So on the board there, it says action and intention. And I think that seems like usually the English word intention, you don't think of it as an action. A lot of people sometimes seem to think of an intention as an action, even an intention to do something. People don't necessarily understand that as an action itself. Is that right? I intend to lift my arm. I intend to speak. I look inside and maybe I can see an intention to lift my arm. So, like right now, I could say to you, In a few seconds I'm going to ask you to lift your right arm.

[01:03]

And between now and then I'd like you to look inside your mind and see if you can see an intention to lift your right arm. When you hear me say, please lift your right arm, can you see the intention to lift your right arm? Or perhaps some of you can see the intention to resist my request. So when he asked to lift my right arm, I'm not going to. I have a different intention than that. But just take a moment and look and see if you can see that intention. Now I request you to lift your right arm. Thank you. Did you notice that you had intention to lower your arm?

[02:20]

When you hear me talk about this, about this intention to lift your arm, I would guess, and almost all of you, the intention to lift your right arm started to form. Is that right? Somehow in me saying this to you, this intention arose in you, and then when I asked, your right arm was raised. But the raising of that right arm included your relationship with me and the other people in the room. It wasn't something that you thought of doing all by yourself. And yet, the way you thought about that was the way your mind constructed the world in which I asked you to lift your right arm. And it looks like most of you, your minds put that together, and by the, I would say, the magic of language,

[03:28]

I said this thing, I had this intention to say this to you, and then I had that intention in me. And then from that intention this vocalization came, and because of language all of us had a very similar kind of karma. All of us had a very similar type of intention. And then all of us did a physical act quite similarly. So we actually, all of us, also made a similar contribution to the formation of the world and to a world which we share. And part of the reason why we share this world is because we did and do similar types of karma. But the root of it, the root of the action, is actually this mental construction, this mental formation, this pattern in our mind, the intention, And also another thing that I find people have trouble thinking of or actually understanding is that even when you have an intention, even when you have a pattern in your mind where you don't see a clear intention, what's not clearly defined as what we call an intention or a motivation, that also is an intention.

[04:59]

So, for example, if I would say, lift your arm, it wouldn't be as clear, perhaps, as lift your right arm. And also, if I would say, I'm going to ask you to do some kind of physical action, that wouldn't be as clear as speaking of your arm. And so you might not be... If I didn't tell you beforehand what it was going to be, you might not be so sure that you're going to be ready to do it. If you ask me to do a somersault or a backflip, I don't know if I'll be able to do it. So you might not be quite as clear that you'll be willing to go along with my request. But when I tell you beforehand specifically what it is, then when I ask, your mind can go, okay, there it is, and I feel okay about that. But still it even if you had this story in your mind about your body and my body and my speech and your action, even if it wasn't clear about what action you were going to be doing, still, that would be the pattern in your mind and that would be the kind of intention you have.

[06:19]

And that kind of intention is not very clear about whether it's skillful or unskillful, because you can't really determine it. But that is a type of action. Some type of action is hard to see, even at all, whether it's going to be skillful or unskillful. And then, as we saw last night, as Eric brought up, sometimes you look at a pattern and think, well, that seems skillful, or, well, that seems unskillful. But the skillfulness is not determined by our idea about the skillfulness. And the skillfulness is not determined by the action itself. It is a dependent thing, and it depends on its results, on its consequences. Its quality is defined by its consequence, which we can't see. Now, we imagine sometimes that things will have good consequence.

[07:22]

That's part of how we determine that we think it would be skillful, is that we think it would be beneficial. But if it turns out not to be, we tend to be less confident that it was skillful. Sometimes we feel, well, I intended it to be beneficial, so even though you tell me it's not, I still think it is. That's possible. Because by I intended, we mean I looked inside, I saw the pattern, of my thoughts, I thought it looked beneficial, so it was a beneficial intention. I thought it was beneficial. The intention was defined by the mind that had it as beneficial.

[08:23]

And I'm going to stick by that, even though you tell me it's not. And then one might say, well, is the intention to stick by it beneficial? And then again you may say, some people might say, yes, I think it is. And I would propose to you that generally speaking, I don't think it is good to stick to an intention, or stick to an intention about an intention, or an opinion about an intention, which in some sense is a discrimination about intention. I don't think it's good to do that. But I think it is good to notice if you are doing that, I think it's very good to notice if you are stuck to an intention, because noticing that is a key ingredient in not clinging or grasping

[09:30]

your intentions and your discriminations about them. As long as we are constructing these stories, and as long as we are clinging to our discriminations about them, we are trapped in that process. we feel ourselves to be trapped in that process. In other words, we can't see outside of it. And in grasping it, then the consequences of that process come back to the realm of entrapment, the realm of grasping. Being aware of the process makes possible letting go of the grasping of the process.

[10:40]

And it's not that there's not consequences anymore, it's just that the consequences do not come back... I should say, the consequences do not come back to the point of attachment, the point of grasping, because there is no point of grasping. And again, it's not that there's no consequences, it's just that the consequences don't come back to the point of grasping. Where do they go? They go pretty much to everything and everybody. And we enter that realm of where the consequences of our activity reach everybody and everything.

