I think at least three people have just come in for the first time tonight, right? So we've covered some stuff. I'm wondering how to integrate you into the high level of understanding that has been achieved. This is a song about a samadhi. Samadhi is a word for a type of consciousness that's focused and open and flexible so that as things change, it adjusts to the change and continues to be open and undistracted. Like a surfer on a surfboard who is able to be, you know, upright and present in the changing conditions and is calm and relaxed and having a really good time adjusting to a dynamic

[01:22]

turbulent situation. That's a type of mind. And this particular is a jewel mirror samadhi. So it's a samadhi that's undistracted about a jewel mirror. It's an image of a precious mirror. That's an image for wisdom, for clearly reflecting or clearly imaging. So the Jewel Mirror Samadhi is one of the descriptions of the mind of Buddha. Another description is the self-fulfillment Another one is the Ocean Seal Samadhi.

[02:24]

There's many names for different types of concentrated, open, relaxed, flexible states of mind that are realizing wisdom in the tradition. So this is a song about the Buddha mind. And it starts out with what I would call good news. And the good news is the teaching of suchness, the teaching of reality, is intimately communicated by the Buddha mind, and now we have it. The transmission is going on and we are part of it. And then it says, take care of it.

[03:29]

Protect what's been given to you. But another way to... This teaching of reality, which is intimately communicated to us and has been intimately communicated to us, And we have it now. And yet, what's here is, you know, please take care of it. But other times they say the teaching is all-pervasive and perfect. It reaches everywhere. if we don't practice, if we don't take care of this thing that's reaching us, then it's not realized. So part of the realization of the transmission is to practice because the transmission of practice

[04:43]

The practice is the transmission. So if we don't practice, we don't realize the transmission. It isn't that the practice makes the transmission, the practice is the transmission. And we have the practice. The practice has been transmitted to us too. But if we don't practice the practice, then it's like we're not practicing. So one way to take care of this teaching is by the practice. And then again, putting it kind of dynamically. And yet, if we don't practice, then there'll be some deviation. Not really, but just because we're not practicing. How can we not practice, since what's been transmitted to us is the practice?

[05:52]

Well, another dimension of and yet is this has been given to us. And yet, there may be some resistance or distraction. From what? From reality. And how could there be distraction from reality? Since you can't be separate from reality, how could there be distraction from reality? I guess because reality allows that, for example, human beings somehow are allowed to not be attentive to what's going on. Somehow we... the universe lets us not pay attention and also the universe... So we can be given something and not pay attention to it

[07:13]

and then it's like it's hard for us to take care of it if we don't pay attention to it and then if we pay attention to it that's that would be part of taking care of it I would say but then we can get distracted we can forget what's been given to us and we forget our duty, our responsibility to take care of what's been given to us. And if we're a little bit distracted, that counts. So deviation will fail to accord with the proper attunement, attunement with reality, attunement with the intimate transmission So one might say, well it sounds, that seems rather not even a hair's breadth deviation.

[08:23]

And it does seem to be difficult. Like that's like zero resistance. But again, at the beginning it says actually there is zero resistance. There really isn't any resistance. But if there is, There isn't really, but if there is, in other words, there's a truth, a conventional truth where there's a Harris-Brett deviation or a bigger than Harris-Brett deviation. And then there's an ultimate where there's not a Harris-Brett deviation. So somehow if we work with our conventional truth in such a way as to find how to practice where there's not a hair's breadth difference, then we're in a corner where there isn't a hair's breadth difference, where there's not a hair's breadth separation between

[09:26]

anything. Everything's interdependent. There's no separation. Everything's intimate. Everything's intimately part of the intimate transmission. And samadhi is a state of not being distracted. It's an undistracted mind. But it's also open and it's open to distraction. But it's not distracted by distraction. It's open to it. And it doesn't ignore distraction. It's aware of all that's going on.

[10:29]

And the precious mirror samadhi is aware of distraction and understands distractions aren't distractions. Distractions are actually ways to realize non-distractions. And there's an art to, like, relating to distraction in such a way that you pay attention to it and let it be. And when you let it be, you can realize that this distraction is not a distraction now. Because you're... and you're totally undistracted. You're letting everything be. You also let the samadhi be.

