We also have a predisposition to conceptualize that. So that comes right after the reflection? No, same time. It's all the same time. They're working together. They're not taking turns, they're working together. There's immediate experience, then there's derived experience simultaneous with immediate experience. So we've got immediate experience and we have this mining of meaning experience in terms of reflection. And the mind part is cognition, re-cognition, re-cognition of the direct experience of cognition. But the direct experience comes with, it says, it comes with contact, attention, feeling and perception, but the perception there is samya. So alaya comes with the predisposition also, or the ability to conceptualize what is reflected by moments, so then when that conceptualization occurs we have the concept of the object. So the object of purification has to be there in order for it to be purified?

[01:09]

The object of purification would have to be there in order for this process to be purified. It would be at that moment, yes, because those are the kinds of moments where we... So we have moments like this, and in moments like this, what arises in moments like this? A sense of the self. A sense of the self, or an idea of self arises in moments like this. So an idea of a self arises and a belief in it. Because what comes with manas? It also says, what comes with manas? Self-confusion, self-view, self-esteem and self-love. So Jyotishni has come along with this guy. So we've got a defiled situation here, a self-love, excuse me, with the Krishna. So we've got the defiled situation, we've got the situation of the self arising, and

[02:11]

we love it, we esteem it, we see it, we believe it, it's our main pal, it's a man. Yes. We're suffering. Now how do we purify the situation? Well in that same situation now, let's look at the object of purification. What's the object of purification? It's the absence of this idea of self in what's happening here. We've got the same situation where this idea of self has arisen. Now we're going to see right here, this can't be found, and when you see that it can't be found, that purifies the situation. But not instantly, completely, there has to be several applications. But that's it, right in that mess, it's in that mess that you're going to not find that mess, you're going to not find that self. So that was just the preamble of my book. And you have to train yourself, you have to train the mind, in order to be able to

[03:15]

see the suchness of the situation, and the suchness is the absence of this projection of essence, which is, you know, in the situation where the essence is being projected. That's the preamble, huh? That was just the sort of, my short question is ... Yeah, that was the short question and that one I could deal with. Is the ... What's coming now? Who knows what's going to happen? This is the big one. So it was to do with, I guess, silent elimination, or turning the mind around. And I'm not sure if it means the same as ... if you have to go through all the sort of mental gymnastics of the purifying the object, like, I was wondering if it's just as fast to just sort of nip it in the bud with the turning the mind around. Can you just nip it in the bud? Fine, go right ahead.

[04:18]

Well, I'm just wondering if that's the same thing, if it happens so fast for this sort of analysis. You can nip it in the bud, but the point is that if you nip it in the bud, then you're basically, you're all set, you know, you nip it in the bud, then nothing's arising, nothing's ceasing, all dharmas, nothing has any inherent existence, everything's quiescent, you stay in nirvana, so you nip it in the bud, there you are, you're all set. Till the next situation arises. Well, if the next situation arises, it's not going to arise if you nip it in the bud. If you keep nipping it in the bud. If you keep nipping it in the bud, you're just going to stay... If you have continuity. If you have continuity, you're just going to keep nipping it in the bud, nipping it in the bud, but after you have continuity, then you can come back and re-imagine the whole thing again, but not be caught by it. So there's nipping it in the bud, nipping it in the bud, nipping it in the bud. This... I forgot my question. You mentioned that nirvana is in infinite possibility and nothing is happening.

[05:32]

I didn't say that in nirvana it's infinite possibility, I said that in the realm of the second turning of the wheel, you see that all dharmas are naturally in the state of nirvana. All dharmas have not arisen, and have not ceased, and have no inherent existence, and so you're facing the infinite possibility of our world, of our life. This is a realization of emptiness, which is not the same as a realization of nirvana. It's a realization that things are in a state of nirvana. Yes, sir. I heard a Zen koan, the koan was that everything returns to oneness, so what oneness returns to? So, in a state of nirvana, basically all this we're talking about, including the self, is

[06:40]

non-existent, so they... I kind of look at it like the creation of the Big Bang, that nothing existed, but everything was created from that event. So, could it be a parallel to it? Like at the Big Bang, nothing was just energy, and then suddenly everything is created here. So, was it a nirvana, and everything was created, a state of nirvana, and everything is created from it? A state of nirvana, and everything was created from it? So, everything came from there and is going to return to... It's not so much that everything was there and is created from there, but everything is that way, and everything that way also includes that there's a possibility for things to appear another way. Slightly different way of putting it.

