one of the members of the class asked me some questions. And I said, those would be good questions to ask in the class. And she said that she didn't know if she wanted to ask them because she thought they might be too basic. They're maybe the kind of questions that a beginner was interested in, that people have been practicing longer might not be interested in because they've covered those topics so many times in the past. I thought of something that I heard somebody say one time if you get to a very advanced level in some training program, it's no good at all if you can't easily go back to the beginning.

[01:05]

I agree with that. If you get so advanced that you don't want to, that beginner's questions are kind of not very interesting to you anymore, attainment is Well, that person said, not any good at all. I wouldn't go that far, but not in accord with, I think, the Buddha way. It's also the case that, for example, Shakyamuni Buddha, his first students were advanced yogic practitioners, but the teaching he gave to them was very basic. They had not gotten any other teaching from him before. The basic teaching he gave them was actually quite advanced.

[02:10]

And it was appropriate because they were advanced yogis. And so he gave them that teaching. But still, the teaching he gave them was very basic. and those very basic teachings to these advanced yogis actually led to one of them understanding the middle way. You know, after a talk of about minutes, So the person asked me this question. He said, I'll make an analogy. He said, if you're rock climbing, when you first start, you do certain procedures for safety purposes. And then after you get more experience, you actually might be able to dispense with some of them. because some of the procedures, who don't have much experience, but after you have more experience, some of those procedures could be dispensed with.

[03:26]

I said, the Buddha kind of talked about that too, that he said, he was referring to some discipline he had done, and that he was still doing some practice he had done in the past which he was still performing. And he said to somebody he was talking to, you might think that because I do these practices which I did in the past were part and parcel of my becoming awakened and liberated, that maybe I'm not actually liberated because I'm still dependent on those practices. And the Buddha often used the example, you use a raft to get across to the other side, you can leave the raft. Right? You've heard that? And so the Buddha's talking to this person and the Buddha realized that he's carrying a raft

[04:34]

So he says to the person, you might think that I'm not free because the raft hasn't done its job because I'm still holding the raft. But he said, that's not true. I am free of the raft. I don't need this raft anymore. It's done its job. But I keep the raft around for two reasons. Well, he didn't actually say wrath. It was another practice, which if you want, I'll tell you. But anyway, it was a practice that he used to realize freedom from fear. And he might think, he said, you might think, since I do this same practice to become freedom of fear, that maybe I am not really, I'm free of fear, but maybe I'm not completely free because I still am attached to this practice. But I'm not attached to this practice. I just do it because I like to. And for one other reason, I'd do it for future generations.

[05:37]

So, somebody who climbs a rock and is very experienced, after a while, the usual safety procedures they may not have to do. They just maybe do the ones that are necessary, which might be practically nothing after a while. They might be free of all procedures. However, in this tradition, you might keep doing all the steps because you enjoy them, and also for the sake of beginners, intermediate, and advanced students. They don't need these procedures anymore themselves, but they see the master doing it. They say, hmm, he's still doing those basic things. I don't need to do them anymore." So maybe she doesn't need to do them anymore. Maybe I'll ask her, do you need to do them anymore? And she says, I don't.

[06:42]

So there actually, but there actually is in the Zen tradition you see examples of people who practice meditation, realize liberation, and then they stop doing the basic practice stop. But this particular tradition, we don't stop doing the basic practice for three reasons. One, actually, for three reasons potentially. One, because we like it. Two, because the practice is the realization. The practice is the freedom. The practice is the enlightenment. The Buddha didn't say it in the example I gave you. And number three, we do it for future generations. We don't just walk off into freedom and peace. We stay in the world with people who have not yet realized freedom and peace. And we don't stay there because we need and we're attached to them.

