The first thing I wanted to discuss with you is these terms thinking, not thinking, and non-thinking. The source of these terms, I mean, in our use of them, comes from a story, from a colloquial conversation between the ancestor, Yaku-san Igen Daisho, and a monk who asked him, what are you thinking? when you're sitting in a very steady way. The Chinese term for the way he was sitting is Gotsu, Gotsu-chi.

[01:01]

Gotsu means sitting still like a mountain, like a bald mountain. And then Gotsu, Gotsu intensifies it but also intensifies it to a point of also having a possible meaning of being shaking. So still is almost shaking. And then chi is earth. So I don't know if, I think it's just colloquial Chinese for like when you're really sitting like the earth. So the monk says to him, when you're sitting like that, what kind of thinking are you doing? And the term that was used is this term and the basic term is this character, this character here, which is composed of the ideogram for a rice paddy or a field and the character for

[02:17]

mind or consciousness. And then the rio, the next character, rio, means like to measure. So the monk's saying, and Chinese is, when you speak it, it's kind of disyllabic. Like, for example, in the Tartsutra, it uses the character for bee, for nose. But when Chinese people speak, they don't say bee, they say beeza, right? Because when you're speaking, if you say bee, it could be a lot of different bees, but beeza narrows it, the compound narrows it. Does that make sense? So anyway, he says, what kind of shirio are you doing? What kind of thinking are you doing?"

[03:22]

And the teacher says, thinking of not thinking. So shirio, fu shirio. Fu means not. So thinking, not thinking. What kind of thinking are you doing? Thinking, not thinking. And then the monk says to the teacher, well, how do you think of not thinking? And the teacher says, non-thinking. So, what kind of thinking? The teacher says, thinking, not thinking. The monk says, how is thinking not thinking? And the teacher says, non-thinking, or hi shi ryo. And non is slightly different in English from not.

[04:22]

And sometimes people refer to Buddhism as a Atheistic religion doesn't have God, but it might be more accurate to say it's non-theistic. It's not really non-theistic. And the word he is also sometimes translated as beyond. non-thinking or beyond thinking. And Buddhism is kind of like, it's not that we don't have deities or gods or goddesses. As you may know in some scriptures, like the Abhidhammsakas, just got hundreds and thousands of deities in it.

[05:31]

All kinds of deities or gods and goddesses. So because Buddhism is beyond gods and goddesses, because it's beyond any kind of idea of divine, it can welcome all kinds of divinities. So particularly the great vehicle has just got innumerable beings are part of the group, just like innumerable other kinds of beings, ordinary beings, human beings, animals, and so on. So I wanted to put these turban up here before Sashin just in case they come up. And so thinking is the definition of karmic consciousness.

[06:33]

I think this character thinking could also be translated as intention or volition. So the basic definition of karmic consciousness, of karma, is what the Buddha says is, the Sanskrit or Pali word is chetana. Which again means intention, volition, or thinking. The translation of karma is action. Karmic consciousness is action consciousness. And it's action consciousness where it looks like the action is associated with somebody. So there's a self in karmic consciousness, and it has activities.

[07:40]

Like I breathe, I think, I talk, I'm born, I die, I walk, I sit. All this, and the total picture of all those actions in a given moment is the intention or the thinking. So what kind of thinking is the Zen meditator doing? He's thinking not thinking. So I would just suggest to you for starters that thinking not thinking means that when we're sitting zazen, our thinking is not thinking. In other words, our thinking is emptiness. Our thinking is a thinking which is free of thinking. Our thinking is emptiness, so in our thinking there's no thinking.

[08:44]

And there's also no eyes or ears or nose or tongue or body or mind or feelings or perceptions or thinking. Basically, the thinking of our sitting of the ancestors and the Buddha's sitting. That thinking is a thinking which is not thinking. And also, the not thinking of the Buddha's is thinking. It's a thinking which is not thinking and a not thinking which is thinking. That's the kind of thinking we have. That's the kind of non-thinking we have. Our thinking is emptiness. Our emptiness is thinking. And how do you How's that or how can you think not thinking? And he says non-thinking. The way you do that, the way you live that way, the way form is emptiness and emptiness form is beyond form and emptiness.

[09:56]

Andrew? Would you say that again, please? Yeah, so would it be helpful to see the word as emptiness as tantamount to awareness? Emptiness as tantamount to awareness? Are you asking if we can substitute awareness for thinking? Thinking and awareness interchangeably? Well, in a way you can use emptiness as interchangeable with any word because all words are emptiness. All words are empty of any kind of self.

[11:05]

And also all words are actually emptiness because there's no difference between any word and the fact that that word is completely free of any words. No words reach a word, no concepts reach a word, and no concept reach anything. So all words, like consciousness and emptiness or thinking, all words our emptiness. In other words, if you look superficially at a word, you may think you can find it. If you look deeply, you realize finally that not only cannot you find it, but all the king's men will not be able to find it. Nothing can be found no matter how deeply you look. Things can only be found if you look superficially.

[12:11]

Like a lot of people, you know, if you ask them about God himself, they say, yeah, sure. Even before they look. Then if they look, they might say, yeah, I think I saw it. And you look again and say, well, maybe I didn't. Maybe I don't actually find it. But even deeper you realize it's not just that you can't find it. It's not just that you can't find awareness. Nobody can find it. That's its emptiness. But I wouldn't use awareness and thinking as synonyms. I would use awareness as a wider term, like mind. But awareness also has a little bit, might be a little confusing in the sense that awareness Yeah, so that's part of what the poem Zazen Shin's about, is an awareness that doesn't necessarily touch anything or see any objects or grasp anything.

[13:18]

There could be that kind of awareness. But thinking does grasp things. Thinking grasps. Thinking is superficial. Whoops. So that's kind of why I didn't want to do too much on it, because I think maybe we might talk about it more during the session. I just want to introduce these terms so that you can see them, because we don't usually use a blackboard during session. Yes. Yes, Jim? Is thinking not thinking an activity is thinking, not thinking, an activity of karmic consciousness? Good question. Yours was too, Andrew.

[14:19]

And what's the answer? What? Is it an act? Yes? No. Thinking, not thinking, is non-thinking. It's beyond thinking. That activity is not an activity of karmic consciousness. It's beyond karmic consciousness. So thank you, thank you for that question. What? Yeah, well, not an activity of karmic consciousness is not the same as, thank you for that comment, is not the same as does not fall into karmic consciousness. So thinking not thinking does not, if I say it's not an activity of karmic consciousness, I don't mean it doesn't fall into karmic consciousness. Did you follow that, Jim? I'm not saying it doesn't fall into it. And I'm not saying it does.

[15:24]

If you say, does it? I say, no. It doesn't. But I actually shouldn't say it doesn't. I should say that Thinking not thinking is not obscuring karmic consciousness. And not obscuring karmic consciousness is not an activity of karmic consciousness. It is the way karmic consciousness actually is functioning. So the way karmic consciousness is functioning is not the way karmic consciousness appears to itself. the non-deceptive, non-misleading, authentic way that our life is functioning, including in the confined way of karmic consciousness, the way that's actually all working, is non-thinking, I would say. And

[16:27]

See, I see. One, two, three, four. Is that it? Five. Five questions. That's okay with me. I just thought I was going to introduce this, but it can turn into a major event. And here we go. Yuki? Now, I'm totally confused. That's karmic consciousness. Yes. So non-thinking is not karmic consciousness and thinking and not thinking are karmic consciousness, but you said not. Thinking and not thinking are not karmic consciousness. Thinking is karmic consciousness. Very basic. Thinking is karmic consciousness. Non-thinking... is the emptiness of karmic consciousness. Emptiness is not karmic consciousness except in the sense that karmic consciousness is emptiness and emptiness is karmic consciousness. But emptiness is the fact that karmic consciousness cannot be found

[17:32]

So it's the vastness of karmic consciousness. It's the ungraspableness of karmic consciousness. It's the innocence of karmic consciousness, of any kind of idea about it. That's emptiness. So in a sense, emptiness is karmic consciousness, but it's the deep karmic consciousness and ordinary thinking that we are familiar with is the superficial karmic consciousness. But the superficial and the deep are inseparable. So really our thinking is not thinking, and really not thinking is the vastness and profundity. Our thinking is actually inconceivably profound. That's the emptiness of it. That is not thinking. No, that's not thinking. Not thinking is the depth of thinking. And those two are always together. So when the monk asks the teacher, what kind of thinking are you doing? The teacher says, not thinking. In other words, deep thinking is going on here with the thinking.

[18:37]

And when we sit really still, our thinking and our not thinking, our deep thinking and our superficial thinking are totally together. So when we sit in the zendo, really still, not going anyplace, not coming anyplace, that's the kind of thinking, not thinking, and not thinking, thinking. And how do you practice that? That's non-thinking, which is not falling into karmic consciousness, not not falling into karmic consciousness. It's the actual not obscuring of it. It's inconceivable too. It's inconceivable. That also is, non-thinking is also not non-thinking. But there is, you know, actually a practice that which is realizing this dynamic relationship between form and emptiness.

