I've heard that the Buddha says that the three worlds are just one mind. That outside mind, there are no separate things, the world, mind, world, living beings and Buddhas, among these three, no distinction. Three worlds is a Buddhist term for all the

[01:04]

different types of worlds that living beings can experience. One world is called the Kamadhatu, which means the realm of actually, literally, sex. It's the realm, and within that realm there's six realms, or six destinies, human, animal, hungry ghost, hell dwellers, fighting gods and divine beings. So, those all are kind of like, it's one kind of world that we can experience. The human world is like, kind of like, a room like this with people in it and where they have clothes and hair and floors and ceilings and eat lunch and

[02:06]

things like that, where most of us are familiar with the human world. But we can also, I think, taste, at least, although it may not be our destiny, we can taste these other worlds, like the animal world is a world primarily characterized by fear, and the divine world is a world where things are very pleasant. And then there's higher realms of meditation, a fine material plane is a second world, where we don't, anyway, when we're in that world we don't experience gross things like people and cars and trucks and mountains and rivers. We experience more things like just colors, smells, but not smells, you know, like flowers and trees, but very subtle smells and very subtle sounds and so on. And then another realm

[03:13]

is kind of a meditational realm that opens up, like the previous one, is a realm where there's no material form, there's just mental images. So, in scanning the possible experiences of living beings, these three realms are the three major categories of all different types of experience that living beings can go through, can experience. So, the Buddha says that these three worlds, in other words, all the different worlds we can experience are just one mind. And that outside of mind there aren't things, there's no separate things. And within these worlds there's mind, there's the world, but also living beings and enlightened beings, and among these there's no real distinction.

[04:16]

In terms of human sense, I don't know how you humans sense, but in terms of human sense it is sometimes said that heaven and earth give birth to human and non-human beings. But in terms of Buddha sense, it's the other way around. That human and non-human beings give birth or create heaven and earth. Living beings are minds, are bodies and minds, are body-minds, are mind-joined-to-bodies. Human beings and other living beings are mind-joined-to-bodies.

[07:58]

And then when mind is joined to bodies, we have many minds, minds connected to individual bodies. And all these bodies which mind has engaged with then create heaven and earth. Together. Many years ago I read a Buddhist text called the Abhidharmakosha and it said that mind

[09:16]

would not be able to know the world if it weren't separated from the world by sense organs. And the reason why it would have trouble knowing the world is because the world is so similar to the mind that it wouldn't be able to perceive itself. So the vision that I get from this is a mind which connects with bodies which are sense organs creating a world

[10:16]

of things. But the nature of these things is very similar to the nature of mind. Prior to minds imagining things there are no separate things. However there is always the possibility of many, of unlimited things, but these possibilities don't manifest until body grounded minds imagine them, and not just one body mind imagining them, but all body

[11:23]

minds imagining them together. And this world, and this universe, whatever it is, prior to arising into things, knows itself by living beings together making it into something knowable. It's not to say that outside of mind there's nothing, because nothing is a

[12:35]

mind created thing. Mind and the natural world are not two.

[13:54]

Our bodies and nature are the same blood. In the tradition called sometimes Soto-Zen, which is a lineage founded in Japan, excuse me, the lineage called Soto-Zen which is transmitted to this temple is a lineage that came through Japan through the founder Ehei Dogen. And in his teaching, I think it could be fairly said, that the natural world, which includes San Francisco and Hong Kong, and the forests, and the redwoods, and the ocean, and the mountains,

[15:18]

the natural world, the physical world, is the expression and life of Buddha. The natural world, which is the expression and life of Buddha, which includes the material world and all the living beings in it, is the life of Buddha, is the expression of

[16:22]

Buddha. And this life of Buddha can be understood through study of the mind. And you can study the mind by studying the physical world, because the physical world is inseparable from mind. Studying the mind, outside of which there are no separate things. The Zen teacher Dogen said that the true

[18:16]

path of enlightenment is to sit upright in the midst of what he called the self-fulfilling awareness. And today, I would rephrase that by saying the true path of enlightenment is to sit upright, or to be upright, in the awareness that the three worlds are just one mind. The focused awareness, the continuous focused awareness that all worlds of experience

[19:35]

are just one mind. The continual focused awareness that outside of mind there are no separate things and that worlds, Buddhas and sentient beings have no distinction. And hearing that you might say, could we have an alternative true path to enlightenment to that one? So I don't mean to be exclusive, I don't mean to say something that sounds exclusive, and

[20:41]

I didn't, I don't think, except to say that because actually what I'm suggesting by saying that is that the true path of enlightenment is a focused awareness on non-exclusiveness. It's a focused awareness on how all living beings, that there's no distinction among all living beings, that all living beings are just one mind, and all Buddhas, which are maybe you can't see, but all Buddhas are also this one mind, and all the things of the world, all worlds of experience and material entities are just one mind, and there's no distinction among them, except the distinction among them is simply the living beings among this one

[21:51]

mind. So the one mind includes living beings, and living beings make distinctions, like I'm a living being, I make distinctions, some of you are living beings, I suppose, and you make distinctions, but aside from the distinction which the living beings are making, there's actually no distinctions among the living beings who are making distinctions, there's no actual distinctions, except the distinctions that living beings are making. So I may make a distinction between me and you, but that distinction only exists as a fantasy in my mind, it has no other existence than the fantasy in my mind. I may make a distinction between my body in the mountains, or my body in the oceans, but that distinction is 100% fantasy.