[11:34]

You let concentration be. You let everything be. But these distractions aren't distractions. They're just ways of deepening the non-distraction. Not being distracted? When we're not distracted, or when we're, in other words, when we're concentrated, do we mess with things? Tracy? When we're in samadhi, do we mess with the samadhi? If distraction shows up, do we mess with the distraction? No.

[12:35]

So, the distraction doesn't distract us. If we push the distraction away, we're not in samadhi. If you push distraction away, if I push distraction away, I'm distracted. If I hold on to distraction, I'm distracted. If I let distraction be distraction, there's no distraction. And in fact, there is no distraction. However, things appear which look like distractions. And I imagine that the skilled surfer does not think that the waves are distractions. They don't Beginning surfers might say, those waves are so distracting, they're distracting my surfing.

[13:37]

Really little waves don't distract my surfing, but those big ones, they really distract me. What if there's no distraction? Then what does samadhi do? It doesn't mess with no distraction, if by any chance. The ocean just went flat. A good surfer would know how to not mess with that. They're not messing with the waves. They're embracing intimately the waves along with their surfboard. They're embracing their surfboard and the surfer and the surfboard embrace the waves. The waves are not a distraction. The waves are the opportunity for the samadhi of surfing. So the waves are not a distraction. They're an intimate part of surfing. All distractions and resistances are an intimate part of not resisting

[14:46]

Another thing which maybe I can mention briefly, which we went over in more detail previously, is I talked about three types of awareness, or three types of mind, three types of cognition, three ways of knowing. And one of the ways of knowing, I'm using the word consciousness, so I'm not saying three types of consciousness. I'm using the consciousness for one of three types of knowing. It's a type of knowing where there's somebody present in the midst of the awareness. It's an awareness, it's a knowing where somebody's there, a self seems to be there, and the self is there with things that are known. of awareness. So it's an awareness of. And there's a self there.

[16:11]

And I call that consciousness. And it's also called karmic consciousness because that's where karma appears and disappears. And karma is used for action where there's not thorough attentiveness going on. If there's activity appearing in consciousness and there's thorough attentiveness, there's no karma, there's just activity. But it's not karma. Karma is when the activity is not attended to. I'm talking about consciousness now, right? Awareness. Consciousness is where there can be And karma is activity plus inattentiveness and confusion.

[17:17]

For example, it can look like in confusion, in inattentiveness, it can look like the activities are owned by that somebody who is there. When there's a somebody, there seems to be impulses or even a wish or a desire to own what's going on, to possess it, to be the owner, to be in control. But that sense of self is not in control of the activities that are going on in consciousness. It's not. It co-arises with them. As I mentioned before, we usually don't think that the things we're aware of, especially like colors, we don't think that they control our self.

[18:29]

We think our self controls them. When the self arises, usually it's afflicted by some and part of the confusion is what's the relationship between the self the sense of self and the things that are appearing and the activities that are going on there's some confusion if we pay close attention we see confusion to think that the self can control what's arising with it and when there's no confusion and there's clear, thorough attentiveness, then there's no karma, then there's activity. But the self is not in control of the activity. The self is not in control of the activity. And there can be impulses to control, and then you can also pay attention to them and let the impulses to control be impulses to control.

[19:37]

And let the activities be And let the sense of self be a sense of self. And let the intimate relationship between the sense of self and the objects that are appearing in the same space, let them all be. And then there's activity. As a matter of fact, . But it's not karma. And another aspect of karma is the sense, because of inattention, that the self who is in charge of the activity, the activities are actually what the self wants them to be. Because sometimes the activities look kind of like what the self wants them to be, but if you pay close attention, you see they aren't. They are not.

[20:39]

They're similar enough so if you don't pay attention, they look like it. And I use the example of raising my hand. Do you think you raised my hand? I don't know. Do I think I raised my hand? I don't. So, you don't think you raised my hand, but you think I think I raised my hand. Right? But I don't think I raised my hand. Now let's say I think I raised my hand. I don't, okay? But let's say I did. Like I used to. When I was younger, I used to think I did raise my hand, and I also thought I could raise my hand. And I thought I could talk, and I could walk, Now I don't... However, let's just say I do think, okay, here I go, ready, one, two, three, I'm going to raise my hand.

