We chanted this vow by the disciple of Hakuin, the, you know, is-that-so guy, and as we were reciting it, as these words were coming up in consciousness, I imagined that some temptation for abiding might have arisen in someone's mind, some sticking points might have arised as you heard-as these words were going through your mind, and I-so I would say to you that it-it isn't-so can you-can you hear this and maybe-what's the word-not-maybe not bet on or not believe? Some of the things you hear, can you do that without abiding and not betting on? Can you do that without abiding and not believing? Similarly, if you believe what you heard,

[01:06]

can you hear that without abiding and believing it? These statements are statements by a kind of incandescent practitioner, very intense practitioner, who says amazing things, all of which he's not the first one to say, but I think he's speaking from his own heart and realization. He says, when I-so this is his vow and also his testament-when I, a student of the Dharma, look at the real form of the universe, all is the never-failing manifestation of the mysterious truth of the Tathagata. When he looks at the real form of the universe, that's what he sees, he sees the teaching of the Tathagata. And what popped in my mind when I heard that was,

[02:12]

one of our other ancestors was with one of his students, and she said, and they saw some birds fighting each other, and she said, what's that about? And he said, that's for your benefit. In other words, that's for you to look at. They're offering you this. If someone had been standing next to Hakuin when people were falsely accusing him and reviling him, if someone had been standing next to him and said, what's that about? What's going on? He might have said, this is for our benefit, this is for our study. We don't know it, if those people were aware

[03:15]

that they were giving Hakuin a great opportunity, and they thought, let's go get him, let's go. Our daughter's pregnant and she told us this stuff, let's go give Hakuin a big, great chance. Let's go see if he can see this as a teaching. Running up there in the temple, you're a terrible monk. But Hakuin's looking and he's saying, this is the Dharma being shown to me. This is an opportunity to see the true form of the universe. And looking that way, he says, is that so? Is this reality? That's the point of this presentation. Is this reality? In

[04:24]

his conscious mind, these people appear to be insulting me. Is this the Buddha's teaching for me? They don't seem to be happy with me, they don't seem to be... They seem to be very unhappy with me. They're telling me I'm a terrible person. I'm open to them talking like this, and I'm looking to see if this is for me, if this is the Buddha's teaching. And when they come back later and praise him, it's the same. When people are behaving respectfully and gratefully and kindly, that too. It's not just when they're being mean to you that it's the Buddha's teaching. Everybody, all day long, is an opportunity for you to look and see, is this my opportunity to hear the true Dharma, to see the true Dharma, to realize

[05:28]

the true Dharma? This guy is saying, either this is the way it is for me, when I'm spending my day looking at the real form of the universe, everything, unfailingly, is the manifestation. So the question is, when you're studying your mind, when you're studying your conscious mind, are you looking at these appearances to see the real form? The real form is that these appearances are appearances. Are you looking to be mindful of that and see that, and thereby open to the Tathagata's teaching? He's saying he wants to do that, or that he is doing that, it's called a vow, he is doing it and he wishes to do it. He doesn't mention that he maybe fails occasionally, and says, this is not a time to consider what's going

[06:31]

on as a revelation of Dharma. People think, if you look that way at, for example, the appearance of people being cruel to you, you know, that you won't be able to do anything positive in response to that, but that's not true. You can look at it and you can say, is that so? But you can also say, would you please stop talking to me that way? Or you can say, I have something better for you to say than that. Like that story of when Brer Bear and Brer Fox captured Brer Rabbit, you know that story? It's about this fox and this bear that wanted to catch a rabbit, they're all trying to catch him, and they finally managed to catch him. They caught him because he was abiding in a tar baby. You know that

[07:42]

story? They tried, you remember hearing it, but you don't remember how it goes? Yes, you don't? Can I tell her? So, they tried to catch him many times and they were unsuccessful. Finally, they had this idea of making a little sculpture out of tar. I guess they started with, maybe they made the sculpture in a cold place in the early morning and then kept it in the refrigerator or something overnight. Anyway, they put the tar baby out and he walked by the tar baby and he says, hey man, good morning. And the tar baby doesn't say anything because it's tar. And he says, I said good morning to you. And the tar baby still doesn't say anything and he kind of pokes him and says, hey, I said hello to you. And he gets tar and gets his hands kind of stuck in the tar. So then he, rather than wait just for