[22:53]

It's a 100% fantasy, which means it's a really good fantasy, it's not like a 98% fantasy, it's a full-fledged fantasy, but it doesn't exist at all, except as a fantasy. And also I might distinguish between myself and Buddhas, or maybe I don't distinguish between myself and Buddha, but maybe I distinguish between Buddha and you. But the distinction between Buddha and you, which I might make, or that you might make, doesn't exist in the Buddha Dharma. In the Buddha's teaching, distinctions between Buddhas and sentient beings, there aren't any, but there are, again, living beings who make distinctions between themselves and the Buddhas. I imagine that leeches, I say leeches because people like to hear stories

[23:57]

of my grandson, right? After the talks people say, I like the stories of your grandson, that was good, lecture. So I should tell at least one or two stories of my grandson. One is, I took him to a movie that had leeches in it, it's a story of unfortunate events, and he said, what's a leech? So his grandmother said, we'll look it up in the dictionary back home. So they looked it up in the dictionary and they found out that a leech is a carnivorous worm. It's a carnivorous annelid worm. Got it?

[25:10]

Now, I brought that up because you might distinguish between yourself and a Buddha, but I imagine that worms do not imagine a distinction between themselves and Buddhas. I imagine that, because I imagine that worms have not even heard about Buddhas. However, I do think worms distinguish between themselves and the Karna which they boss. I think they do, I think they're like big into like, oh, there's some Karne over there which I'm going to boss. I think they eat, right? Put it in the mouth, anyway, I think the leeches probably do make some

[26:16]

distinctions. They're living beings, they make distinctions. But we, in addition to making distinctions between ourselves and what we eat, we also make a distinction between ourselves and what we don't eat, and also between ourselves and Buddhas, we do that. However, the true path of enlightenment is continuous, focused attention to the teaching that there's no distinction between you and all living beings and all Buddhas and the oceans and the rivers and the trees and the grasses. Again, I don't mean to be exclusive, but I'm suggesting that if we exclude anything by saying it's separate from us, we'll slip a little bit off the path to enlightenment. A little bit, I think so. So in that way,

[27:26]

like there's only one path to enlightenment and it's the path that includes everything. So in that sense, it sounds narrow to be so inclusive, right? Couldn't we like, can't you like have two paths, one where you include most things or something and one where you exclude some other stuff? Couldn't there be two paths? You know, I don't think so. So anyway, when I first came to Zen Center, I didn't think I would be a disciple of or in the same kind of like blood as this person named Dogen. I didn't think that, but I find myself becoming more and more the same blood as him. I have the same faith as him or at least I have the same faith of what I think his faith is. I think his faith is that each of us is born together at the same moment as the whole world and with the whole world, not before and not

[28:35]

after. It's not like there's mountains and rivers and then us, or us and then mountains and rivers. We're born at the same moment as the mountains and rivers and we die together with them and are born with them. That's, I think, his faith and he also, his faith I think was that the true path of enlightenment is to sit upright in the midst of this awareness of how we're all born together and how there's no distinction between the different people who are born together with the world. This means that since there's no distinction between you and all Buddhas, that all Buddhas are with you and since there's no distinction between you and all living beings, all living beings are with you. The world is created

[29:39]

by all living beings together, I am created by all living beings together, you are created by all living beings together, I am created together with all Buddhas, you are created together with all Buddhas. This is what I think is Dogen's faith. And the path to enlightenment is to somehow, for us to be steadily, moment by moment, aware of how we together with all beings and all Buddhas and all worlds are just working together and that there's nothing but this working together. No person, no animal, no plant, no rock, no water, no air

[30:46]

is not our life, is not expressing our life, because our life is the expression of Buddha and all of nature is the life and expression of Buddha. So the ancestor Dogen says, the mountains and rivers of the immediate present, not the mountains and rivers which I imagine, because the mountains and rivers which I imagine are like that's in the realm where I imagine the mountains are separate from the rivers and separate from the people. Those mountains

