we have this practice, this straightforward practice of sitting, and service, and meals, and working, and talking about it is, in a way it's, sometimes it's even clear, not necessarily, isn't it? But then I forget that people are talking to themselves in their head, while we're doing the practice. And sometimes what they say is stuff like, why are we doing this? I want to go home. So maybe it is good to talk occasionally, since the scriptures are not necessarily written on the walls, on the trees. So I speak again. And actually, I read one time to you try to have a little break, I guess, complex break.

[01:19]

We don't need a break. Get some rest. Get some rest and things like that. Some of you are going to leave Tassajara, I guess. And also some of you aren't going to be able to see me anymore to talk to. So in one sense I don't want to open any major wounds in your psyche. just before you leave. On the other side, I feel like I'd like to open up some new material, even though it's too late and not a good time. That's not a dilemma I have. You have this somewhat, you know, some understanding of what we've been talking about and now I don't exactly know how to tip it over but it might happen. But before I tip it over I wanted to just remind you of some very basic things and that is this nice little quote from the Lotus Sutra where the Buddha says, those who practice all virtues are

[02:35]

are gentle and soft and harmonious and upright, they will see the Buddha teaching the Dharma right now. So that's one little practice in a nutshell. Practice all virtues. Be gentle, harmonious, and upright. And I know that will apply in this class, too. And practice all virtues as unpacked as to mud with all beings, which also means getting, of course it basically means getting into the mud of your own body.

[03:47]

Sink down into your experience moment by moment of pain and pleasure and whatever phenomena is manifesting through your experiential dimension. sink down into that, be completely present with it, don't indulge in it, don't turn away from it, just compassionately listen to and experience what's happening and then when you get there be gentle and harmonious with the situation and be upright and continue to be balanced It's the way you settled in a balanced way and now continue to be balanced in that practice of all virtues. Getting dirty in order to help yourself be present, but also getting dirty to help all beings who are down in the mud. So that's practice very simply, you know, which we've been going over in many, many ways.

[04:54]

Practice all virtues, do gentle upgrades and harmonies. And you will see the Buddha. In that situation of being present with your experience and upright, The meditation on emptiness naturally unfolds. We don't recommend an active, you know, what's called a personal effort kind of dualistic application of analytic meditation, but that does not mean that analysis, meditative analysis, is not going on. In fact, meditative analysis spontaneously arises, in other words, experiences you're having naturally come up and unpack themselves, dismantle themselves, and analyze themselves right before you. In other words, they show you their dependent co-arising. In other words, they show you their lack of inherent existence. In other words, they show you their ultimate mode. And having the ultimate mode of things revealed to us is all we need then.

[05:56]

but to have the ultimate mode revealed to us prior to us practicing all virtues could, what do you call it, just be like a badly seized snake. But if you're completely present with your experience and upright in it, then when the ultimate truth, the ultimate mode of existence, the ultimate way that the things you're experiencing are, will not be harmful, you will not mishandle it, and it will liberate you. Does this sound familiar? Now, one other thing I wanted to say, one more pitch here for a little language pitch, and that is, I think it would be good if we could we should know how to seize the snake called the word absolute.

[07:06]

I'm not saying we should banish it from the English language, it has a purpose. It's a word we use to meet people who use the word. But in Buddhism, especially in the teaching of Nagarjuna, there's no place for absolutes. And the word absolute has this ... makes a suggestion of something that exists in and of itself. The word absolute has that nuance of something that exists in and of itself. Something that's independently existent. Whereas in the teaching of the Middle Way there's ... nothing is independent, including nothing. Nothing is also not independent. Even emptiness is not independent. So the word absolute, we should be careful of using that. And you know, I looked up the root of the word, the word means ab, which means away from, and salvere, which means to loosen.

[08:17]

So to loosen away from. So a thing that's absolute is kind of loosened away from, it's pulled away from context and it has an independent kind of quality. So phenomena and truths, Buddhist truths are not, well excuse me, the ultimate truth in Buddhism, the ultimate truth in Buddhism is not an absolute. However, the funny thing is that what we call conventional truth is like an absolute. that what people's conventional view of experience is, is that things are absolute. They see themselves, they see objects, okay? And they attribute independence to it. They think the thing is there, kind of like loose, you know, loosened away from everything else all by itself. So actually we, or the conventional truth, the truth for discriminating consciousness, is that various things are absolute.

[09:22]

So the first truth, there are two truths that are taught by the Buddha, the first truth is the truth of the conventional truth, samvritti satya. Samvritti satya, samvritti means, you know, one means that samvritti is to cover or conceal. So it's a kind of, and satya means truth, it's the concealing truth or the truth of the conceiver. What's the Concealer? The Concealer is discriminating consciousness, which projects independence on its objects, which projects absolutes onto relatives. That's the truth which conceals or hides Truth, actually. It's the concealing truth, or the truth of the concealing.

[10:33]

And also, one way to talk about a truth is that a truth is something that the way it appears is like it exists. So, although it's called conventional truth, it's not really a truth, because the way things appear It's not the way they exist. The way they exist is that they exist in relationship. Everything exists in relationship. Nothing is independent. We project over phenomena independence or absolute existence. But there is and we must use that conventional truth. It's not a truth. Ultimate truth is the way things... is actually a truth. It's because the way things appear is the way they are. Ultimate truth is actually a truth because in ultimate truth the way things appear is the way they are. In ultimate truth things appear to a lack in their existence.

[11:37]

Things appear in relationship. Things appear as dependent and co-arising. All phenomena... What do you mean by appear? They're actually objects of knowledge. We actually can see. that things lack in their existence. And the way they appear to you, the way they look, the way you know them, is just like they are. You know them like they are. In other words, you know that they're just coming to be out of dependence. And that's a truth, you see. The other truth is a truth where they appear to be one way, but they don't really exist that way. They appear to be conventionally existing, But when you see them conventionally existing through conventional truth, the conventional truth is that they are conventionally existing. Conventional truth is they exist independently. So it's funny, isn't it? That the things that come to exist through causes and conditions and have that kind of wondrous, conventional, temporary appearance, then we lay this thing over on top of them and make more out of them than they are.