[07:45]

I'm not saying that everything is in the state of nirvana, and everything comes from the state of nirvana, but the way things actually are is that they're in a state of nirvana. It's their state, it's not that they're coming from their state, that's the way they are. Things do not abide in any category of existence or non-existence. And because of that, that allows the appearance of existence and non-existence. Any old questions out there? Oh yeah, you're... It's getting really old. So, I wanted... This is going to be hard to ask, so I'm sorry. It seems as though in the realm of language or thinking, this derivative state, not the

[08:51]

immediate experience, but what we derive from immediate experience, and it seems like there's different rules that apply, appear to apply. For example, it looks like something sticks around, that there's not just this present moment and then it's gone, present moment gone. And what I wanted to use as an example is this sentence. The man is burning a log on his head in a dream. So, for me it's like, something stuck around in order for that whole thing to change, it's like the man burning was still there by the time the dream came, in order for there to be this thing that I call meaning. It seems like it's not just going away, but something is lingering in this language world in sentences or paragraphs or lectures.

[09:52]

I have this sense that there's a bigger space than a momentary, and then gone. Watch my hand. Can you see the circle? So, it seems like the beginning of the circle remained, right? Somehow your mind... Yeah, what is that? Your mind creates this thing there. But how? I didn't hear the memory part. What is that mind that creates the sense that things exist over time? The duration. Preceding cognitions are an impact on present cognitions. The just antecedent condition is one of the main conditions for the present consciousness.

[10:55]

It's gone, but it's a condition, because it's a condition in the present. So, the beginning of the sentence has a big impact on the end of the sentence, even though it's gone. Particularly, when you're in the second part of the sentence, the second moment of the sentence, the first moment of the sentence, is a very important condition for the second moment of the sentence. And if it's a mind consciousness, it is the organ. It's very important for the mind consciousness. And the mind consciousness... The sense consciousnesses do not pick up the circle here. Ah, okay. But the mind consciousness, the previous moments there, are very important for you to imagine a circle, which never was there.

[11:58]

But you can make it there because of those previous things. But we don't say that there's several of those antecedent sense consciousnesses. We just say the previous one. It's the previous one that has the most power. It's the one that's going to be the organ. The ones before that, maybe they have something, but they're weaker. That one's very powerful. And so that gives rise to a sense of... Well, you can make history that way. The mind makes history. The sense consciousness does not make history. But the mind does. The mind consciousness can do that. And alaya has predispositions for doing that, which can be reflected and the mind consciousness can check on those for other historical information. But the organ, the mind organ, which is going to make this piece of information an objective piece of information, is the previously antecedent thing, which did happen. You're interested in this.

[13:00]

Memory is very important to us, yes? Does this also have to do with habit energy? What we call habit energy, like you start here... Well, habit energy is another word for predispositions. For predispositions. Predispositions make you do a circle, because there's a memory where your fingers start. Or even my predisposition that you put a name on it and it associates qualities with you because of something that happened yesterday. I didn't quite... I mean, I could say yes, but I didn't quite follow what you're saying. Oh, okay. Well, you know, like, for example, when... You can say the same thing again. You talked to me yesterday, and what do you want to do with that? The predisposition that you're this person who's the same as yesterday, and that any impressions from yesterday hold true today,

[14:05]

including such things as your name and age and social security. Yeah, so if you did imagine me a certain way, that would be based on your predispositions from past karma with me or other people. Right. Yes. And that's... We're saying that that is the function of alaya in this scenario. And that's immediate. In each moment. You come with predispositions to make something of the world. Okay. To make the world designatable. Okay. And each person has a somewhat different past karma, so we have different predispositions that come with the moment. These are not... These are unknown, unidentified, but then we reflect on them, and then we have identification. But then we lose the immediacy, and then we go off in this story that I told before

[15:09]

and we can remember, which is on tape. Right. And there's impressions, which in a way are easier to work with, to say impressions or feelings I had from you or anyone yesterday are like kind of dragging a dead corpse around. But then also I'm working with just logical sequence, like the fact that if I saw you open that door, and then a few seconds later I saw you standing there, I would start making connections about this person. You're working with logical sequence, but what I'm teaching here is that you're predisposed to work with logical sequence. Okay. It's not really that it is a logical sequence, it's that you're predisposed. You act according to logical sequence, and that has the impact on you, that has the consequence that when you're born, after acting with the idea of logical sequence, as you're born now, you're predisposed to see logical sequence. But the reason why there was logical sequence in the first place was because you imagined that there was.