[11:54]

And we always were totally such a process, but we imagined that we weren't. We imagined that we were just our idea of what was going on, and we grasped that idea, and that's how it was for us. Similarly, everybody else is, all their actions are coming to us, and most people do not realize that they're relating to us that way, and we don't realize that either, and yet by letting go of the grasping to our intention, we start to realize how everyone's affecting us, too. And we become more and more appreciative and joyful about all these interactions. The key to what I just described is what I described last night as enlightenment.

[13:08]

Enlightenment is the way all my activity is supported by all of you and supports all of you. All of you make it possible for me to talk to you right now, and my talking embraces and sustains you. And your silence embraces and sustains me and everybody else in the room. Your listening embraces me, it sustains me, and embraces and sustains everyone else. The way that works is quiet. This process quietly functions moment by moment. It's in complete harmony. There's no selfishness in it. There's only generosity in both directions.

[14:12]

You generously receive and give, and you are nothing but a receiving and giving gift. However, we have, right now, if I hold to the image which I have of this process, I don't really have full confidence in the process. And if I should happen to disagree with the process and say that this isn't the way it is, I'm not helping everyone and not everyone's helping me, that thought is okay, because everyone helps me have that thought. The thought that not everyone's helping me, everyone helps me have. The thought that you're my enemy, my enemies help me have. The thought that you're my friends, everyone helps me have the idea that they're my friends.

[15:16]

I do not make these thoughts myself, yet I am a person who has these thoughts. If I cling to them, I will exile myself from the actual process in which I am born, the actual process in which I am living, the actual process of living. And once again, I said last night that although this process of enlightenment is quiet, it can talk. tell people about itself, even though the way it talks about itself is really just an indication of itself. It's not itself. Like, you can say, I'm over here.

[16:21]

But that's not, you know, when you say, I'm over here, that's not you. That's just you talking. You actually are quiet. You know, when you say, I'm over here, that's talking. But you're quiet. You're quietly sitting there. Once again, the key to entering enlightenment, entering awakening, is to pay attention to that process which creates a sense of alienation from life. So, any questions so far about what I just said? That's something we'll review. Yes, would you like to come up here?

[17:26]

You mentioned When you raised your hands, you had the intention to do so. And then you mentioned when we lowered them, did we have an intention? I think you did, but I wondered if you noticed. I did. So what role does it play when you don't actually have awareness of the intention, as opposed to when you do? Did you hear that? The role of not noticing an intention is, we call, a missed opportunity to meditate on intention. You missed an opportunity to notice something about how the world is created. And missing that opportunity then tends to... Yeah?

[18:33]

It tends to make it harder to notice again, to look again. It sets the pattern for not looking. So it has that consequence. And it also has a consequence of making it a little bit more possible that you could have misconceptions about what your intentions were since you didn't look at them. If you don't look at your intentions, you could think, well, I think they were this way or that way. And if you look, you sometimes find out, oh, they weren't that way. They were another way. Usually they'll be another way. Not totally different, but a little different. You might assume your intentions vis-à-vis your family are the same as they were yesterday. If you don't look, like, I'm devoted to my family. I was devoted to my family yesterday, so... If somebody says, are you devoted to your family today, you might say, yeah, without looking.

[19:41]

Or they might even say to you, are you devoted to your family the same way today as you were yesterday, and you might say, of course, I'm all the same. I'm all devoted to my family, and it's always the same. Well, good. Thank you. Did you look, or was that just an assumption that popped up? I didn't look, and I didn't wonder whether that was an assumption. If you look, you will notice, somewhat shockingly, that your intention towards people you're close to and far from is changing all the time. So missing that one little moment is an example of the kind of way of relating to our activity which we can call unconscious. But another way to put it is that the activity is an activity of an unconscious. It is an activity that It is an unconscious activity, but it is unconscious activity. So it really is activity and it really is cognitive, it's just that there's no mindfulness of it.

[20:49]

And it would seem that you're more likely to be stuck in if you're not even aware of it. Correct. Not being aware of it tends to promote being stuck in because And if you weren't stuck in it, and you didn't pay attention to it, that would tend to lead you to get stuck in it. So if you have moments of freedom, which can happen, where your mind's constructing the things and you're not attaching to them, if that would happen and you weren't aware of it, you would miss out on that moment of freedom, and that would make the process more likely again to slip back into getting stuck. And one finding I've heard about in neuroscience is that when a certain pattern occurs in the neural network, it tends to leave an effect. And that effect makes it a little bit more likely for that same pattern to occur again, or a similar pattern to occur again.

[21:57]

However, observing these patterns disturbs that process to some extent. And I've also heard that the older we get, the more, if we're not consciously aware of those intentions, the more those habits or patterns get established and the harder they get to break. That seems to be the, what do you call it, just observing people's behaviors and meditations. And so that's one of the reasons why older people are interested in meditation, because they sense often that their mind and body are getting stiffer and stiffer. And younger people don't feel so much pressure to counteract the stiffening that comes from not meditating on our actions.