[21:47]

And they say, well, you just decided not to raise your hand. So you kept your hand down. So who's going to raise my hand if I'm not going to? Maybe you ask my hand to come up, okay? But I don't hear you asking. Am I asking you again to ask my hand to come up? I don't think I am. What? Did I do that? Or did Tracy? Tracy doesn't think she did. Right? Did I raise my hand if Tracy hadn't asked me? I don't know. Did I raise my hand? Somebody says I did raise my hand.

[22:51]

But you didn't, right? You didn't. I don't know either. I'll play the game of... my hand got lowered. Did I lower it? I didn't mean to. It got lowered. Maybe I just got tired and somebody besides me lowered it because somebody was tired. Or was it me that was tired? Holding it up. But let's just say I'm going to raise my hand. Ready? If I pay attention to that, I keep being surprised. The way it gets raised, I did not expect it to do that. And I did not, whoops, it moved again. It got lowered. I'm not doing, this is ahead of me. These movements are ahead of me. I'm here, but all this stuff's happening ahead of me.

[23:53]

Ahead of me? Yeah, ahead of my idea that I'm doing this. I'm constantly surprised by the activities of this body. I'm not divorcing myself from responsibility for it, because I keep being here. But I'm not in control of being surprised. And I just saw my hands go down and they bounced. I didn't expect them to bounce, but they did. But, you know, nobody made them bounce. That's just sort of what happened. When the weight of them hit the flesh of my thighs, they just bounced up. So maybe you didn't even think that I made them bounce up. Right? So watch.

[24:55]

Watch. See how I bounced up? Unless you think I'm faking, you probably didn't think that when they bounced up, I did it, right? It's like a reflex. And I didn't do that. Yeah, you did. I'm responsible. I had a response to me, but it was given to me. Yes. I think I am partly in control, raising my hand. That there are other factors involved, but that it's not solely my control, nor is it completely out of my control. So you think it's not solely in your control, nor solely in your control. And also, these thoughts... I guess, I imagine that they occur in consciousness, where there's somebody there, who you might call me or... Yeah, and also in your consciousness, you think such thoughts arise.

[26:07]

Okay? Huh? Yeah. So that's a little short course on consciousness. Okay? We can come back to that. We will. Because consciousness is the realm of words. Wait, am I right or wrong? Are you right or wrong? Yeah. Do you agree that my conscious self is partly in control? Okay, I'm willing to talk about this. When you say... Okay, so what I would say is that... That one meaning of control is things are not happening the way I'm trying to make them happen. Is that a meaning of control? That I want them to happen? I'm just saying, is that the way you use control? That I want things to happen a certain way and they don't happen that way.

[27:08]

Is that control? Steering wheel controls the car. Steering wheel controls the car. That's what the word control is. Airplanes have controls. I know they have things that are called controls. Yes. When I say control, I mean control. Well, this is getting really interesting to me. I didn't make it interesting. You didn't make it interesting, but somehow interest arose. And it was dependent on you bringing up this thing about controls. And also, yeah, so it's just really interesting. You, and this goes to all of you, do you call control when something happens and it doesn't happen the way you wanted it to?

[28:14]

Do you call that control? You don't, do you? No. No. Okay? So, if I move my hand or if my hand moves and I want it to move a certain way, if it doesn't happen the way I want it to, then is it in control? I thought you said no. And I'm Well, you can say, am I in control or is it in control vis-a-vis my wishes? Is it under control? And you can say, or is it under the control of my wishes? You say partly. So then I asked you, if if I wish for things to go a certain way and they don't go that way, then is that control?

[29:17]

And usually we say no. The fundamental thing in consciousness is... If you tried to control it, it was unsuccessful. Yeah. If you tried... So I think people do try to control things. And so I'm asking... And I think that people are... If they look carefully, they will see... ...successful. They're always unsuccessful. I don't know if I'll go that far as to say always. But I would just say that there is in consciousness somehow coming up one of the afflictions that comes up with the... Four afflictions that come up with the sense of self in consciousness. Four. Self-view, self-pride, self-love, and self-confusion. So in consciousness, along with the self, comes confusion and comes pride, comes the thought that the self actually owns the stuff that's going on and is in control of them.