[31:52]

we're not talking about, we're talking about the actual immediate mountains and the actual immediate rivers. The mountains and rivers of the immediate present are the manifestation of the path of the ancient Buddhas. Abiding together in their normative state, they culminate the qualities of thoroughly exhausted study of the Buddha way. Because they are events prior to the appearance of time, they are the livelihood of the present. Because they are the self before the emergence of subtle signs, they are the penetrating liberation

[32:54]

immediate actuality. So here sits before me anyway, the question of how is it possible not how is it possible, but do I wish to try for a moment to open to the meditation that the distinction between me and you, and between me and Buddha, and between me and the mountains and rivers, and the trees and the grasses, that there isn't any, to open to

[33:59]

Buddha sense, and enter the Buddha way. There's another grandson story. He's at an age where he goes to the toilet, he gets in the room by himself and he sits on the toilet, like a lot of people I know. He's stationed there and then he goes through this process of elimination which I understand most of us do. The distinction between the different people when they're in this physical act, the Buddha teaches, there is no distinction between the different

[35:07]

eliminators. Still when he gets there, he's not yet skillful enough to do a really good job cleaning up afterwards. He does a pretty good job I should say, but anyway, some people would like him to do a better job and he can't quite do it yet. So he asks for assistance usually if there's someone to assist him. I think he's been instructed by somebody to ask for assistance. So he calls for help after he's done his part. Usually he calls his mother I suppose, but when his mother's not around he will ask for someone else to help. But sometimes even when his mother's around, if there's grandparents around too, there's a number of people that can be chosen to help him. So his little mind, like our little mind, connected to his little body with his sense organs, makes distinctions among the various

[36:15]

potential wipers. And particularly the grandparents, his grandparents are kind of like wondering who will he choose? Who will he favor with this opportunity? It's kind of like, who does he feel closest to? Something like that. Anyway, on one occasion he chose his grandmother and she went in and he said, he calls her Abu, it's Chinese for grandmother, he says, Abu, it was really hard to choose, and I chose you. So there is, whatever you want to call

[37:19]

that, sweetness, light, love, in the midst of distinctions. But really, it's the absence of the distinctions that makes the distinctions actually kind of fun. It's reality that makes illusion enjoyable and precious and adorable. But if we lose sight, if I forget that these distinctions do not exist in the awareness of the Buddha, then it's possible, it's possible that I might not want to wipe somebody, or I might feel angry if I'm asked to wipe when

[38:24]

I don't want to, or I might feel angry if I'm not asked to wipe. I might not appreciate it. Life. What's life? I wrote it down here, what life is. Oh yeah, life. Life is nature, life is all living beings, which are just one mind. That's life. And outside this life, there are no separate things, and we won't even have a separate thing outside of them called nothing. Nothing is in the realm of mind. You could say outside of mind there

[39:25]

is the possibility of unlimited separate things. I think I would say that, in a sense, outside mind, but again, outside mind is another thing. So there really is no outside or inside. But outside and inside are mind things. The ancient sages passed eons living in the mountains and the forests. Only then did they

[40:27]

unite with the path of enlightenment and use the mountains and the rivers for words and the wind and the rain for a tongue to expound great emptiness. And again, until recently, like a few seconds ago, I thought, people might think, well it's nice for the ancient sages to go live in the mountains and the forests, what about me? I have to live like, you know, in an urban area, so I won't be able to use

[41:31]

the mountains and the rivers for words. And I won't be able to use the wind and the rain for a tongue. Today I don't think that's what it means. I don't think that's what's meant. I think wherever we are, and on this planet for example, we can use the mountains and rivers for words and the wind and the rain for our tongue. Not our tongue, a tongue.

[42:34]

But we can also pass on that and have the mountains and rivers not be our tongue, have the whole world not be our body, make a distinction between other bodies and our own bodies. We can do that too, because we're living beings, we can do that. While being a living being who can distinguish between herself and other living beings and between herself and the mountains and the rivers, while being such a living being, it's possible to enter the Buddha way. By being a living being who can make distinctions, but also who learns to pay attention in a moment, and then maybe another one, and maybe another one, but anyway,

[43:41]

starting with one, pay attention to the self-fulfilling awareness, the awareness that fulfills the self. And what is that awareness? It is the awareness that all living beings and all Buddhas and the entire world create you now, that you are born together with them, they support you, and there's only one thing that doesn't make you and that's you. You are made by all Buddhas, all living beings and the entire world, and the entire world and all Buddhas and all living beings are made by you together with all others. This awareness is what I call the self-fulfilling awareness. Again, it's easy to pass on that and think of the

[44:47]

awareness which distinguishes, which really believes that we're separate from each other, the Buddhas and the whole world, that's easy, that's our habit, that's not the path to enlightenment. But the person who doesn't take the path to enlightenment is actually inseparable from all those who do and do not take the path to enlightenment, and from the natural world which is actually expressing the life of Buddha. Can I be mindful of the teaching and by being mindful of the teaching develop this awareness which is the path? There's not one separate