[08:43]

a minute and just until it melts, he tries to use his other hand to pull his hand out of the tar and gets both hands caught in, and then he uses his feet and so on. So he gets totally caught up in the tar. And then the bear and the fox come out and say, we got you. And they did get him. He got stuck. Because he was abiding in his idea of creating cordial behavior on the part of babies. So they got him and they were going to punish him. Well, they were going to eat him, but first they were going to punish him. Or one of them just wanted to ... they were going to eat him, but they weren't just going to bite into him. One wanted to throw him into hot water and cook him. The other said ... that's

[09:43]

the fox. But the bear said, I want to knock his head off. He wanted to knock his head off first. The bear had been feeling very frustrated about this rabbit for many years and was kind of like dwelling in that frustration and because of that wanted to knock the rabbit's head off. Yeah, heavy abiding in his memory of this rabbit tricking him many times so he wanted to knock the rabbit's head off. And the fox wanted to put him in the hot water. They're arguing about various things and the rabbit says, hey, please knock my head off. Please. Or throw me in the water, but please do not throw me in the briar patch. Whatever you do, don't do that. And they kept arguing. He said, oh, I'm so glad you're not going

[10:46]

to throw me in the briar patch. That's great. Whatever you do, don't do that. So they thought, even though they wanted to eat him, they thought, well, let's throw him in the briar patch first and then after he's like tortured, then we can eat him. So they threw him in the briar patch and he made sounds. He made sounds of agony and they were very happy to hear that. And then he was quiet. And then they heard somebody singing, and the song was, born and raised in the briar patch, thank you for throwing me into this nice briar patch, and jumping around out of the briar patch in ecstasy. So, when people are being mean to you, if you can be upright and not abide when they're about to kill you, it doesn't mean you necessarily

[11:51]

go along with the murder. You might. You might trick them or you just might do something so now they've done their service to you, they've threatened you, they've reviled you, they've talked about killing you, they've stuck... Now, you can do them a favor, and you can show them what you can do when you're not abiding, like Hakuin did, is that so? He showed them. They didn't get it, but later they got it, later they realized, oh, he could do that because he was not... When they were first reviling him, they said, is that so? So they didn't realize he's showing us compassion. Maybe they did, but anyway, we don't know that. And later, when he said the same thing, they might not have noticed that either, who knows? Anyway, you can show this to people, sometimes. But sometimes you can't. Sometimes

[12:57]

there's nothing you can do, other than teaching the Dharma, and they go ahead with some kind of unskillful thing, you can't stop them. And even the Buddha sometimes couldn't stop people being unkind to him, but he always could be kind to them. So there is this possibility, and this is like the same thing in your own mind. When there's reviling going on in your mind, be kind to it, don't abide in it, and then you can trick it, you can play games with it, whatever, you can do whatever you want, whatever seems to be creative and so on, you can do. Another image, if you... I could wait a while before... maybe I'll stop for a second before I give you another image, and see if you have any... I don't want to flood you with metaphors, but you can flood me with metaphors, you have

[14:00]

any metaphors you want to flood me with? Anything you want to bring up? Any questions about anything? Yes? I saw it in a movie called Song of the South. Song. Uncle Remus is telling the story. Yeah. It was when you said, in reference to being with other stuckness, and you said, yes, but the stuckness is not the stuckness.

[15:02]

The stuckness you're aware of is not the actual stuckness. Right, so... Well, for example, if you have an image of someplace of your body being stuck in your mind, that image in your mind is not the physical stuckness. It's an image of it. You can't see physical stuckness. Physical stuckness is not a visual appearance. It's a physical thing. Unless it was like, I guess... Even if you saw somebody else's body, and you saw something about the way their body was shaped, or the way they were moving, you'd be seeing an image of them in your mind, which would make you think that they're stuck. And if you feel in your own body, if you look at the way you're moving, or if you have a visual image of yourself moving, see yourself in a mirror or something, or if you have a

[16:05]

tactile sense of some sticking point in your moving, what you're dealing with in your consciousness, you're dealing with a picture of your body. You can't see your body in your conscious mind, but your unconscious process is also making images of the body, which are the basis for your conscious image of the body. I'm saying that to you. So, I have a belief sometimes, that my consciousness goes to that spot, where it's stuck, and that that's where the consciousness resides. Instead of, it's not like Grand Central... Yes, so I'm suggesting to you that you have the belief in your consciousness that your consciousness goes to a physical spot.