[23:07]

So I'm suggesting to you the story that the more you meditate on your action, the more flexible you will become. Or at least the more you will counteract the rigidity of mental and physical habits. And another part of that process would be You don't try to counteract the rigidity. You just pay attention to the rigidity. You don't try to counteract the grasping. You just notice the grasping. But trying to counteract the grasping is another kind of grasping. It's discriminating between grasping and not grasping. and being caught by that.

[24:09]

Not necessarily acting on it, but just being caught by it. But just observing it, including being caught, is not another action for aspiration. Yes, please come up. So am I hearing you say that the grasping, like when I recognize my rigidity about something, that if I try to fix that by relaxing or breathing, I try to alter that, I think I need to alter this, that's actually grasping? No, not quite. If you notice grasping and you think of relaxing when you notice grasping, Okay? Right? She notices some grasping and then she maybe thinks of relaxing.

[25:15]

She's saying, is that thought of relaxing another kind of grasping? I'm wondering if that thought of relaxing is actually grasping. Yeah. So is the thought of relaxing actually grasping? And it could be... The thought of grasping also could not be a thought of grasping. The thought of relaxing could also be not a thought of grasping. It could just be a thought. Relax. It could just pop up. But if that thought of relaxing was a thought which is trying to come in with, I want to get relaxing, I want to get relaxed, And also the thought of relaxing is, noticing relaxing is different from this tension. Now, if I notice that this thought of relaxing is different from the state I'm in, and I grasp that discrimination between the two, the grasping is not relaxing.

[26:31]

Because I'm stuck. You're stuck in the discrimination between grasping and the way you are. So you feel in some way, let's say you're feeling tense, and you thought, relax, just pops up. Like one time I was, I think I was in Japan, and I heard this phrase come up, this Japanese phrase come up in my mind, which was, I thought, oh, I thought, what does that mean? It just passed through my mind, but I'm kind of wondering what it meant. I thought, what does that mean, and what does that mean? Oh, I know. It means I'm thirsty. And I thought, oh, and I am thirsty. Right? I didn't think, okay, now I'm going to say in Japanese, I'm thirsty.

[27:36]

I didn't think that. But in fact, I did think that. I didn't think it, but I did think it. In other words, something about my body gave rise to this Japanese expression, and I didn't even know what it meant when I became conscious of these words. But something in my body conjured up And it had something to do with me being thirsty and being in Japan and studying Japanese. And this thing came up and I didn't know what it meant. And I looked at it and I said, oh, I am thirsty. So sometimes when you're tense, the word relax comes up. Which, something helped me about that, relax. Then if your mind discriminates between the word relax, and the feeling of tension, then that's another image of what I was doing. Now, if you get caught by that discrimination, that being caught is not relaxation.

[28:37]

So, I'm hearing you say... I'm going to try to remember this. I'm hearing awareness versus... What did you use? Being stuck, you used, don't you? Discrimination. Discrimination, because that thought went from awareness to getting involved in... Analyzing, discriminating. So it's removing from yourself. Awareness and discrimination. There's a difference. Now, there can be discriminating awareness, and there can be awareness that there's a discriminating awareness. But that awareness can be such that it doesn't actually grasp discrimination. So you can feel a certain way, and the word relax can come up, and then you can think, oh, yeah, relax. And that word, that feeling, whatever, that intention, has an effect of relaxing.

[29:47]

You feel relaxed without trying to do anything. Just the arising of that is a new state. Now, you can also then, and you can be aware of that. You can notice, oh, I was just sitting here, and the word relax came up in my mind, or somebody said relax, and my body relaxed. Or like I also just thought of, sometimes women who are nursing, they just see a baby, to be somebody else's baby, they just see a baby and their breasts express milk. Just by seeing a baby. They didn't think consciously, I'm going to express milk. But something in there actually wasn't just a, you know, the body and mind, something, the eyes see the baby or smell the baby and its milk comes. This is like, you know, not really a big problem in a certain way.

[30:47]

Seems quite natural. breasts, babies, you know. But you can get in there and tell a story about that and grasp discriminations, right? And if you notice that discrimination, being aware of those discriminations and learning about those discriminations will promote not being caught by that, not grasping. Then, even though... Even though... So then in a situation where you're in a relationship to somebody and you start expressing yourself to them because of who you are and who they are, like expressing something nourishing to them because of who you are and who they are, and making discriminations about that, being aware of discriminations and thereby not grasping them, entering into this process, of freedom from your discriminations, by noticing, you become one with freedom.

[31:50]

So you notice them, you don't start getting to make a distinction? No, you notice the distinction. You start thinking the distinction? Well, first of all, you notice discrete distinctions, you notice distinctions, you notice distinctions, you notice discriminations, you know them, you know them, you notice. You notice good, you notice evil, you notice good, you notice evil. Primarily here. Not so much out there. You notice, you notice, you notice, and then you notice, are you clean? Are you clean? And there's plenty of this to notice. But we don't. You have to be able to be aware of that to let it go. You have to be aware... in order for it to be released. You don't really do it yourself, and the other one... You don't do it yourself and nobody else does it for you, you do it with everybody, actually. And that's what you get to see.