[45:49]

thing actually, it has the character separate in there, which is nice, no separate things, no distinction among things, no distinction among beings. So in this talk today I have come back to this topic a number of times, it has not necessarily been a continuous awareness, but there's been some moments where the words and the awarenesses may have been tuning into this self-fulfilling dimension, which is the awareness of this Dharma teaching of the Buddha. Dogen says that this statement, that all worlds, sometimes put in the category of three, but all the infinite worlds actually, which are three types, are just one mind. Outside this

[46:59]

there's no separate thing. World, Buddha and sentient beings, no distinction. This teaching of the Buddha, Dogen says, is the whole life of Buddha. It's Buddha's teaching about what life is, and it's Buddha's whole life of teaching, according to Dogen. Continuous attention, focused attention on this, continuous focused attention on this is the path, the true path to enlightenment. And this focus also, this word samadhi, I said self-fulfilling awareness, but actually the awareness is the word samadhi, so it's the focused or concentrated awareness of this teaching. And Suzuki Roshi said, samadhi is when you forget all about

[48:03]

yourself. So again, if I open my mind to this teaching of all worlds, just one mind, and so on, the way of attending to that teaching is to forget all about myself when I attend to it. So again, it's not that I'm contemplating the teaching that there's no distinction, and then at the same time distinguishing myself from the teaching, or contemplating the one mind and then separating my mind from the one mind. It's to attend to this one mind so fully that I have this samadhi of one mind, the one mind samadhi, the self-fulfilling samadhi. I forget about myself in the process of this attention to myself, which is totally embraced

[49:15]

by this one mind and totally embraces the one mind, totally embraced by the whole natural world and all living beings and Buddhas, and totally embraces all living beings, all Buddhas, all worlds, the mountains, the rivers, and the great earth, which embraces being chosen to wipe a butt, or not chosen, which enters the mind, which gives up the distinction among things. Right while the distinctions are there, because this one mind includes all distinctions, and how does it include all distinctions? In the understanding that

[50:16]

they're just fantasies of all the living beings that are included. And we love all the living beings who are imagining they're separate from us, and choosing whether they want to get together with us separate selves, or avoid our separate selves. So some people who feel separate from us want to get us, and some people who feel separate from us want to avoid us. But the basis of that desire to avoid or possess is a fantasy. We don't really possess each other, and we can't avoid each other. However, we are not separate. When you're not separate, possession doesn't have much meaning, and avoidance doesn't have much

[51:17]

meaning. That's why possessiveness and avoiding are unskillful emotions. Gratitude, however, makes sense. Appreciation works. Devotion works. All that will thrive in the mind. In the realm where there's no distinctions, you will be able to be devoted to the people you already kind of appreciate. I will be able to be devoted to the people I already appreciate, but we will also learn to be able to be devoted to the people we appreciate less than fully, even people we don't appreciate at all. And in our devotion to the people we appreciate less than fully, in our devotion to them, we will find appreciation. That's a nice time, for me anyway, I think it's a nice time. Eleven-eleven. Like that's less than an hour. Not that long, right? Wow.

[52:40]

Seemed like longer, didn't it? The first part was kind of heavy, but I was trying to like imbue the basic teaching, let it sink in, so probably it sunk in. Now to play with it, if you want to, or if I want to, to play with. Yikes! Not separate from anybody? Yikes! Then, of course, I shrink back from the teaching and get self-concerned. But to pay attention to that teaching without worrying about what's going to happen to me if I don't hang on to my distinction from others. Don't worry about that, because if you think about it, you could get ripped off, etc. Because how do you defend yourself against people if you don't remember

[53:47]

you're separate from them? Yeah. How? Jeez, how would I? Like, they could ask me to do anything and how would I be able to not do it? Etc. Don't get into that. That's not the focused awareness. Just open to the teaching without worrying what's going to happen to you if you do. The proposal beforehand is that this happens to be the true path to enlightenment, so I don't know what's going to happen to you, but it's the true path to enlightenment. I don't know what's going to happen to me if I think about it. I might hesitate to take this true path of enlightenment because I'm talking about giving up distinctions here. And another thing people like is a song, but I couldn't think of one new one, I'm sorry.