[19:44]

So form and emptiness is already going on, our thinking is already empty, but if we don't practice non-thinking, we don't realize it. So we do this inconceivable practice, which realizes, which is the way form is, the way form is emptiness and emptiness is form, that way is empty, And it's emptiness, but it's also form. So it's kind of like a third situation. It's like what I was saying before. Samsara, samsara is thinking. Nirvana is like not thinking. And they're inseparable. We live right there. And when we practice where they meet and don't lean either way, that's non-thinking. It doesn't fall into samsara. It doesn't fall into nirvana. You can't really fall into nirvana. You can just want to fall into nirvana because as soon as you try to fall into nirvana, you fall into samsara.

[20:46]

But you really don't fall either way. That's non-thinking. So non-thinking is our actual freedom. Emptiness isn't exactly freedom. Excuse me for saying that. I'll probably get in trouble for that. I don't know what kind of spirit I'm going to become because I said that. Emptiness is not really freedom. Emptiness enables freedom. I would say freedom is non-thinking. Realization of emptiness is non-thinking. And the way you realize emptiness is by thinking freedom, by being freedom-thinking. That's non-thinking. That's my suggestion to you about this family-style teaching of our ancestors sitting. What kind of sitting is that? Not this. What kind of thinking is that? Not thinking.

[21:47]

How do you do it? Non-thinking. Non-thinking is the way we realize our karmic consciousness is liberated. Next was Francis. Yes. And the mind of no-bode realizes emptiness of you name it. Emptiness of thinking, for example. Travis. If you dwell in non-thinking, do you produce karmic effects? If you dwell in non-thinking, do you produce karmic effects? Yeah, I think when you dwell, the way your dwelling equipment is not your drilling equipment. Your dwelling equipment is, yeah, non-thinking is your drilling equipment and karmic consciousness is your dwelling equipment.

[22:56]

Sorry. Karmic consciousness is dwelling equipment. It's a wonderful imaginative process that we get from having a human body. We get dwelling equipment so we can dream that we can dwell someplace. Everything's flowing. There's no place to dwell, but we can imagine that we can dwell. And it's easy for us because our karmic consciousness conjures up dwelling opportunities. And they're very attractive. I was talking to an old friend on the telephone the other day, and she said, do not give up that real estate. Is that OK, Travis? I'm thinking about it. You're thinking about it, yeah. And by the way, somebody sent me a note saying, what is the role of personal discipline in Zen practice?

[24:04]

And I'm not going to exactly answer that, but the thinking of the ancestors is thinking, not thinking. And the person practices non-thinking, because The person has to practice this non-thinking in order to realize that thinking is not thinking. In order to realize that not thinking is thinking, the person has to be engaged in practice of non-thinking. The person has to be engaged in the practice of not dwelling in the thinking or the not thinking. And dwelling in thinking is ordinary suffering. And dwelling in emptiness of thinking is special suffering, much more dangerous and difficult to be helped by, out of.

[25:07]

Does that make sense? It's better to dwell in form than in emptiness. Yeah. And If you remind me later, I'll talk more about that point, about how it is that it's worse to dwell in emptiness than in form. The next person was Kim. Is that right, Kim? Was she the fourth, third? Yes? practice some way think not thinking but it's like practice is not thinking and think not thinking is the kind of just the ultimate truth the way the way things actually the way things are so i guess

[26:08]

We're always not thinking. It's just a question of realizing that? Yeah. We're always not thinking. We're always not thinking thinking. Except we're not always not thinking thinking. We're not always. We're only that way when there's thinking. Like we're not always thinking. There are special cases like in dreamless sleep is a happy one. It's very restful. So it is possible to have no thinking. But at that time, so when there's no thinking, when there isn't any thinking, then there's no thinking to be not thinking. But usually we're thinking. whether we're awake or asleep, usually we're thinking, and our thinking is actually not thinking. That's always the case. And so the question is realizing it, because realizing that thinking is not thinking relieves all suffering and distress.

[27:13]

According to Avalokiteshvara. I think that for me it feels like it's important to confirm that the practice isn't to try to think yourself into not thinking about anything. It's important for you to not do that, yes. Please don't. And it's more about how you are relating to your thinking? This practice is, to a great extent, how we're relating to our thinking, yes. And how do we relate to our thinking? According to Bajong, how do we relate to our thinking? Do you remember? Not obscuring it, not ignoring it. That's how we relate to our thinking. Or not giving it weight and not taking it lightly. That's how we relate to our thinking. And if we relate to our thinking that way, we're on the path. And in this way of relating to our thinking, dash karmic consciousness, we will understand the pinnacle arising.

[28:31]

We will understand the inconceivable process that gives rise to karmic consciousness. By treating karmic conscious properly, we open to it completely, We don't grasp it. We don't turn away from it. We just open more and more to it by this training, by this non-obscuring relationship with it. And by opening to it, we open to the true dharma of it. And the true dharma of it is this dependent core rising. But if we try to grasp anything, we close down on the causal process in that attitude. We really can't, but we're disoriented by trying to grasp something that's inconceivable. So a big part of our practice is about how we relate to our thinking.

[29:34]

Yes. However, I would like to say the slight difference between ultimate truth and the way things really are. Ultimate truth is the not thinking of thinking. Ultimate truth is the inconceivable vastness of everything, emptiness. That's ultimate truth. But the way things are isn't just ultimate truth. The way things are is ultimate truth is inseparable from conventional truth. Conventional truth is also not the way things are, it's just the way they appear. The way ultimate truth is conventional truth and the way conventional truth is ultimate truth, and the way conventional truth binds you if you grasp it, and the way ultimate truth releases you, that's the way things are. So the way things are is slightly different from ultimate truth.

[30:39]

Is there a good word for that beyond the way things are? In other words, besides the way things are? Well, there are actually. Another term for it is the thoroughly established character. Another word for it is suchness. So emptiness is kind of, in a way, the way things actually aren't. And suchness is kind of the way they are. And suchness totally embraces emptiness, but it also embraces the way emptiness is intimate with things that don't look empty. But we're not trying... It's okay if you want to. If you want to play golf, it's allowed. If you want to cook lunch, it's fine.

[31:41]

If you want to go into a yogic state where there's no thinking, you can do that. But that's not the main point of our practice, to go into some special state where there's no thinking. That's more like a vacation or something. It's a big vacation. But that's not the point. The point is to realize that vacation is actually not vacation. And golf is not golf. The point is to liberate suffering, not just take a vacation. Because after you come back from big vacations, you still have to deal with the world of suffering. It's kind of like form emptiness and the practice of suchness. And it's also the practice form emptiness and the deeply practicing perfect wisdom.

[32:47]

Perfect wisdom realizes thinking, not thinking. It's a practice. And if I could just mention one other thing which I think I'll probably mention again and again and again. But I gave the talk on Sunday and I talked about, you know, how disciplined form is emptiness. So I use the example of wearing a robe and it keeps changing and we keep taking care of it. But in the process of taking care of it, we have an opportunity to not obscure cause and effect. And by relating to wearing a robe and not giving robe-wearing weight and not taking it lightly, you realize that robe-wearing is empty.

[33:57]

Is that clear? And then while you're wearing it, sometimes you feel like you'd like to take robe-wearing lightly, like put Velcro on so you could take it lightly. And a lot of people might think they could take it lightly, but when it keeps falling down, it's hard to, you're tempted to give it weight when it starts to fall off you, because it seems heavy. And you look foolish to have your robes falling on the ground. And everyone's looking at you, what's the matter with you, you know? So maybe you'd like to You know, get it under control. But getting your robes under control will not bring you to the emptiness of your robes. Does that make sense? Is that clear? And even if you don't have robes, you know, your outfit is less tempting to give weight to and try to get under control because it's kind of very well behaved.

[34:58]

Yeah. It's even got an A on it. I mean, your outfit's not that difficult to wear either, that nice outfit. So anyway, we have these various, some outfits we wear which are kind of like saying to us, can you give up trying to control this and still take good care of it? So it takes a lot of work to wear certain robes because every time you move, they fall off you. So it's a lot of work. Can you wear something that takes so much work and that you have to be kind of taken care of all the time like several little kids? Can you take care of it without trying to control it? If you can, you realize the emptiness of wearing robes. That was what I talked about. So we use these, and then we have odyoki.

[36:05]

You know that one too, right? How do you take care of your bowls? And we have serving. How do you serve? And we have bowing, and we have our sitting posture. All these forms we have as opportunities to relate to them without trying to control them, without trying to not fall into karmic cause and effect. Andrew? I'm sorry. You're not the only one. You become confused. Well, that's normal. Because all these things are words, when you live in a place where everything's words, that's called the realm of confusion.

[37:12]

Now, if you were there, and if you were confused, then I have some more words for you, which are, don't give that confusion weight. Now, I'm not accusing you of giving it weight. But a lot of people, when they notice they're confused, they're tempted to give it weight, and then they feel really bad about it. And a lot of other people, before they notice they're confused, they take it lightly. So once you realize you're in the realm of words, you realize you're in the realm of confusion. Karmic consciousness is the realm of confusion. You lived there? Did you say unfortunately? Well, now wait a second. I asked him if he lived in karmic consciousness, and he kind of said, yes, unfortunately. Now is where we come back to the bodhisattva vow. And I'm not going to ask you if you have the bodhisattva vow, but the bodhisattva vow is, willingly go into the karmic consciousness where it's going to be very likely to be confusing.

