In the third case of the Book of Serenity, Bhranadana's teacher, Prajnatara, is asked by the Raj of East India at lunchtime, he says, Master, why don't you recite scriptures? And Prajnatara says, this poor wayfarer, when breathing in, doesn't dwell in realms of body and mind. Actually, he said, I don't dwell in the five skandhas. And when breathing out, I don't dwell in 18 elements of existence. So he's sitting there, you know, just having lunch. But because he's trained in Buddhist presence, he has noticed over the years of meditation, he's seen those five skandhas quite a few times. And he keeps seeing them. They're all over the room. Like there's, you know, Marcy and Tia and Diana and Judy and these various people, okay? And it was also like form and feeling and windows and perceptions and consciousness and light bulbs and tummy mats and feelings and perception.

[01:09]

This is just... You know? That's just the way the world looks to one who is present and ardent, upright and gentle. The five skandhas just start dancing around the room like we're the people. And the people are the five skandhas, and the five skandhas are the people, and it's all just, you know. And then there's the eyes and the ears and the nose and the tongue and the body and the mind, and there's the colors and the smiles, and there's the realm of the eyes and the realm of the ears and the realm of the nose. That's what they see, you know? They're just sitting in that world. And you're sitting in that world, too. And if you just be present, it will start revealing itself to you. Just like if we take a little field trip out in the woods, you know? We sit out there, you know, raccoons will come to visit us, skunks, snakes, homeless people, yuppies, joggers. forms, feelings, perceptions, all this stuff will come to visit you if you just stay present with your experience. If you make a self into any of that, make a self into the homeless, make a self into the raccoons, make a self into yourself, then we're going to have problems.

[02:17]

You can see that. All right? This is what appears. So he says, breathing in, I do not dwell in the five skandhas. Breathing out, I do not get entangled in the 18 elements. The Zen master breathing in sees the five skandhas and doesn't make them into a self. Sees a self and doesn't make it into a self. Doesn't dwell in a self. Doesn't dwell even in these elements of existence. Breathing out doesn't dwell in these elements of existence, these analysis, these objects of analysis, nor in a person. All this stuff's happening in this wonderful, concerted, swarming love space without any dwelling. Just sitting there being aware of it all working together. This is the zazen. So what I'm doing here is just like, you know, bringing up for you a little bit about what's happening all the time in the Buddhist teaching that's, you know, lurking everywhere.

[03:25]

So now do you want to talk about something? Any questions? Yes, Joe? How do we practice with seemingly endlessly arising, gaining money, always asking, what's in it for me? How do you practice with it? Well, I don't know how you practice with it. Want to tell me? I just try to be aware of it. That sounds good. I'm sitting here. Anybody seen a gaining mind lately? Anybody have a gaining mind around here? Ah, two of them right there in front of me. They got the best things in the house. Gaining mind or gaining idea or idea of gain. Gaining mind. Gaining idea or idea of gain. Anybody see an idea of gain around here lately? When you came to class, was there a gaining idea anywhere? Was it a curse or anything? Or was it in your heart? Or was it in your eyeball? Or was it in the back of your head? Gaining idea is a door to the truth.

[04:30]

It's not a bad thing. You know? Gaining idea unobserved will possess you and make you its slave indefinitely. But if you can bring that gaining idea out in front... Anybody have a devil out in front of them? If you do, you're a lucky meditator. Get that devil right out in front. Right out here. Does anybody not have a devil in front of them right now? Now I know some of you think, I don't have one in front of me. I don't have one at all. He's got one. I can see that he's got one, but I don't have one. Where I propose to you, the ones of you that don't have it out in front, it's in the back. And it's your boss. And it even says, I'm not here. I'm not here.

[05:32]

I'm not telling you what to do. You're an independent operator. You know what to do. You're the pure one here. Don't listen to that guy. You don't have a devil around here. There's no devil. Get that devil out in front. Get that gaining idea out in front. Get that power thing out in front. Get it out in front there. Watch it. Take care of it. Don't let it lose you. You don't lose it. Like they say in the mafia, keep your family close, but keep your enemies closer. Keep that devil close. Don't let your devil get behind you. Don't let your enemies get behind you. You get that devil out here, that'll liberate you. But who wants the devil out in front? We want angels out in front. That's okay. Got angels? Put them out in front, too. Angels, devil, everything. Get it all out in front. An angel back there, an angel out there will enslave you, too. Anything back there will enslave you.

