just mentioned that last week I was talking about being impressed by the Buddha mind seal. Being impressed by the Buddha mind seal. And she said, came to her that if you're going to be impressed by something, that would be good if you saw it. Is that what she said? That's great. And in fact, in fact, I propose to you, that we are being in crest right now. Actually, I wouldn't say that the Buddha mind seal impresses upon us. I would say that the way we are in crest, that the function of being in crest by the entire phenomenal world, how that works, is the Buddha mind seal. And right now, we are being impressed by the phenomenal world.

[01:06]

Or rather, what we are is the impression of the whole phenomenal world. And in order for that to occur, we must be soft. And when you hear must be, you know what we say in English, well, she must be soft. Like she must be soft, but she's probably soft. Doesn't sound like she's soft. In fact, you are soft. That's how and why you can be impressed by the full phenomenal world. What you really are is very soft. What I really am is very soft. So soft that I am always sensitive to and being created by the entire phenomenal world. And everyone's like that. However, we We have attitudes which are contrary to that. And because of these attitudes, we have trouble appreciating how soft we are. So it isn't the Buddha Mindsail that impresses us.

[02:15]

It's the whole phenomenal world that impresses us. The fact that we are the impression of the whole phenomenal world and also that the whole phenomenal world is created by us being impressed by it, that interaction, the reality of that dynamic is the mind seal of the awakening. So softness is part of the program here, the program of reality involved that a living being is very soft. Or rather, not that a living being is very soft, but that the nature of a living being is softness. Because the softness of a living being is not a living being, it's more the Buddha nature of the living being than soft.

[03:18]

Usually when I read Time for Newsweek, when they have these grand cover articles. I'm usually disappointed, but I often read them, especially when they're about Buddhism. They see what they have to say, and usually I feel that they're not very impressed, but I was impressed. I was soft enough to be impressed by an article I read. which is something about what does science have to tell us about God, or what's the relationship between God, science, and human beings. One part of that I thought was particularly relevant to this case we're on, and also I thought it was relevant to a question that came out a few weeks ago. And the part that I thought was particularly relevant was... Well, anyway, just that most evolutionary biologists now feel, although they don't come out publicly and say so, because until recently it was a taboo to say so, most of them feel that the nature of evolution is such that it was inevitable that we would be created, or that the evolution would lead to something like us.

[04:53]

And then it says, well, not really. And what they say is that it isn't that actually human beings, that it isn't like that you, that it isn't that evolution was, it isn't that it is inevitable, according to the way evolution works, that you would be formed. They won't say that yet. Or even that human species would be formed. But they do feel it is inevitable. that a form of intelligence would have evolved that would have developed the essential characteristic of human beings. And that is that the being would become aware of itself. And then the being would try to figure out how that worked. And Kim asked a while ago, you know, what's the point or what's the good of the fact that we develop this self, which then causes all this misery, in a sense.

[05:58]

Wasn't that your question? Or why we become aware of external objects? Was that your question? What would be the good of... Yeah, what's the good of self-awareness? Or the sense of self or the sense of separateness? So aside from goodness or badness, in fact, it looks from the point of view of certain biologists that it's inevitable that there's a force of evolution such to create complexity and intelligence leading to something which they feel is the essential quality of human being, namely that they're self-aware. self-referential, and caught up in that concern with how that works. And so to study Buddhism is to study this self. And I feel like a lot of what happened is that for the last perhaps approximately 3,000 years, human beings have been struggling to adapt to the evolutionary breakthrough of becoming self-aware.

[07:08]

which happened in conjunction with their awareness of death as an external thing. If you think death is external, that creates a sense of self. And we don't know exactly when this happened. There's burials, you know, quite old burial sites, older than probably 3,000 years old. So around that time, for some reason or another, death was so much of an issue to these beings, they started to have these burial ceremonies. So somewhere around that kind of awareness, and when you make that an external process, then you need to have a sense of self. And this is sort of an inevitable thing. And in the... In the myth of Amor and Psyche, you see there too happy living beings with psyches, but they couldn't know what they loved.