[38:23]

I'm not here by accident. I want to be here to learn how to be in this confusing situation where these words are spinning me around and I'm getting nauseated, almost throwing up. I wanted to come here because there's something very valuable here, which is the liberation of all beings. Right. And I want to liberate beings from those too. Anybody who is caught by those ideas, I wish to liberate them. However, the wish is, although it's just an idea, that wishes a necessary idea in order to become free, which is also just an idea. And I want to be free, even though it's just an idea. And I want to help you, even though, for me, you're just an idea.

[39:26]

But I don't think you're just an idea. Just for me, you're just an idea. And I still want to help you be free, and you still kind of make facial expressions like you want me to help you. Yeah, see, even though you're kind of unfortunately here, you're also fortunately here. So anyway, a lot of people, almost everybody's like you. Almost all sentient beings are just like you. They have karmic consciousness. It's confusing. It's disorienting. And sometimes they even forget that they wanted to be here in order to help people. All I see is just words. And they're all just like in a dark jail cell.

[40:29]

And just bump into these things. And also, not just a dark jail cell, but all the bars say, these are real bars. No, it's not. I don't know if it's real or not. No, you don't know, but subliminally it looks like it's real. And it's not. But anyway, I agree that the place you're describing is karmic consciousness. Karmic consciousness is often described as like a jail. And the jail is, the surface of the jail is words. That's a normal situation. I'm quite upset. I am upset. I can't speak. As soon as I examine myself, all it is is just a thought examining the previous thought. The thought says, I am examining me.

[41:37]

Yeah, that's normal. That's a normal situation. Does that sound familiar to you guys? Yeah. Yeah, so it's upsetting, it's disorienting, and it's painful. It's uncomfortable, it's stressful, and then it also can be frightening. Frightening. So now might be a good time to mention that Dogen says that non-thinking is like the right thinking in the Eightfold Path. You know, Eightfold Path has right view, right thinking, or right intention, and then right action, right speech, right livelihood. Is that right? So right view, then right intention, or right thinking.

[42:39]

And right thinking is Right is renunciation, freedom from ill will, and harmlessness or nonviolence. So we have to practice nonviolence towards this confusing, stressful situation. Not we have to. If we do practice right thinking with this confusing situation, There will be freedom from the confusion. But we have to practice it in the midst of the confusion. So right thinking is practiced in the middle of confusion. And in order to practice it, we have to do these bodhisattva trainings because bodhisattvas do not practice in a nice, calm, undisorienting place.

[43:44]

They practice in a confusing, stressful, even frightening place and they practice renunciation and nonviolence in response to this confusion and disorienting words. We have to train at that if we wish to realize fearlessness. So again my dream of Martin Luther King is he lived in a confusing, stressful, frightening situation and he was able to have right thinking non-thinking. He was able to like listen to all that confusion and not be violent with it. And the fruit of that is fearlessness. Being unafraid of this nauseating, confusing, stressful situation. Being unafraid of it. Not getting rid of it, but being unafraid of it. Unafraid of what? Unafraid of karmic consciousness.

[44:45]

How do you get there? By practicing renunciation, nonviolence, and non-hate, harmlessness towards the confusion, towards the stress. That's the early teaching of Buddha, right thinking. Later teaching of the bodhisattvas is you practice generosity towards the confusion. You say, welcome nauseating confusion, welcome stress, welcome fear. You practice ethics with the confusion, including that while you're practicing ethics you're confused about what ethics is. I want to practice ethics and I'm it's just all words, I'm confused. And you practice patience with the confusion.

[45:48]

And you practice diligently and heroically, energetically with the confusion. And you become with the confusion. And then you can see the Dharma of the confusion. That's non-thinking, what I was just talking about. And the confusion disorients us from practicing right thinking. It disorients us from non-thinking. We get spun around so we have to learn how to be spun. We're not going to stop being spun. The situation is confusing. It's not going to be not confusing. Like somebody said to me, you know, that chant of the, what's it called, Zazen Shin, that verse, they said, it's so painful that it says, bird, a bird flies like birds. It's so painful that, say, a bird flies like birds.

[46:53]

Could you change that? So I got a different translation where it says, a bird flies like a bird. But then the person came to me and says, oh, this one's even more painful. It's so awkward and clumsy. This is the poetry. This is karmic consciousness. For me, you know. People come to me, oh, it's so painful. Oh, yeah. Please change it. I change it. Oh, it's worse. But I remember, this is my kato. Whatever I offer you, people say, oh, it's, you know. Like, Fu and I went into the library to talk about where to put this nice altar that we got, and then we thought of a good place to put it. And I said, I'll tell people you said to do it that way. And she said, oh, so now you're protected. You can hide behind me. But actually, I told somebody about it, and I didn't say who made the decision, but the person got really upset with me and attacked me.

[48:04]

And they're coming to get you now that I told them it's really your decision. Anyway, this is karmic consciousness, where we're trying to help each other and we are helping each other. And the way we help each other is that when we're helping each other, the person we're trying to help comes to us and says, you're really unhelpful. And that's not a joke. Or maybe it is. we do need to get the joke. This is a joke. Karmic consciousness is a joke. The question is, can you understand it? And we're not going to understand the joke unless we're nonviolent with it. So thank you for speaking for the assembly, telling us how you are and everybody else is that way. They've got the same confusing, stressful, unhappy state of words spinning around words all the time.

[49:15]

And I don't know who is next, but I see Kristen's hand, and I see Maggie's hand, and I see Jim's hand. Is that it? Is that all the hands? Yes. Kristen. For some reason, this feels like a confession that I'm having some difficulty accepting such and such a practice. She said, the idea of the practice of such, you've heard the practice of suchness, right? In the book on Zazengi, if you want to practice suchness, you should practice suchness right away. So suchness is a practice. So the way things are is the way things are. And how are they? The way is perfect and all-pervading. There's no place it doesn't reach. But if you don't fan yourself, you won't realize that. And then you think, but when I fan myself, that's karmic consciousness.

[50:18]

And that's right. For me, like I got the fan, that's karmic consciousness. I fan it, that's karmic consciousness. So this is the carved dragon. In a way, this is not really the practice of suchness. You can do that too. But that's also something you might say, well, that also isn't karmic consciousness. I am practicing attention to the fan. I am practicing attention to the practice of suchness. That's the carved dragon. So in karmic consciousness we, in acts, we carve the practice of suchness. It's not the actual practice of suchness. It's a kind of limited version of it for karmic consciousness. But you are trying to practice it. And then

[51:20]

And then Dogen says, you shouldn't despise this karmic consciousness version of the practice of suchness. Don't despise it, even though it's not the real dragon of the practice of suchness. But also don't esteem it, don't like it. What do you do with it? Become intimate with it. And also the real dragon, the way the actual practice of suchness, the way Thinking is not thinking and not thinking is thinking. That actual process of reality, the real dragon, don't like it either and don't dislike it. Become intimate with it. How do you become intimate with it? If you've got karmic consciousness, and sentient beings do, you become intimate with the real dragon by becoming intimate with the carved dragon, with the karmic consciousness version of the practice of suchness, with the conceptual version of the inconceivable practice.

[52:33]

When you're intimate with one, you're intimate with the other. And the karmic consciousness version of the practice of suchness is very challenging because, as Andrew just said, it's happening in a realm of confusion and stress. So if you can become — it's quite a feat to actually not lean back from certain forms of karmic consciousness. It's really hard, but the proposal is extremely optimistic that if you could do this thing, you would also simultaneously, in your intimacy with karmic consciousness, in your intimacy with being little and confined, you open to the unlimited and unconfined. You realize one, you realize the other. You realize suchness really you realize how to be intimate with karmic consciousness. But since now we're kind of not sure if we realize suchness,

[53:39]

But we do have karmic consciousness and we have a sense. See, this is again with the forms. We use the forms and I have the sense I finally have an intimate relationship with my robe. You know, I really am okay when it keeps falling down and I put it back, and it's falling down and I put it back. It's really, if this goes on forever, I feel like, okay. And ordiocchi, if the water's spilling and the server's putting oatmeal on my hands, all that stuff, it's kind of like, do it again. Let's do this again. I'm so happy to be here, being intimate with these forms, and I'm so happy to be here where I don't get anything with karmic consciousness. That's the way you would be if you realized suchness, and that's the way practice which will realize suchness.

[54:43]

So before you have realized suchness, which is already here, you practice this karmic consciousness version of it. And when you feel you're finally intimate, then your friend comes by and puts Velcro on your okesa. Now don't put Velcro on it. I just got used to not having Velcro. Well, it's a new rule that we have. Everybody's going to wear Velcro now. There's going to be no more faces falling down. Everybody's going to be really tidy. There's going to be no more foolish people. Everything's going to be right at Zen Center from now on. And then we get used to that and say, oh, the new policy is we're going to go back to the old way. Let's see. There was Jim. Who else? Maggie. Maggie, Jim, John, and Sonia, and Rachel.

[55:48]

Do you care that there's a typo up there? Well, I care, but I try not to give it weight. It's a little hard. We're missing a K-I-N. Is that what you're talking about, the K, replacing the G with a K? Maggie? How would you relate to what we chant in Heart Sutra, sensation, perception, formation and consciousness?

[56:57]

So, for example, would you say that perception, She's saying, how would I relate this discussion to the Heart Sutra when it says, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness? The formations in the formations group is chaitanya. thinking is in the formations group. It's one of the things that's there. But it's actually, in the early version of the teaching, the fourth aggregate, which you call formations, was actually this, just this. Because this is the one which is the formation, the shape of the whole consciousness. And then later they filled in details of the shape of thinking.