[12:47]

And that's conventional truth. That's ordinary worldly knowledge. Ordinary worldly knowledge is basically to make too much out of things. To see things the way they actually exist, to actually perceive things in the same way that they exist, that's the ultimate mode. The ultimate mode then is not exactly the same as liberation, it just is a condition for liberation. And the other one, the other view, unaided by the second truth, the Buddha can see both truths, unaided by the ultimate truth, then you're just in bondage. Now one thing I want to say, which I think I, whether I said it or not, I think I was capable of saying something like, the two truths are two ways of seeing the same thing. I would say more it's like the two truths are two ways of seeing, but there's not a thing out there that they see.

[14:09]

The two truths are in the same realm of being, in that way they're one, because they're really two aspects of life, but they're really two ways of seeing, not the same thing, but two ways of seeing. In other words, the two truths are actually objects, they're phenomena, two kinds of phenomena. One kind of phenomena, phenomena of something being concealed. It's a phenomena that has a concealing over it or a layer over it. The other phenomena is things as they are coming to be moment by moment. Well, an object of knowledge, nyaya, you know, a nyaya, unknowable, like in the Heart Sutra, it says, you know, there's two kinds of obstructions, actually there's three basically, there's karma avarana, klesha avarana, and nyaya avarana.

[15:16]

So, these truths can be known, they can be known, they can be objects, they are objects, and so you can In fact we do know, we go around knowing things that inherently exist. We know of things that inherently exist. That knowing, that type of knowing, that object which we know in that way, that's conventional truth. We also can know things, as an object of knowledge you can know something as lacking inherent existence. At that time, however, your knowledge is no longer an obstacle, there's no longer an obstruction, and you're no longer afraid. I think what I wrote down earlier was that the two truths are just two ways of seeing the conventional. That's pretty good, that's better.

[16:21]

Yeah. And seeing the conventional as conventional is the ultimate truth. Seeing the conventional as ultimate, I mean absolute, is concealing the conventionality and the arbitrariness, not arbitrariness, but the co-dependence, the dependence of the conventional. Okay, now, How you doing with that? Yes? Are you asking a question about the object now?

[17:40]

Yeah. Object of perception? So what's your question? Does that object have the knowledge that we see the object's knowledge? Or is it also a combination of us and our knowledge and the object's knowledge that is liberation? To say that the object has knowledge is a little bit beyond the scope of our discussion so far as introducing a new dimension. But if I can build up to that maybe, and that is, I'm just saying now in addition, instead of saying that there's a truth over on the side of the perceiver, you know, and then that truth is the way you see things, actually I'm putting the I'm shifting the language into that the two truths, or objects, are phenomena. So one kind of object is an inherently existing object.

[18:44]

That inherently existing object is, for the person who's looking, an object. And they think it's a truth. they think that that object is the truth. In other words, they think the way it is, is the way it appears, the way they're thinking about it, is the way it is. And they actually have made a statement about its mode of existence, and the mode of existence that they're stating in the conventional realm is that it exists independently. But you can say seeing the object that way is the truth, but I'm saying no. Let me put it the other way. The object is the truth. You just see the object. Of course, you make the object that way because you project this phenomenon by the way you see it. But for you, it is that way. The object actually inherently exists.

[19:49]

However, it doesn't inherently exist. But you see it that way. so the way you see it or the way it appears to you the way object appears to you is that it inherently exists however it doesn't exist that way so it's not a truth really it's only a truth for the obscuring consciousness now what about the other case where what you see out there the way it looks what it appears to be is actually what it is that's the ultimate mode so then what you see is everything's kind of dependent on everything and nothing is like absolute and cut loose from this context. You don't see it that way. Is that seeing a type of understanding or is there an actual sort of perceptual, is there something perceptually different going on? I mean, I don't even have to use these words to use to try and get at this, but this is a regular old perception. Right. It's just that the object has changed. So the same equipment you use to perceive, you know, inherently existing objects, you now perceive

[20:55]

non-inherently existing object. In other words, you perceive emptiness. In other words, emptiness is just an ordinary, it's an ordinary object of knowledge. Completely ordinary. In fact, it's more ordinary than the conventional things you see. It's perceiving without messing around. And what you want to say is that it's the object of perception that makes it that way and not the perceiver? No, no, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying the truth These two truths are objects, which you see makes them know more than objects. It doesn't make them like something out there. Okay? There's not like a thing out there called the two truths. They're just two objects, they're phenomena. Now the thing that they ... of course, one person looks out and sees what the phenomena they see is called the first truth. the truth of conventional existence, in other words, the truth of things are inherently existing.

[21:59]

One person sees that, or one consciousness sees that. Another consciousness, for example, the consciousness of what we call Buddha, looks out and sees dependently co-arising things all over the place. In other words, the object that the Buddha sees is ultimate truth, left and right. Does the Buddha ever see anything other than ultimate truth? and people who aren't Buddhists can see both. Sometimes you see one and sometimes you see the other. So all the objects of the Buddha are, you know, lack inherent existence, are empty. I see your hand over there. Wait a second. Jennifer's question hasn't been answered yet, I don't think, in a way.

[23:13]

Can you hold your questions for a second? So, now Marianne was talking about this thing she read in Dogon where something about the Buddha is something about the communication between us and the Buddha. I guess it would be that the meaning of Buddha is that for you, everything you experience is definitely co-arisen. To me it sounds like you're making too much out of it there, by saying you are part of the thing.

[24:30]

This is just talking about truths, okay? Two kinds of truths. There's no you being discussed here. Nobody's going to bring up you or me at this point. If you want to, we can do it, but this is talking about ... we're just walking around all day long just perceiving objects. Right now you're doing it. It's a question of what kind of objects are you perceiving? Including looking around and having a sense of perceiving yourself. The self is one of these things. You can look at somebody's face, or think of the Buddha, or look at the wall. And then you can also project some idea of yourself out there and look at that. When you look at yourself, when you think about yourself, what do you see? There are just two truths, two ways you can see yourself as an object and be aware of yourself. One is as an inherently existing independent operator. This is the usual way. The usual way, in other words, is to make an absolute out of yourself.