[30:33]

And if that stuff isn't under control, there might be a sense that the self is in major jeopardy and that the self will in some ways be harmed or even collapse because along with the self comes this sense of pride and love. and also is confusion. So with the confusion there could be a little bit of unclarity about whether actually the self was in control. And sometimes the self thinks it is in control, looks more carefully, and then it finds out that what's going on in consciousness is not under anybody's control in consciousness. But it's hard to see that because there's so much confusion. But with samadhi, the intention to pay close attention, one can notice that although there's the wish to control, and again the wish to control is quite strong, and the wish to control has basic forms of wish,

[32:06]

And they're all called, they're called desire, let's say desire, three kinds of desire. And one of the kinds of desire is for things to be a certain way, for there to be a certain type of being. Another desire is called the desire for pleasure. But as I mentioned recently, last weekend, in the Buddha's teaching, pleasure and let it go, that's not what Buddha calls desire. Buddha's, you may be glad to hear, can enjoy pleasure. But when a Buddha enjoys a pleasure, the Buddha enjoys pleasures the first time. Untrained people or people who are not really well trained, when they experience a pleasure in the consciousness, the self often has a desire to have it again.

[33:23]

You can experience it a second time as new, but before you experience it a second time, as a matter of fact, oftentimes before you even experience it the first time, you're planning on the second time. Like you're experiencing pleasure, which is fine, and almost like halfway through it, you say, when can we meet again? Actually, you always do experience pleasures for the first time. That's called a valid perception. Valid perception is first time experience. And desire is desire to repeat it again, and not even to repeat in general something like this, but this one. Now, we will accept substitutes.

[34:35]

And then because we accept substitutes, I wanted to repeat it, and it was not repeated. Sometimes it's not repeated, like, I want this pleasure again. And it actually wasn't pleasurable at all. I didn't get anything like pleasure after I wanted to. Sometimes it gets repeated, like licking an ice cream cone. Mm-hmm. Let's do it again. If you pay attention, it's not the same, but close enough. So I'll do it again and again. And each time that you want to do it again, each time I want to do it again, I hurt myself. Each time I do it again, pain arises. But experiencing pleasure is not painful.

[35:40]

You experience it and say thank you and enjoy it and let it go. It's not painful. But if you experience it and hold on to it, it's not the pleasure that's painful, it's the desire to repeat it that's painful. Like I often tell this story, a friend of mine who loved to take showers, and his mother said, you can only do five minutes. In other words, you can only repeat the warm water 685 times. You have five minutes. How many moments of pleasure can you have? So he gets in the shower, and he immediately starts crying because he knows he's not going to be able to repeat this very many times, as many as he wants. Now, if his mother was a stricter teacher, she would say, you can only have one second of hot water. And then he could try to repeat within a second.

[36:41]

It's the wish to repeat that is a source of suffering. Somebody walks by, some lovely person walks by, and you go, whoo, whoo. That's not a lovely person. Or maybe walk by like that. Lovely person walks by. Whoa! Wow! Great! That's okay. But how about this? Lovely person walks by. Wow! That's desire. And I also use the example, driving down the Green Gulch Road, especially down, especially, yeah, when you're driving up, you don't get to see the ocean usually. In Green Gulch, you don't get to look at the ocean. You got the sky, great.

[37:44]

But going down, you have the sky, you have the mountains, and you have the ocean. And so you're just driving along, you know, just Joe, Joe, not desiring, and then... Except desiring to control the car. And then you see this world-class, beautiful vision, and you kind of want to look at it again, but you kind of can't. So you don't, maybe. And so it's just beautiful and you move on. Maybe you'd like to see it again, but you can't get into it. So you're just smacked with beauty and you're fine and you move on. But if you're a passenger, you can look again and again and you can make yourself really sick. not with beauty, but with the desire to see that thing again.