[17:06]

And I would say that spot, there might be a spot, a really important spot, where there's some, I would say, residual of clinging is now embedded in the body. Part of the consequences of the way we think is that it transforms our unconscious and our unconscious moves with our body, so then our body gets transformed too. So if we think certain kinds of thoughts, the consequence of that is that our cognitive unconscious is transformed, and it lives right with the body, so the body gets transformed along with it. The muscles, the nervous system, connective tissue, you know all about that, right? The endocrine system, you know, what is it, adrenaline, all that stuff gets affected by what we think, consciously. And it gets affected not directly from the consciousness to the body, but to the consciousness,

[18:08]

to the unconscious cognition. The unconscious cognition is really living close to the body, so that's a fact. Then there's feedback from that place, these places of stuck, the deities come out of the forest, into the consciousness, and they say, here's a spot. And you bring your kindness to that spot in consciousness, and that conscious act has a transformative effect on the unconscious, and the unconscious is what touches the body. Yeah, the deities are like, you know, it's like there's some stickiness in the unconscious process, you know, because it's absorbed these consequences of unskillful conscious activity, you know, like hating somebody or something like that. That's a conscious act, and it transforms the unconscious process, it transforms the

[19:13]

nervous system, okay? But a living nervous system kind of sometimes would like some help, so it cries out for help, and the cognitive process goes, and the consciousness lets this visitor come in from that space. So you do get a spot, and if you meet that spot with kindness, that transforms the place where the spot actually is. So conscious activity, but you're bringing your attention and your kindness to a conscious version of the unconscious process, which is actually in touch with the body. The consciousness is not as directly in contact, conscious mind is not as directly in contact with its support. Its support is the cognitive process, which is actually really close to the body. The part of our cognitive process is connected more directly with the body than consciousness

[20:29]

is. That's the unconscious part, which is much more complicated and fast-moving, and has been around much longer than the body. And it's much better worked out. So then, is it possible that we could be clearing from the unconscious? That's the part that the work is being done at, the conscious... But I'll tell you, interestingly, the image I have when I'm doing this sometimes is that story you have told forever about the Japanese woman in the airport watching her child. It's like that being... But she's watching the child in consciousness, and I'm watching her in consciousness watch her child. It is going to that... Right, it is going to that place. Every conscious act is going to or is permeating the unconscious process.

[21:31]

And the unconscious process is supporting that consciousness, which is concerned. But the consciousness doesn't... The way we're actually relating to each other is far too complex and rich for consciousness to deal with. So consciousness does a reduced version of our relationship. Right now we're talking, but what's actually going on is much more complex than what we are aware of. But the way we're talking to each other now has a transformative effect on the support of this consciousness. And the support of the consciousness shares the physical reality. And consciousness can go away and the unconscious process can go along very nicely, taking care of the body and the body taking care of the unconscious process. Without the body there is no unconscious process and there is no consciousness. Without a body there is no cognitive unconscious process. And without cognitive unconscious process the body dies.

[22:37]

Instantly, more or less. But you can take consciousness away, the body can go on a long time. And many animals have mind, and you can see that they have mind, but they don't seem to have consciousness, and they don't seem to have fear. But when you have consciousness, you have a sense of self, when you have a sense of self you can have self-concern and fear. We're that way, and dogs are too. Most dogs I know seem to have a self, they have nightmares, and they also have happy mayors, and happy dreams, and they can be possessive, they're definitely into being afraid and being aggressive and violent, all that stuff, very simpatico with humans. But many animals do not have consciousness, it seems to me.