[25:33]

is dependent, hits to see yourself, dependent to co-arising, that's called enlightenment. Enlightenment arises with that. In other words, that's all dharma is coming for, confirming the self. Rather than, I'm over here, I'm this thing going around I understood that there's a shift when you go to seeing, when you're seeing a non, when you see something as dependent on co-reason, that it's not the same, it's not an object of knowledge in the same way.

[26:55]

It's not. That's right. It's not. It shifts from being an object of knowledge which has an overlay of identity on it, independent existence on it, which we are capable of doing, objects. We have a consciousness which can project these baggies around everything. And if you're present with that, which most of us have that available to us to see things that way, if you're present with that, and stop messing with it. Stop messing with it means not activating the mind around objects. Bodhidharma says don't activate your mind around objects. You can sit there and watch your mind activated around objects. Watch your mind wrapping everything with independence. You watch that and watch it and finally you notice in some sense what it is to see an object without activating your mind around it.

[27:56]

Then the object appears without that packaging. And then you can see that the object is in this dynamic relationship with everything. So the object analyzes itself into its condition. And so the object starts to appear different to you. In other words, it starts to appear as something which independently co-arises and therefore lacks an inner existence. Still, you seeing the object. Well actually, when you see an object, ordinarily, when you see an object, at the moment you see an object, it is not you seeing the object. You don't do it that way. We don't do it that way, not at the moment, not once. What's happening? When you see an object, at the moment of perceiving an object, you do not say, I challenge you to this.

[29:19]

You do not say, I see the object. At the moment of saying, I see the object, you're looking at the object you're looking at as I. But when you ordinarily perceive something, you're temporarily taking a break from checking yourself out. You're not an object when you're looking at another object. Or you can at the next moment switch and you look at yourself. In other words, consciousness perceives itself. The self is now the object of our consciousness. And you can put your various selves out there to be objects in your consciousness. But that moment, there's not a self back here looking at that self. As soon as there is, you switched around looking at this one again. That's not the way the mind works. There isn't a self except when the self's an object. You cannot know or think about the self unless you put the self out into the object category. That's the way the mind works according to a certain tradition.

[30:23]

Okay? Yes? So you're describing not a state when you ordinarily see an object? No. always the same, the way the mind works. It's just a question of whether the very well-established pattern of projecting independent existence onto objects, whether that gets a break or not. When it's operating, that's the usual way that people see things. That's the way we sort of like work together. We have conventions about how to project the self, or how to project identity and inherent existence onto things. We do it with language. We put a word on it. Walk around, you know, have this experience, have that experience, We don't just do that, we flap a word, we flip a word onto everything, at very high speed. Everything we experience, we've got a word for it. Everything we experience consciously has knowledge. This is about knowledge. All this truth business is about knowledge. In a realm that's not about knowledge, we're not working there. This is not the problem area. The problem area is in terms of objects of knowledge, jnaya avarana.

[31:28]

That's the ultimate cruncher that stops us, is these objects of knowledge, things we know. That's the final thing that has to be dropped in order to become completely fearless and awake. So this is about knowledge. And the operation of the mind, the way the mind operates, the funny thing is, again, is that the ultimate way of seeing things is the most basic, the most ordinary. It's like, you know, not quite putting yourself into a coma, but turning yourself way down to like the basic idol. Like, if you look in the Abhidharma charts of the Theravada Buddha, you know, they have all these states of consciousness, you know, and then they have this kind of consciousness, I think it's called Kriya Vijnana or something like that, which means like the basic functioning that all minds are going through and then all these overlays of all these other consciousnesses. But the Buddhas always have that going on, just like we do, and they just can dip right down and just operate in this very kind of like, hey you, that kind of thing, you know, hey It's like that.

[32:30]

Hey you, yes? What's Buddha, huh? It's the same, you know, just very basic, very basic. Dial tone or something like that. It's very basic. So when you're perceiving the ultimate mode of existence of an object, when you're perceiving the ultimate mode of existence of cold, the ultimate mode of existence of heat, the ultimate mode of existence of pleasure, the ultimate mode of existence of pain, the ultimate mode of existence of self, of Buddha. When you're perceiving these things as an ordinary functioning perceiver, the ultimate mode is just completely ordinary. What's almost extraordinary is what you're seeing. What you're seeing is light. You know, you're seeing the universe come together on this object. And you all just put your hands together and you have a slight smile. Anyway, it's a big relief. If you've just recently been putting this junk on, just recently, I mean, up until recently, and also for quite a while before that, you've been putting stuff on this object for eons and eons, and suffering because of it, and now there's a break.

[33:38]

Instead of laying this, doing this extra special thing, which is very common, onto objects, and perceiving them by this ordinary perceptual way, now you've stopped doing that, and you continue to perceive in the ordinary way, but now what you see, is ultimate truth, which is actually just the way things are, which corresponds to the way they appear now, rather than the way they are being overlaid by our fantastic imagination system. But the perceptual process is like very ordinary in some ways, now it's just really relaxed because it's so easy for it to perceive things this way. Now Charlie and John Mark, and David, and Anna, and Wendy, and Roberta, and... Charlie?