[57:58]

So the Heart Sutra is saying, when it says form is emptiness and the same is true of feelings, perceptions, and formations, it's basically saying the same is true of thinking. I don't know if that answers your question. So maybe my question is more the difference between formation and consciousness, you know, all the way from perception. The difference between formations and consciousness? Okay. So the fifth aggregate is called consciousness. And consciousness is kind of the space where there's somebody who's doing things. So the consciousness is, we say karmic consciousness, and the shape of karmic consciousness is thinking. That's the formation. Yeah, so consciousness always has things going on in it. Consciousness has a self, and the self has actions.

[59:02]

And the actions are the karma, and the shape and the type of karma it is, is the current shape. So the consciousness is like a big, not ocean, but warehouse It's actually, yeah, it's actually, it seems big. It's actually a small version of our life in which there's a self. We actually have a much bigger mind. Ordinary people have a much bigger mind, but there's not a self in the whole mind. But that huge mind supports this small area of consciousness where there's a self who has intentions or thinking. That's where the five aggregates are. The five aggregates are in consciousness. But the five aggregates aren't everything in our life, they're just everything in our self-life, in the self-space. Consciousness is the self-space. But we have a life which is much bigger than the self-space. And the bigger life, body and bigger mind,

[60:06]

they support the little karmic consciousness. But karmic consciousness, as I mentioned, Suzuki Rishi said, it's big enough to have a lot of problems. But it's actually a small mind. And then the formation, you said, it's a form of consciousness. So it's a fixed image of that dynamic consciousness. It may look fixed. The image of the way the formation looks is called perception. Perception is the way the formation looks. So the consciousness is a space in which a self lives and self has actions. And the actions are the shape of that consciousness. And the perception is the view of what that action is. The pattern of consciousness is chetana.

[61:15]

The pattern of consciousness is thinking or intention. And every consciousness has a shape or a pattern. and that's the thinking. And also there's a perception of what that shape looks like and that's another thing that's there all the time, an idea of what I'm doing. So I'm doing many things and I also have ideas or an idea of what I'm doing and that idea might look fixed. None of this stuff is fixed and that's part of what we have to learn is that all these phenomena are interdependent And they appear fixed but that's a false appearance. But if we're kind, if we're non-violent and practice renunciation and don't hate this stress that comes when things appear in a fixed way, there's stress and fear. So if we practice with the situation, we learn that the self and the things that it is doing are not fixed.

[62:20]

It's a process. It looks like neither the pattern of thinking has its source of this conscious world and always originate from that. Well, that's a little, maybe not such, I don't quite put it that way. The source of karmic consciousness is maybe indirectly karmic consciousness because karmic consciousness, the Buddha taught, has consequence. Karmic consciousness is a cause of an effect. What's the effect? The effect is the transformation of the larger cognitive process. The larger cognitive process is the support of the small karmic world. I was talking about the formation. The formation is not caused by the karmic consciousness. The karmic consciousness and the shape of it is supported by the bigger cognitive process, which is the result of many factors

[63:27]

one of them being past karmic consciousnesses. Would you also say that karmic consciousnesses support formation and perception? No. Karmic consciousness has perception and formation. It doesn't support it, except in the sense that it makes a space for it. But the things that it makes space for also support it because without the things that it makes space for, there would be no karmic consciousness. So the appearance of a self supports consciousness, but consciousness provides the place for the self to appear. So they're mutually supporting each other. In that way, I would say, yes, they mutually support each other. Feelings support perceptions. Perceptions support feelings. Consciousness supports formations. Formations support consciousness. All the five aggregates support each other. Jim? There's this lovely phrase in the Zazen Shin, effort without desire.

[64:32]

And I'm thinking of that phrase in relationship to these three, thinking, not thinking, and not. I was wondering how that phrase is governing or commenting on this relationship. Effort without desire, how it's commenting on this relationship here. I think that's kind of a, that's words to, I don't know what the word is, it's words which are, well, I'll just say it, are kind of like, have a relationship with non-thinking.

[65:33]

effort without desire. Another word, another translation is effort without without an aim or without pointing. So you're making effort but it's coming it's coming because of the way things are rather than trying to make them some way. How does intent go into that effort? Hmm? How does intent so effort... Well, let's see. It's like that example that comes to my mind of where Cesar Gracia is going through the door and he joins his palms and bows and somebody hits him from the back and his elbow goes back. It's like this activity of, you know, you're not really trying to poke the person in the chest with your elbow, but it is an effort. But it's an effort that comes just from the causes and conditions, and you're not adding yourself in addition to the process, for example.

[66:45]

Yeah, there's no intention. The attention is not intention. But it looks like activity. And the definition of activity is usually intention. And the definition of effort is usually that there's some desire to get something. Like people say, why would I go to the store without trying to get the best food? It just doesn't make any sense. Let's see, who was next? Sonia had her hand. And Rachel? And John? John? Sonia? Rachel? I guess so. So let's say I take the fan and I start fanning myself. Yeah. And all of those actions arise from karmic consciousness. No, they don't arise from, but they might appear in karmic consciousness. Is there an inconceivable something that causes me to take those actions without intention?

[68:03]

Yeah, I would say that there's an inconceivable cognitive process that supports those actions, which you can see these actions appearing in consciousness, and there's an inconceivable process that's supporting their arising in consciousness. And that inconceivable process is not intending that they will appear the way they appear. No. That is part of our mind which we are not aware of consciously. So we live in consciousness, we are here, and we are aware of objects. And that cognitive life is supported by another realm of mind which doesn't have somebody there who's aware of objects. And that realm of cognitive activity surrounds and supports and is affected by the realm of consciousness.

[69:15]

And that doesn't intend that what appears in consciousness will appear the way it appears, but it supports it. And again, I often use the example of like moving my hand just now. I do not know how to do this consciously. I can see it happening, but I understand I cannot actually calculate the way these fingers wind up, you know. I can't actually consciously do that, but I can watch it happen. I can't consciously — if I look carefully, I can't consciously figure out how to walk. But I can see that I'm walking, And it's wonderful. I can think that. Or I can think it's not wonderful. And I'm not in control of thinking it's wonderful or not wonderful. But I have an understanding in this consciousness, which is that I do not know how I talk, how I move. I'm just doing so much here, and I'm not consciously working it all out.

[70:17]

I can't do that, and nobody can. But in consciousness I can see it happening. This is the realm of activity. And I can think I'm doing and not doing some of it. Is that called autonomic? The thing that you can't control? In consciousness, no. It's actually not usually called that. I think autonomic more has to do with adjusting temperature and digestion, things like that. This is usually called voluntary skeletal movement. This is usually called related to the... The nervous system has an autonomic part and a... Huh? Sympathetic and autonomic. I think this is more sympathetic. And somatic. Yeah. Yeah. And this is words for this process. What's suchness, John?

[71:20]

What's suchness? Well, I have a conceivable idea. Suchness is the way everything I'm talking about cannot be found. And the way that these things which I'm talking about cannot be found is inseparable from the way they appear to be able to be found. That's suchness. Suchness is all this, the autonomic nervous system, the unconscious cognitive process, the conscious cognitive process, all this stuff is empty and the way it's empty and the way emptiness is it, that's suchness. Okay, next. Let's get Sonia here. Sonia? Were you telling me where you are? Huh? Were you telling me where you were? Yeah, and where did she say she was?

[72:21]

Yeah, she thinks she's right here. That's normal kind of consciousness. Yes. In karmic consciousness we think we're here and also we think we're here now rather than yesterday. We don't think we're here yesterday. Yes? Yes, Sonya? I was going to ask, I was thinking about this freedom. I was thinking about freedom against fearlessness you brought up. I'm feeling afraid right now. Freedom from fear. Fearlessness. Fearlessness. and arising secretions of the mind, and that non-thinking is more like somebody, or, yeah, that's what it is.

[73:39]

My mind. Is that? I don't know what that is. We could say, it's what you just said. And I'm not going to say, I don't want to say it's inaccurate. I thought it was fairly clear what you said. Emptiness is not exactly the same as dependent core rising.

[74:44]

Emptiness is the truth that anything we say about dependent core rising is totally absent in the actual dependent core rising. That's emptiness. emptiness is very much about dependent core arising. It's the fact that nobody's idea of it, it's free of everybody's idea of it. And it's always free of everybody's idea. The process of creation is always free of what we're saying about it. So like we sometimes say, You know, like with young people we sometimes say, like I do this too, I say, you did it. You did it. We tell stories like that. What she actually did is free of that story I told of you did it. You know, I'm not saying, I did it. It's free of that too.

[75:45]

So emptiness is the freedom of the dependent core arising from any idea of dependent core arising. And call and response come out of dependent core arising? Say again? Call and response come out of dependent core arising? Call and response is the way dependent core arising works, or dependent core rising is the way call and response works. And we can have stories about it, which are beautiful. But if we had a story like there's no call and response going on, it still would be going on. inconceivably. It's always going on inconceivably. So inconceivably we are always asking for guidance and we're always getting a response. And conceivably sometimes we think we're asking for guidance and we think there's no response.