[08:13]

There were loving relationships between beings, between between human beings and plants, between human beings and animals, loving relationships, and maybe some, I don't know, some not so loving relationships. But anyway, at a certain point, there was rumblings in consciousness to want to know something. And that gives birth to the sense of externality and objective knowledge. It was a certain time when they call it the bicameral learning, which was done pretty much like . So this knowledge created up in the open on me, too. Yeah. So there's theories about this.

[09:18]

And one of the books is called The Origin of the Bicameral Mind. That book, although the issue, I think, is good, I guess some people criticize the anthropology in that book. But anyway, I just thought that it's interesting that, according to this article, most evolutionary biologists feel that it was inevitable It was sort of built into the nature of the way things go that this would happen, that beings would develop an intelligence that would become aware of itself, which means it would create a sense of something external. And then once that externality occurs, then there can be a sense of self. And once there's a sense of self, then you can become aware of self, and then you can study how it works. So that's what the Buddha mind seal is about. The misery the human beings experience is because of a misunderstanding of what the self is and not understanding how the self is created.

[10:19]

That's the basic cause of suffering. A misunderstanding of self. A misunderstanding of the relationship between self and other. The Buddha Mind Seal is the liberating understanding of the relationship. Now, I thought I might also mention that, so we had this story here, a story which occurred more than a thousand years ago, approximately, and more than a thousand years ago. Not a lot more than a thousand years ago, about a thousand years ago. Yeah. Matter of fact, I believe it was exactly a thousand years ago. 993 it occurred.

[11:27]

Yes. I have a question about the psychology that this person was using, saying that this was inevitable. I just get this feeling like those words are in some way like trying to rationalize in a sense like trying to rationalize death or ourselves, that it just made me think that maybe our destiny isn't to look at ourselves and accept it, but maybe that this evolution occurred so that human beings would destroy themselves. I mean, there's that possibility and it seems in some way like the author's trying to make themselves feel better by ruling out that possibility. I really got the possibility that we're destined to destroy ourselves?

[12:28]

Well, sort of... It just seems like it's part of an argument of the same type of fears that human beings have felt about death, like having the same fears that, well, maybe we could destroy ourselves and turning it around like it's this inevitable thing that that would... I don't know. I just got this feeling relating those words to our feelings about death. I'm going to make noise. Um, you're making sense, but, you know, what are we going to do with the sense that you made? Talking about nuclear wars or something like that. Are you talking about nuclear wars? No, I'm just wondering why, um, in using this word inevitable, it makes me feel like there's this inevitability that, um, that we're not here to destroy ourselves when, um,

[13:30]

I don't know. I just got this feeling like the author's ruling out the other side of it out of fear of it. Ruling out the... Oh, I see what you're saying. As though they were saying that it is inevitable that human beings would become aware of themselves like that was a positive thing. Is that the way you heard that? Yeah, just kind of turning the back on the fear that maybe we aren't going to progress in that direction, but that we might simply destroy ourselves. Oh, yeah. Well, I didn't pick up that positive tone to it. Although I think you could see it there. I'm going to pick it up just in the sense of that Whether it was inevitable that we got to be like this or not, putting that aside scientifically or theologically, what I feel has happened is that people are self-aware.

[14:40]

Everybody's self-aware, except people that have some developmental problem. Everybody's self-aware, but the self that they're aware of, or the way that they're self-aware, is not a positive thing. And as a matter of fact, the way most people are aware of themselves is a miserable awareness. And it is awareness which can ramify into great harm and cruelty among others. human beings and between human beings and the rest of the environment. So I didn't hear it that the author was saying that most biological scientists say that it was inevitable that human beings would be led to be aware of the Self and understand the Self. I didn't hear it in that tone, but you picked up that tone. What has happened, though, according to Buddhist teaching, and Buddhist history, the history of Buddhism anyway, is that human beings did become aware of themselves and the way they became aware of themselves was a very miserable situation, a very painful way.