[07:50]

We stay there because we like to be with them and because we care about them. I said during that meditation something I've said before, this sitting time is a time which offers the opportunity to observe the breathing body. And the Buddha said on some occasions that all of his teachings basically can be summarized mindfulness of breathing bodies. So we have an opportunity to do one of the most all-inclusive basic practices the Buddha taught. But tonight I added something in addition. I said it's an opportunity to observe and care for the breathing body, and it's also an opportunity to observe and care for other breathing bodies. When you're sitting in this room with your so-called your breathing body and other people's breathing bodies,

[08:56]

you can care for theirs too. You can come to this room, come to this class and sit down and care for other people's bodies. You can come to this room, other people are making their bodies and breath and mind available for your care. This is an additional unadvertised benefit of this class. That the other class, your classmates are offering themselves to you for you to care for them. Quite a few years ago, I don't know how many, maybe thirty, maybe twenty, a woman at Zen Center who had doing hospice work, and I think she was doing kind of something like hospice work at Marin General.

[10:07]

She told me there was a woman in Marin General, a Chinese, ethnic Chinese from Thailand, I think, who was in Marin General, and she had Cisco because she had met Master Hsuan-Hua the master who is kind of the founder of the city of 10,000 Buddhas up in Ukiah. Is it in Ukiah? It is in Ukiah, I think. It's the Mendocino County State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. the state closed it down as a mental health facility and the group of Chinese Buddhists bought it and turned it into a monastery. The founder of that name is Shren Hua, Master Shren Hua. She met him in, I think, in Thailand and she said she wanted to become

[11:15]

ordained as a Buddhist nun, and he said, okay, America to practice with him. But in their tradition, or excuse me, and then between the time she asked him and when she arrived, she found out that she had cancer in her leg, bone cancer, and et cetera. And so they wouldn't ordain her. And the woman who was working with her in hospice said, could she come to Zen Center? She's dying, could she come to Zen Center and die? And I asked the people at Zen Center, we didn't yet have a hospice program. And I checked with people and they said, okay, and she came to Zen Center. I didn't say, she didn't, the hospice person didn't say to me, will you ordain her as a nun? Didn't ask me that. She just said, could you come to Zen Center and be in a Zen temple at least?

[12:23]

With her illness and I checked and people said fine and she came. So she was one of the harbingers of our hospice program which we developed. So she moved in And I think she could walk when she first moved in, but after a while she was in a wheelchair. And also she had this tumor on top of her head, like a large, like stuck out about two or three inches. She had bandage. She had this tumor with a bandage on top sticking out of her head. And one night she came into the dining room at Zen Center, San Francisco Zen Center, in her wheelchair, you know, to come to the meal. And Rusa Chu said to me, she said, she just comes into the room so everybody can love her.

[13:27]

She offers herself. Just to give people a chance to love somebody, which everybody did love her. Her name was Le Hong Breeze. I brought this taking care of people, right? That people are actually offering themselves to us to care for. They may say, leave me alone, don't, you know, don't touch me, leave me alone. No, don't touch them. It's okay. You don't have to touch them to care for them. You can care for people at ten paces. Or two, or whatever. Nobody can stop you from caring for them but yourself. Or nobody can stop me from caring for people but me. People are available

[14:30]

but sometimes they don't want what you have to offer, and I think it's a good idea not to press it. I've told you this story before, some of you have heard this story before. One time I was looking at this boy, I don't know, I think he was about four to six. He calls me granddaddy, and I was looking at him. He was having breakfast and I was looking at him. I was caring for him while he was having breakfast. I was caring for him. Maybe I was overdoing it. He thought I was overdoing it. Which I can understand. I was looking at him with adoration. Like the adoration of the kings, right? Of the little baby boy. So he kind of frowned, you know.

[15:36]

And then he said, Would you stop... I was caring for him, but he didn't want my style of care. So I said, Okay. And I looked up at the ceiling. And then he said, to his male cousin named Gabe. He said, do you think Gabe had difficulty accepting instruction? So he, you know, in other words, he reestablished contact when he realized that he could have influence on my caregiving. So when we're meditating, we have the opportunity to observe many breathing bodies we have the opportunity to care for many beings and some of the beings are very advanced and what i was going to say was that the Buddha was willing to teach beginners however as the number of students he was

[16:59]

And as the maturity of many of the students grew, he gave his more mature students the opportunity to teach the beginners. Not that he wasn't interested in the beginners. If you just take all of his advanced students away, then he would teach the beginners. But in fact, when his advanced students were there, he gave them a job to do, and they took care of the beginners in different ways. Not that he wasn't interested in it. Yeah. And there are some situations, even after he had his advanced students teaching, there are some situations where he still taught beginners. There are marvelous examples of that, which if you ask me to, I'll tell them.