[76:49]

Or we think, I asked for guidance and I got response. Or somebody came and gave me guidance and I didn't ask for it. We have those stories. But always we're asking for it and receiving it. We're always in this intimate relationship with awakening, with suchness. We're always living where nirvana and samsara are together. And samsara calls for nirvana. And nirvana says, I'm right here. Your mind imagining about lunch is, you know, that's your thinking. That's samsara. And that's always inseparable from freedom of all your imaginations. You're always free.

[77:51]

While you're thinking of lunch, you're always free of thinking of lunch. Louder? It is your experience, but you don't know your experience. Your actual experience, what your actual experience is, you are intimately living with freedom. That's your actual experience. But you don't know your actual experience and nobody else does either. It's not like you're unusual. Your actual experience is inconceivable. But you are having your actual experience because your actual experience is another word for your actual life. Your life is experience. Your life is inconceivable. But when you say, it's not my experience, I think what you mean, a lot of people use the word experience, they mean it's not my karmic consciousness.

[78:53]

And if it was your karmic consciousness, I would say that's fine that your karmic consciousness is, yes that's so, but that's not it. But that karmic consciousness which says, this is my experience, is inseparable from freedom of that karmic consciousness. Rachel? Thank you. When I'm working with something, the way you work with your own, I often wonder what the tipping point is where it's just, you say, this is out of control, I'm going to invent a rocket suit because something needs to change. Can you say more about that? About when you're working with something and it's overwhelming, you feel like, I had it, I'm going to make things simpler? There's a point where it's only reasonable to say, let's do an abbreviated form, or this ocean's gotten out of control, or something needs to change.

[80:02]

Not like you don't want to practice with it anymore, but it's for the best. It could be for the best to actually make a change. So you say, when is it for the best to make a change? Is that what you're saying? I'm saying there's all the spectrum. Things you want to work with, it could be for the better to work with them, but you get to a certain point, and it's better to make a change. So you're working with something, and you want to work with it, and you get to a place where you want to make a change? Yeah, or try a rapid suit, maybe wear something else, et cetera. So make a change means, does it mean sort of set aside what you are working on and work on something else? No, I suppose you're working with the same thing if you have an okay-sa and you turn it into a rock-a-soo, it's the same thing, but... It doesn't look like the same thing to me to switch from an okay-sa to a rock-a-soo.

[81:18]

To me, it looks like putting the okay-sa down and putting a rock-a-soo on. And we do sometimes do that. Like, you know, we don't usually wear the okesa when we're doing certain kinds of work. But we might wear a raksu because it's, like, usually if you're driving a car with a seatbelt and everything, it's pretty difficult to do it with the okesa on. But sometimes, actually, I do wear a raksu when I'm driving a car. And giving a class reads us too lazy to wear the okesa, or do you want me to... It might be just that I thought, well, we just say, well, what are we wearing for this class? And we might say, well, we're wearing Roxas. I might not be saying let's wear Roxas because I'm tired out from dealing with Diokesa. But you're not asking, I don't hear you asking this question, but I feel like maybe I should mention that. Part of the practice is being enthusiastic about it, right?

[82:22]

And part of enthusiasm is not to take on a practice that's too advanced. So, for example, if you're wearing an okesa that's too slippery and you just, you know, you feel like it's just so complicated that you're getting discouraged and, you know, you're not feeling much energy. You just feel it's just too much. It might be better to put on a different okesa that you can be enthusiastic about. And that, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's part of the practice is to not take on a practice that's too difficult. And you might think it's okay, and then you start getting frustrated and so on. And your friend might say, you know, I think that's a little too advanced for you right now. Like, oh, I use expansion... a medium-level Ocesa.

[83:24]

And when we do whitewater rafting, we have like level three, four, five. And they say, well, don't try level five rapids now. Do number three. If you try five, you might get hurt or get discouraged. Or some people... they have not yet sat a one-day sitting and they want to try a seven-day sashin. So we often say, why don't you sit a couple one-day sittings and see how those go? And then they sit them and they go pretty well and say, okay, maybe you can try seven now that you've done two of those. And if somebody wanted to try seven with not that background, I might say, I think that's, you might, most people when they get into it, they think this is hard. I think I should quit. It's so hard. But it might be better to, before you try it, to think about, now, if it gets really hard, will I be able to finish? And you might say, I'm not sure I would.

[84:26]

Well, then why don't we try something not quite as difficult? So I think we do sometimes change the practice if we feel like it's too advanced and we're going to quit. Like during sesshin also or during practice period, sometimes people are having so much discomfort that they're thinking of leaving. And I would say, well, I think it's better to maybe stay and, you know, make it easier on yourself in a sense. Sit in a chair or do some walking meditation rather than leave now that you've started. But sometimes it gets so hard for a person that they just say, I got to leave. And so, okay. maybe if I had known beforehand I might have said I think it's too advanced for you so when people and then the other side is for enthusiasm you should give up practices that you've done enough so don't keep doing the same thing over when you're actually it's kind of like not challenging you anymore so part of the way we find this is often consulting with a teacher about am I is it too easy now

[85:35]

I'm not having the problems I used to have? Or you think this is too advanced for me or too difficult? And sometimes the teachers say, I think that's too advanced right now. So why don't we just not do that right now and do this for now? And then later, maybe we'll do that. Am I answering your question? Yeah. That's part of enthusiasm. One way to say it is part of enthusiasm is to rest. Another way to put it is part of enthusiasm is to set aside. So part of it is to rest from practices when you get fatigued. Another part is to set aside practices that are too easy, unchallenging, or too advanced. That's part of husbanding or monitoring your enthusiasm level. Yeah. Yeah, with help. With people who have gone through that course before and say, you know, for most people it's hard just to sort of come to Zen Center having not sat before and jump into a seven-day session.

[86:43]

Most people that's not a good idea. So we usually kind of like learn the ropes first. Okay. I don't know who was next after... After, after, yeah. Well, I see Rita and I see Tracy. Any other people with their hands raised before? And Yuki? Yes. And Laura? Rita? In looking at these words, I start to think about our classing practice as a body practice, the posture in the body, as well as some of the things that we've been talking about. And I wonder if you could talk about the body in relation to our karmic consciousness.

[87:45]

I thought I heard you say something like the body was part of that figure of mind that made Agnes first. Yeah, my actual body, I have a body that I cannot conceive of. Like the way my organs work, I have stories about it, but I can't actually conceive how my eyes work and my ears work and my sense of touch works. I have ideas of it, but my ideas do not reach marvelous, the astoundingly beautiful way that our organs work. But I do have a karmic consciousness version of how my organs work. And the way my body actually works, I have pictures of it, but how the pictures of my body arise are far beyond my conscious awareness.

[88:48]

So I'm suggesting that we all have a virtually infinite body and an infinity that includes boundaries and surfaces and limits. And we have a cognitive process which embraces that body. And we have a conscious mind where a concept, a picture of the body arises. It has fingers and arms and legs. And the practice is not just in the karmic consciousness, but the karmic consciousness again is the carved dragon place where we have a carved dragon version of our body. And if we skip over taking care of the carved dragon version of our body, that's going to hinder, to some extent, realization of the infinite body or the inconceivable body.

[89:53]

If we practice nonviolence with the body that appears in consciousness, if we practice compassion with the phantom body, that appears in consciousness, the dream body that appears in consciousness, if we practice compassion there and apply the teachings there and don't give weight to that body or take that body lightly and so on, we open to and start integrating and become more intimate with our infinite, inconceivable body, which is peace and happiness when we integrate. You're welcome. Tracy? I'd like to go back to something from an earlier class, that I either have a fundamental misunderstanding or maybe lack of faith.

[90:54]

Or perhaps something else. During the classes I feel like I got more of a taste of karmic consciousness So to not believe what I think, that's one of the things I'm taking away, is to not put so much attention on what I think. To not believe what you think is kind of like don't give weight to what you think. So that's kind of exciting to think about. Why? Why do I miss it? To not really do that. And so I was imagining... And don't give too much weight to that exciting possibility. Well, you'll see it's squelched in the next sentence. Because here I am, I'm imagining that, and then I was imagining a real situation with somebody. You know, I'm a fairly new grandmother, and there's another grandmother also, one with person.

[91:57]

And I notice she has something she believes that I actually don't believe about children. Okay, so and do you believe your story that she has something that she believes? So you're like her then, huh? That's kind of consciousness where we have stories of people who are believing with their stories. But do they really? It might be that some people here are actually free of their stories of what a grandmother is. But I'm going to be in the real world. No, you're going to be in common consciousness. You're not going to go to the real world. You're going to go to... What? No, she's already there. You can't go to the real world.

[92:59]

Going, going places is karmic consciousness. And in karmic consciousness you can go to another karmic consciousness. But you're not going to go to the real world. You maybe go someplace where you can't see my face anymore. Or these people, yeah. Is that right? You guys think that? create something together. But if we're in the situation where I'm going to say, okay, I'm going to hold on to what I believe, and she's over there holding on when she tells. No, but you're still holding on to your idea. You're just like her in the story you just told. You're holding on to your idea that she wins, and also that you're giving up yours and she's holding on to hers. You're holding on to that one. That's what I'm here to ... That's, that is, that is Greenbelt's talk.