[32:52]

By noticing how you let go of your clinging, or how the clinging is released, or how you release your clinging to see how that happened, you also get to see it without doing it by yourself. And also nobody else does it for you, but that you do it together. The key, though, is to tune into the distinction-discrimination process that's happening around every moment, every intention. So the intention is something you can tune into. Then you can tune into the quality of the intention, which means you're tuning into your discriminations. And the discrimination is a place where you start to get grasping in the process of storytelling, of intention creation. Noticing this, that sets the stage for letting go of distinctions. And if you don't let go of the distinction, you're probably going to make a story. Even if you let go of the distinction, you still will make stories.

[33:55]

You still make stories. But you're telling stories now in the realm of enlightenment, where you realize everybody's helping you tell the stories. and your stories are supported. Whereas before that, you're confined by your stories, trapped by your stories, grasping your stories, grasping how you feel about your stories, and feeling like you're doing a... well, actually feeling like they're... not just feeling like you're doing it yourself, but feeling that they're true, and also Feeling your story about how they're happening is true. Not isolating. Isolating. Isolating and exiling. Exiling yourself from your relationship with people. In a sense, you're inviting people into your story. The process of meditation is to invite people into your story.

[34:59]

And your story actually is a story of how your relationship is. So our stories are stories about our relationship with everybody, and our stories are that my relationship with everybody is that I don't invite them into my story. I just invited everybody into my story about my relationship with them, and then I said I didn't invite them. Please go away. Please go away. Now, I just invited you into my awareness. I just made a mental, cognitive picture of my relationship with you, and I invited you, And I invite you in and in the picture I say, you're not welcome. And we do that because... We do that because... You're asking me? I think we do it because of... Fear? Fear, yeah, fear, that's right. Fear. I think fear is related to reproductive advantage.

[36:13]

Now you have a mask. In other words, I think we create these stories because those who can create stories have a reproductive advantage over those who can't. And I think as animals, as animals in the biological world, I think that making these stories have been advantageous to being able to, for people who have it, to reproduce. Survive? Well, not so much survive. Well, survive... I also think it's about fitness, I think. It's survive up to the point of reproduction. After that, it's questionable why we, After-life survival is, in some sense, biologically not very important. Or I should say it's questionable why we live after we're done reproducing. I guess we keep living, especially, I think, after, like, it's almost impossible to reproduce. We live even beyond there. But you never know when you might possibly be able to have another debut.

[37:21]

But I think that's where it comes from, I think. I think we were made by the universe. Living beings are made by the universe. And I think that the universe's long-range project is to make living beings so that the universe can have living beings in it. And the living beings, in order to keep going, They sort of have these storytelling devices, and some of this stuff helps reproduction, but makes for unhappiness and suffering. And so this meditation is about how living beings who are really into reproducing, who are built for reproducing, who are suffering and cruel to each other, especially to people who are not genetically related to them. And it even spreads into the relationship with people who are genetically related. Like parents sometimes kill their own children. The children killing the parents isn't such a problem biologically.

[38:26]

But the parents killing the children just is really like not only not happy, but it's really weird. But it can happen because of these stories. So the stories are necessary in order to perpetuate this. Yeah. It's illusion, whatever. It's a physical world. You call it reproductive. No, no. Stories aren't so much... I think the stories are given advantage to the storyteller. In that sense. And however... then when the storyteller tries to believe these stories, they start to become less peaceful and more unhappy, more violent, more... However, stories are created, I think, out of fear in the first place, but it doesn't get rid of the fear.

[39:27]

But I think we... Kind of contradicts itself. Kind of contradicts itself. Yes. It's a pretty strong pull. Strong pull? What's a strong pull? What you just discussed. You know, this physical world of reproduction, that's what I'm hearing, the biological self, that says, I'm here to reproduce. I'm here for ego or whatever. When I see something else, then I feel fearful, and I'm going to hold on to that, because that's what I really believe I am. And so I'll keep doing the same thing in order to protect, because that feels better somehow to me. But it really causes us grief. And it ends in accord with biological reproduction. But it does cause us grief, yes, to say the least.

[40:34]

It causes a lot of grief. This time? Yes. Okay, I was with you right until biology came in, and I think it was sounding to me like that was the story that gets to explain the other stories instead of being a story that we weave, that we want to not grasp and hold on to. And so I was puzzled, because it sounded before like you were really talking about wanting to have stories and move back from stories, but that this reproductive imperative sounded like that was the story that was even explaining why we made stories. So that's my question. Well, that's good points.

[41:39]

And how can we deal with that? I agree with you that it sounds like a story, and I don't want to treat that story any differently than any of the other stories. So why tell that story? I would agree with you that that story is not any better than any of the other stories.