[18:07]

But I want to go on to something else first. And that is, somebody asked me, the sitting isn't really necessary. And I said, well, in this particular school it may be necessary. sitting may not be necessary for some other skills, but I was also asked, you know, what drew me to practice Zen and what drew me to practice Zen was the beautiful behavior of some people. Just like somebody might see somebody climbing a rock and think that that was really beautiful and want to learn rock climbing. I saw people, basically I saw people respond in just ways that I thought were totally cool and so beautiful. I wanted to learn to respond to people that way.

[19:10]

But how do you develop the ability to respond to people that way? And then I found out that all the people who did these different types of response, they all had the same kind of basic training program, which included, but not exclusively, it included care of the breathing body in a sitting posture, and care of the breathing body in a walking posture, and care of the breathing body in a standing posture. But the sitting posture was the one that they'd spend the most time at. But sometimes they'd spend a long time walking. Sometimes Zen monks do long walks, and the whole time they're walking, to practice mindfulness of that walking body, that breathing, walking body. But they do spend a lot of time sitting. And one of the advantages of sitting is we can do it together.

[20:15]

You can also sit by yourself, which is fine. I often laugh when I think of things, which I haven't told you why I'm laughing yet. That happens quite frequently. Like I laugh when I thought of my grandson telling me to stop looking at him, and then I told you what I was laughing at. So now I'm laughing because I was talking to someone yesterday at Green Gulch. We're having a session there, and this person was having a difficult time. And this person walked, and I was talking to her on the deck outside the meditation hall, and this person, who I didn't recognize, walked out on the deck are you in this retreat? And he said, yes, I am. And I said, where's your seat? And he said, my seat is among the trees. And I said, well, we're closed during this week.

[21:21]

It's just for people here for the session. So you can come back next week. And he said, okay. He wandered off barefoot into the trees. So we sit, we become enlightened, and then we sit. We sit and then we are able to do the things we've always wanted to do. we sit and then we can do beautiful things which we were motivated to do, like climb mountains and respond compassionately. When people accuse us of crimes that we have and punish us for their hatred out of their hatred for things we haven't done.

[22:29]

And then when people praise us in the most lovely way we respond to that the same way we respond to cruelty towards ourselves and towards others. I wanted to learn that So I entered the training program and I'm still wanting to learn that. And after I learn that, I will continue to do the training. Maybe not because I like it, but for the sake of future generations. Maybe one of the things I'll learn is to like the training program. But even if I don't like it, I still am continuing it. I am continuing it. I'm still doing it. the training program, I'm still sitting Sashins. I still spent the day, until I came here, I spent the day sitting. I spent the day yesterday sitting, and tomorrow I'll sit again.

[23:31]

All day long. Because that's the training program which I've been doing for 46 years. And I'll probably keep doing it for the sake of future generations. And you are grateful, yeah. People come to me and they walk into the little room and they say, thank you for being here. I'm so glad you're still here. Somebody said to me just recently, it's quite a feat that you're still here. And I said, yeah. It's quite an ankle, too. So, yeah. And this person also asked, does it go on forever?

[24:33]

And I didn't want to say yes, but it kind of goes on until nobody needs it to go on anymore. If nobody needed it, I guess it wouldn't have to go on. But as I say, there's new generations, so for the time being, it looks like it's going to go on a while longer, perhaps quite a while longer. Forever, I don't know about. It's conceptual, but there's a lot more work to be done. Yes? Yes? Use it or lose it, yeah. Yeah, something might be lost and your insight might show you that loss is actually just an idea and that you don't really lose anything.