[94:03]

That's right. That is Greenbelt's talk. Greenbelt's talk is to remind you that you're not going to get out of karmic consciousness with your co-grandmother. It's not like you're going to let go of it, and she's not. Yeah, this is karmic consciousness. So if I'm supposed to go through the world and just keep letting go and keep being open and realize my thoughts aren't that important, I just feel like the bad guys might win. Yeah. And then are you going to give weight to that? The bad guys might win that story. Are you going to give weight to that? Yeah, it does seem like it. And it doesn't look like you're going to take it lightly right now.

[95:07]

But it looks like you're going to give it weight. And if you give it weight, it's not that if you give it weight, the bad guys are going to win. It's just that if you give it weight, you are going to be discouraged, stressed, and afraid. And when you're discouraged, stressed, and afraid, then it's a question of now are you going to start practicing? Or are you going to be, I guess, discouraged, and then I'm going to quit? I'm discouraged because I give weight to things. Because I give weight to things, I will be discouraged and frightened, and I might quit. But then if I get more discouraged, I might say, oh, OK, that didn't work. And I might say, OK, now I'm going to try to not give weight to the scenario the bad guys are going to win. Or give weight to the scenario the good guys are going to win.

[96:13]

Donald Rumsfeld was big into the good guys are going to win. He said, the good guys are going to win. You people have nothing to be afraid of. We're going to get rid of the bad guys. The good guys are going to win. There's only one way, the National Rifle Association, there's only one way to take care of the bad guys with a gun, and that is to have a good guy with a gun. This is what people talk like, and they believe it. And so it is Gringold's talk to say karmic consciousness is the problem. And if you see somebody who is caught up in karmic consciousness, you are actually seeing your own karmic consciousness which has this picture of somebody who's caught up in it. And that picture is your opportunity to practice. And are you going to give it weight or take it lightly?

[97:14]

And the teaching is don't do either. And from that place you will see the Dharma. And from seeing the Dharma then when you see somebody who appears to be not being open and compassionate, that you won't be caught by that, and you'll be able to practice compassion towards that picture and that person. This is the amazing proposal to you. power of nonviolence. Nonviolence is not giving weight to the picture of bad guys and not taking those lightly. And in that practice, you will see the Dharma. And when you see the Dharma, you will be able to serve the realization of fearlessness. And it will be transmitted to everybody that's afraid.

[98:18]

And everybody else, a lot of other people here are going to be following you in just a few days out of the valley of Green Gulch talk. That's the real world. into another realm of karmic consciousness where the people are not talking about as much, are not reminding each other that what we're dealing with here is confusing, disorienting karmic consciousness. That we are living together with this human condition. And if we know it, if we know we're confused, we're starting to wake up. Starting to wake up. But if we know we're confused and then practice violence towards our confusion, then that doesn't help. So we don't have to worry about having karmic consciousness. We do have it. It's the realm where we have things.

[99:32]

And when you're in the realm where you have things, you have karmic consciousness. And then if you notice that it's confusing and challenging and frightening and disorienting, you're starting to wake up. And then if you remember to practice nonviolence towards it, now you're really cooking. you're heading towards seeing the Dharma. When you see the Dharma, you're going to really be able to help. You're going to be unhindered in showing other people how to notice their confusion, be nonviolent with it, and see the Dharma. And it's a little bit violent to grasp what's appearing as reality, including that that person's grasping what's reality and I'm not. that story also, if you grasp it, it's kind of doing violence to the subtlety of the relationship. Like I was just reading, who was it I was reading?

[100:37]

Oh, this man who, he wrote this book called Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow. And he It's such a lovely story. He was born and raised as a Lutheran, but in Germany. He's 80 years old now. He lives in America, but he was in Germany. He was actually from Lithuania or Latvia, and he lived in Germany and he was raised as a Lutheran, but he didn't really go for Lutheranism. He thought it was not convincing, so he converted to Judaism. Later he found out that both his grandparents were Jewish. Then his parents moved to Paris, and he had to wear a sweater which had a star on it. But Jews were not allowed to be out in the street after 6 o'clock, and he was out in the street after 6 o'clock.

[101:39]

So he turned his sweater inside out. And he's walking, you know, after dark down the Paris street and he saw a German soldier in a black uniform. The black uniform are the most dangerous SS people. And the man saw him and said, come here, little boy. And he went over to him and the man picked him up and hugged him and took out his wallet and showed him a picture of a little boy and gave him money and said, go home. And he said, at that moment, I really believe what my mother told me. And that is that human relationships are much more complicated and amazing than we can ever know. And then he became this great psychologist. Because the karmic consciousness is amazing. And we make pictures of people.

[102:40]

And sometimes the pictures we make of people is that they're kind of simple. that they're our friends or our enemies, that they're SS and they're going to kill us. And he didn't say, the man showed me a picture of his own son who probably looked like him. He didn't say. He took out a photograph and showed it to me and gave me money and said, go home, after hugging me. So we don't know who our co-grandparents really are. The teaching is that they are yourself. In other words, remember that, that you're looking at yourself. When you see a narrow-minded person, remember you're looking at yourself. When you see somebody who believes what they think, when you see a bad guy, when you see a National Rifle Association person, all these people are teaching about teaching you yourself. They are not you, but in truth they are yourself.

[103:43]

This is Green Gulch talk, which we imported from over the ocean. It used to be China talk and Japan talk. It's Buddha talk. It's talk to help us be nonviolent. Do you believe in the power of nonviolence? Do you believe that nonviolence will give rise to fearlessness? That's the message. If you want to be fearless and you want to teach other people to be fearless, practice nonviolence. If you know with your whole heart that you will never kill, you won't be afraid of being killed. You might be killed, but you won't be afraid. But if you think you might kill someone, then you're going to be afraid of being killed. We have to practice nonviolence in order to be able to help this world.

[104:46]

And nonviolence means we do not believe our stories about others or ourself. Nonviolence and also renunciation of your view of what's going on. Don't kill your view. Just renounce it. Give it up. I got a view. My view is you are my friends. Okay? Right thinking is to pronounce that. I don't know who you are, but I do hear that you are teaching me who I am. Yuki? During your induction with Kim's conversation with Kim, I think I heard four kinds of thinking, so I want to clarify. Four kinds of thinking? Four kinds of thinking. I know, but who was I talking to?

[105:48]

Kim, about no dreaming. You used that, no thinking, which is not thinking or non-thinking. It's none of those. It's a very unusual state, like in dreamless sleep. No thinking means not having thinking, which is also action? We spend part of our life being not a karmic being. Like if you're in a coma or a special yogic state or a dreamless sleep, at that time there's no karma going on. You have the body's functioning. Lots of cognitive processes are going on. Like the sounds are happening and the body's responding to them and the cognitive processes are dealing with it and the cognitive processes are deciding not to wake us up. Just like in some yogic states, the cognitive process say, you don't have to have consciousness right now.

[106:55]

It's okay. You don't need it. Special situations like that. But that's not where we learn the teaching, and that's not where we practice. It's different from ultimate either. Just that no... And maybe that's a mushido. Yeah, like mushido. There isn't any mind. Path of no mind. So... the Buddhist tradition discovered that when yogis went into these states where the consciousness was suppressed, that they went in and when they came out, there was no evolution during that time. You can't practice without consciousness. So if your consciousness is at this level of development, when you go into the state of no mind, no consciousness, when you come out, you haven't evolved positively or negatively in terms of your understanding. So bodhisattvas do sometimes go into dreamless sleep. They do sometimes go into these yogic states. But we don't practice there. We can't practice there.

[107:55]

There's no people there appearing for us to have stories about and be compassionate with. We can't practice compassion without consciousness. Having experienced not thinking, that stage is... you can have a realization of fushiryo. Fushiryo is not no mind. It's not mind. It's not thinking. It's emptiness. We can realize that our thinking is very, very deep. The depth, the inconceivable depth of our thinking is not thinking. And we can realize that, and the way we realize it is by dealing with our superficial thinking, by being compassionate to it, applying the teachings of how to relate to consciousness, applying them, applying them, applying them, and we open to the profound

[109:00]

level of our thinking, which is called not thinking. And then we do the same thing with not thinking and realize that the profound thing about not thinking is thinking. Thinking is actually profound when you realize that it actually is not thinking. Was there someone else? Oh, pardon? She just came up with a term. She said, mushirio. which would be like there isn't any thinking. No. It's like being in dreamless sleep. It's like being in a coma. But we don't evolve there because we don't have any problems in comas. We don't have problems in dreamless sleep. But when a dream comes up, oh, there's an enemy. And I have an opportunity to not, to renounce that idea and be compassionate and nonviolent with the enemy.

[110:02]

Did it ever happen in a dream that a monster has appeared and you went up and said, I want to be your friend? Yeah, that's a wonderful dream. And has it ever happened to you when you're awake? Yeah, that can happen. That's the training we're trying to do. And that will lead you to realize that that enemy, right there, the Dharma's right there. Laura? The danger of dwelling in emptiness? Oh yeah, you're reminding me. The main danger of dwelling in emptiness is nihilism. To think you could actually dwell in vastness, to think that you could dwell in unfindability, is an immature understanding of it, which is threatened by or at risk of nihilism, where you think nothing matters. So dwelling in emptiness might lead to taking things, like everything, lightly.