[42:45]

And it may be a story trying to explain the origins of stories. But I wouldn't want to say that that was any truer than any of the stories that that story has said to me. But anything more real than any of the other stories, I wouldn't want to do that with that one either. It seemed to me that the part that I liked was the sense that we're trying to understand ourselves as living beings and part of the animal world, and that even though there's a delusion of thinking I'm just in this body, that there's something about the life of the body to understand. Yeah, so it was only the point where it seemed to be the story that trumped other stories that I had questions. It seems like one of many stories that we could work on, but... And I mean, I'm not wanting to say it's less than other stories either, just that it seemed to emerge in a way that surprised me. I didn't mean to trump the other stories, and I didn't mean it to trump our learning about stories rather than, you know, trump learning about stories, meaning that in this case we should believe this story and not learn about this story and not get over this story.

[44:04]

This is a story also to get over. But it's a story that particularly relates to why do something that causes so much trouble, I guess. And there's a trade-off for doing this troublesome thing. So there seems to be a trade-off of advantage for this person to ignore their relationship with other people. So that's a story about about a living being deluding themselves for some possible advantage to themselves by ignoring their relationship with other living beings. Like when the Japanese... Here's a story about the Japanese that

[45:07]

I think in the 19th century, they still had a lot of respect for China as a place where their culture, to a great extent, came from. Now, they had a Japanese culture before the Chinese, but the Chinese culture brought them lots of wonderful things, like Chinese characters and ceramic arts and things like that, temple construction arts. All these things came from China. Japanese generally respected China. saw Chinese people as their Asian family. But then in order to conquer China and colonize it to some extent, to get some resources that they wanted, they started to talk about how they weren't connected to Chinese, how they really weren't closely related. And it was this big propaganda thing about how the Chinese are Asian, but really they're not. doing their job properly, so we have to go help them.

[46:11]

And the fact that they're not inviting us to come over doesn't really matter, because we're not really in the same family anymore. So if we live in a world where we're all in the same family working together, getting advantage over anybody else in the family is kind of hard to get at. Taking something before anybody doesn't make any sense. Even each other, as Rumi said, doesn't really make any sense in the world of our actual relationship. But then we kind of like certain things we can't do if we can't even get at each other. Some part of us wants to get something. There's something about that that has developed in living beings, to get something for me. And when we look at animals, we think, oh, they think that too.

[47:20]

Well, they also have consciousness. They can also tell stories, to some extent, about, get something for me. About, you know, this is my area here on the beach, you know, for me and my pups. Get away. I watched the female elephant seals, you know, establishing their turf on a beach. So there's something like that. There's a story about how we create these senses of separation and ignore our interdependence, it seems like, in order for certain other things to happen. And then these become writtenized and believed. And we do it. And this process, unobserved, unsupervised by a mindful being, goes on cognitively in an unconscious realm.

[48:22]

And if unobserved, if unacknowledged, unobserved, not brought out in the light, it just keeps going and becomes heavier. And also not looking at it tends to make the observing potential of the being who's involved in this become less and less skillful. So then even if the being wishes to look at the process, it's hard. And the process gets, generally speaking, gets stiffer and stiffer and stiffer. And then stiff means constricted and painful and frightened and violent. Even though it's getting constricted, like, you know, some people, they barely can walk, but they can send out large groups of people to murder each other. The leaders of countries who are getting tighter and tighter and more and more afraid, because they're functioning in the system in an unhealthy way like that, they just get more and more crazy, and more and more violent, and more and more afraid, and more and more violent, and more and more afraid.

[49:39]

So we have these archetypal figures, in a way, of this process, like in world history. The most frightened people are the heads of the countries. Emperors, dictators, presidents, the heads of countries are the most frightened, most isolated, and they're at the core of the violent process which comes from this ignorance. So now the question is, how to antidote this? And so there's a story about that. The happy story is by watching this process, it can be reversed. Yes. Yes. Before we get to the antidote, when Nancy came forward with the question about the biological story, I was also having a question about it.

[50:43]

Yes, I felt Nancy back there with her question. It seems like where I was wanting to, what I wanted to look at about it was the biological story makes it seem like although the advantage to the storyteller has this reproductive advantage, that sounds kind of like an individual situation. But it seems like there's something other than personal biological reproduction involved in the story that you're telling about. It becomes not only the family reproduction, but the local culture and the larger culture or the institution or the organization. I mean, it's kind of at all levels of social organization. so that even someone who might not identify with this story in terms of biological reproduction could recognize it on these other levels of self-extension.

[51:51]

So that was just what I wanted to... Yeah. So it's a more subtle story than it might sound at first, it seems. Yeah, in some ways, the... A physical body is easier to see sometimes than a group body. A cultural body may be harder to see. So that's Samarasana starting here, and then learning how to extend it to larger and larger realms. Uh, so the word relationships has been popping into my mind, sort of like I'm thirsty was popping into yours, maybe.