[23:41]

But they have mind. So, we can transform our cognitive unconscious by the way we work with our consciousness, but our unconsciousness does not transform our consciousness. It doesn't transform it, it supports it. And what it supports is a transformation, but the transformation comes from the consciousness. Karma happens in consciousness, it doesn't happen in the unconscious. There's no self there. That's what I'm saying. This is coming to you, and you're making a conscious version of it, and you're consciously telling me how that's going. Thank you. This relationship is also why we do ritual ceremonies, isn't it? Did you say the way or why? Did you say the way or why? This mechanism, this process... It's the way, and you could say it's why, but it's definitely the way.

[24:46]

Right. So, when we make an intentional act like a ceremony, and we have lots of those, we are informing and transforming this otherwise inaccessible unconscious. It's not otherwise inaccessible. It's accessible by not practice, too. It is accessible. It's always being accessed. We're always transforming the unconscious. But there's a certain way it gets transformed when you, for example, sit, and you sit, and the message of the sitting could be, this is a ceremony of not abiding. This is a ceremony of sitting still to realize Buddha's wisdom. That conscious act transforms, accesses and transforms unconscious processes. But also, other conscious acts also do the same.

[25:49]

Not the same way, but everything does it. There are certain things we do which are gestures towards, an homage towards the inconceivable support of this consciousness. And other things that we do are saying, consciousness is real. And there's not a huge surround of unconscious processes that we don't know about. Some people think that there was a time, not too long ago, when people thought there wasn't an unconscious, in the West. In Buddhism it's been there from the beginning. Freud and other people made a good argument for that. There's something going on besides consciousness. But people before that thought that that's all there was. So all you have to do is just mess around in consciousness and just study more books and you can answer the teacher's question. You can figure out a way. But that's for a long time been not the way in Buddhism. So our rituals are kind of like saying, we're doing something in this little place to transform the huge surround.

[26:55]

And we want to transform the huge surround because that's most of our life. And that huge surround is going to make this consciousness a happier place, a more diligent place, a less violent place, a more fearless place. It's going to make it a really good place, but it's not just that, it's actually going to be liberated by the actions here that will cause a body to arise that says, you know, it's actually okay if you're free. You don't have to hold on anymore. It's fine. We don't need you to do that. The body says to consciousness, you can relax. Yeah, but you have to... In order for your body to actually tell your consciousness that it can relax, the body says, I'm ready to relax, are you? And the consciousness says, okay.

[27:56]

So then the consciousness is ready to relax, the body is ready to relax, so there's total relaxation of consciousness, unconsciousness and body. But in consciousness you have to treat the unconscious in such a way that the unconscious says, you know, it's okay if you relax. You don't have to be... I'm not afraid anymore, you don't have to be afraid. You've been so good, you can relax now. It's like... What pops in my mind is this kind of complicated story about this basketball player named Bill Bradley, who also was running for president for a little while, but I guess he just didn't have enough charisma, but he had a lot of ethical strength. And he wasn't a very good athlete, but he made a big effort to train himself, so he got to be pretty good, and he got to be the star of the Princeton basketball team. Princeton, which is usually not a basketball team on the par with Michigan and Ohio State and Iowa and North Carolina

[29:00]

and Duke and stuff, right? Duke's in North Carolina too, isn't it? North Carolina is known for having a number of good basketball teams, and Duke lost to a little company, a little school recently. But anyway, usually Princeton does not have a good basketball team relative to national standards, but when Bill Bradley was on the team, they actually got to the semifinals of the national championship against Michigan. And Michigan had on their team, anyway, one of the great stars of all time, and Michigan won. But after you lose in the semifinals, you play another team, well, you have one more game to find out whether you're second or third. And so Michigan won, and this other team won, and they played for the championship, and then Princeton played the loser of the other game.

[30:02]

I forgot what team it was, but a very good team, right? These are the top four teams. So they're playing, and they play the first, and Bill Bradley was a team player, you know? You pass the ball to the other player to make plays. It isn't just one person doing all the shooting. Even though that one person is better shot than anybody, you still pass to make better plays and so on and so forth. So they played the first half, and I think maybe they were ahead, I don't know. And his teammates said, Okay, Bill, relax. You don't have to pass. So, when he got the ball, if he had a shot, he took a shot. Not that he didn't pass at all, he just said, you know, you don't have to be a team player, you can relax.