[111:10]

And when you take things lightly, people can come up to you and say, you know, I think you're taking things too lightly. And then you take that lightly. So people who are sort of grasping or abiding in emptiness, which is grasping in an immature understanding of it, almost no one can help them. Yeah, it takes a very skillful teacher to pull somebody who has a sense of everything. I can take everything lightly. But people do have those realizations. There's some kind of realization, but they basically feel like, I'm free, I can do anything now. Whatever I do is fine. That's kind of not right. But it's understandable sometimes when you see how everything's so profound. So that's the danger. And like I told the story one time that somebody, I see you, somebody

[112:14]

after Tassajara, Tangario, people came and said, there's something unusual about this person now. And I went over to talk to him, and I was talking to him, and I felt like he was living in this blissful bubble. And I kind of went, you know, I said, I see where you're at, and I see you feel really good, but I think you're actually not relating to me anymore. And the person actually thought that during Tongario they had become my successor. And part of the reason is that their seat was, they had the seat right next to me. And the person got into this dream that they were receiving Dharma transmission from me during the Taungaryu and that they'd become my successor and they were my consort. And I said, this is really just your idea and it's okay you have the idea but you should let go of it. And if you don't let go of it, it's not going to work very well for you to stay here because you're not relating. And...

[113:19]

She wouldn't come out of that place, where she was very happy. But she finally did come out. And she came out in the emergency room of the hospital, where she realized that this wasn't just a joke, that it wasn't just another special initiation ceremony. And there's many stories of where a person thinks they have understanding, like that famous story of, what's his name, Fa Yan and the director. And Fa Yan says, why don't you ever come and see me? And the director says, well, because I understand. I've had understanding. And Fa Yan said, oh, really? Well, tell me about it. In other words, the guy thought, I don't have to see the teacher anymore because I had enlightenment with this other teacher. Fa Yan said, well, tell me about it. And the guy told him, and he said, oh, that's what I thought. You don't understand.

[114:23]

And the guy left the monastery. And after he left, Fa Yan says, if he comes back, he can be saved. But if he doesn't, he can't. He was in this bubble of enlightenment. And even Fa Yan, when he told him, he just got angry and left. But then the man said, well, maybe I should go back and check it out again. And he went back. And then they had a conversation again. And he let Fa Yan poke the bubble. And he woke up from his dream. But he was like stuck in his realization. This is the superintendent of the monastery, too. He was like an advanced practitioner, but he was living in a bubble of realization of emptiness. He was abiding in his enlightenment. And the teacher said, can I touch that? And he said, yeah, go ahead. And the teacher touched it. And he said, I'm out of here.

[115:24]

But he came back, and the teacher touched it again, and it opened. But sometimes there's nobody who can say, you know, this is not working, this is not going to work. Because a lot of people just say, oh, you're a Zen master, and then we have another catastrophe. Francis? What? Grace? It's a body practice. Yeah.

[116:27]

It's a body practice. We have this real dragon body and we have the carved dragon body. The carved dragon body we know about. It's got arms and legs. It's got pain in the knees and the hips. It's got challenges to sit upright. And it's got heat on the butt and stuff like that. That's the phantom body. And we work with that body. And when we work with that body, we're also working with the other one. When we become intimate with the phantom body, we become intimate with the inconceivable body. It's all body practice, but we have to deal with our dream of the body in a compassionate way in order to realize our undreamt-of body. Our undreamt-of body is always here, supporting our consciousness, and our consciousness makes up a simple version of our undreamt-of body. So we work with that. If we skip over our dreamt body and just say, okay, I'm just going to hang out with my undreamt-of body, that won't work.

[117:36]

because we'll just be dreaming of our relationship with the inconceivable body. I have a problem that I can't quite articulate, but I also have the problem of coma. And you said a lot about coma, and I actually was in one. And it's not true you're not responding, but it is true you're not responding. You don't hear sounds, you don't smell sounds. You don't do it consciously. They don't respond consciously. But if you press somebody's body, Yeah, so I guess I'm using a different word by response.

[118:47]

If I press on somebody's skin and it makes an indentation, I would say their body responds. And I would say that the nerves would register that an indentation was occurred. But even a person who's awake, you can do things to them that they don't consciously know are happening. So let's see, what did I say? I'm getting lost in what words you're using. You're saying the consciousness maintains something? Yeah, I agree. Unconsciousness is, excuse the expression, the storehouse of all this cognitive, it's a cognitive storehouse of all this sensory data.

[119:54]

And I'm saying that a person can be in a coma and their body is still neurologically functioning to, like, pressure and temperature and sound. That it's still, the nerves are still responding, but the person isn't conscious, they're not conscious of it. Yeah, well, I'm just saying, so we disagree. We have a different understanding of neuroscience. Okay? So I don't know who was next. Did I say some of their names before? Oh, no. Oh, Frances passed. So there's Zane and there's Mikael. I mean, Shane. I was wondering who Zane was. Pardon? I was wondering who Zane was. I hadn't met them yet. Yeah. My question is going back to co-grandmothering.

[120:59]

I don't have a co-grandmother, but I have other family members who I sometimes feel have very fixed views about things. They might even agree with you. You might say, I have this dream that you have a fixed view, and they might say, you're right, I do. But that doesn't mean that their view or your view is anything more than your agreed karmic consciousnesses. Yeah. And my concern with that is that Last time you were talking about nonviolence and appropriate responses to injustice. And I feel that sometimes my efforts to welcome nauseating confusion or renounce my own views have prevented me from responding appropriately. And I wonder if there is a danger to renouncing your own views.

[122:07]

I think if you renounce your own views the way that's being recommended here, it's not so dangerous in itself because you don't lose track of your view. You still remember that that was your view, you're just not attaching to it. So it's like having a tool that you're holding it not too tight. You can still use it, but you're not tensing up and using lots of extra muscles to hold it. Whereas before you were like stressing yourself by holding it so tightly that it was, you know, you could use it but you get tired really fast. So renouncing a view doesn't mean it's still not available. Like the view that in certain arithmetic systems 2 plus 2 is 4, you can hold that loosely. Or like my grandson said to me when he was little, he said, what's your favorite animal? And I said, human. He said, humans aren't animals. So he had the view that they weren't.

[123:15]

And I don't know how he was holding it. But I could look and see, am I holding the view that humans are animals? And if I'm holding it, that will make our conversation more difficult for me and him, I would say. But I still might think, well, yeah, humans are animals. But I could also sort of say, well, I could open to him his opinion that they're not. So that The flexibility is promoted by renunciation of our view of the world. In other words, flexibility is promoted by renouncing karmic consciousness. And renouncing karmic consciousness is called right thinking. is part of right thinking. So renouncing our thinking is part of right thinking.

[124:17]

And then renouncing is related to being non-violent with our thinking. And renouncing our view is related to not hating our thinking or hating the people we're thinking of. So all those go together with right thinking and right thinking is non-thinking. The way we can not hate our thoughts of bad guys, the way we can renounce our view of bad guys, the way we can be nonviolent with violent guys. The way we can do that is called nonthinking or right thinking. So we can be surrounded by bad guys and feel like these are all my friends. They're all helping me move forward in my work to help them and everybody else. And they're helping me in this way that I call aggressive and hostile and disrespectful and all that. I think Mikael was next, and Neil, and Audrey.

[125:29]

I'm just aware that the class has really gone on a long time, and it's a possibility we should stop, right? On the other hand, it's the last class forever. Yes? So you were talking about yogic states, and I was wondering how you would relate that to jhana? Same. The jhanas are talking about yogic states. And there's one jhana which is so profound that consciousness is basically turned off. And it's okay for bodhisattvas to go there for a little while but they shouldn't stay too long because they've got work to do of dealing with their karmic consciousness so they can show other people how to deal with theirs. Yeah.

[126:36]

And the Buddha taught practicing jhanas too, and the Buddha practiced jhanas. But again, I didn't say bodhisattvas cannot do the practices. It's just they're not encouraged to stay there very long. What I heard you say was they are not helpful? When you're in the very deep states, I didn't say they weren't helpful. I said you can't evolve there. You can only evolve by dealing with problems. It's not that they're not helpful. If you can concentrate well enough to be in those states, that's very helpful. That will be very helpful to you in your bodhisattva work. But you can be really concentrated and flexible and relaxed and undistracted without going into a state where there's no consciousness. You can apply those concentration skills to your consciousness work. So it's very helpful to develop wisdom to have that concentration.

[127:40]

But not to abide in those states is what I'm saying. It's not recommended for bodhisattvas or for non-bodhisattvas too. Buddha did not abide, Buddha did not wake up in those deep concentration states. He woke up in a place where there was stars appearing and a tree. But he was that concentrated. He could be that concentrated. Oh, Neil. Yes. I understand that clinging to my view versus someone else's view causes me suffering. But when I see, for example, I have a cousin who is in a very dysfunctional family. Her parents and her, it's not very nice to watch dynamics.

[128:43]

You had that view. I had that view. And I've seen that sometimes what I see going on is not exactly what's going on. But at the same time, sometimes it feels like there's something that I can offer to to help ease that situation. But that, again, comes out of my view, and a lot of times it's counter to their view. And where does action come out of this? Action from relief suffering that's not necessarily directly... If you have a view that some people are having a hard time, and they have another view, dash intention, that you would like to help them, Okay? If you renounce your view that they're having a hard time, and you renounce your view that you want to help them, you probably could still remember that they look like they're having a hard time and that you want to help them.