[34:39]

I thought you said previously that the Buddha sees the two truths simultaneously, but today you said the Buddha just sees the ultimate truth. So the Buddha sees both truths simultaneously, but the Buddha doesn't see things through the first truth. The Buddha doesn't actually believe that things inherently exist, but the Buddha can see that there is that truth. So the Buddha sees the truth, but doesn't perceive it as his, it's not his understanding. So that's it. Or kind of sees that the conventional truth is part of the ultimate truth. The Buddha sees that the conventional truth has to be taught, in order for people to be taught the other one, sees that, keeps that in mind and teaching it all the time, so in that sense the Buddha sees it, sees the necessity of it you might say, sees the efficacy of bringing up that truth, but the Buddha doesn't actually see that truth. For the Buddha all objects are empty, including emptiness you see as an object. It's not this kind of like miffy fluffy thing, it's actually an object, it's actually something

[35:47]

And maybe just before I answer the questions I'll just briefly mention that emptiness, the structure, the world of ultimate truth, okay, is a lot of emptinesses. It's not one big fat void, it's a structured void, highly structured. How is it structured? It's structured, it's not equivalent to, it's not identical like a photographic image of conventional reality. But it's structured by conventional reality. Because it is the conventionality of conventional reality. But the conventionality of conventional reality is not identical with conventional reality. All is based on it. So, if you have like an emptiness of a person, that means you have some kind of like person, some person comes together in some way, you see how it comes together, You see it's dependent co-arising, you see it's emptiness. That's the emptiness of that person. That's not the emptiness of another person.

[36:50]

Each person has their own emptiness. So it's all these different emptinesses. So in the big picture of ultimate truth, there's all this content. What's the content? It's not all the inherently existing things piled up in their relationships. It's all the emptinesses of all ... So there's this interdependent, and that's also another reason why the emptinesses are also not inherently existing, because they're also relating. So all these different lights, you know, all these different radiances are pulsating and working with each other, but they're very definitely located, they all hook into some conventional existence, because there is conventional existence. If it's a conventional existence, it's a fact, nothing more in that realm. So it's a jam-packed, highly social world of emptiness with lots of you know different emptiness is playing with each other and also they're constantly pulsating and changing because they don't they only exist as long as the thing that their emptiness of is around they don't like hang around later in a library of previous sentences of things that are no longer around but the current living emptiness of all things now let's see next was i think john i want to

[38:18]

just briefly describe a kind of process of moving through modes of perception. Because I'm trying to figure out how it corresponds to the way you're talking. I have a feeling it does, but I'm not sure exactly how. So it's one, two, three. One, I think, is perceiving objects as inherently existing, which is basically not having your expectations disappointed. seeing things that are kind of boring. Not seeing the same colors you've always seen, seeing the same objects you've always seen, not having any problems just kind of putting the conventional labels on things. And then the second way seems to be a kind of dynamic process where there is some kind of questioning of who is perceiving. So it's walking along the creek and noticing that not only noticing that there's a rock falling down, but seeing this whole kind creep of movement of the mountains and then questioning the kind of salient time spans for me as a human or me as just kind of walking along and then seeing this whole kind of movement and seeing the mountains as walking at the same time.

[39:33]

And then more than, you know, hearing a bird and then wondering what all of this looks like from a bird's point of view. And the third is where there isn't this kind of analytical process but there's just a lot of kind of surprise. You know, there are colors you've never seen. There are sounds you've never heard. And it's just, there's a kind of aliveness to it. Which seems to come after, I mean, the second seems to kind of prepare the ground for the third. Now, does that, can you see that as corresponding to the conventional and ultimate as you were describing? No, I would see it as corresponding to ... The first one sounds like conventional, pretty much. The second one sounds like meditation leading up to, hang in there, leading up to the vision of the ultimate. And the third?

[40:34]

is just that you all this everything you just said whatever it was out of each one of those things each one of those things is just uh depending on the co-arising period that's it and um if i could possibly just shift a little bit to another practice period now 1994 we're studying Vasubandhu right and he has this teaching about that we have this company at his mind of projecting inherent existence on things, right? That's the first stage, but things are going pretty well. There's suffering, yes, but basically the system's hanging in there. Then you have... but what in the system is that the concepts that you're dealing with, which are the objects of your knowledge, okay, you projected inherent existence on them. That's the system, the conventional world. Then you start studying what's called In other words, you start studying the fact that these concepts that you project reality onto, they're actually just concepts.

[41:46]

You start wondering, you start questioning, you start being suspicious, not of the concepts, but of your belief that they inherently exist. You start to be suspicious, you start to be questioning, and things start moving. You move into another realm. But it's another realm within convention, where you still believe in conventional reality. It's kind of an intermediate realm called training in Vijnaptimatra. Then there comes a time which is called Vijnaptimatra city. City means you master it. In other words, you actually see things as just concepts. In other words, you see the conventional world as just the conventional world. And then these wonderful experiences you have of surprise and the swirling blah blah blah, okay, that can still happen but you also see that as just convention. It isn't like that's like ... it is better in a way, it's more fun in a lot of ways than ordinary kind of boring.

[42:51]

But sometimes what happens in those realms is the boring comes and gets you there too. But it sounds like the person's moving out from the usual patterns and basically elaborating and intensifying the study of what's happening. And if you're present and upright, part of the reward you get is loosening up and getting new information and surprises and stuff like that, so it's coming to you. In other words, this is the harbinger of revelation of dependent co-arising. But when it actually reveals itself, It would not be, there's no Dharma by which it would be different from the previous one. So you could wake up to dependent co-arising while being surprised by something, or by being totally stuck, you know, totally in cooperation with the program, you could wake up right there too. But given what you said and given that I know you, I think you're moving into the training of this. but your description is not the description because there's no dharma by which you would specify how the thing would look different.

[44:05]

It isn't that what you're perceiving like. So what's the role of habitual modes projected onto existence? I mean, it seems like we do that, but once the ultimate is attained or non-attained or whatever, What happens to those habits? Well, there's two kinds of habits. One are conventional habits. And among the conventional habits there's one that will drop and the rest of them will go on. The one conventional habit is to make the conventional into absolute. That one will drop. And all the other equipment will keep going. You'll still be John to me until you come to me and specifically tell me that you've changed your name. And even then we'll have to have a discussion about it. So what about conventional discussion? So all the conventional equipment goes on as usual. So the kind of laziness of perception which can be a kind of set of perceptual habits also goes on?