[52:52]

Give me a second. Yes, are we doing something? Jean or Linda, could you bring another, uh, cushion, Zabotan over here? There's an extra one. That would be nice. I have to, uh, Yes. Closer to the mic. Oh, my. This is quite close to the mic. The bearer of the mic. Oh, well. Posterity. I don't think... Is this working? It's not just posterity. It's got actually a person there. Oh, great. So I should get... It's not posterity. Face recognition. So the word relationship, relationship, does this make a difference? Oh. was popping into my mind last night and even more today.

[53:58]

And maybe you said the word relation or relationship, and so it's planted there, but it's now popping up on its own. And then the comments about sort of evolutionary advantage makes me think, All these words seem static up here, but you're talking... I actually didn't say evolutionary advantage. I said reproductive. The evolutionary advantage is the study of the stories. It's advantageous Studying these stories of relationship is evolutionarily advantageous, I would say. If you call advantageous that which makes beings in harmony and peace. And not studying these stories, the storytelling that's going on, it serves another certain purpose, I would say. But the storytelling does not serve the purpose necessarily of peace and harmony.

[55:03]

Studying the stories, however, does serve peace and harmony. That's my main point here. Some stories seem to be really designed to cause trouble for somebody. I think my question isn't so much about the story as about our relationships to our stories and our relationships to each other and the relationships of these together. And the stories are primarily about relationship. But you can also talk about your relationship to the stories. There's two things. One is, I'm saying the stories are stories about relationship. And second, that then the question is, how do you relate to the stories? And I'm suggesting that you learn about them. And they are about you and the world. I mean, your story is about you and the world. Well, there was some... Like I observed, even going back to the first intention to raise our arms, so I'm sensing like movement.

[56:17]

So when you said, I'm going to ask you to change your arm, I think my mind formed a picture of my arm going up that was actually different from how our arms went up. And someplace in there, I guess my intention changed as I saw arms going up in a certain way. My intention changed from following the request to being in relation with everybody else in the room, I think, is the story I'm telling myself about why my arm picture went from here to here. I have a story. You were observing your intention. And when you observed your intention, you saw your intention was changing. If you hadn't been observing your intention, you might not have noticed. My story is, if you hadn't observed your intention, you wouldn't have noticed that your intention had changed.

[57:19]

Now, you could think, all my intentions change. That's something you could think right now. But that's just a theory. To actually see your intentions change, you have to look at them. So June was looking at her intentions and she saw the change. That's one of the things you'll see. If you start looking, you'll see your intentions are changing, moment by moment, even about a generically ongoing topic like lifting your arm. So you saw that. That's an example of the difference between watching your intention and just being unconscious of it. So that was it. Yeah, and we're talking about how do you relate to your stories. So you had these stories and you noticed your story was changing. And during that time that you noticed that, you were doing what I'm recommending is the antidote to the problems of human life.

[58:26]

I'm trying to decide if to use the word felt, but it felt connected to have the story flow to be in keeping with my... I don't want to use a discriminating word, but I feel like it's sort of my deeper intention is to connect and feel a part of this group, even more than left or right. Yeah. And so there was like a deepening of intention. So there wasn't just, there was movement, which I sensed, which usually I don't. So you're exactly right. Usually it's just like, boom, right to the spot. So there was movement and there was more authenticity to what finally came out of my postural change. And that's the direction from simple to more complex that we're going.

[59:36]

I don't know that last part. I don't know if that's the direction. Well, whatever. I don't know. I didn't see that direction. I don't know. I didn't quite follow the direction. Simple to complex was there. You know, in a way, one simple to complex is simple is... Give attention. That's kind of simple. Complex is your actions. So you give attention, which is quite simple, to what? To your actions, to your intentions. Those are not simple. Because in there is, well, it's as complicated as your mind can be. It's right there, every moment. Your mind is as complicated as it is. So I'm saying simply turn your attention to this very potentially, almost infinite, not infinitely, but anyway, a small size infinity of possibilities there of relationships.

[60:39]

Study those. And studying those will lead to opening up to something which is beyond cognitive enclosure. If you come up here, you'll be able to hear really well. You've figured out my real intention. I saw a film last week on the Nature Channel and different pieces of coral in the same area as they grew and they got closer and closer when the one coral, and I don't know their names, detected.

[61:48]

Bill. I'm sorry? Bill. Bill and Sammy. Bill detected the closeness of Sammy it reached out and enveloped it and destroyed it. So he had the reproductive advantage. And if that's, on that level of life, if that's the instinctual thing to do to preserve themself... By the way, one synonym for instinct is adaptation. I'm sorry? Sometimes I find it helpful to, when I hear the word instinctive, to say adaptation or adaptive. OK, so this coral is trying to extend its genetic process. And that involves consuming another coral.

[62:49]

And on a... on the level of humanity, of human beings sort of doing the same thing. Seems like they've been doing something like that for quite a while. I'm not exactly sure how to ask this. In being aware of being able to be a different way and not just preserving yourself, as we see in the world right now with the aggression. It's like a higher level of perception to realize you're part of, everything's part of one another. It seems like it's higher on an evolutionary thought process. You could say higher, but you could also say actually more accurate. But aside from better and more accurate, you can also say it releases beings from suffering.