[15:47]

Their understanding of themselves was generally very poor, very low level. Namely, they thought that what they were was independent operators. And they've been thinking this way for at least 2,800 years. We know for sure that that observation was made. Whether that was a true observation or not, it has been said for at least that long that people have been looking at themselves in a wacko way, a way that causes them suffering, and which is the basis of them having wrong likelihood, wrong view, wrong intention, wrong mindfulness, wrong speech, wrong concentration, wrong conduct, based on a wrong understanding of self. But there was another part of Buddhist history was that one person at one point in history understood the self. It finally happened that somebody did understand himself. Now whether, I don't think biological science generally agrees that it was inevitable that someone would not only become aware of self, but would become aware of the malfunctionings of the understanding of self, and by so thoroughly studying that, they would actually understand the true nature of self, be liberated and then teach all other beings about this program.

[17:04]

That I didn't hear about. You picked up on that. That's what it seems. You asked about the inevitability. I'm not sure about the inevitability, but it seems like the only purpose of that distortion, if you will, is to grapple through the suffering just to realize that it doesn't work. Yeah, and in that, I don't know if I'm hearing you, I don't know if I'm out of place, but it seems like there is no honor without that grappling. In the sense of real genuine honoring of each of ourselves, not as independent beings, but as the community that we are. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. And it seems like, I mean, when you ask the question about the inevitable, that's because I don't know about the inevitability of it. It's in my own experience, I just know that I'm here and we're here. And it seems as silly as it seems to love the distortion instead of love one another.

[18:12]

And if we're grappling with that individuality, there's only the suffering and there's not the loving. We do more respect or honor. And so we asked the question. That's where I went. And I don't know the case. I quickly read it. This came up for me last week, and really crystallized by your mention in this article, which is to be that This idea that we sort of stumbled evolutionary along the road of evolution into this concept of self. And implicit in that is that we have it and most other species don't have that self-reflexic quality. And it took people a long time to ever figure out what this faulty perception of self was. Somehow it seems like this faulty perception of self is sort of built into the awareness itself.

[19:19]

It doesn't come up the right way. It comes up with this misperception about how a whole thing works. So then last week I was thinking about animals. animals don't, you know, like my dog, doesn't have this problem. And we're, and so we're wrestling desperately with this problem, trying to figure out what's going on, but what came up last week is, well, is my dog just sitting there enjoying Poodoo Smart? And we're the only ones who really want to go out with a big problem. Well, I don't think the dog does enjoy Buddha's mind that much more than we do because dogs are so empathic that they're suffering with us. But they have no way to get out of it because they can't understand our problems. That's why we have to practice for our dogs. But they're suffering.

[20:21]

They're having nightmares because of our problems that they're sensitive to. So they aren't completely free, they're not completely happy, although they don't have our problems. Well, they certainly experience the results of our problem. But they cannot figure out our problem because they don't have language. But we're all enjoying Buddha's mind. The dogs, we're all enjoying it. It's just that we have problems. So the dog, which doesn't have an awareness of self, There's some problem there? There's not a problem there. That's not a problem. The problem is, for the dog anyway, the problem of the dog is that it suffers with us. It has pain in community with us. But does the dog claim that? No, they're not neurotic that way. So this whole problem that we have in studying and having to end up here, you know, to do something, I mean, the dog's okay.

[21:29]

I don't think they have their own problems. You're right, the dog's okay. The question is... Why do we have this problem? Why did the mind go wrong? What is it that made us go wrong? I don't think it went wrong. I don't think it went wrong anywhere along the way. I think that the way I see it is that there was, before life developed a certain way, there was no knowledge in the universe. There was no objective knowledge. There was no knowledge of anything. And therefore, there was no reflection in the universe. And that's not wrong either. That's just the way it was for a long time. Or at least a long time around here in this solar system. And that wasn't wrong. That was perfect for that time, you know. But things worked out. Things tightened down around a situation such that somehow along the way the mind developed the ability to become aware of an object.