[06:37]

The good things in your life will enslave you back there, too. Your kindness back there will enslave you. Okay? So get that yin idea out there. Get that devil out there. Get that angel out there. Get everything out in front. Watch it. Watch it work. These are five... And also, devil's angels and yin idea are five skandhas. Which five skandhas? Angels must be one of the five skandhas. Angels are a form, a feeling, a perception, a mental formation, or a consciousness. That's all it is. Take that stuff away. There ain't no angels. But we do have angels. There are angels. And they have no self. But they're really wonderful. And if you don't have an angel, you're in trouble. And if you don't have a devil, you're in trouble. Because there are angels and devils back there. Don't you think so? Have you met one lately? Is that it, Ben?

[07:40]

Y'all ready to go on your path to complete perfect enlightenment? I never ended a class early, but looks like I'm going to tonight. Oh, yes? That's OK. The class is over anyway. Excuse me. You just said you're patting yourself on the back for not getting angry at what? People who don't deserve anger. Oh, you're not getting angry at people who don't deserve it. Yes, we're all congratulating you. That's wonderful.

[08:45]

Thank you. That's great. That's appropriate. It's okay. You can pat yourself. And they might be right. You know, deal with what? With that comment? How about considering it's possibly true? That's good enough. Does what matter? Does it matter if you're out of touch with your anger or not? It sure does. If you're out of touch with it, you're enslaved by it. If you're out of touch with anger, you're a sitting duck. You're a walking time bomb. At Green Gorge we had this guy one time, nice guy, pretty sweet guy actually, but a big guy. And this guy was really one angry guy, one angry guy.

[09:47]

He used to get beat up a lot when he was a kid. And also when he was a kid, he used to go around beating up other people too. He and his friends would go into bars and beat people up. He was cute when they were young, but then as he grew up, people told him he wasn't cute anymore, so he stopped beating people up. But he was still just as angry as when he used to beat people up. But you know, he didn't know he was angry, this guy. Sometimes people kind of like broach the topic with him a little bit, but he let them know that that wouldn't be a good idea. Because he wasn't angry, but he might get angry if they talk to him about it anymore. And he used to work in the kitchen at Green Gulch Farm with big knives. And people were very frightened of what he might do because he was not angry. So he was like totally possessed, you know, and you just wonder, when is it going to blow? You know, it was very dangerous.

[10:56]

So if you're out of touch with your anger, It's very dangerous. So you can't just necessarily say, okay, I'm going to get in touch with my anger. That's why I would suggest easiest access is get in touch with your pain, which is much harder to work with than anger. That's why people get angry. Anger is easier to be angry than being pain and vulnerable. But if you can get in touch with your pain, if you can't find your anger, get in touch with your pain, and then if you can feel your pain, then you can feel perhaps some inclination towards eliminating it or eliminating what you think are some of the conditions for it it's again good to have anger right out in front. But it doesn't mean that you're always angry, and it doesn't also mean that you're angry inappropriately all the time. But when you're in pain, there is some difficulty in staying present with it. And if we are impatient and don't stay present with our pain, then one of the ways we move away from that, then the moving away from the pain

[11:57]

is that avoidance is a gesture of anger. You may not be real strong in anger. Well, good. And so if you have no problem with it and you're angry with pain, then maybe you're not that angry. Well, even irritation is not anger either. Frustration is not anger. It is anger. Pardon? I'm being told that it is anger. No, no. Well, this is a vocabulary thing, okay? Irritation and frustration and pain are the same category. They're qualities of experience. They're ways of experiencing the thing. Anger is a response to irritation, frustration, and pain. That's the vocabulary that I'm trying to develop with you. Okay? Okay? If you can be patient with your irritation, frustration, and pain, then anger will not arise except when it's beneficial to people.

[13:07]

Yes? Yes, uh-huh. I think some people might be able to see that their personhood is like, for example, an idea. For example, I often use the example of the person of Abraham Lincoln. We can identify by certain concepts. A black figure, you know, with a black beard. I could draw a little sketch and ask people who that is, and maybe 90% of you would say Abraham Lincoln. That's the person of Abraham Lincoln, but that's not like making necessarily your experience into a unity. So you can still have a sense of person without having a sense of the unity and wholeness and identity and independence of your life space.

[14:18]

The person, in other words, doesn't need to have a self. Pardon? No, not necessarily. I can see all these people lined up in the back of the room there, you know, out of the room. I see all these faces. All right? To me, people aren't separate. I don't see you as separate, but I see you in different masks, with different faces, and different persons. But I can see you as interconnected, and not see you as individually existing subs. Mm-hmm? I see a relationship between you. I see you as one big happy family. I feel it and I see it.