[45:09]

Yes. You can have lazy perceiving Buddhas. Although people might come up to them and say, you know, Buddha, excuse me, but we'd like you to kind of take a course. We'd like you to sharpen up your perceptions because you're such a wonderful person, we want you to be able to do this other thing too. Okay, fine. I've got no investment in being the kind of person I was when I first woke up. Was I? I think so, I'm not sure. Well, Charlie kind of asked my question. Okay, great, thank you. No, no. When you were talking about it, I remember something that Katagiri Roshi used to talk about. Yes. Although, I'm not sure, anyway. Yes. He said that we should the vibrating between form and emptiness, very quickly, incredibly fast. So I'm wondering if that is the same as going back and forth between the two truths, seeing the conventional truth on one side and then seeing the ultimate truth on the other side, and actually have this vibrational mode where they're almost the same, but not quite the same, but we see them.

[46:17]

I can't say what he meant, but now we're just talking about form and emptiness, okay? Form is a possible object, another one is feeling, another one is concepts, and of course all these things are concepts when you know them, but this applies to both conscious and unconscious processes, or objective knowledge and non-objective knowledge, the same five skandhas going on. Then there is consciousness itself, which cannot be perceived. as an object, except as a concept of consciousness, and then this huge mass called the four skanda, which is all kinds of mental formations. All these things, except for consciousness, can be an object of knowledge, okay? Now, the vibration, one vibration is, there's an object of knowledge, you should vibrate between that object, seeing the object, and realizing its emptiness. See, if I see the object, I realize it's empty. Or are they conventional? Yes. Actually, they also feel like entirely different modes of perception, like one is actually liberating.

[47:27]

In the same mode of perception, same mode of perception. But one feels like in bondage and the other feels… One is in bondage and the other isn't. Same mode of perception. Which is good news, by the way, folks, you don't have to get your perceptual processing. I mean, you can go ahead with your basic, same brain, same body, same culture, same unless your friends don't practice Zen. Same friends. Bondage. So, and you don't, and without remodeling your consciousness, you use your regular, just keep cranking it away and now it seems a new thing. What does liberation arise out of? What does it arise out of, David, tell me? It seems like the object of knowledge. Yes, and what is the object of knowledge that liberation arises out of? The ultimate truth. You've got to have the ultimate truth for liberation, that's number 10.

[48:30]

In other words, when you see dependent co-arising, you see dharma. When you see dependent co-arising, you're seeing ultimate truth. When you see dependent co-arising, you see the ultimate mode of things. Things that are dependent co-arise, their mode is they lack inherent existence. When you see that, you see dharma. When you see dharma, you see Buddha. When you see dharma and Buddha and dependent co-arising and emptiness, You are liberated. You can't stay stuck at that moment. You have nothing to hold on to. You as a liberated thing. And also you get to have your conscious as usual. Unless you didn't eat enough rice. Zen monks eat rice. Remember that. Eat before enlightenment. And brush your teeth afterwards. Yes. And then eat after enlightenment and brush your teeth afterwards. Okay?

[49:47]

Same perceptual process. Different object. Different truth. Different truth. Different object means different truth. Same way of thinking. Ordinary, normal human being. Hopefully your mind's working just like everybody else's. Not playing any funny games like making up your own language or something. You're vulnerable to, you know, dictionaries and everything. There you are. You know, people can ask you to go to see, you know, have an MRI, everything. Nothing funny about you. You're just one of the boys, okay? You are. You're one of the girls. This is conventional truth. You're into that, you can watch it as well as anybody else, matter of fact, if you're a little bit better than this. But, when the truth changes, when the object changes from appearing different from the way it is to appearing just like it is, then we get liberated.

[50:49]

That's what it's all about. And our training is to make us so that we would just drop, just for a minute, oh yeah, just for a minute, just drop all worldly affairs, just for a second here folks. Just for a second just sink down into what's happening and just drop, drop everything and just let something appear without slapping inherent existence on it for a second and you get liberated on the spot anew. But that requires quite a bit of training, because it doesn't count to like do it in your head, to sort of think about it, you have to like be in your body, in your mind and when it's actually happening to just let the thing happen. without all this activating consciousness around it and slapping extra stuff on it, then that's the training, that's the training, that's the training. So John describes something that's happening to him while he's training, and as you start the training things start to move around a little bit, be a little different.

[51:50]

Before you have actually dropped the whole thing, things start to change a little bit, your sphincter muscles loosen sometimes, you develop some hip problems, you know. You think things you never thought before, new things appear, blue jays start acting funny, all this stuff happens, you know. But that's just sort of like, kind of like loosening up around the edges, it's like getting ready for the big drop, you know. When the drop happens, there's nothing to it, you know. It's just that you stop messing around and that's it, and that's liberation. But it's hard for us to train ourselves with that. That's why, in some sense, We don't need this class, we just sort of do our practice, and the practice does it. I mean, if you do the practice, that's good, you know, just follow the schedule, sit up right, you know, chant with your whole heart, you know, bow with your whole body, that does it. That's training yourself, like this, just leaving it alone, just be a Zen monk. It's enough. Of course it's not, in a way, because you can't believe that this could be all there is to it, because we're talking about ultimate reality here,

[52:56]

we're talking about absolutes, so then all this stuff comes back in, then you need a class now and then, or perhaps even somebody needs to call you on some attachment for your understanding of the teaching or something like that, because we can slip into these new tricky ways, like, you know, I'm not going to speak English. Okay? So that's it, it's a training, just train yourself so that you can now, not perceive differently, but perceive something different. In other words, seeing this thing that's right there all the time, namely dependent co-arising, it's always right in your face, if you would just leave it alone. Alright? Now Jack wants to butt a head in the line, should we let him? Anna wants, do you want him to go ahead of you? Anna gives it up. Can Jack go ahead, you?