[31:03]

So at the second half, he just shot when he had a shot, rather than always passing to other people. And he made all the shots, he scored 58 points. But I just felt like, you know, there's a time at which the body releases you. You've disciplined yourself enough so you can just let go, even of discipline. But you can't really let go, your body doesn't really want you to let go, unless you take good care of it. And the way you take care of it is in consciousness. And the consciousness takes care of it and transforms the thing that actually takes care of it. Consciousness transforms the thing that actually takes care of the body. And that process is much too complicated for any conscious mind to do. But conscious minds can do some things, like they can try to sit still, they can try to be kind to everybody, they can try to be honest, they can try to be ethical, they can try to be diligent,

[32:05]

they can attempt to do this, and when they don't, they can confess and repent, and try again. Conscious minds can do that, and that transforms the mind, which is in direct contact with the body. So then you've got the body and mind supporting ever more skillful and ready conscious minds. Yes? So, the subconscious and associated cognitive processes support, I don't know if autonomous is the correct word, the autonomous functions of the body. And that supports the conscious aspect of being. Am I right so far? Yeah. You can say autonomous, you can also say just processes that are not under conscious control. What did you say? Huh? Autonomic? Yeah. So, when there's death, the subconscious and cognitive processes stop?

[33:07]

Well, there's two levels of death. One level of death is when the heart, for example, the heart stops for a while, and there's no blood circulating anymore. Perhaps. But there still can be some cognitive process there, just that it's not operating the heart anymore. You can still see some consciousness there for a little while. What's your question? So... I say there's still some mind there, I should say. Okay. But then when you finally get through that and the second stage of death, whatever that's called, when the being is just dead, what happens to the conscious? The consciousness can go quite a ways time before, and there can just be the unconscious process. Like when a person is in a coma,

[34:10]

the unconscious process is still going on quite nicely, even when they're not eating. But the consciousness can be gone for quite a while. Well, where I'm going with this is the question of afterlife and soul, which is probably not a tremendous thought. Well, we might be able to do a very brief version of that called... Life only has birth and death in consciousness. That's where birth and death lives, is in our conscious mind. The unconscious process does not have birth and death. It's only when we look at a body from the point of view of consciousness that we think, Oh, now it's dead. You know, like this body is alive,

[35:12]

this body is alive, and this body is dead? That's the way things are in consciousness. The unconscious process doesn't think, This body is alive, this body is alive, and that body is dead. It doesn't think that way. It doesn't think. The way it's alive is not a matter of birth and death. Birth and death exist in consciousness. The way our body is right now is that it's supporting, and it's supported by everything. That's our actual life, which is inconceivable. When we make our life conceivable, it often appears as birth and death. And also my life, and your life, and not my life, that's in consciousness. And that's what Xiang Yan, Xiang Yan was the guy who had a problem with consciousness.

[36:13]

That's what he achieved liberation from. So, to try to figure out how this works is like him trying to figure out how to say something from before his self was born. To try to figure out what happens with afterlife and stuff like that is a conscious enterprise, which is fine to do, and people will talk to you about it. These chants are conscious activities. The unconscious cannot read, doesn't speak English or Chinese or Korean or anything. Consciousness is the problem, and in consciousness there's birth and death, and there's a body living and dying, and then that's consciousness. We're talking about how to take care of consciousness in such a way that the body will allow liberation from consciousness. By studying consciousness, you can become free of it,

[37:14]

which means you become free of birth and death. But the freedom from birth and death is not some new thing. It's been going on all the time. We're always free of birth and death, except we imagine it in consciousness. It's a mental formation. It's a conscious construction, this birth-death thing. But even while we're doing it, the actual life we have is supporting a mind which thinks falsely about life, that converts life into birth and death. So, nirvana, there's no birth and death. Nirvana is a kind of life where there's no birth and death. It's not conscious, but it's a mind. It's called the mind of nirvana. It's a mind, but it's not a conscious mind. It's the mind liberated from consciousness.