[26:07]

And so actually someone might stop practicing for the sake of future generations. just to show them that actually, even though they don't do the practice anymore, they used to. Nothing was lost. They might do that. So you might actually not do the practice to help future generations too. So for example, tonight, today is the and December 3rd in 1971 was the last full day that Suzuki Roshi lived. But Suzuki Roshi was no longer on that last day, he was no longer sitting. He couldn't sit anymore. But he didn't lose anything. No. He didn't lose anything.

[27:10]

That was not And nobody thought he lost anything. And then, five o'clock in the morning, the next day, the next day he only lived till about five o'clock in the morning. But at five o'clock in the morning, 132 people started sitting, like the ones going on now. So as he was lying down, dying, 132 students of his sat upright, living. So there's that. But for people like me, who are like me, for me to get up in the morning and go and be supported by people to get up in the morning by being supported by people to sit and they feel supported by me that practice is still appropriate to my body and I don't feel like I have to yet show them that if I wasn't there nothing would be lost but someday I might do that little

[28:39]

Hello, everybody. No more Reb. Nothing was lost. I may show that at some point. So for me, it's still the exercise program goes on because I like to, and it seems to encourage people. But sometimes the exercise program, I think, will hopefully be a good teaching, too. so back to tonight I'd like to just to say again like two levels of self well two levels of self one which could be called

[29:43]

self as object. Also could be called the material self or the narrative self. It's the self in terms, it's the self that's, how would you put it, the sum total of of all that you can call yours. Your body, your social security number, your driver's license, your family, your enemies, your religion, your home, your car, your body. First of all, your body. your self as object, the self you can observe in terms of what's yours.

[30:55]

And it includes not only all that's yours, but then it also sets up all that's not yours. It organizes the world. This sense of self organizes the world in terms of what's yours and what's not yours. And also there's, along with this sense of self, there's a feeling. You feel different about what's yours, and you feel that it's yours, and you feel differently about things that you think are not yours. You feel emotional about that. This is kind of a gross example, but maybe it's helpful. This guy named, I think his name was R.D. Lang, he said, you know, I don't know, a lot of people anyway feel comfortable with...

[32:05]

the saliva that's in their mouth right now. Most people do. They feel like it's theirs. It's in their mouth. And then from there on there may be individual differences. Like some people can lick their hand and feel okay about licking it again shortly afterwards. But a lot of people, a glass of water, clear water, and they're not terribly thirsty, and you have them spit their own saliva into the water, they feel somehow that the saliva doesn't belong to them so much as it used to. And they feel emotional about drinking the water. If they're really thirsty, no problem. But if they weren't that thirsty, They feel like, oh, it's not really mine anymore.

[33:10]

Matter of fact, I don't think it belongs to anybody now. Still, if somebody else came over and drank the water, I think that was kind of gross too. Because it doesn't belong to me, but it doesn't belong to anybody. This is an example of something that doesn't belong to anybody. I feel emotional about anybody else eating my saliva when it's outside my body. of the emotions around self. The emotion of feeling around self. Yeah. So, that is the dog. However, take food and then we have dogs who have a different socialization background to us than us, and some of them are very sensitive about what is their food and what is not their food.

[34:16]

And some dogs are, that is mine, and nobody's going to mess with it except my boss, and what's yours is mine, too. Different, different different distinctions, but once you, once you, that dog, what's mine is mine except for my boss, my alpha, and what's yours is mine unless I get caught. That's their, that's their sense of, that's the kind of self they have. It's a different self and that can be modified, structured by interactions. That's one type of self in consciousness. It's the self as object or the narrative self. It's stories like, I paid for that food, so it's mine. I paid for that food, but that food was stolen.

[35:24]

Therefore, although I paid for it and it's mine, I feel uncomfortable about it. All the different stories we have about the objects of consciousness, like food, our bodies and other bodies, all those stories, how we relate to them. That's the narrative self or the material self. It's easier and it's the grosser of the two. The next kind of self is the self as knower. And the self as knower defines the self as object or the narrative self. Because in this process of, this is my body, this is not my body, there's some knowing of that, which doesn't have any possession in it. It's just knowing. And that sense of knowing is created by the grosser sense of knowing, which is knowing in terms of objects.