[53:58]

No. Okay. I was wondering if it might be useful to think of an object not as getting knowledge, but as getting information. Objects do not have knowledge. Nobody said that that I heard. If they did, I don't agree with them. Objects do not have knowledge. Objects are objects of knowledge. Emptiness doesn't have knowledge. It's just a question of knowing the emptiness of an object. And then knowing the emptiness of an object is knowing an object called the ultimate truth. So the object, and then knowing its emptiness, knowing the emptiness of the object you are perceiving, you have knowledge of, the emptiness of it, it now becomes an object of knowledge. Versus the object and the emptiness of the object. The emptiness object can be an object of ordinary perceptual processes, an object of knowledge.

[55:01]

Object doesn't have knowledge. Right, yeah, no, I know that. What I was trying to get at is, in a perceptual process, is it useful just to see that something... I don't want to say has, but I have to use the English. It's okay to say has, or you can also say is. Okay, that an object Yes, definitely. And what information is an object? It is, huh? It is dependent co-arising. Every object sort of delivers you information about dependent co-arising. A perfect example. Not perfect, but a wonderful, luminous example. Every object is teaching you dependent co-arising. It's right there saying, do you want me to tell you? I'll tell you about the pinnacle of rising because I'm unthankable!" And you say, yes I do. You say, okay, first thing you do is don't move. And just now, now, just sit there and listen to me now.

[56:03]

Are you listening to me? Now, listen some more. Now see if you can listen to me and hear those sounds and not activate your mind around what I'm saying to you. Can you do it? If you can, you're going to get this dependent co-arising and you're going to realize who I really am. Listen that way. That's what the object is. That's the information every object is giving you. All the time. Non-stop. All of them are like that. When you hear it, when you see it, then the object says, now you see how I'm not really here inherently? And how you don't have to make me into an absolute thing? And you say, yes I do. Thank you very much. I'm a happy Roberta. I appreciate the information. I like seeing it in terms of information rather than knowledge because then every sentient being gets different information out of it.

[57:21]

Right, it's good to see it in terms of information instead of knowledge. Right. So that it's sort of like a crystal with different facets. I don't know if you would say that, you know. No, it's okay. Because everybody, it seems like everybody looks at experience and we're all putting different information. Right, uh-huh. It is more like information, it's more healthy to see it in information than knowledge. To see it as knowledge is incoherent. It's just incoherent to see it as knowledge, that's all. There's no place for that view except incoherence and nonsense. That's unconventional to see it that way, as far as I know. I don't know if anybody has the convention to see it as knowledge. But seeing it as information is among ... there's other conventional views besides seeing it as information. Seeing it as information is actually not conventional. But it's common sense to see it as information. What you're presenting is common sense, which is more like Nagarjuna would see it. It's useful to have stop signs. They have different colors. We've worked out and we've communicated the reason.

[58:24]

Cars are not nice to get hit by or get hit in and all that stuff. All this stuff is part of the practical conventional reality and information about stop signs. All of it's there and the information is coming on and it's very useful and practical. And Buddhists continue to use that, they wear their safety belts when trained to do so. Without training, Buddhists will not wear their seatbelts. The wearing of seatbelts by Buddhists, it dependently co-arises, it's not an information thing, it's all just information, that's what we live with. Right? That's it. There's nothing more to it than that. And that's liberating, if you can accept that. And to have knowledge of it being like that is necessary, but we have knowledge about that, and we have knowledge about less information situations, namely when we want to make things not very informative and just make them be the way we want them, they were yesterday or something, and we close off the information and our knowledge then becomes knowledge of inherently existing things, and based on that knowledge we're in bondage.

[59:25]

and it's information wants to be free, which they're using to say that they don't want a copyright of stuff, but it always seems to be something about what we're talking about too, about information wanting to liberate itself. You know, I think that's right that information wants to liberate itself, but the key thing is, In order for information to liberate itself, in other words, for example, inanimate objects to liberate themselves, for the information of a rock to liberate itself, what's necessary is that we hear the anxiety of that information calling out, wanting to be liberated, that anxiety of things saying, please listen to me. Yes, which means you have to listen to yourself, yourself first of all, your own information. When you can listen to your own information, then you can listen to all the other information, it's anxiety, it's wanting to be free because we're in relationships, so if we're in bondage because we won't face our own stuff and open up to our own information and just let it be information without making it into inherently existing, if we won't do that then all the rocks and computers and numbers in the world are also locked into that bondage and they're crying out to be released too.

[60:57]

So we save all, you know, all the numbers in the world are saved by our practice. So, Nagya, are you still alive? That's okay, it's a kind of a car road, did you see how it happened? Ah, yes! A friend of mine used to say, he used to have lots of enlightenment experience from coffee. What do you mean to say to drop it? Is that the same thing as saying to empty something? Which we don't do. We don't empty something. We don't do it, no. It's the same with dropping. Same with dropping, yeah. But don't make dropping then passive. Well, the active part of that is doing the practice. The active part is... No, the practice doesn't do it. The mind by nature has an active and passive aspect, so you can say, you know, let it drop or drop it.

[62:06]

You can hear drop as the mind has the ability to think of things that it does and it has the ability to think of things that have been done to it. This is just language, I'm just using this language, you know, what it's called. There's this wonderful poem, you know, which I don't know the poem actually. Basically, I'll tell you the narrative of the poem. is uh there's this guy outside this woman's uh house and he calls her servant you know her servant's name is jade little jade that's a chinese lady she has a little servant named jade so he calls the postman door he calls little jade little jade because he doesn't want to call her name you know because then people will know he's outside so he calls his servant's name you know so we can't actually i can't actually say It's not the words, you know. And this is where the meeting thing happens in our head, is that we express some words and somebody, and there's a meeting, and in that meeting, in the energy of that meeting, the meaning can manifest.

[63:18]

So I say drop it, I'm trying to talk about how you can let something, let an experience come up and like, you know, not activate your mind around it. you know, how you can drop, how you can drop all that stuff you laid on everything, and let it drop. But also, it's actually already dropped, you know, the thing actually has all, simultaneously the thing is actually all by itself and it's pure dependent co-arising without the stuff added to it, or you could say without the dependent co-arising taken away from it. Pulling the dependent co-arising away so it's by itself, or pushing self-existence onto it, these are ways we activate our mind around objects. So just drop all that. Could we say drop happens? Drop happens, yeah, drop happens. In other words, but also you're willing for that all to drop. You trust that, you trust, you're willing. You can see that, you can see that that's causing all the problems and you say, I would, I would, I would be willing for that to drop for a second, you know, and then it drops. It actually drops all the time anyway, but it also actually crops up there.