[22:36]

To think of something external. That happened. That happened. And that wasn't wrong either. Matter of fact, it was just not right or wrong. It was just simply, you know, like a volcano or like a, you know... Did you call it karma? Huh? It's not yet karma. Karma's not there yet. But it's not yet action. This is just life. Just life. Before that, there was life too. And life had no sense of life being separate from other parts of life. And this was bliss and joy of the universe having created life. And that joyful thing went on for a long time. But at a certain point in the history of life, some beings, and they happened to be related to us, became aware of something being external. That's what I think. Then when that happened, a little sometime after that, part of what they became external of was the death of things.

[23:41]

They started to see that death was something external. They could be aware of it. And when they became aware of death, which includes all the other things that aren't them, then the sense of self was born. And that wasn't bad either. But it happened. And once the sense of self was born, the self was a thing which was separate from the external. The self was a thing which was separate from death. Death is what was the end of the self. Self was separate from its negation. So self became this precious, individual, unitary thing. And then we then developed the idea of something all by itself, alone, an identical, an identity. Now we have this another new idea, a new idea of something all by itself, a reality by itself. Then we took that and applied it to everything, including itself.

[24:45]

And that is currently well-situated in our psyche, the belief that something can exist all by itself. We have that, we have a sense of self, which is not exactly the same, and we have the sense of internal-external. These things are not actually overlapping each other, but we confuse them. They're all perfectly lawfully produced by the history of the universe. And if we can see clearly how they work, we are liberated from the process. But when we confuse something existing by itself with our sense of self, then we misunderstand the self and all this misery goes on and it won't stop this process self-perpetuating. But actually, the idea of something by itself, that something can live independent of all other things, that something can happen to you all by yourself, that you can do something all by yourself, is built on the overlapping of your sense of self with the belief of something independently existing.

[25:49]

So that's the mistake. The mistake is that confusion. That's right. Was it inevitable that we would make that mistake? I think it was inevitable, because if it weren't for that, we would be living in the realm, human beings would be living in the realm of where we are aware of things externally, and if that wasn't a problem, and if we didn't screw that up, we would lose track of another situation which is going on simultaneously, namely how it is that we're just like a dog. and that we empathize with all living beings and that we have no sense of being separate from anything. We need to be reunited with our whole evolutionary history. We need that in order to be fully what we are. But we won't do that work because that work only mildly bothers us because in fact what it is is something we've forgotten.

[26:54]

which kind of vaguely bugs us. We yearn for it. When we see children, we're reminded. But basically, it's not bad enough. By this additional confusion and creation of this thing, of an independent existence which we confuse with ourselves, we get in so much trouble that we have to solve this problem. And when you solve this problem, you get not only to solve this problem, but you also get reunion with your whole history as part of the living system. So ordinarily you're walking around, in this story of history, we reached a stage where we lost our earlier level of awareness, our sense of oneness. We lost it. But then because we lost it, we forgot it. We couldn't remember it. Then we had to get in more trouble. And we did. But solving the problem at this level, not only solves this problem, but reconnects to the earlier situation. So we get double, we get double, we have a double problem.

[27:56]

When we had one problem, we were stuck. When we had two problems, we had the possibility of solving both problems. We have no way to solve the problem, just like a dog has no way to solve the problem of suffering that we are sharing with it, because it doesn't have the problems that we have. It has to have the same problems. And we had to have these problems in order to solve our basic separation from beings. Once there was separation, we were in trouble on a low level of being at loss for some basic oneness. And we recapitulate this evolutionary thing in our lives. At some point in our life, we were one. We had to separate from the one. And we have to go into some kind of trainings. in order to actually emphasize how we have to go in training, which is like, what do you call it? It is like amplifying the sense of separation, amplifying the sense of somebody else's standards in relationship to ours. We have to grapple with that, as he was saying.

[28:59]

And then as a result of that, we come out and go back, in a sense, to this oneness. We'd go round and round until it's completely circulated through all life. This is the project. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just, you know, hard. It's like the Garden of Eden. I just feel like you tell the story of the Garden of Eden. Yeah, it's the story of Garden of Eden. So, who isn't going to be seen as an evolutionary response to a fundamental perceptual mistake? Yeah, or it's a fundamental mistake in response to an evolutionary... I was going to say there are no mistakes. The problems that you see now are very natural. Because, as you say, the Garden of Eden, the beginning of man, man was very simple. He was like that of the animal. He was not aware. As you know, man was painting before he learned to write, and he was naked before he learned that he was nude, which is basically saying man began at zero, and all there is is a growth in awareness.