[38:49]

And I have sometimes actually stopped the car going down so I could look. And as soon as I stopped to look again, you say, well, not completely, is it? The pleasure is dead. The pleasure is gone. Well, don't you get another one? sort of but it's all mixed up with trying to get another one it's still a nice view but i'm ruining it by trying to get another one so here comes the gift can i have another one so then in reality, we get new beauty every moment. But because, and we do, our body gets new beauty every moment.

[39:50]

Our wisdom gets new beauty every moment. But our consciousness, which gets new beauty every moment, every time a beauty appears, it wants a repeat. If there's desire, if there's A practice there, however, it's possible when the thing goes by to watch and see, oh, there's desire. If I don't notice that there's desire to repeat, then the desire goes into the thing, and the thing becomes desirable. At first, the thing is just enjoyable. then because of wanting to repeat it, it goes into the thing, gets confused with the thing, and then the thing seems to be desirable. So then I start running around after it and try to get a hold of it. This is the kind of stuff that goes on in consciousness.

[40:55]

And another thing that goes on in consciousness, because if we do not control what's going on, the self will collapse. But the self won't collapse. But anyway, if it did, there would be no consciousness to worry about it. Because if the self collapses, then the consciousness collapses. And then all we've got is wisdom and a vast... symphony of physical and cognitive process where there's nobody there trying to own what's going on. But usually in consciousness there's a feeling that we need to be in control. And if I know I'm trying to control, oh, that's desire. Should you really what?

[42:04]

It's okay to pull over in designated areas. You know, that's fine. But the question is, what are you looking for? And also, almost all the places to pull over, when you pull over, you can't see the ocean. It's almost, at the Green Gulch Road, none of the pullovers can you see the ocean. The place you can see the ocean, actually, is when you're sort of coming around the corner. and you don't have any mountains in front of you. So it's not actually a very good place to stop, but sometimes when there's no other cars, you can actually drive to the other side of the road, which is illegal, and go to one of the turnouts for people going uphill, and then you can just go on it. But when you're walking up the mountain, you don't have to worry about driving a car. So then when you're walking up the mountain, you can stop at various points and just look at the ocean.

[43:11]

The question is, am I looking at it to repeat, or am I looking at it for some other reason? Did you say supposed to be a dandelion puff? We are dandelion puffs. We are dandelion puffs. And that's an understatement. We are dandelion puffs. Yeah. And part of our puffiness is that we cannot stop ourselves from wanting to be something other than a dandelion puff. Because we're afraid if we're dandelion puffs that that won't work out very well for us. That's the way it is in consciousness, is that we want the self to be not a dandelion puff. We're okay with dandelion puffs. They can go puff all over the place. And even some people can be dandelion puffs.

[44:15]

But the self is permanent. And coming along with permanence is omniscience and omnipotence. The self wants to be omnipotent. It has a will to power, the power to control, the power to own. It wants to be sovereign. The other stuff can be un-sovereign, all these little things that are going on, the feelings and stuff, because basically, no problem, they can be dandelion puffs because I'm in control of them. This is what consciousness is like as normal. that's consciousness. Then there's the non-conscious processes where things are not appearing as objects and when there's not somebody there aware of them. However, there's lots of stuff. Images of the body and images of the world are being manipulated by cognitive processes.

[45:24]

The body's being stimulated and affected by the whole world around it and registering it and regulating heartbeat you know it's doing all kinds of the unconscious process is a servant of the body and it does an amazing job and it's been worked out over a long long time and it works amazingly is just marvelously effective. And consciousness doesn't know how it does. Consciousness is making theories about it. And, you know, neuroscience is making theories about how that process works. And I think they're pretty good. And they're very much like Buddha's teaching. And there's an intimate relationship between the unconscious processes and the body, and between the unconscious processes and the conscious processes.

[46:30]

And the conscious process feeds stuff into the unconscious, like how to move the hand, how to walk, how to speak English. And as we grow up, as we learn languages, our language training, in consciousness those training with those activities transforms the unconscious process which then supports us eventually to speak English. But I cannot figure out consciously how to move my lips and tongue and people give me instruction but when I actually and I can hear it and I can learn to speak English and Chinese and Tibetan and so on I can learn it but when I actually pull it off I can follow how that happens. Yes? . Much more complicated than I can ever say.