[36:35]

That basic one applies to all the different objects of who possesses what. And it knows the feelings associated with the different stories. It knows them, but it's not the same feeling. It's not the same feeling, but it knows that there's comfort with this kind of knowing, that there's comfort with owning this. There's discomfort with not owning this. It knows those things the same way, those different kinds. So it's more subtle. You could say it's more clear, or almost, you could say, transparent. I offer that now for discussion.

[37:40]

Can you see that? Can you see? Any questions about what I'm just doing, describing these two levels of self in consciousness? The self as subject Yes, that's the same. Self is subject. And the self is object, yeah. Self is subject, self is object. Self is knower, purely, and self, in some sense, you could say, as owner. As owner and the self, also the social self, the narrative self. The knower knows the social involvement. of the social self. It knows it. But it knows this type of involvement, it knows that type of involvement, but the knowing is the same in the three cases.

[38:44]

Whereas the self as observer, there's different feelings for each type of involvement. The self is out there involved with objects, owning some, not owning others, feeling this way for some, that social self, that storytelling, the storytelling self, the storied self, that self is changing, changes more in relationship to the things it's involved with. But the knower is kind of this, is more, and in some sense it's more, it's more, less changeable by what it knows, just the knowings. So knowing that I'm in pain, knowing that my body's in pain has one kind of feeling, knowing that other bodies is another kind of knowing.

[39:45]

Again, as Woody Allen says, there's two types of disease. One's the ones that are not too serious and the other ones that are serious. The ones that are not too serious are other people's and the ones that are not mine. Of course, that's Woody Allen, not you. You may have a different arrangement, but the knowing in both cases is kind of the same. Yeah? I don't mean to use the law. This is something to use to explore consciousness. to give you some room to study. I offer this as some combination between discoveries of meditators and discovery of scientists, that this is something to be scientific about and experimental about.

[40:47]

Yes? It's a huge delusion that we're all separate, yeah. Well, the first thing that came to my mind was that Buddhas can do that.

[41:49]

Buddhists can feel the suffering of all beings and not get wiped out. For people who have developed, such openness may be too advanced. And I'm guessing that the reason for the illusion of separation was not to protect ...from the feeling that would be overwhelming. My guess is that's not where it came from. My sense of where it came from was something more directly related to helping us be able to solve problems which our dimensions of our mind can't solve. like we have a level of cognitive activity which works out how to keep our body and kind of to keep our feelings and so on in a certain range, and also to keep us in proper relationship with the geography of the earth and gravity and other bodies and other animals.

[43:05]

All that, much of that is worked out in our body, in our mind, at an unconscious level. But there are certain things which in the arena of consciousness where there's a sense of separation that we can't learn on the level of unconsciousness, unconscious cognition, where there's no separation. There's no separation even between past, present, and future, here and there. Those are all things that are conjured up from the unconscious and made into images which can be known in the space where there's somebody there knowing them. I think that the sense of separation was more in the service of being able to learn language rather than protect us from what we would eventually be able to open up to with training, and which before we had consciousness, we were open to.

[44:14]

Our cognitive unconscious suffering of the whole world, but it doesn't know it, you know, consciously. The suffering of the world, according to this teaching, exists in consciousness. And the evolution of the structure of consciousness was not in order to deal with the problems that occurred when consciousness had been created. The problems that occurred when consciousness created are design flaws, I would say, are in some sense artifacts of the basic program. Once again, I propose that the nervous system and the organs are servants of the body. That bodies developed organs as servants to the body.

[45:19]

Developed more and more and became more and more sophisticated. A cognitive process developed of making images of this process and relating these images in such a way as that this mind could now serve the body. Then this body and the mind which serves it, or the body and the nerves and the organs that serve it, together creating a consciousness. This consciousness created another level. This mind created a consciousness. The consciousness is in service of the unconscious and the body. created in order to feel the suffering that comes with consciousness. Consciousness, I don't think, was created to feel pain. I mean to feel suffering. I don't think that was the reason for it.