[15:27]

And I can also infer it and deduce it and all kinds of other things. Yeah. But I can also... The other thing, if I want to be miserable, I can focus on you being separate from me and me being independent of you, and then I see it differently. And then I see it differently, and then I suffer. I can suffer. I can be deluded. I know how. Okay? In other words, you don't have to eliminate persons from the world in order to have freedom. You also don't have to eliminate selves from the world in order to have freedom. But what you need to do is understand that persons don't have self. That persons don't actually have, like, something that holds them together. There's just, you know, a tentative, what do you call it, designation that has some use in this world.

[16:30]

But you don't have to, like, personify and unify and selfize your experience. You don't have to do that. However, I say you don't have to, but of course we have a strong habit to do so and we suffer inexorably and non-stoppably because of that. Because that's our deep habit is to make a self-automatic experience moment by moment. But that's not necessary. Therefore, we can become free of it once we understand the conditions for it. Understanding the conditions for this arising of the self, and understanding the conditions for the arising of suffering, one can become liberated from the suffering, liberated from the belief in the self, and still see the self, but see it as a form of feeling or something like that. And when you see the self as just some kind of experience, just like angels are some composition of these five skandhas, surface of the composition of the five skandhas, and yet angels aren't one of those five skandhas, and self isn't one of those five skandhas either.

[17:33]

When you see that, that helps you not map and project the self onto your experience, and then you stop suffering from that cause. And then there's a next layer, which I'll get into later, but that takes care of the selflessness of the person. Is that a little clearer? This takes a little bit of work, you know. This takes... I've been studying Abhidharma for 28 years, and I'm getting a little bit into it now. Yes, Jackie? How do you practice it in real life? How do you practice it in real life? When does real life start? Tell me when real life starts. I talked about selflessness. So what did I say selflessness was? I've been talking about it. What did I say it was?

[18:36]

Now she's been hearing me talk about it. What is it? You said that it's an interdependence. It's a feeling of interdependence. No, it's not a feeling of interdependence. It is interdependence. So in the real world, to the extent that we're interdependent, that's the selflessness in the real world. When it doesn't operate that way, that's called the lack of selflessness in the real world. That's called misery and war. Okay? When you say it doesn't operate that way, that's what we call war. Okay? Well, like, when the people in this class, okay, are acting selflessly, when we have a selfless thing going on here, we have a happy group of people. That selflessness is realized. Pardon?

[19:36]

Well, here with me, yes, yeah. But if you and I go out in the street and you and me start arguing and fighting with each other, then where's the selflessness? Is it still there? Maybe, maybe not. So the selflessness in the real world is when in the real world we're in harmony and in love with each other, then it's selfless. Then it's a selfless world. Now, when you talk about how do we take this out of this room into the real world, the way you take it is by practicing selflessly. How do you practice selflessly? How do you practice selflessly? How do I practice selflessly? We walk out the door and we continue to study the self. Now, if we study the self a little, it's not yet selfless study. But if you can totally, if you and I can totally, in this room or outside this room, if we can totally study the self in our family and work situations, then that selflessness starts to manifest, starts to realize itself in those situations.

[20:46]

If you're in this room here, and any of you are not totally experiencing what's happening to you and studying what's happening to you, if you're not studying the self right in this room right now, then your practice is not selfless. If you're having yourself out in front, then your self is in the back. Yes. You really have to let yourself in order to be selfless. And you become more aware of expressing more of your own faults, and you start seeing more of others' faults, even though they're not nothing. Yes. Well, that's one story. If you don't like yourself, how can you be selfless? Okay, so did you hear what she said?

[21:49]

If you don't like yourself, how can you be selfless? Well, first of all, when you say if you don't like yourself, does that mean you dislike yourself? Well, what I mean is just not becoming more aware. Okay, as I become more aware, I start, as I become more conscious, I become more aware of my faults, my non-virtue. Okay? This is a normal part of this process. That's called bringing the non-virtue that's in the back out in front. Or the other way we say, it's called turning around and looking at the non-virtue back there. Okay? That's a normal part of this process. Are you finding this is okay? So she's right. As you do this kind of meditation practice, you start to notice your non-virtue. You start to notice a lot of it. And that is good that you notice a lot of it. It's not good itself. What's good is that you notice it.

[22:50]

And it's painful to notice it. It's not good that it's painful to notice it, but maybe it is good that it's painful to notice it. But anyway, it is painful to see our own non-virtue. However, that is part of it. Not because especially that's you know, more important than other things, but that's part of what we have to notice is our own non-virtue, and it is painful to notice it. That's right. Okay? Now, she said something about not liking it. Now, wait a minute. That part, we differ, Greek. We differ, okay? I didn't say don't like the non-virtue. I said notice it. Admit it. Let it come out in front and study it. Love the non-virtue. Don't like it. If you like it, fine. But I'm not saying to like it. I'm saying to love it. You don't necessarily like your kids when they're doing certain things. Or you don't like what they're doing. Right? You're not supposed to like it when they hit each other with hammers. You don't have to like that.