[48:03]

Yeah. What are the two either-ors? No, there is a conscious intention. I consciously intended to move my hand. Okay? There was. And... Yeah, but I didn't think I made that conscious intention. I don't think that. My conscious intentions do not arise from me. They are conscious. People think they can choose something. People think they can wish something, but we cannot choose our wishes. We can't consciously make the things we wish. You can't by your consciousness decide who you want to be with. I do, but the instruction to say what I'm saying was made before I say it.

[49:19]

The instruction, the intention, the impulse to say what I'm saying was delivered, was in the unconscious before I said it consciously. There is intention in consciousness. There is. Intention is what it looks like wants to be done. The intention is what the pattern of the consciousness seems to want to do. That is conscious intention. But we don't consciously set that up. That's not set up by consciousness. It's set up by the unconscious processes.

[50:24]

The unconscious processes support all the intentions. So every moment there is an intention, but the consciousness doesn't make the intention. The consciousness, however, influences the processes which support the appearance of the intention. Because the unconscious processes are to a great extent the results of past conscious intentions. But the consciousness, not to mention the person who seems to be in the consciousness, do not give rise to the intention. That's why we say over and over, I vow to save all beings. Because if I say I vow to save all beings, that transforms the unconscious processes which support me to say it again. But I cannot, it wasn't by my own power that I vowed to save all beings. It was because somehow I wound up at Zen Center.

[51:25]

Yes. And yes. I often experience the conscious mind as a servant of the unconscious. Yeah, the conscious is a servant of the unconscious. Yes. And then all of a sudden I began to be aware of all the things that I needed to do. They arose in me and then I made my decisions. The unconscious process is a servant of the body, the conscious is a servant of the unconscious, but also the consciousness is a servant of the body too. but also the body is the basis for the unconscious, and the unconscious is the basis for the conscious. So the higher levels are offering services. Not the higher, but the older levels are the support for the newer levels, and the newer levels are the servant for the older levels.

[52:29]

But the servant has design flaws. And one of the great strengths of consciousness is to have the sense of self. The beings who have a sense of self have a great advantage over those who do not. So it serves the being that supports it. But there's design flaws in the self and one of the design flaws Self-view, self-confusion, self-pride, or self-aggrandizement, and self-love. Self-love, yeah, it's a design flaw. Can you imagine why it's a design flaw? Can you state the self first? you mistake the self for something real, and also, I'll be right with you, and also, you become afraid of what's going to happen to it.

[53:41]

So there's a lot of fear associated with the sense of self. And part of the reason it's so frightening is because we love it, and we have an exaggerated sense of its power, a sense of it needing to be powerful, Since Rachel's new, we call on Rachel now. Louder. It's not at all equal, no. For me, self-acceptance would be to accept all the afflictions that come with self. Would be to hear the teaching of these problems that come with self. And then accept it and not try to get rid of it. to let it be and also let the afflictions let them be too. And hearing the teaching in consciousness transforms the unconscious and transforms the body.

[54:48]

And making vows in consciousness transforms the unconscious. Making vows all day long or frequently during the day, making vows. Let's say you make vows to help people. You make vows to act wholesomely. You make vows to practice generosity and ethics and patience. Every time you make a vow like that, it transforms the unconscious process and then the body gets transformed. If you make a vow to be mean and selfish, that transforms the unconscious process and that transforms the body. the body, whatever kind of body you got, supports your mind, and the mind that supports directly is the process, which is much more complex. That holds all of our skills, which then are delivered to consciousness when it needs them. Consciousness is not always remembering how to ride a bicycle and how to speak Chinese or English.

[55:58]

holds that it's not always telling us how to speak English and ride a bicycle, but when we need it, or when it needs us to consciously observe bicycle riding, the bicycle riding skill surfaces. But other things surface too, which the consciousness and sometimes finds out later how useful it was. And so the unconscious, in your case I would say, stimulated your consciousness to help it out by making your conscious uncomfortable. And the consciousness said, hmm. And I think the unconscious probably appreciated that you didn't push it away. That you said, okay, what's this about? How the unconscious process works is much too complex to be conscious. But still, it sends stuff into consciousness.