[46:22]

I think the virtue of knowing comes with the drawback of separation. So, in the Greek myth of Amor and Psyche, the biblical myth of the Garden of Eden, when there's knowledge, there's separation. Separation from organic bliss, from organic vitality, from the garden. The word paradise means from the garden of life, we become exiled by knowing. Yes? How do we feel the suffering of others? Without being Oh, they are affected. They are affected, but they're affected so universally that they just, what do you call it, they are just the light of wisdom.

[47:38]

No resistance anymore to the suffering of all beings. They are just the suffering of all beings, which is actually That's who we are all the time. We're that too. We're nothing but the suffering of all beings. Actually, we're not the suffering of all beings, we're also the life of all beings, because not all of our life is suffering. Only our conscious part of our life is suffering. Our unconscious mind is not suffering. Our body is not basically suffering. As long as it's alive, it's working properly. But there's a realm that sort of is a good servant to the body called consciousness, and there we suffer a lot. And from there we do unusually cruel things sometimes because we get frightened up there. But our body's not frightened. Our body doesn't know about death and birth.

[48:43]

So the Buddha is open to all living beings with all their suffering and all their joy. And we are too, but we don't understand it until we practice the Buddha way for quite a while. Because we don't understand it, we have some resistance to somebody suffering. And we have some resistance to some people's saliva. But some parts of our body don't have any resistance to the things our conscious mind does. So Buddhas are realizing that all beings are working together, that the entire, that all living beings are supporting each other. And, you know, in some cases, I think many of you know, that when some beings are suffering, there's a problem opening to it. Right? Some beings, you kind of, it isn't that you like the suffering, it's just that you're like, there's no resistance.

[49:50]

you understand that this isn't, you're not fooled by the illusion of separation in some way. You know, in that sense you're a little bit enlightened. When you have no resistance to anybody's life and anybody's happiness and anybody's success and anybody's greatness and anybody's smallness and anybody's pettiness, that's called Buddha. And that's really the way we are. are cooperating with each other. And the Buddhas see that. They see, oh, everybody's helping each other, they just don't get it because they don't understand their consciousness. Because in their consciousness there's this powerful thing of, this is what I own and this is what I don't. And this is my abilities and these are my thoughts and these are not. I'm a Democrat, I'm not a Republican, and one party is better than the other. But I don't know exactly which one it is, I forgot.

[50:58]

Which one was it? Do you remember? So the Buddhas realized how we're all working together, and they also see that that the way we're working together is that some, many people don't understand it and they think we're not working together and they think these are my friends and these are my enemies. And Buddhas are totally not resisting these are my friends and these are my enemies. But they're also not dwelling in any of that. Hmm? Because they're not alone. I mean, when you say there's universal wisdom, there's no separation there at all, and it isn't one Buddha, it's many, it's infinite numbers. Infinite numbers of Buddhas, yeah. Remarkably, because you're part of something so vast, I like to argue with you,

[52:09]

Well, you can say at that point and you can also then say at this point. At this point we are part of that. The teaching is that the practice we're talking about is the same practice and the same enlightenment as it was, as it is, and it's the same for all beings and you. The practice that I'm doing that's not the same practice as you, that practice is not the practice that's not the central practice. The central practice is not that you're not, it's the practice, it's the way I'm practicing that's the same as the way you're practicing. That's the practice. That's the Buddha's practice.

[53:10]

But I cannot see the practice that is the same practice that we're all doing together. And in order to see the practice with wisdom that we're all doing together, I have to be knowledgeable about the practice that I'm doing and that you're doing. In other words, I have to be in order to be free of the consciousness where it looks like my practice is not your practice. where it looks like I've been practicing this many years and you've been practicing that many years, and you practice this way and I practice that way. In order to be free of that perspective and realize the practice that is the actual practice of the Buddha, which is the same practice that everybody's doing, we have to study the world of self.

[54:13]

We have to study the self which lives in consciousness. We have to study consciousness because in consciousness we do not see in consciousness the way we're all working together. But our life is actually the way we're all working together. We just can't see it in consciousness. However, it's in consciousness that we're going to learn how to be free from blocking us from the vision. Because what's blocking us from the vision is consciousness. And consciousness has these two types of self, which are key things to understand, along with all the feelings that are surrounding them. So to understand the self, the self helps us understand the feelings, and studying them both is studying the self and understanding consciousness. So several people had their hands raised. Yes?