[64:02]

You can also say it makes it possible to be fearless. And it makes possible joyful service to those with whom you see you're related. It makes these things possible without saying better or higher. You can do that. But you can also just say what can happen in one kind of consciousness and what happens in other kinds. And this consciousness that you're open to is a consciousness that you actually... You don't really have a story about it. You're just happy to realize it. But you then can tell a story about it. You actually give up your stories and enter it. And when you enter it, then you can perform acts of kindness and you are free of certain kinds of emotions like hatred, confusion, greed, and fear. But you still have a sense of... you're participating in a process of embracing all beings and enjoying them embrace you.

[65:15]

This is what's possible. You can call it higher or deeper or whatever, But it is enlightenment. That's what we call enlightenment, is to be in that, to realize that way. It's also called a way. The Chinese character for enlightenment is also a character for the path. It's a way of living with people that opens when we become free of our stories. And you could say it's a higher perception. You could say that. No problem, but... it's actually being free. In some sense, what I'd like to point out to you, it's being free of the distinction between high and low. So, now, if we call that high, that's okay. And we can call low, you know, having a mind which is, all I care about is me, and anything that helps me, and anything that doesn't, I would just assume I don't care about. I just don't care about it. There's a lot of stuff I don't care about because I don't see that it helps me. We call that lobe.

[66:16]

We call this other thing high. That's fine. I don't mind. Somebody else can reverse them. Okay. What I'm saying is that you aren't caught by the distinction. Either way, you enter the realm which you could call high if you want to. Now, calling it rare is, in some sense, I would say, you know, again, I make the distinction, calling it rare would also be okay, because it's rare. But if I get caught by the distinction between rare and common, that's common. Not to be caught by the distinction between common and rare is rare. And we have the capacity, I propose to you, to have at least moments of not being caught by the distinction between rare and common, good and evil, self and other, Buddha and not Buddha, and so on.

[67:17]

Christian and Buddhist, Muslim and Jew, we have a possibility of not being caught by those distinctions. When we do, we enter this realm we call the realm of enlightenment and actually living it. And it has these wonderful qualities of not being caught by the wonderful and not wonderful. and it has qualities of compassion. Wisdom is pretty much the same as not being caught by distinctions. The kind of wisdom we're talking about here is not just discernment, but discernment to such a point that you're not caught by distinctions anymore. So there's wisdom, there's compassion, there's fearlessness, there's total devotion to everybody, to every living and non-living being, total devotion, and feeling totally supported by it. this capacity is available to those who get over discrimination.

[68:22]

And you can call that high if you want to. Or Fred. Okay. And you can also say that the enlightenment is In a sense, it's a cognition. It's a kind of life. It is not like something looking at something else. It is actually the way we are together. And the way we are together is consciousness, because our bodies interacting with other bodies, that dance is consciousness. So in some sense, the highest consciousness is that consciousness of how they're working together and supporting each other, that type of consciousness. That's a different type of consciousness from the consciousness that arises from some part of our body interacting with a particular part of the physical universe.

[69:34]

That's a certain type of consciousness. and that consciousness comes with storytelling, and so on. Not being caught by the distinctions of that consciousness that arises as our body interacting with the world, not being caught by the discriminations that that consciousness can do, opens to a consciousness, an infinite consciousness of perfect peace and harmony, and where there's no concern or advantage over this body over another body. Or this body getting together with one body, rather than all bodies. So this body is concerned about getting together with one or more bodies, but not all bodies. And we have to deal with storytelling around that, and not be caught by it. Because if we're caught by that,

[70:34]

afraid and at risk of violence. Almost always afraid and at risk of violence all the time, too. But we're not at risk of violence. We're just doing it. We always can be violent if we're afraid. It's possible. Not everybody is. But almost everybody's on the verge of it all the time. You just poke them a certain way and just swatch it. You know, if you poke them just right. And it'll be an attentional act coming from fear. Still, this person, this person who's in this little trap, is actually in this other way with everything that they don't see, because they're caught by their discriminations. And this person is just like you.

[71:37]

This person has this tendency to be trapped by his or her consciousness and therefore afraid and on the verge of violence all day long. But this person also has the potential to leap free from this by meditation on this, by being aware of this constricting process possibility of leaping beyond it is realized. I would like to confess that I have a tendency to story tell in which the ability to make distinctions is of great value.

[72:39]

You should say it once more. I confess that I storytell in which the ability to make distinctions is of great value. OK. So you say you have a story in which being able to make distinctions is of great value? Yes. And I listen and I follow it then like a rubber band. I snap back into it. But you have to be able to. I need to be able to make my distinctions. I need to make the distinctions between the good and evil. You do. You do. That's true. Because the universe made you somebody that's that way. So you need to be the way you are. And not only that, but as you know, Some people who make distinctions are inconceivably adorable. Don't you just love some people who make distinctions?