[16:11]

And you imagined there was because you kind of can't stand to just live in a world where you don't have that. So you go right ahead and do imagine it, and then the consequence is to have it, to imagine logical sequence, but there actually isn't a logical sequence that falls into the category of existence, or non-existence. It's just an appearance of a logical sequence, and we're predisposed in that way. Okay, and if you were to... Just like this, we're predisposed in a certain way, and not other ways. But that isn't the only thing that happened there. Just like we say, you know, you can go out in the ocean, there's no islands, and you look around, the ocean looks like a circle of water. But the ocean is not a circle of water, of course, everybody knows that. It's not round, or square, it has infinite variety, you know, but we can't help but see it as a circle of water, because that's how we're predisposed to see it that way.

[17:12]

We don't go out in the ocean and see a square of water. We don't. We are predisposed that way, but guess what? Some beings do see a square of water, but they're not right either. There's no vision of the ocean, the ocean is infinite in variety, infinite possibility. We don't have to do that. We don't have to go in the ocean and say, it's not a square, it's not a circle. It's like, give me a break. You just got one. I don't want a break. I want to go back to where I didn't have a break. Okay, it's a circle of water. Thank you. I see who, a long time ago, did you ever, did anybody ask you a question? Is that your old question, or a new question? It's my old question. Okay, great. In this system of directing pressure, it's my old question,

[18:13]

but I'm going to start in a different way. Okay. You and I were walking some time ago across the lawn, and there was a cut flower in the lawn, and you were chatting with me, and you picked up a flower, and a second later... I winked. And did you smile? Well, a second later, someone, a woman came walking towards you, and you gave her the flower. It's almost, you were talking to me, you picked up a flower, and you gave it to her. And she said, this is the first time I've come to Green Gulch. And then you continued to talk with her. And then... I was not jealous, and I didn't... But what I did think

[19:20]

was that maybe experienced practitioners live more in a world... Oh, there he is. She wasn't jealous. Very good. Experienced practitioners, yes? Live more in a world of direct impressions and less compulsive, mechanical chatter. And that these things... Because it was very beautiful, you're right. Experienced practitioners live less in a world of compulsive chatter. That's right. And it's beautiful. They chatter, but it's not compulsive. They go, Oh, want a flower? And then they can stop for a while

[20:20]

and say, I'm glad to see you're not jealous, Elena. And you can say, Yeah, me too. It's wonderful. Here we are chattering away and no compulsiveness. It's fantastic. It's scary and unusual. Let's go back to the compulsive house. Let's see. Oscar. Oh, no, you're next. I have a question about humor. You have a question about humor? Uh-huh. So... Stop! This is about humor. This is not humorous. Stop! One drink. You want to indirect humor

[21:24]

rather than direct humor. You want humor you can know rather than the actual. Oh, good. You're done? Do you say all right? Yes. Is it true? Halfway true. Okay, finish it. Please. Well, I was just wondering if humor wasn't maybe a little hello from the... Humor is a little hello? Hello from the world that we live in. You wondered if it maybe was a little hello? I think it is a little hello. It's a little hello. Hello.

[22:26]

So, when the Buddha, after his enlightenment, stepped back into this world to teach to use words, to conventionally interact with conventional beings, was his way of seeing the world at that point the same way I see the world now? The way the Buddha sees the world is very similar to the way we see the world except that the Buddha doesn't believe that the way the Buddha sees the world... The Buddha sees the world two ways. One way the Buddha sees the world is not the way we see the world usually. One way the Buddha sees the world is as having no inherent existence, being unproduced, unceasing, and in quiescent and in the state of nirvana. That's one way the Buddha sees the world. The other way the Buddha sees the world is as a place where things are arising and ceasing. So, when you see

[23:28]

the sunrise, the Buddha sees the sunrise too. But the Buddha doesn't have to see the sunrise. It's not a compulsion to see the sunrise. The Buddha is perfectly comfortable to not see the sunrise and also so comfortable to not see the sunrise that the Buddha can actually see the sunrise. But the Buddha does it as an imaginative act whereas most human beings prior to Buddhahood have at least some predisposition to see the world arise and cease. So, even if we're looking at the same thing as the Buddha, we may have some compulsion to see things a certain way whereas the Buddha is not compelled to see that way except the only thing that compels the Buddha to see the world arising and ceasing is to benefit beings. And if there's no beings around at the time that need the Buddha to see it that way, the Buddha will not necessarily see the world arising and ceasing. But if you're looking at the world arising and ceasing and you ask the Buddha a question about sunrise, the Buddha will turn a sunrise on