[55:15]

Yes, yes, yes? or more subtle, it's more subtle, it's more clear, it's not so different. The knowing that this is mine is very similar to the knowing that this is not mine. But the sense, this is mine, is one kind of self. That's the narrative self, this is mine. And this is not mine. That's the narrative self. That's the material self. That's the self as objects. But in both cases, there's some sense of knowing those two cases. And the sense of knowing is pretty similar and more subtle. The way I know that this is mine is very similar to the way I know that I think. The way I know that I think this is right and the way I know that I think this is wrong are kind of the same and more subtle than this is right and this is wrong.

[56:25]

Yeah, that's why I didn't want to say it was permanent. The self is nowhere, isn't permanent. It's more subtle than the other one, but it's also conjured each moment. They're both only existing for a moment. They both live in consciousness in the place, and in consciousness has this sense, this has this concept of now in it. So they both kind of are conjured into this now space. And then this whole, you have a new now space. So they both, so they both, but one's more subtle than the other. They both prop up consciousness. They give the fullness of, they, they, they articulate the different subtleties, different types of self that create consciousness.

[57:37]

And they're both impermanent. And in consciousness, however, there is the idea of permanence. In the unconscious, there's no sense, there's no idea, there's no appearance of permanence. But in consciousness, there's the appearance of permanence. Because it's very important to understand the self. The more you understand, for example, them, and the more you understand their relationship, the more you understand that both of them are just process, and you can't grasp either one. They're impermanent, process events. They do exist in a process way.

[58:39]

They're dependent. They have no, you can never really find them. And the more you study them and the more you see how they function, the more you realize that they can't be found. And the more you can't be found, the more you're free of consciousness without destroying it. So when you see that consciousness and the feelings and ideas and the selves that are there are unfindable, you're liberated from suffering. Or not, there is liberation from suffering which is created by not understanding consciousness. Betsy and Sarah and Jeff? No? Okay, Betsy? It's difficult. ...

[59:43]

Yes. What goes away? The inside goes away? Okay. Or just like a flash of lightning? Well, you wonder if those intuitions are enlightenment?

[61:17]

In consciousness, one of the... one of the virtues of consciousness and one of the reasons why it's being maintained, you know, in this life process is that insights can, intuitive insights consciousness. But, and those intuitive insights may actually be sponsored by unconscious processes. rather than figuring something out. So we're living in consciousness and suddenly we know something and we don't know where it came from, but we know it. And sometimes insights make you feel peaceful. Like suddenly you have an intuitive feeling that your enemy is your friend. It's sort of like, wow, where'd that come from?

[62:26]

And now you feel relaxed with this person who you used to feel uncomfortable with because they said, you know, I hate your guts or whatever. And suddenly you go, oh! It reminds me of two things. Two stories. One story is really a long one, but here it goes. And those other two stories, remember the stories about the two beginners? Remind me if you want to hear those. Buddha teaching two beginners, okay? But I'm going to tell you two other stories. One is really do it fast. It's from a book called The Kite Runner. And in that story, this most, the person, the author of the book who is telling his own life story, he tells of himself doing, it's about the worst thing I've ever seen him doing. He let his best friend, not just his best friend, but someone who was such a good friend to him, someone who would give his life for him, he let that other boy be raped.

[63:34]

And he stood by and watched him be raped. And he's afraid to speak up. Just let this boy, who turns out to be his brother, he lets him be raped. It's just the most horrible thing. And he spends years suffering from this extreme cruelty that he did to his most beloved brother. And then when he's an adult, he happens to run into the guy who raped his brother. And this guy has become a big, powerful guy. This guy captures him. And one thing leads to another. And this guy is beating him to death. So the author who has done this horribly cruel thing to the most dear person in his life out of cowardice, he let him be abused in that way and suffered all those years because there was no way for him to process it.