[30:04]

And when you were given the gift of thinking, that started the awareness, awareness of the finite, which is of the material world. And when you become, man began to think, that sets in subjectivity, which means duality. He has likes and dislikes. He thinks of good and evil, and those things do not exist. That's what's set in the problems. Because there was the one that's at the beginning, and it's always been there. It's just that you have to become aware of it. So man began at zero, and there's just a natural growth. So becoming aware of the finite, his thinking, is very natural to settle problems, because life is not subjectivity. It's not subjective. You have to look at it objectively, like the artist, with no likes or dislikes, just as it is. That's the problems. But they're very natural. Everything is natural. Do you people think it would be inappropriate for us to take our clothes off?

[31:23]

That's your question. Pardon? Great question. Stuart? Yes, in the introduction, the first sentence says, slow away, make a chest, the rotting axe handle. While your eyes revolve in your head, the dipper handle is taken away. I wonder if you could help explicate the dipper handle taken away in the context of the sentence. Also, there's another problem there, too, which is the relationship of the image of the axe handle to the game of chess. I have trouble putting the parts of the set. Each image seems to have some value, but I don't understand the room for it. So there's an introduction, there's a kind of an introduction to this story, which says playing chess slower, kind of like, kind of sleepy, dull chess, rots the handle of the axe.

[32:39]

And can I just make it just one small thing is that, you know, sometimes in chess you can say to a person, mate in four. You know, in other words, you can predict that four moves from now, it'll be mate, and you can prove that there's no possibility for it not to be mate. But that assumes that the person who's announcing this is going to mate the moves, such as to cause the mate. that this person wants to execute those moves. So they say made in four, but often they usually don't make those moves. They just say that there's a possibility of it being made, and there's no other possibility if I make these moves. What would be the possible reason that you wouldn't? Well, you might not want to beat the person. It's just like Atari in Go. But why wouldn't you want to beat the person?

[33:41]

You might not want him to lose. You might enjoy playing. You could be playing with a person and say, now we're in a situation where I could make you in four moves. However, I'm not going to make this move such that I would make you in four moves. And the person might say, oh, that's true. If you made that move, I'd be forced to make this move, and then if I was forced to make this move, then you could make this move, which you could make, and then I'd be forced to make this move, and then you could make this move, and then I'd be forced to make this move, and then it would be checking. The person could recognize that. You could point that out and say, however, I'm not going to make that move. I'm going to make this move instead, because I want to keep playing with you. That's possible. I mean, it almost seems a little cruel in a way. I could beat you, but I'm not going to beat you. It's sort of like proving that I'm so much better than me that I could beat you, and I'm not even going to, because... Well, you could show that, too, by saying, made in four, but I'm not trying to do it.

[34:49]

I'll do this move, and then you're going to make that move, and the person makes another move. Now you might say, made in four again, but I'm not going to make this move. You keep this up indefinitely. Some people would prefer torturing the person than just ending right there. So it's not inevitable because some people are cruel and they might not promote or prolong the torture. But you're also wanting to turn around. The game could turn around, the other person could end up meeting you. There's a possibility. And it'd be exciting, too. Yeah. Isn't that a feng shui bit to me? Isn't that what, of all things, isn't that what this case is about? Did he sort of like, did he sort of like say, did he say mate in four? Checkmate in four? Is that what he said? In a sense? I'm the master. I'm going to beat you on this now.

[35:49]

But then it didn't come forth. I'm going to make a move now. My move is basically checkmate. Checkmate in two. Hmm? Checkmate. Mate in two. Mate in two or mate in one? Mate in two. Well, mate in one, actually. Or mate in two, yeah. So the teacher's saying mate in two moves. I'm going to make a move, you're going to make a move, and then it could be checkmate. But it wasn't quite checkmate, actually. It was... Well, let's do the case, okay. But before that, Stuart wants to... Yes? Maybe it was better luck next time. Can there ever really be a checkmate in a Zen conversation? Well, somebody can resign. Somebody can think that they lost. And somebody can think that they gained. And somebody can think that they gained.