[38:15]

That's called nirvana, peace. It does sound like that, yeah, except it's not the mind of non-human animals. In order to realize the mind of nirvana, to realize it, it is like the mind, the mind of nirvana is like the mind of animals that don't have consciousness yet. It's like their mind. And it's also like the human mind. It's like the human mind which has consciousness and unconsciousness. It's like that too. The mind of nirvana is like everybody and everything. It's just like everything, and it's the life of everything. The mind of nirvana is the life of everything and the practice of everything and the enlightenment of everything. That's what it is. But for human beings to enter the mind of nirvana,

[39:17]

they have to kind of forget it and go into consciousness and then be kind to consciousness and then become free of consciousness to enter nirvana. Nirvana is where we come from. But nirvana and samsara, the world of birth and death and the world of nirvana are not separate. The way samsara actually is, is nirvana. When you understand samsara, that's nirvana. And the discussions of birth and death and afterlife occur in birth and death. They occur in consciousness. It's not that we shouldn't talk about it, but we should realize

[40:19]

the way of talking about it, the point of it, at five minutes to five, the point of it is to realize we're trying to become free of consciousness and free of this discussion, but that doesn't mean we don't have the discussion. It means that if you want to talk about birth and death and afterlife, we need to find a way to talk about it without abiding in the discussion. Are you ready for that? If you are, fine. But the point is not to figure this out, because this is just an illusion. It's to be kind to it so we become free of it. And that's nirvana, which is always right there. And nirvana, there is no birth and death. And nirvana also is just a thought construction. It's not a solid thing. So it's just the same. Basically, it's the same nature as birth and death. It's just that there's understanding on this side and this side, there's delusion. But they're not separate. And we need to practice in between them, which we'll talk more about tomorrow. If we happen to come here,

[41:21]

we'll talk about it. If we don't come here, it'll still be the case. We don't make nirvana, we wake up to it. Yeah? So, it sounded to me like, from what you just said and discussed, that nirvana is an undisturbed, not just human life. No, no. It's an undisturbed mind. But it's not human. It can be any kind of being. It's an undisturbed Buddha mind. Huh? No, it's a mind. It's not this... It pervades and illuminates consciousness. But it's not consciousness. Consciousness has birth and death in it. If you understand consciousness, that's nirvana.

[42:30]

But the understanding is not another consciousness. It's liberation from consciousness. But it's not separate from consciousness, because consciousness is birth and death. Consciousness and the mind that supports it. If there's an idea of birth and death, it's supported by this unconscious process. So the unconscious process shares responsibility for the consciousness which has not yet been understood as an illusion. Yeah, but the liberation of the... So if you mean... Yeah, so nirvana... If you mean liberation as undisturbed, okay, fine. But it's not the consciousness that's the liberation. No, the liberated mind can liberate consciousness.

[43:32]

It's not... Liberated mind is a mind, but it's not the consciousness. It's the liberation of the consciousness. Is it beyond consciousness? It's not really beyond, because beyond conscious is another conscious idea. It's free of being inside and outside of consciousness. It's free of all categories of consciousness. It's inconceivable. Is dharmakaya nirvana? No. Dharmakaya... To say that dharmakaya is nirvana is saying too much. But dharmakaya is the realization of life. It's understanding consciousness, and it's transforming the basis of consciousness into wisdom. But it's not another consciousness

[44:36]

that renders life into a conceivable form. Consciousness renders life into a limited place where there's a self. But nirvana doesn't eliminate the self, doesn't eliminate birth and death. It's freedom from birth and death, without touching it. It's right there with it. There's birth and death, which has consciousness, where there's a self, and that self is free of self-clinging in nirvana. And the self that thinks it can cling never could. That's why it always really was in nirvana. But this freedom is not another version of consciousness. It is freedom from the limitations of consciousness. And it lets consciousness be limiting because there's a good reason why we have living beings being the way they are. There's a good reason why each of us is the way we are, and nirvana lets us be.

[45:37]

That's the peaceful side of nirvana. It lets everybody be the way they are. Really. Can you believe that? Everybody is allowed to be just like they are. So much so that we're free of being the way we are. But that's not another consciousness. It's free. But it's not exactly beyond or not beyond. That's back in the consciousness part. Is that clear now? So I hope we can meet again tomorrow morning.

[46:13]

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