[64:23]

Yeah. So it's, it's, it's very dynamic. So, but if you're willing for it to drop, dropping can be realized by the, by the person who's willing. But if you're opposed to dropping, then that resistance can block it being realized through you. But you can want, you know. Just like, again, I said this before but I'll say it again, Bodhisattvas can want to help people, that's fine. Bodhisattvas can want to drop all body and mind, that's fine. But to say, I help people, is not Bodhisattva, you know, recommended course. To say, I help people is arrogance. To say, I drop body and mind is arrogance. But to want to help people, and to want to drop body and mind, Bodhisattvas, that's where they're at. They want to drop body and mind so they'll be happy and everybody else will be happy. They want to help people so that they'll be happy and everybody else will be happy. They want this, but they don't go around and say, well I did it. And this is the way it is.

[65:26]

But if you want to, you can Somehow you're available for things to be that way in your life. And one of the ways the practice makes you want to. Practice comes from wanting to. In practice, when you settle into your suffering, you get to see all these examples of how you activate your mind around things and cause all that pain. So you say, yeah, I guess I wouldn't be willing to drop this brilliant activating I'm doing around this object. I wouldn't be willing to drop it. Because it's, yeah, I'd rather be actually happy and free than smart. And also I know that after I'm happy, I'll just be just as smart anyway, so... It's a matter of priorities. Just a second, I want to give Anna one more chance. No? I'll come back later. And then I think is... I don't know, were you ahead of Wendy? So Wendy and Jennifer and Stuart. Yeah, I saw you nodding your head.

[66:34]

I actually had a diagram that worked for all this, but it had to do with... I wonder if it would be okay if I draw it, and then maybe I can say it. Our next guest... I'm hoping that will calm you down and see.

[67:56]

So up here, this is conventional, ultimate reality. This is a little X, which is five skandhas. Yeah, I know. I'll turn it around again. And I call this time. And then there's arrows going in two directions. And I call that eternity. And then there's all these arrows coming in. Okay, so here are the five skandhas and they exist conventionally or as we can experience them in the realm of time and in the realm of time there's all of this information coming in to the five skandhas and what they're doing is they're just choosing particular ones that they can stand. Because to experience all of this at once, they're not capable of that.

[69:06]

But what happens is, this conventional reality will come around it, and the ones that are perceived will be sort of actualized for that group of five skandhas and be given substance. But at the same time around it is this ultimate reality, which includes all of this information coming in. So, what these five skandhas actually can begin to believe is that they exist in time. And knowing that they exist in time, or that they conventionally exist in time, these two realities can come together and actually liberate them. The way this feels then is that eternity is running through this, and that's where liberation happens.

[70:09]

Because the... the ultimate reality that allows the five skandhas to see they exist in time also allows them to see that they exist in eternity. So addressing So, I think that then what... I'll try again to say what this feels like, because there's actually a sense of all of this coming in, and there's a way that it's released out this way. And...

[71:11]

I wonder, is this like reaching anybody? It's reaching. Okay. I just need to see some notes that I wrote there. It's a very light tea. These are the non-coffee drinkers. Wendy, it looks like you've drawn an unclosed exploding heart. Well, I think that's actually what it starts to be, is it's indescribable. The unconstructedness of it, or the unimaginability, or the unthinkableness of it, is actually how it releases us, one.

[72:30]

It's the effort to take this structure and describe it or pin it down or prescribe it or package it that is the painful part of it. I think that the way this functions is to is to free us, and I think I've kind of erased everything in here, which is kind of interesting, because I think that's actually what happens. All of this functions to release this into this experience. Can I ask a question? Please. When you came to this idea and visualized it,

[73:33]

What were you trying to answer to yourself or get to? Because that might help me get out more. Yes, yeah. What was happening when you visualized this? Right. What I think I was trying to understand was something that I read from Meister Eckhart, which was, he says, in order to see God, you must place all of your hopes and desires in eternity. What that meant to me was my hopes and desires are something that I contract into a little place and make them substantial, that they actually can be realized or something like that. But when I put them in eternity, then they become... They free themselves. And how do you do that?

[74:36]

Yes. How do you do that is to know that this conventional reality is conjunctive with ultimate reality. And that, in a sense, creates them in places. You know the places. Right. Maybe using eternity in a different way than it's used, you know, in a common Western sense, but, you know, in the dedication to the Moolamajamaka, you know, it says, not eternal and also not terminable. So, you know... Yeah, and this eternity is both of those. It's not eternal and it's not terminable. It's... What I think that... It's now. It's not now. See, that's the problem that happens, is that there's a tendency to think that there is a now and there is an eternity, but there's only this eternity. Therefore, if you place everything in it, it all gets erased or sort of spread out, or it doesn't sort of keep sticking and sticking and sticking.

[75:45]

So now doesn't stick either. Now doesn't stick. Now is always now. But it's still stuck. How is it stuck? Something is happening now, or I'm here now. That's when you say it. That's when you say it. You don't say it happens. It's never happened. What happens when it never happens? There's eternity. Because you're not... The sense of it is that it's only the tendency to grab a few of these, which creates an idea of time. So, a now is an idea of time. But where else, I mean, what else are we talking about? So, the now is grabbing those and putting them into time. I don't know if this is helpful, but it was a way that I could stand to try to explain

[76:56]

what I consider to be the experience of this. And it seems to me that when the five skandhas notice this grabbing, those very, you know, the very things that are created there by that grabbing, just, they purify this grabbiness by saying, I'm in eternity, I'm in eternity, I'm in eternity. What you're seeing is just the grabbing and making something out of it. That's all we're seeing, is the grabbing, the specific bits of information that we can stand. I don't know. Anyway. And I also feel that the way then that this is liberated also is the way it liberates everything.