[24:29]

for herself and look at it with you and then you can talk about the sunrise and say, to me it looks like this and the Buddha can say, oh I see, well to me it looks like this. But actually, if you want to go on a break with me, you say, okay, and you both check out for a minute and go look at other ways of seeing it. And you can say, well it looks to me like my mother did not love me unconditionally and the Buddha said, okay, I can see that too because you told me she didn't make cookies for you that day or whatever and you say, yeah, I can see that. If you want to take another look and you say, okay, and you take another look, completely different point of view. It's easy for the Buddha to do because the Buddha is not forced into my predisposition to see it a certain way and you can learn that from the Buddha. So the Buddha can try on our view but doesn't have to except if it would help us. And the Buddha says, you know, oh I see. So out of empathy the Buddha can kind of surrender to our world and look at it through our eyes and then talk to us

[25:29]

about that and honor that and then say, now that we see this can we take one more step here into another possibility? But if the Buddha can't relate to our world at all then it would be hard for the Buddha to like honor our world and show us how to honor our world and step forward and beyond it. So the Prajnaparamita says, from where does the Bodhisattva set forth into perfect wisdom? And it says from the ordinary world. So we have to start here and go forward. So the Buddha comes and looks and the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas come and say, okay, ready, one, two, three, let's go. Okay? Yes? If the Buddha has no predispositions then what's the mechanism for taking form and for the specificity of speech and image? What's the mechanism if not predispositions what's the mechanism for the

[26:29]

specificity of the Buddha's form and mind? It's the dispositions of sentient beings. It's the cries of the world. They create the specific manifestation. So then the Buddha's response is, although it appears specific to sentient beings, is universal. No other Buddha would appear any other way. I don't know about that. It might be that different Buddhas would respond different ways to the cries of one person. So you might have a whole, you know, even an array of Buddhas who are responding to your cry in different ways, but their specific response would be in response to your specific cry. So what specifies it to them, if we don't say that there's any disposition, what is the mechanism

[27:29]

for them having a specific way to respond to a particular person, for different Buddhas to have a specific way? It's the combination of the wish, it's the combination of wish in response to suffering to educate and education that would be molded in, or contoured by the particular request, or the particular expression. But another Buddha coming from another angle might be shaped by the person's call differently. They all have the same vow. The vow is universal, they're coming from different perspectives, different universes, different histories, and so then this person's, this person's response would maybe manifest the Buddhas in different ways. It's possible that several Buddhas were inside at the same time, but that one's teaching

[28:30]

might not be as effective as another and so on. And is the trajectory or the vector of the vow different from what would be described as a predisposition? Is it different from that? Yes, would we not say that that's a predisposition? I think not. I think it's a dependent core arising not a predisposition. I think predispositions are things that arise in the darkness of ignoring dependent core arising. So when there's dependent core arising it doesn't look like a predisposition anymore. It looks like this unbelievable world of dependent core arising. None of that heavy overdue notice is coming in. It's now happening. So that's

[29:31]

a wonderful thing. There's no predisposition of the Buddha's vow is fresh. There can be old versions of the Buddha's vow but the Buddha's vow is kind of fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh for what's needed now. That's what I said. But I could be wrong. It's easy to be wrong. Yes, Walker? It seems to me that all the different Buddhas hear one cry and they see it from different places or histories. These places or histories are just dispositions. They're just dispositions? They're a form of disposition. That's why they would react differently. Otherwise it would seem like they would all react the exact same way unless they had some other history which seems to be a disposition. Grace

[30:33]

seems to want to comment. Well, the only way that I have to understand that is, and this is creating a self of the brain, but, you know, if we have sense organs that receive, and then we have something else that's happening with mentation, which simplistically I think of as the brain as a sense organ. So it's a sense organ to all the sense organs and each set of conditions that have pre-existed. So, in your case, Walker, it's like you, as a Bodhisattva, you have to hear the cries of person A. Well, you have existed for how many years now, your brain, your being, whatever. Those series of events that have all created something that is not one in the s...