[54:50]

So I'm going to do an old one. If that's okay with you. Is that okay with you, David? Sorry? Yvonne? Susan? Is Vernon here? Boom, boom, [...] boom. I can do what I want, I'm in complete control. That's what I tell myself. I got a mind of my own, I'll be all right alone, don't need anybody else. Give myself a good talking to. No more being a fool for you, but then I see you and

[56:02]

I remember how you make me want to surrender to one mind. You're taking myself away to one mind. You're making me want to stay with one mind. Boom, boom, [...] boom. Our intention equally extends to every being and place, with the true name of God's name. Yes. Yeah, the first world, the world of desire, the desire realm, it's like where you want

[57:25]

to have lunch and want to take a nap, and where you think lunch starts at a certain time and ends at a certain time, involves time, that kind of thing. And in the human dimension, you see humans and you see animals and you see, there's words and things like that. The animal realm can be seen as a realm of animals or it can be seen as a realm where you feel overwhelmed by fear. The hungry ghost realm can be seen as beings who are in a state of insatiability, but in another sense, when you feel insatiable as a result of greed and so on, acting out greed, that in a sense you're in the hungry ghost realm. Hell realm can

[58:26]

be seen as actually beings in a state of torment, a state of almost extreme isolation, where they actually feel extremely isolated from other living beings. But you can also, when you feel like that, in a sense you're experiencing an infernal retribution for wanting to isolate yourself from other beings. Divine realms, states where you feel, you know, basically only positive sensation, and realms where you're kind of like using power to get into divine states. So those are the realms of desire. And then there's meditation heavens, special states that come as a result of concentration practices, where you, the world actually, you don't actually see anymore the kind of composite images that you see in an ordinary

[59:31]

physical world, but you're still seeing physical forms, but you don't see like people and trees and stuff, you just see colors and shapes, but not so articulated and so on. And the same with sound, you don't hear language anymore, but you hear sounds, but not linguistic operations in that realm of meditation. And then higher, even a deeper level of concentration where there's no forms, there's just mental images. And they're big, juicy mental images like infinity of space, infinity of consciousness, and infinity of nothing whatsoever, these kinds of mental concepts, very, very spacious mental concepts. And the sense of well-being and ease is greatest in these formless realms. In terms of material or worldly pleasure,

[60:35]

these are the highest states of worldly pleasure in these higher meditation worlds. So those are, did you get those three worlds? Did that make sense to you, Nina? Well, there are realms of bliss, but they're not usually called that, they're usually called the realm of fine material and formless. But in the fine material and formless realms, there's no negative sensation, there's only positive sensation, but not only is there only positive sensation, but there's equanimity with regard to positive sensation. In other words, even though there's positive sensation, if you would take it away, the person is so happy that they're not even attached to positive sensation, because they're experiencing the bliss of equanimity. So these

[61:36]

are all possible realms of mundane experience. And they're said to be just one mind, all these different realms that we can go through, and all the different realms that other people are going through. Anything else you want to bring up? Yes? You were saying that the wind, or the voice that carries on the wind, and I had heard you study some Tibetan Buddhism, and I was just kind of curious how Tara relates to Dogen, and Buddhist philosophy, and elemental, you know, the elements in Tara, and alchemy of mind, since that's the beginning of the lecture, you know, which is different than the other

[62:41]

So I was wondering what the relationship is between Tara and Dogen, and does that find Tara kind of more familiar with Tara than a lot of Zen? Well, I feel that the Zen teacher Dogen is, you know, I don't think he actually heard about Tara during his lifetime, but I think what he heard about was the name Avalokiteshvara, Chenrezig. I think that the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion, Avalokiteshvara, in Tibetan Chenrezig, in Chinese Guanyin, in Japanese Kannon, I think he was very devoted to meditating on Avalokiteshvara, and I think that, it seems to me that Tara is, in some sense, a female

[63:50]

version, or the female aspect of Infinite Compassion, so in a sense she's like related, very closely related to, it seems to me, Amitabha Buddha and Avalokiteshvara. So I don't know if everyone would agree, but I feel that Tara and Avalokiteshvara are, you know, they're in the same team. They're both beings of Infinite Compassion. But Tara, with that feminine form, can be worked with in ways that Avalokiteshvara in the masculine form, you know, is different. And in India, and I think in Tibet too, but particularly in India, Avalokiteshvara was usually portrayed in masculine form, but in China, Avalokiteshvara was usually, most commonly, related to in a female form. And in a sense,

[64:59]

the female form of Avalokiteshvara in China, I feel, serves a similar function in that Buddhist culture that Tara does in Tibet, or did in Tibet, or does in Tibet. So Tara is not so salient in Chinese culture as Avalokiteshvara. So if you go to Chinatown around the world, in all the shops that sell statues, among the Buddhist statues, the most common one, I think, is this white-robed Avalokiteshvara, white-robed Kannada, with the flowing robes, holding a vase and a flower. There's probably, I don't know, more of those maybe than almost any other Buddhist icon, but that's a female form of Avalokiteshvara. So maybe that's why Tara is not so often seen in the lowlands of China and the Chinese outposts around