[78:13]

There's not a something that is liberated, but what there is, is liberating everything at the same time by also... by also letting everything exist in front of you. Like the... Okay. Would you like to come back up here? Thank you. Thank you. And I realize that there is something there, and then I notice it, and then I have an employment, and then I have an identity for it, and a relationship to it.

[80:16]

But my life is filled continuously with all of this unconstructed information. When I hear you say that, then I have just taken whatever happened all over the world, including what you said, and I brought it into, through dependent co-arising, I brought it into some kind of like, something I could know as an individual experience. In all that's going on, we just select some part of it moment by moment. But in order for that thing that's selected to be something by itself and knowable, we have to put a concept or a word on it.

[81:23]

Otherwise, we don't have experience. That's where we're built to operate. We don't have any other kind of experience, in terms of knowledge. And even sense experience, although we don't put a word on it, there too we're selecting. But in our sense experience, we're also selecting among all these different things. We don't know our sense experience because we don't put a word on it. In the realm of sense experience, we do not have conventional reality. We don't have a convention about how to feel things, how to see colors, and so on. We do have a convention about how to see colors when they become known to us, because then Conventional reality is equivalent to the world of knowing, of knowledge. However, this additional thing of attributing more to it than that is also very common and has become basically a convention.

[82:28]

Although most people don't admit it, it has become conventional and ordinary to make the conventional world into more than what I just described. And that's the part that causes the pain, and that's the part that actually can be seen through by opening up to the way we made our experience in the first place. You can't figure out how you selected it, that's inconceivable. But you can see how you put the word on it, and you can also see how you put more than that on it. That we can do, that we can witness, and witnessing that is witnessing all things coming forward to create something. And also it's turned the other way, it's witnessing that we bring something forth to put on the coming forth of all things. This is delusion, which when we see it more than delusion, causes suffering.

[83:31]

If we just see it as delusion, I deludedly create this conventional world. If you let it go at that, that's the ultimate view. Yes, Jennifer? Um, well, I feel similar to what you just said about Kiki and Rinpoche. So, um... What Kiki do you hear? Um, she hears almost sunset and, um... together do you say or separate separate well we're all we're very happy to hear that because uh otherwise you would be violating convention earlier in the class when you started um beginning speaking of um that information or what i call stuff and then um all the hands went up um All of a sudden I realized I had to go to my mother's salvation because I couldn't stay with anything.

[84:38]

So I went back to my two favorite characters which are 24-11, a lonely confusion, not to be known as a low-witted person. It is like a heavy sea snake or a lonely executive incantation. And 24-15, which is you are always calling errands at us because you were mounted on your horse but forget about it. And then my two favorite cooking battles I just want to know if you can go on, but I just want to know, you just said animal But wait, you can continue. Yeah, please continue. Sorry. What do I have? And so they helped me bring back to take the record stuff, because I just, there was no bell in the class, and I was like, isn't anyone else want to hear a bell go?

[85:47]

I was like this. Out there. My energy was all out. So those characters brought you back here. Yeah. So I was finally really thankful for having this teaching. I want to say that we co-arise and just like us didn't have something. Fine whatever gets you through the class.

[86:48]

And to use the karakas to get through the class, now that's really something. Okay now I would like to practice. You want a little help? Could you ask a question after we practice this chanting? Let's practice this chanting. I'd like Neel to tell you how to say the Sanskrit. So there'd be, it'd be like S-H-N, or it's like, yeah.

[88:30]

So number one, as you all know, is Tathagata. [...] Arhat! [...] Arhat So that gives you vidyā-cāraṇa-saṅhaṇya.

[89:33]

Vidyā-cāraṇa-saṅhaṇya. Vidyā-cāraṇa-saṅhaṇya. Number five, Sugata. Number six, Lokabhik. And number seven, Anutthara. Puruṣa-saṅga-sārati.

[90:42]

Puruṣa-saṅga-sārati. [...] Purusha Damyasati. Good. Three words. Number nine then is probably the hardest one. Shasta Deva Manushyanam. Shasta Deva Manushyanam. It should be Deva, not Dev. After the D, there should be an A. Shasta Deva Manushyanam. Shasta. We have done it with the S, too. Yeah, if you want to know all the little funny marks in that one, there's a bunch of them.

[91:50]

The first S has an acute accent over it. The first A has a long mark. Then after there's a T there, that A has a long mark. Then Manusha, the A that follows the N of a long mark. Then the S before the Y has a dot under it. Then the A that's after the Y has a long mark. And the N has a dot under it. And the next A has a long mark. What does the dot on the N do? That means the tip of the tongue is touching the root of the mouth. Can you breathe gently through your nose? Sastra deva manushyana. Sastra deva manushyana. Thank you very much. My question follows after an answer about information wanting to be released, all things wanting to be released from the anxiety that creates grabbing them.

[93:17]

So have we, after we've said also that we are in the universe the only beings that we know of do these object-subject differentiations. So, would that be that we have such a responsibility over all beings to realize them, to liberate them as well? Are they suffering just because we're doing this? I don't know if they're suffering just because we're doing this, but I know they're definitely suffering because we're doing this, not just because we're doing this. Maybe they're suffering by themselves. They may have some other problems, but we definitely, they're definitely hooked into our suffering, just like we can be hooked into theirs. But I think anyway, before you get to that, we do have a responsibility, that is our responsibility. We have a special responsibility because we have a special problem, we can be the specialist

[94:22]

we can become especially wise and especially compassionate. So that is our responsibility as human beings. We have a great opportunity, that is our responsibility. We definitely can cause suffering to other beings. That's for sure. What they would be like if we weren't around, what kind of problems they would have, who would be the leader of that group and have the responsibilities to save the rest of them, and whether they would have the ability to do so, I don't know. But we, in some sense, since we have the most problems and we can cause the most trouble in the known universe, we have a responsibility to get our thing together and liberate all beings by understanding what's going on.

[95:04]

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