[57:04]

That's why I used the image of the dark forest, right? At the beginning, didn't I use that? No, you didn't hear that one? So, this comes to us from D. H. Lawrence. We know about the conscious self. So conscious self is conscious mind. Mind that has a self. It's like a clearing in the middle of a dark forest. I don't know if he said, yeah, I think he just said dark forest. And I added to the image that there's lots of clearings in the middle of the dark forest. And in each clearing we have a consciousness and a self. So each of us lives in one of those clearings. and I'm proposing that all the clearings are intimately related, that there's no separation between the clearings, where there's the idea that the clearings are separate.

[58:05]

So your clearing is not the same as my clearing, but only in my conscious mind is there the idea and belief in the idea that your clearing is separate. Actually, and Freud said, I think he said something like, human beings are powerful, solitary fantasy machines. Agree with part and not with another part. I would say we are powerful machines. not separate fantasizing machines. And one of the main things we imagine in consciousness is that we're separate from other consciousnesses, other beings. So we're not, we don't have the same consciousnesses. You have me, right now you have an image of me in your consciousness, but you don't think I'm in there.

[59:13]

Do you? But you think somebody else is in there, don't you? Do you call that me or I? That's the usual thing. You are in my consciousness, but you're not in here as me. I'm here and you're here. And you're not me. As it says here, I am not it, in truth it is me. That again describes consciousness. Wisdom is understanding the intimacy of all the clearings and the intimacy between all forest. That intimacy is wisdom. And that intimacy is transmitting all the time to the forest and to the clearings.

[60:17]

Yeah? about a who is empathetic to the and the emotions of others. to a great degree. You just have to learn what it means to surround yourself with people who are very distressed. To try to concentrate in one person in the room And so I'm glad to point out that there are certain areas of the brain that when we feel the pain of the person, well, we're anywhere, whatever.

[61:19]

But this doctor, this was an extreme case. You mean in a highly developed sense of it. Well, I would say that our ability to be able to live with empathy for the suffering of the world, that our ability to do that would come from the same practices by which we're able to live with our own suffering in our own consciousness. Same thing. So, again, back to practice. can be applied to what's going on in consciousness.

[62:27]

So in consciousness, for example, one practice in consciousness is the practice of developing samadhi, which is to let these thoughts be. And letting them be means let them go. Let your thinking be. Let it go by developing an ongoing attention to your thoughts and then you become more and more undistracted by the thoughts. But most people without training themselves in this way are somewhat or very distracted by the thoughts that are arising in this consciousness space. And the basis of that practice is to be generous, ethical, patient, and diligent with these thoughts.

[63:31]

That sets the stage for being able to let them be. So these practices are practices which have come somehow and come to our bodies and come to our unconscious processes and through coming to our bodies and our unconscious process they have now come into our consciousness from the forest. In the forest there is this vast forest which is teaching and the Buddhas are the intimacy of this vast forest and all the different consciousnesses and all the different sufferings they're all intimately related and this is the intimate transmission which we have. And that transmission is touching our bodies and therefore in that way is touching our unconscious processes and then coming out of our unconscious processes is the message of these practices which appears as words in our consciousness.

[64:33]

And the words are practice. And the words are generosity, patience, diligence, and samadhi to be practiced with what? With the stuff that's in consciousness, that's appearing, and with the self that's appearing there. Not appearing, but seems to be there. All these practices are applied to the self and all its afflictions, all the things with which the self is confused, all the things with which the self has a confused relationship. So we practice generosity with all these thoughts, whatever they are, enemy, friend, mine, good, bad, I'm worthless, I'm better than other people, all the thoughts that arise, it's Tuesday, whatever, all these thoughts and all the confusion about like wanting to control, wanting the self to be permanent, accepting the whole thing.

[65:42]

This is a detail of how to accept and let things be. If we can let them be, we become free of these three types of desire, one of which I didn't get into. First is desire for pleasure, which means when you're in consciousness, you want to repeat it, which is impossible. So it's frustrating and painful. Next desire is desire to be some way, and to be exactly some way, not generally, but exactly. But the reason I want to have it exactly not just because we like that thing so much, which we do, but to prove that the self is powerful. It's really a desire for self-power, which is part of the affliction, the self-pride. And the confusion is that we think that that's possible. If you pay attention, you realize it's frustrated.