[23:53]

But you have to love them. You have to teach them. You have to be close to them. When they have hammers in their hands, you have to get close to them and disarm them. in a loving way. If you disarm them roughly, they're going to learn violence around hammers. If you lovingly disarm them in a way that they understand the disadvantages of using hammers, this is called love. So you love the appearance of everything. You love everything, love everything, and everything will tell you its secret. And also your non-virtue will illuminate you. But it's difficult to look at your non-virtue. Or if you stay present with this process, your non-virtue will come out in front. where you can see it. If you don't stay present and let it out in front, it will act along the periphery of your life, unconsciously, in a much worse way than it'll ever act right in front of you.

[25:01]

But if you can get it out and study it, it won't act at all. It'll be there, but it will lose its power. But this is not pleasant work. This is very dirty, slimy work. It's unpleasant to look at our own non-virtue. However, our own non-virtue, when we stay present with it and lovingly care for it, has a tremendous benefit, tremendously illuminating and also makes us appreciate other people's virtues greatly. It's a highly enlightening process to study our own non-virtue. And it's very difficult. And to study non-virtue is quite selfless. And the more selfless you are in your study of your non-virtue, studying your non-virtue is pretty selfless right off, and the more you get into it, the more selfless it gets. And when it finally gets completely selfless, then your whole practice is selfless.

[26:05]

And you bring that into your so-called everyday life and see if it can spread. And if it can't, you just keep trying until it does. When you get really good at it, it spreads. Barbara? This is good. She's confused. This is called bringing the confusion out in front. She can see it. Could you speak up, please? That's too bad. It's better to start with your confusion and go forward from there. If you back up, you're going to get in more trouble. That's fine. Study non-virtue. There's one piece. But can I say one thing?

[27:07]

And that is, if I say study non-virtue, I don't mean like go around and look for your non-virtue. Where's my non-virtue? Do I have any non-virtue in my body? You know, because if you look for your non-virtue and then you say, oh, that is my non-virtue, the non-virtue you find is not the non-virtue you should be studying. That's the non-virtue which you already admitted and you've been indicted for and convicted for, so you might as well admit it already. The non-virtue you should be studying is the one that happens when you're just upright, looking at a well, it just pops up in your face and says, study this. That's the one you should study. So when I say study it, It's studied and it's revealed to you in your non-personal selection process, okay? So that's, we're studying the non-virtue now, okay? No, there's a heat called mental formations, okay? And within that heat,

[28:09]

You place greed, hatred, delusion, concentration, distraction, faith, envy, hypocrisy, lack of self-respect, self-respect. Well, many, many, there's 64 different mental formations that go in the fourth aggregate. 64. If you look at your chart, which I passed out, look on that chart, if they're arranged according to skandhas, the samskara skandha, the formation skandha has 64 elements in it. Okay? Yes? When you first started talking about that tonight, I noticed a moment of relief. Release? Yes. Good. Well? Because I had seen things like faith coming up as a non-virtue or anger or something, and something then seems to have not unraveled.

[29:10]

And when I heard you describe it as an aspect... It felt like I could see it grew up and not associate it with self. But then when we started talking again about studying the virtue, I told the computers about speaking English. ending that as an empty element that exists now and not something that I have grasped or pushed away and have, you know, constantly with some form that doesn't exist like this. I realize, you know, created a theater to identify it. I sort of feel like you need to concentrate this question a little bit down to... It's a little bit too amorphous for me to handle. Slightly after the class is over. It's getting kind of past the time of the class. So maybe you could talk to me more about it later or concentrate it and start with it at the beginning of next class.

[30:12]

I think it's a little unwieldy for this point in the evening when the campers are starting to get a little sleepy. So can you work on this a little bit more and bring it up again? Okay. Alright. I'd rather not do it now, okay? How are you feeling? Are you okay? Are you overwhelmed? No? You're okay? Some of you? So I'm not asking you to sort of go around snooping around for non-virtue or looking for the five skandhas or something like that. Don't try to make this stuff happen, okay? You just let this happen tonight. You came to this class. You got some input. Now just continue with the basic of staying present, and you just see... If anything that came up tonight or anything in your read, just see if any of it starts appearing to you.

[31:18]

Don't go look for it. Just stay present and see what comes up. Okay? More of that approach. A more revelatory approach rather than a kind of like, let's go find out about this thing approach. Okay? Thank you for your... Attention, attention, attention, attention, attention. Thank you for your attention. I hope you continue to be attentive to your experience all day long. This will be very good. I need you to do this. We all need you to do this. Do you believe that? Good. We do. Please, be attentive. They are in tension.

[32:11]

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