[66:13]

the world. Anything else? Yes, you? I don't know where it came from. I mean, I found it in my notebook. I have a little black notebook, that's where I found it. And the Chinese character for mountain is written, and the Chinese character for forest is written, and the Chinese character for wind is written, and the Chinese character for rain is written. So I was writing English and I would insert those Chinese characters in my notebook, and then the blue Chinese

[67:15]

character for mountain, the green Chinese character for forest, I forgot what color I made the wind, and the rain was blue also. It's in my notebook, but I don't know where I heard it before. Yes? If it's all one mind, what cons for individual differences? Well, these bodies that have sense organs, you know, these bodies are like in this big field, which is this big field of mind, these sense organs in that field, then the mind takes a particular grounding in these sense organs, and then, because of the sense organs,

[68:17]

the mind starts making distinctions, because sense organs do that. They kind of like make distinctions between what they feel, and what other sense organs feel, and so then we have these individual consciousnesses, but really the individual consciousnesses are just this one mind which is hooked into an individual body. And then because the mind now has this body, the mind can know the world through the body. So the bodies, like our bodies, are the way the universe knows itself. You take all the bodies away, the universe is just mind, it has no way of knowing itself. So it knows itself through all these individual bodies, and the bodies give rise to the distinction among the bodies. You won't find any distinctions except in the minds that are connected to individual

[69:28]

bodies. That's the only place that these distinctions exist. Like there's not actually a distinction between you and me, it's that my mind creates a distinction between us and yours does, but if you take away our distinctions, there's no other distinction. The bodies are part of the pool of mind, yes. They live in it. And they live in the universe of precipitated physical things, which all the individual subjects, which have bodies, create the physical world. So the physical world of trees, mountains, and buildings, that physical world is born of all the living beings working together. So all the living

[70:28]

beings live in the physical world which they create, and also their bodies are built out of the physical universe which they create. So they live and the bodies are living in the middle of the world which the bodies create. That's why the world, the physical world, and individual bodies arise together. But the distinctions which the minds connected to bodies create, those distinctions are nothing more than a fantasy. The fantasy, however, although what's being imagined doesn't exist at all, it's not just a fantasy, that there is a fantasy. That's part of the wonder of being a living being, is that we fantasize. But what we fantasize is never what's happening, but with the aid of fantasy, that's part of the way we create the universe, is by fantasizing things that

[71:32]

don't exist. But even though we fantasize things that don't exist, and that's part of creating the world that does, the things we imagine don't exist. Just the imagination exists, or the imaginings exist. But we, of course, have a strong predisposition to believe what we imagine as actually existing beyond just an imagined. So I imagine a separation and I think it's actually there, and therefore I'm afraid of people. And of course people are afraid of other people who feel separate from them, which makes sense because somebody who believes in separation is frightened and dangerous. They're armed and dangerous in a sense. They're armed with the belief, with the illness of believing their fantasies are real. So people are dangerous because of that. However, the people who are dangerous

[72:36]

because they believe their fantasies are real, those dangerous people are actually not separate from us. And if you realize you're not separate from the people who think they're separate from you, and who are therefore poisoned by that belief, and suffering because of that belief, and prone to unskillful action because of that belief, if you understand that that illusion, that sense of separation is an illusion, you're not afraid of them. You overcome fear of them. Or if you practice generosity with all these people who think they're separate from you, you're happy living with people who feel separate from you, but by practicing generosity you get over your belief in separation. And, or, when you get over your belief in separation, you practice generosity. Either way, you become free of fear of other people

[73:37]

who believe they're separate from you, and who are afraid of you. Yes? Yes, David? You hear his question? He says he runs into people who have fantasies about him. Right? Is that right? Yeah. We all run into people who have fantasies of us. There's nobody you meet who doesn't have a fantasy of you. People wouldn't be able to see you if they don't have a fantasy of you. Only because of having fantasies of each other do we have each other.

[74:41]

Otherwise, we're not others. But anyway, when you meet people who have fantasies of you, he said he has some tendency to want to disabuse people of their fantasies about him. Like, if people think you're really wonderful, you might want to disabuse them of their fantasy, right? Maybe not. If people think you're sort of mediocre, you might want to disabuse them of that fantasy. And he says, but he doesn't want to do that. He doesn't want to get into disabusing people of the fantasies they have about him. So how can he get over that? By not believing your fantasies about people. By not believing my fantasy about your fantasies, and not believing my fantasies about myself. Not believing my fantasies about you. Not believing my fantasies about your fantasies. Not believing my fantasy about your fantasies about me. Like, you have a fantasy that I'm mediocre,