[66:43]

And the more you realize how frustrated it is to repeat pleasures that are impossible to repeat and to control states of being which you cannot control, the more you realize that, the more you are tempted to want to give up the whole thing. And that's it. Being. Just sort of, just stop this whole thing. Get out of here. That's another desire. But we can notice that. And we can be, again, when we notice this habit, we can be generous, careful, diligent, and undistracted by the wish to get rid of this habit to try to control. Yeah. Would you say that I, my conscious self, influence I'm not saying I completely make it happen.

[67:46]

Okay, just a second. You said, can my conscious self influence the raising of the arm? Consciousness, every moment of consciousness, at the same time that it arises, it transforms the unconscious. So the consciousness is constantly transforming the unconscious. You can say influence too. But it influences by transforming it. at the same moment. So the unconscious supports the rising of the consciousness. What happens in consciousness is not made by consciousness except indirectly because consciousness is constantly transforming the unconscious which supports. It's like we are affecting the earth, right? Our consciousness is transforming the earth and the earth supports our conscious activity. The world we live in

[68:47]

is partly due to what we have thought and said and thought and gestured. So our conscious mind is very, very, very important because it transforms. And the conscious mind, by attending to practice, can transform its base in such a way that its base becomes perfect wisdom. I'm sorry, can I control, can I influence my arm raise? You're not. Yeah, you influence it, but not directly. I know, I know. If I say turn the car, I know there's a steering wheel and linkages involved. Yeah, but again, if you look, what if you turn the wheel and the car doesn't work? I'd influence, but, you know, it didn't quite happen. Yeah, right. It doesn't work at all. Maybe the wheels skid. Yeah, so then... Okay, what? Well, I feel like I'm just distressed by the... It seems like, on the surface, it sounds like you're saying we have no influence on... I'm not saying we have no influence.

[70:00]

You're using words that sound so much like you're saying them. Oh, you can't control your arm raising. I know, but you're involved. You're involved, yeah. What is a big problem here is that there's a strong tendency to say, if you're not in control of something, you're not responsible. But you are responsible even if you're not in control. If you try to do something and it doesn't work out the way you want to, you're still responsible because you have something to do with it. But anyway, I'm just saying. in control. And not only that, but in consciousness, the self isn't the thing that's making the intention. The intention is in the same place where there's a self, and the self thinks it makes the intention. That's just plain confusion. That's just like, that's actually not at all true. The intention of that moment.

[71:02]

The self is in a place where the intention has arisen. the intentions to move arms arises in consciousness, the self comes up, the consciousness comes up, the intention comes up. It's not like the self's here, this is what we think though, the self's here and the self makes the intention. It's actually the consciousness arises with the self and with an intention, and with the confusion. And the confusion is, this self made that intention. We can learn more about how it happens, but I guess I should let it go. I think that we are involved. I just painted a picture of how we're involved. We're on the stage. Here's the stage. Consciousness. We're on the stage. We're in the workshop. In the workshop there is a self. We're there. And work is getting done.

[72:04]

And there's confusion. And one of the main confusion is, one of the main confusion is, there's a confusion. The self, it's not the self. There's a confusion that, here's the confusion, here's the self, and the confusion is that the self made the stage come up. In a common language sense, I would say, in a common language sense, I would say, my self made my arm go up. Yeah, but also, in a common sense thing, is that people think that this self made the intention to move the arm up. I think that's going too far. Way too far. All right. And then, if you say, that's going too far, then you say it's 925. Okay. And what do you call it? The natives are restless. And I'm not in control of the natives. So I say thank you very much. And I just want to quote Charlie one time. One of the more brilliant things Charlie has said in my presence is, are you saying that bodhisattvas can not have their cake and eat it too?

[73:17]

Yeah, please pass the books back. And the answer is yes. Bodhisattvas cannot have their cake and eat it too. And Charlie has little sheets of paper if anybody wants to go online and listen to the classes and find out what was really said. and get control of the situation.

[73:55]

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