[129:46]

But now you can come not as above them, but sort of just their friend, and you're coming and showing them how to relax with their views. And their views might be that they disagree with your views. Or rather, you might have the view that they disagree with you and they might agree with you. And you might be able to renounce your view and they might not yet be able to renounce theirs. And they would say, I can't renounce mine. But they would be with you who are, you're relaxed with it. And they're not. It's just like, you know, children sometimes have trouble going to sleep at night and they need somebody to show them how to relax. Somebody who remembers that it would be good if they drank a little bit of milk and if they turned the lights off and laid still for a little while. But if that person who's doing that is rigid and uptight, it makes it harder for the child to learn how to relax.

[130:52]

So if you can relax with your view about them, and relax with your view about helping them, you will transmit this compassion to them. Even though they might think, this guy is really a weirdo. They might say, but I feel more relaxed about him being a weirdo than I used to. And they might say, I wonder if he had anything to do with it. And you might say, I don't know. But the bodhisattva is transmitting this mind that doesn't abide in anything But it doesn't mean he doesn't have ideas, feelings, perceptions and so on. It just means that he's not abiding in them. It's this non-abiding that you're transmitting. And if they say, yes, I do think you're really unhelpful, you're really, you know, disrespecting us, you really have strange ideas, If this is what's appearing in your karmic consciousness, then you practice again renunciation with that, nonviolence with that.

[132:01]

And that gets transmitted. They may not look like they're picking it up yet, but since you're not Holding to it, you're also not holding to what's helpful and the time scale about when it's going to be helpful. So you renounce, boy, it's taking a long time for them to realize how relaxed I am. That thought might occur, but again, you renounce it. But you still have it. Boy, it's been hours, it's been years I've been visiting them You go to visit somebody in the hospital, and they keep being sick. When you went, you were relaxed with their illness, and now you're relaxed with their illness, and now you're relaxed with their illness, and now you're relaxed with the illness, and they keep being sick. But it may be that even before they become well, which you would like them to become well, they're already starting to relax with their illness. And maybe they won't get better, but they might die at peace.

[133:06]

Because you're at peace with their illness and you're at peace with them not getting better even though you want them to. So then they could learn that. But it's not easy. My daughter called me this morning and asked if my tiny leader could come out to Green Gulch for me to take care of her. She's sick. So I'll be taking care of her this afternoon. And so I try to practice it with her, you know. I try to practice renouncing my view of who she is when she smashes me on the head. Today she's going to probably be kind of quiet. We'll see. But, you know... My job is to renounce my view of who she is and renounce my view of what's helpful to her. She often thinks of things that she wants to do that

[134:07]

I'm not so sure about. She was here on the 15th, which is Thursday, and she had these matchbooks. I was lighting some candles, and she got these matchbooks, and she was trying to pull the matches out. And she couldn't pull them. It takes quite a bit of grip to pull those out. And I showed her, and she actually managed to pull one out. And I said, that's enough. She said, let me do another one. That's two. Just one more. She did five. But, you know, I didn't think it was necessary to pull five out. And also, some say, well, that's an easy example because, you know, it doesn't really matter. So I agree. I didn't want to give weight to pulling out five rather than one or two. But I also didn't want to take it lightly and just not even mention that I think that was more than necessary. And she said, well, you know, let's do another one. She was kind of relaxed about it, actually.

[135:10]

I liked her spirit. It wasn't like... It's like, oh, let's just do one more. I say, I think that's enough. No, no, I think... You don't understand. She knows that I'm trying to work on her. If we can relax with the situation, then we can start to play with it a little bit. She was actually doing pretty well, and I tried to keep up with her. We can start playing with it. If you can start playing with it, you can enter into the dependent core rising of it with the people you're playing with. You may be, in a sense, seem to be a little ahead of them, but basically you can't get too far ahead of them if you're playing with them. They can't really play with you until they relax, so you have to transmit the relaxation to them. And it may take a while. But when they start to relax, they can start playing.

[136:13]

And when you're playing together, together you can realize this pinnacle arising, and then the Dharma comes, and then the healing comes. Yes? a certain amount of control that you're deciding to be relaxed or you're practicing being relaxed. You're practicing being flexible and open and not holding care of you. But in my experience, it's actually been more helpful to just realize what I'm feeling and to not try to control that at all. Do you think I'm telling you to not realize what you're feeling? Do you think I'm telling you to control it? I just feel like there's more of a really dynamic interplay. Yeah, I agree. I agree with you.

[137:20]

I agree with you. So I feel like I'm not saying to deny how you're feeling, and I'm not saying to try to control how you're feeling. If you're feeling sick, I'm saying be generous with that and accept that. If you're tense with being sick, I would say accept that you're tense. I'm just saying if you can start to relax and be generous and open, to the way you are, that you will start to enter into this interplay, which is very subtle and so on. I agree with you. So I guess my question is, if my intention is to be intimate and open and flexible and helpful or whatever, and actually engage, how do I get from I feel really sick and I have to back away and take care of myself. How do I get from there to being able to engage more openly? Is it just a matter of practice? You said, I'm feeling sick and I have to back away?

[138:22]

Sure. Back away? You said back away. So what do you mean by back away? Well, to me it feels like you're not enacting your Be intimate. Yeah, so you may feel like, this is too much for me to be intimate with. So I want to back away. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, so that's an example of what I was talking to Rachel about, that some pain comes, some sickness comes, and you want to be intimate with it because you've heard that if you can be intimate with the pain you can see the Dharma in it. And that will be liberating even without getting rid of the pain. That's a practice you've heard about. But this pain seems to be too advanced.

[139:22]

It's too much. You cannot relax with it. So you actually say, Right now I need to rest from this wonderful practice. I'm not going to be able to relax with it. And except this is just too advanced. This pain is too intense. It's too massive. I just feel like I'm not going to be able to relax. So I want to rest or take a break. If you find the place that's workable and then stay there and maybe the workable place is that you just can't engage or whatever, you have to back away. Well, excuse me, but the place you found where is workable, you found something you can work with. Right. So if you're going to the workable place and you just keep going to the workable place over and over again, is that eventually going to realize your intention? If you keep going to the workable place and you're in a sangha,

[140:27]

and you have a teacher, your teacher will say, I think you've gone to the workable place enough. I think it's time to go to a more challenging place, which it will be workable, but at the beginning, when you first start working with it, you don't know how. So I heard this guy use this term, area of moral clarity, AMC. Sometimes it's unclear, you know, like when the pain is really strong, you have no moral clarity. You don't know whether to deal with it or not. Try to find some area where you do feel clear. This I can work with. This is like, what is it, Goldilocks? This one's too hot. This one's too cold. This one's just right. This one's too hard. This one's too soft. Find the place that's just right for you where you feel like I can really be intimate with this porridge. and then expand it. Yeah, you do, like you could say, I think this is too hot for me.

[141:36]

What do you think? And teaching might say, Why do you think it's too hard? You say, well, I think if I get, I'm afraid that if I get into it, I'm going to like, it's going to be, I'm going to tense up. And the teacher might say, okay, let's wait. And then you might say, again, I feel like it's too advanced. The teacher might say, I think you're ready for it and I'll stand right next to you when you go there. So let's go there. And then you go there and maybe say, I still think it's not going to work. And the teacher might say, I think it's okay. Okay. and then you might pass through. Or the teacher might say, you're right, let's back off. Like my grandson, again, when he was a little boy here at Green Gulch, he said to me, in the winter one time, it was kind of a cold night, the sun had set, and he said, let's go down to the garden and dig in the dirt. Laughter And I didn't say to him, I think that's too advanced for a little boy to go out in the dark, in the cold at night.

[142:41]

I didn't say that to him. I thought, we can do this, I think. We can go on this trip. So he got his gardening equipment on, his little plastic gardening equipment on. And we walked down from the house up there, down the path here, down towards Meg and Jeremy's house. As we approached the pond, Also, we were traveling with the little dog, Rozzy. Did you ever see Rozzy? We had this little Jack Russell terrier named Rozzy, who Maceo loved. And we're walking down the road, and he stopped and he said, what's that sound? And I said, I think it's frogs. Frogs. And he was old enough to say, you mean like ribbit, ribbit? And I said, yeah, that's the sound. And he said, okay. So we walked closer to the pond. And he said, I think Rozzy's getting scared.

[143:48]

Let's go home. So I felt that we could go on this trip. I didn't feel it was too advanced for him. But I didn't send him off by himself. So I think, you know, together we can go into the scary areas and sometimes we say, this is too much. And sometimes we keep going. And we should respect our limits. And again, renouncing my limits doesn't mean I don't follow them. It just means I'm relaxed about it so that if I go and I feel like, okay, this is it, and I renounce it, it makes it easier for me to say, I'm going back, rather than I failed and I'm a worthless, cowardly Zen student. Renouncing it helps deal with the limits more skillfully. Renouncing doesn't mean denying them. So, yeah, so during the session that's coming up, we will run into some limits, probably, most of us, some limits.

[145:06]

And then we want to practice nonviolence with them. We don't want to hate them. We want to renounce them. We want to relax with them. But if we can't, if it's too much, It's okay to change your posture a little bit and be more comfortable until you feel clear again. I can work with this. And then maybe sit still again for a while. So do we take care of everybody? our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way.

[146:05]

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