[75:45]

or slightly below average. You have those fantasies. I fantasize you have those fantasies that I'm sort of mediocre. I fantasize that you have those fantasies. So if I do believe that, then I want to get you to get over that fantasy and think I'm above average. Maybe. But anyway, maybe I don't want you to think I'm above average or below average. I just want you to get over your fantasies about me. And actually I do want you to get over your fantasies about me. I want you to stop believing your fantasies about me. And I want to stop believing my fantasies about you and me. But the place to start is me getting over my fantasies about you and about me. That's where I start. Because I do have a strong tendency to believe my fantasies about people. Like I think this person is really beautiful, and this person is not so beautiful. And I have a big job to get over my belief in my fantasies about people. But that's where you start. Once I get over them, I'm not going to be so, what do you call it, I'm going to be more skillful in helping other people

[76:52]

get over their fantasies. I still may want them to get over it because I realize they're suffering because they believe their fantasies. But when I don't believe mine anymore, I'll be more skillful in helping others not believe theirs. I will be very patient with them because I realize from my own practice how difficult it was to get over them. So I understand they're probably having a hard time getting over believing their fantasies too. So I'll be patient with them, and I'll be generous with them. I'll appreciate them in their present state of believing their fantasies. And again, it's nice to have a grandchild because you see the person having fantasies, but you still appreciate them even though they are having fantasies and believing them. Like now he has strong fantasies that there are not monsters.

[77:56]

He has a fantasy that there's not monsters. That's his fantasy. But you know he doesn't believe it very strongly. So he's trying to get that really well established that there aren't monsters, because a little bit he thinks that there are. So if I'm talking to him, like one time I was up here in the yard talking to him, and I put my hand over my mouth, and I was saying, well let's go over there and do this, and when I went, he said, when you do that you sound like a monster. And I said, you mean when I go like this, you sound like a monster? And he said, yeah, don't do that. Then he said, there aren't monsters. But he's saying that because he a little bit thought for a second there his grandfather became a monster. So you can really adore people who are struggling with fantasy

[79:03]

and trying to believe or are believing in their fantasies. They're still adorable, they're still worthy of our love, it's just that they are shaking when it comes to understanding fantasy as fantasy. He's too little to understand fantasy as fantasy. He's really working with him intensely and believing and unbelieving. Like he says to me, let's play a game, I forgot what he called the game, but anyway, let's play this game of putting these animals, they were mostly African animals, like giraffes and hippos and stuff, let's play a game of putting these animals in water. So what he wanted to do was get a big tub of water and put the animals in the water. So I said, well, let's play it down in the garage on the cements

[80:07]

in case we spill the water. I said, it would be easier to just take the tub downstairs and fill the tub down there. So let's take the tub with all the animals and go downstairs and fill it with water. So we're going down the stairs and he's imagining, as we go down the stairs, he's saying, this is going to be so much fun. This is going to be so much fun, we're going to have so much fun playing this game, it's going to be awesome. He's just talking, he's working himself into this state of great excitement, but he's imagining that this is going to be fun. He's not imagining that it's not going to be fun. He could have done that, but this one he's imagining it's fun, and I'm listening to him saying, this is going to be so much fun. And I don't say anything, really. But in my mind I'm thinking, this may or may not be fun, we'll see. But I do see that you are energetically pursuing

[81:07]

this activity because you think it's going to be fun. And we got down there, we filled the tub with water, we put the animals in, and as soon as we got the animals in he took them out and then he wanted to play golf. It might have been so much fun, I didn't notice whether it was or not. I didn't say, was that fun? Was that like super fun? I didn't ask and it looked like it was, whatever how much fun it was, it was very short-lived and not very intense. I could be wrong, but it was definitely short-lived, it was very fast. Then we moved on to some other thing which he also thought would be lots of fun. And this morning I came down from usually where I have my clothes, up in the Spring Valley, and I was coming down with this dog called Rozzy, she was following me, and I said, come on Rozzy, and then I looked back and she was quite distant from me, and I said,

[82:11]

come on Rozzy, and she came a little bit. She was smelling some things she wanted to smell, and I said, come on Rozzy, and she kept coming and I had to keep inviting her to come along with me. And she was kind of coming along. But if Rozzy thinks something is going to be fun, she doesn't walk like that, she walks very fast, with tremendous energy, you know. But she thought it was not going to be much fun to come with me and go sit in that room. Even the dog imagines that it's going to be fun to do such and such, and when she does, she believes it and she like tears after this thing she thinks is going to be fun. And when she gets there, after a little while she realizes it's not what she thought it was. So, even dogs imagine things, even carnivorous worms imagine things, and humans are really good at it, and so people imagine all these things about us, and it's

[83:14]

a real challenge for us not to believe what we think they're doing when they're imagining about us. But that's the basic thing to learn, is to learn to not believe that what we imagine the world is, is the world. Yes? Mind knows itself through beings and also the world knows itself. Mountains know themselves through us. We create mountains together and then mountains can be aware of themselves through us, through their relationship with us. I got it, yeah. That's a very good question.