[64:48]

He didn't have the courage to tell anybody he did it. He couldn't apologize to his brother. Just this horrible thing and no repentance. And then he runs into the guy who did this. The guy is beating him to death. And suddenly he starts laughing because he's having an insight, an intuitive insight. Where did it come from? He realized that this is what he'd been begging for for 20 years, that he would get something. punishment or some repentance for this cruelty. So he starts laughing how ironic it is that this terrible thing is what he'd been begging for. And then when he laughs, the guy who's beating up stops beating him up for a second. And when he stops beating him up, by another turn of fate, he gets to run away. So insights, these kind of insights, this occurred in his consciousness.

[65:51]

Usually when we're being beat to death we don't think, this is really funny. But he got it. And many stories of saints are like that. That people are beating them or something and they get it. They wake up, you know, and everybody like is enlightened. These things happen in consciousness. But actually they're also, they're fed by the unconscious processes. But the unconscious processes need consciousness to recognize them. The unconscious processes can't exactly figure out what's good about this and why everything's working out perfectly and this isn't freedom. So in consciousness we go, doesn't make any sense but this is totally cool. This is what I So that's intuition. You can't figure it out. And here's another example, which isn't quite as good.

[66:55]

One time I was talking to a friend of mine, and I said to her, how's your dad? And she said, he's fine. Why do you ask? I said, oh, because I... I thought he was in the hospital." And she said, well, what do you mean in the hospital? I said, well, I just kind of see him in the hospital. And your mother's there with him. She said, what? I said, yeah, I just thought he was in the hospital with your mom. What? She said, can I use your phone? So she picks up my phone and she calls her mother and she says, she says, Mom, how's Dad? And she says, shit. Never mind. Where is he? Oh, shit.

[67:56]

Oh. She hangs up and says, see you. She also gave me, and she gave me this this subtle cue, which was, you would know about things like that. Yeah, you would know that my dad's in the hospital. In other words, I would have that her father was in the hospital 2,000 miles away. And then I would tell her that, and she would call up, and her father was in the hospital 2,000 miles away. In consciousness, I saw her father in the hospital, which hospital it was. I don't think I told her, but it was Mount Zion Hospital in, no, Mount Sinai Hospital in Minneapolis. It's in Minneapolis. I knew the hospital. I knew he was there with her mother. She called her mother, and her mother says, he's in that, blah, blah, blah.

[68:58]

I didn't know what the problem was. But she kind of wasn't too surprised that I knew that, because she thinks of me maybe as in my consciousness there's intuitions popping off. And actually there are intuitions popping off in my consciousness. And you are either the beneficiary or victim of them, depending on your attitude. I'm telling you intuitions quite frequently. well, the story's a little bit, I'll finish it now. After she left, I realized where this story came from. It came from me a few days before and saying to me that they were in this hospital and they saw this person in the hospital with his wife. So somebody told me that. And, you know, it wasn't in my consciousness.

[69:59]

unconscious as you know I heard it and it became part of my experience and when I heard that I didn't think I should call my friend and tell her that her father was in the hospital then she just happened to come a few days later I'd forgotten all about it And I was talking to her and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, how's your dad? Because I saw this. So it was, it's an intuition. It wasn't like I didn't figure that out. It just pops up there. So these intuitions, they're intuitions, but they're grounded in our body. Related to her body and my body related to another body in Minneapolis who goes into the hospital and and my other friend's body is with her mother and father's body, and my other friend's body gets on the telephone and talks to me about something unrelated. This goes into my body, my unconscious, and then my friend, our bodies meet, our consciousnesses are vibrating with each other.

[71:11]

Up into my consciousness comes the story. Boom. It's intuition because you don't know where it comes from. It's all based on our body and our bodies are connected. Only in a consciousness are they separated. My life is your life, your life is my life. This is the Buddha's understanding. And then we have this consciousness, all these consciences sitting on top of each other. interconnected life where we have insights and we have discoveries and all kinds of wonderful things happen. And we also have this illusion of being separate, which is a big problem. Right? So, thank you very much. I hope you can come next week.

[71:59]

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