[36:50]

So what's the reality of the situation? That there isn't actually a checkmate beyond your idea that there's a checkmate. Well, somehow we have to not just say that, but we have to be in a situation where we're gaining and losing. We can understand that. But there has to be gain or loss for us to verify this. So that's what we can do here now. Do you see what I mean? You're right what you said, but we have to do that in a situation where there's gain or loss to prove that. You know, Stuart's asking this question about this thing about he wants me to do something. Do you want me to do something? What do you want me to do? I would like you to help me integrate the various parts of this first sentence.

[37:55]

Slow play in a game of chess rocks the X. It seems like two separate. All right, so how are we going to play slow chess? Let's play some slow chess. How are we going to do that? Shall we do the case as the chess and watch and try to do the game as slow chess and watch the axe handle rot? Shall we do the case and watch the eyes revolve in our head And had the dipper handle taken away? All right. Is that dipper handle as a big dipper? No, it's in little dipper. Marks? The way I see that is to those who hesitate, you lose.

[39:04]

You're right. That's correct. So now, what are we going to do about that? Let's use it. We're going to do this case, and then if you play slowly, watch what happens. Do you understand what slow is? Hesitating or thinking about this case, watch yourself, see what happens. Do you know how fast or slow play is? Yes? In chess, we use a timer. You make a move, and you hit the time, and the next person looks at it and makes a move at this time. So that's fast chest. Slow chest would take away time instead of getting time to think about it and roll it over, figure it out. And perhaps that's where the mistake is. And that's a good analogy. But I think also, even with the timer, that's slow chest. We can't use any time.

[40:07]

This game has no time duration. So it's really fast. It's like somebody else is in charge of this clock. A lot of people are in charge. Everybody's in charge of this clock but me. And you. Okay? Okay, now, yes? What I heard Stuart ask you, if I heard you correct, is the dipper candle and the image is just, you know, kind of jutting, jarring, right? And the dipper candle, then there's a question about the dipper candle. What I heard him asking that he'd like you to do is to describe what that dipper is in the image. I think the teacher heard that and offered to. He just offered a particular method, and I'm capable of it.

[41:12]

This is an introduction, but it's also sometimes called a pointer. It's pointing at how to play the case. All right? So see if you can watch. As this happens, see if you can watch this happening while we study the case, which we're doing right now as I'm talking. This is my way of studying the case with you, and this is your way of studying the case with me. Is this slow play or not? Is your head rolling around, is your eyeballs rolling around the socket right now or not? Are you losing track or not? Watch it. This is an introduction for you to watch this case. Now, I thought of two ways of doing this tonight. One way is to go through the case so you have a familiarity with it. And then we could play the case where I just make the original statement And then you can respond according to your way.

[42:18]

You don't have to say what the elder said. You can say something different. You don't need to know anything about what happened before. All you need to do is be a human being and pay attention to do it. What do you think? Any suggestions? I'll just make an initial statement. as playing the part of the wind cave and then elders will come forth with their response just as they did in this case. What would you, if you were there at that time, what would you have said? If you came forth before the elder, what would you have said? He was first in the story. What would you have said? And then what will

[43:18]

I say, and then what will you say? All you have to do is what you would say. Leading out the minister at the end? You don't have to wait for the minister's line. You could come in earlier as the minister. Now, if the minister had spoken first, then the minister might have gotten what the elder got. But he got to watch. very nicely, and observe the law of cause and effect and make his comments. So that's also possible here. We could have several ministers. Right? However, the room's set up in such a way as to... I mean, it's kind of like, there's things, we need more room in the room, I think. I'm not wrong.

[44:22]

We need to... We need more mobility. We need more flexibility of movement. All right? So I think what we need to do is... Yeah, open the windows. And... Um, move some chairs out of here or something. Are you reinventing the show something? Uh, it seems to be happening, yes.

[45:05]

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