[84:34]

The mountains do not know themselves through our ideas of the mountains. That's not how they know themselves. They don't. Our ideas of the mountains are not the mountains, and actually if we believe that our ideas of the mountains are the mountains, we hinder the process of mountains learning who the mountains are. When I do not believe my ideas of the mountains, I help the mountains really be mountains. I aid them in being the mountains that they are, which are beyond my ideas of mountains. So it's not, although the mountains are precipitated in relationship to beings who have fantasies about mountains, the mountains really know themselves when the beings who have fantasies about them, and thereby create them, do not believe their fantasies about the mountains. It's by not believing them

[85:40]

that you realize the actual creative process by which you and the mountains are born together. But if I believe my ideas about mountains and people, that belief blocks my access to the actual process, the mutual process by which the mountains create me and I create the mountains. So it's the actual process of experience that helps the mountains realize that they're not out there all by themselves, that they're alive with me. Because I don't believe my image of them, but I do have images of them, and part of the causation of mountains is that they arise with living beings who have ideas about them. It's not living beings that don't have ideas about mountains, that manifest mountains. It's living beings who have fantasies that create mountains. But the fantasies that living beings have are

[86:42]

not the mountains, they're fantasies about the mountains. And once again, if the living beings who work together to create the mountains and rivers don't believe that their fantasies about the mountains and rivers are the mountains and rivers, then the living beings and the mountains fully realize their life together. I think they can. I think they can. Whether they can do it as thoroughly, I have a fantasy that it looks difficult for them to do it because I don't know what education programs they have. Human beings have education programs for disabusing human beings of their belief in their fantasies. And those education programs are called Buddha Dharma, even if it's not within the usual sectarian view of Buddhism.

[87:48]

Any process which helps living beings get over their fantasies about things as being them, that we call that Buddha Dharma. And I can see such training programs among humans and animals, but how much animals can follow it, I'm not sure. But I think that they do pick it up to some extent. I think sometimes animals do have ideas about things and they somehow kind of like, it seems like they get over them. Here's an example. It's a movie, right? But still, it's a fantasy about animals getting over their belief in their fantasies. So these two brothers were, I think they're Bengal tigers, I'm not sure. Anyway, they're brothers, they had the same mom and the same dad. I think they were twins. And so anyway,

[88:52]

people killed their mom and they ran off with their dad. And then, I think actually maybe people killed their mom and one of them ran off with their dad and the other one got caught. And then later, people shot their dad and the Maharaja or something that shot their dad, after shooting their dad, he had a picture, he was having a picture taken of himself with his gun, with his foot on the head of the tiger and then the tiger got up and ran away because it wasn't really dead. They shot a hole through the tiger's ear. So the tiger had an ear piercing, a hole about maybe a half an inch in diameter through his ear. So he took off. But then they caught the one other little brother. So both brothers were in captivity from early age. And one brother was raised in such a way, or he had the nature,

[89:56]

that he was more docile, which means, and docile means able to learn. So he was actually got in a circus situation where he was treated kind of meanly, but his response was to become docile and he learned some tricks. And one of the tricks he learned was to jump through fire. And animals are, again, the realm of animals is to instinctively fear some things and difficult to get overcome with fear often, but not impossible. So he learned to jump through fire. The other brother who was also raised in captivity, but raised in such a way as to make him not docile, I think what they did is they frightened him and just frightened him and frightened him and frightened him, but no let up and he became extremely aggressive and much more aggressive than any animal in the wild would be. Tremendously aggressive

[91:00]

and harsh. So then somebody had the idea of having a show of getting these two tigers together and having them have a fight. So anyway, they put the ferocious one in a cage and then they had the docile one who knew how to jump through fire. They sent him into the cage, but on his way into the cage, he saw this ferocious tiger and he, you know, he cowered down and started shaking and wetting his pants, so to speak, wetting his fur. He was just, you know, terribly afraid of this big, horrible, vicious tiger. Very afraid like animals can be. And even the fierce one was also afraid and his response to his fear was to be super aggressive. And this one's response to his fear was like try not to go into the cage. But they kept poking him and poking him and they got him to go into the cage and they got in the cage and they started fighting. And he fought to defend himself and I don't know how they did this, but they got pictures of these tigers fighting in this cage. And then they sort of like, in the movie, they show you them imagining

[92:05]

or remembering, probably through their smell, remembering when they used to play together in the trees and how they helped each other. Particularly the one who was fierce remembered how the docile one had helped him one time when he was in trouble. And then they remembered that they were brothers. And then they started licking each other and kissing each other and hugging each other. And this was very lovely. They got over their idea, they got over their idea of who each other were. Somehow that happened. They realized. And then they got another idea of who they were, but anyway, they got over that one and moved on to another one. And then people got very upset because they weren't fighting anymore. So they started poking at them to get them to fight, you know. So then ...

[92:58]

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