[31:34]

Uh-oh. Um, it has created something that is somewhat idiosyncratic in how it responds, not that it responds. Yeah, and so Stuart's question and Walker's statement are related to whether I think we can understand that beings offering different opportunities for response. So, the grandchild calling and the old man calling will manifest a different response from the same vow. But the question is whether many Buddhas would get the same response to these

[32:35]

different cries. And so that's the thing for us to settle quite soon, please. Back in the world of Fu's sentence, the man is burning the log on his head in a dream. And we talked about the way the beginning of the sentence impacts the end of the sentence, but the important thing to me, even as Fu read it, is the beginning of the sentence doesn't make... The sense changes constantly as the sentence goes along and that the meaning goes from the back to the beginning. And language works this way all the time and it's not that this needs to be accounted for in what we're talking about, you know, this mind system, or language, we're talking about the mind, but lots

[33:37]

of times when we're talking about language and signs, we kind of are ignoring that way that we actually go backwards and so that there's not really a time element. If you think of it as a sequential time, it's clearly false, so if there's a time element it's like all happening at once or happening in multiple directions. Well, discursive thought means to run back and forth. So that aspect of language is discursiveness or that is... It's part of the reflective process. So it doesn't tell us anything beyond how the mind works in that linguistic way. Yeah, I don't think so. I think it tells us how the mind works, right? In that linguistic way. Yeah, in that linguistic way,

[34:37]

which creates these fireworks by punchlines and stuff like that, but the punchline wouldn't work if we didn't run back to the beginning of the sentence. A person without discursive thought would just go bop, [...] dream. With discursive thought you go bop, [...] dream. Then the sentence has a punch. Because of this... And our experience works that way quite often, too. Well, that is our experience. I mean, our less obviously verbal experience, where we hear something and we don't integrate it and then a little later it has a different meaning. Right, but discursive thought probably came in there to make this nice meaning happen. Discursive thought as a structure, not as necessarily talking to yourself about it. Well... I mean, you know, like, you hear a bell, it doesn't mean anything, you hear another bell... I feel like discursive thinking as a structure rather than

[35:37]

as talking to yourself... It just means words are not words. You mean words are not words? Right, I mean, you could move back and forth in that way without using words. You mean using concepts instead of words, you mean? Well, or perceptions, whatever that word exists instead of things. You can use images instead of words. Images, thank you. You can run back and forth between images... And that would still be discursive. It would still be discursive, yes. But words are really important because when it comes down to words we really get tough. And that's what makes impact with words. Because if you're just bouncing concepts around your head, it's not fully social. It gets conventional when you start using the words, and then the society starts developing. You know, we don't speak Chinese here, kind of thing, right? And so the words are really important, the language is

[36:37]

really important for causing this. Because you can't just go to high school and just be bouncing stuff off your head. The best nerd still has to talk eventually. So words are really important, although you can be discursive without them. A lot of nerds are really good at being discursive non-verbally with symbols. You know, like Steve Jobs creating this... building a computer when he was a kid, this head basically. There's no words out there, just levels, higher and higher levels of symbolic abstraction. And then boom, there it is, a breakthrough. But it's discursive thought, running back up and checking these conclusions again. Yes, you had another question? I want to check out something that I used to understand Alaia, which refers also to Fu's question, Fu's sentence. To me, Alaia

[37:38]

takes a shape so that what we would be doing at the end of the sentence is not actually going... nothing remains, nothing stays, but Alaia has a new shape as a result of the man. And so when we're at dream, we're looking in the present at the shape that was laid down by the word man in the past. So it doesn't, actually, the moment doesn't stay, but the shape of Alaia that was shaped by man, and then head, and then log, and then burning, all those, that's what we're looking at in the present. So that's how I understand Alaia. Did you all understand that? Great. Is that enough for today? 11.15? It's only a

[38:38]

two hour and 15 minute class. I know it's short. It's a little embarrassing to have a class that lasts for two and a half hours. Huh? It's so long. Two hours and 15 minutes, that's long. But also it's embarrassingly short. I think it's embarrassing short. We never have eight hour classes here like the old days. Kind of like, you know, we'd be dying around this joint. But it might be nice to sit a little while for lunch. Is that okay if we conclude now? Otherwise I think there's more questions. all right to stop? I mean, I could just tell you I'm in extreme pain now. Then you'd let me stop, right? I want to I I want to I

[39:42]

will. Now I am totally paralyzed. I paralyzed. I am paralyzed. I I vow to save them, delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them, dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them, Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to keep the highest. I vow to keep the highest.

[40:33]

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