[73:43]

And isn't it just so beautiful to watch them do it? From the time they're just tiny little things until they're musicians and physicists and poets and dancers. These distinction makers are totally lovable. All of them. And when you're doing that, you're like totally lovable in doing these distinctions. They're totally wonderful. Life is wonderful. And beings that make distinctions are wonderful and totally worthy of love. And they're also, if they're caught by the distinctions, they're miserable. So then they're totally worthy of compassion. So we appreciate them. and we love them, and if we're that way we appreciate ourselves and we love ourselves and are compassionate towards ourselves. Compassion, the love doesn't necessarily lead to meditation, but the compassion does. The compassion says, Oh, this person's got a problem.

[74:45]

This wonderful discriminator has a problem. She's clinging to her discriminations. That part is not necessary. But anyway, when it happens we love the person anyway. Even though they're hurting themselves, And we have medicine for them. If they will pay attention to their discrimination process and notice where they're clinging, they will not only continue to be a beautiful discriminator, they will be not caught by their discriminations, and then they will be even more wonderfully helpful to other people who are caught. But it isn't at all that we don't appreciate discriminators and discrimination. We do. In fact, appreciation is a very good way to become free of it, of clinging to discriminations. Appreciate all of them. So again, nondiscrimination-wisdom or nondiscriminating wisdom of the Buddhas is not to not discriminate and try to eliminate the process of discrimination.

[75:53]

It is actually to learn about all discriminations. So that's another story which now says, yes, we appreciate the discrimination, but we also want to learn about it. And not just one example, but all examples, because just doing one example or six examples would be discriminating among them. So you want to practice non-discrimination towards your discriminations. In other words, study them all. Love them all. Care for them all. And then you'll become free of them and clean to them. But don't get negative about them. That's being caught by a discrimination. To think maybe that they're junky, crappy discriminations, that's okay. To think that they're high or rare or low or whatever, that's okay. Just don't get caught. How do you not get caught? Through meditations.

[76:55]

Yeah, through meditating on it. You can come up this way. You take the direct approach. It's more related. I shouldn't say more related. It's not really more related. It's just that this is one way to relate, and that's another one. You could walk around several times after that. See, there's no way to get away from a relationship. Let me ask a question. Sure you want to use this? Sure. It's okay? Not too close. Last night, you told us a great story about when you were 13, and you were in the throes of a teenage relationship, and you decided kind of the way out of it was to be kind. which seems pretty remarkable at 13.

[77:56]

As you've grown in awareness and enlightenment, what's changed about that story? Is it that you don't suffer from it, or has kindness changed? What's changed? Well, the story remains an example of seeing what you think would be helpful, and then trying to practice it in relationships, and then losing it. So it's a story to tell you simply that when you see something that you really think you kind of know would be good, when you actually start relating, it's hard to remember. So it's saying to you, it's hard to learn to do this. It's not too hard to think of some good thing, that would make your life, that would revolutionize your life. That's not exactly hard or easy, that's just a gift. But then to put this gift to work in daily situations is, I'm just saying, don't expect that it's going to be easy.

[79:06]

In fact, know that it's normal for it to be hard, and so if it gets hard, don't get depressed about it. That's not going to help. What's going to help is confess that you slipped, confess that you slipped, confess that you slipped, confess that you forgot what you really wanted to do, confess that you forgot what you really wanted to do, do that over and over and go back to your work. So that part of the story has been the same all these years, and I'm still practicing this difficult thing. Another story which happened the year before, when I was 12, was I was doing some... what you call it, evil things. And I got a lot of social reward for it. And a big strong man said to me, you know, it's easy to be bad. It's hard just to be good. And I thought, oh yeah? So that's one of the conditions which led me to think, I'm going to do this good thing.

[80:11]

I knew it was easy to be bad, actually. So that's another story about it. And to do good, you have to pay attention. So what's changed is, I don't know what changed. Let's see. Everything changed, and I don't know what changed. But I'm still talking about that same thing, about just be kind and try to do good. I guess one thing that's changed is now I realize that the point of being kind and doing good is not just to be kind and do good. That's not the whole point. Now I know that the point is to get over the distinction between being kind and not being kind.

[81:19]

and to get over the distinction between being good and not being good. That's the point of doing good and being kind, is to get over the distinction. Say more. Huh? Say more. Because even if I was sort of... It was a good idea to just go to school and be kind, but it's so hard, you know. And even if you get better at it, just keep being hard. And you still kind of like, even though you're trying to be good, you still feel separate from the other people at school. And you're still afraid, even though you're trying to be good, and you're even afraid of not doing good. Which you might say, well, that's good. And you might be afraid of doing bad, and you say, well, that's good. But then also you do bad because you're afraid. That's not good. Anyway, this realm of doing good and avoiding evil It's not the whole story. The whole story is that when you get over the distinction, you realize they're not separate.

[82:24]

And then you can actually avoid evil and do good. Because you never hate the evildoers and prefer the good doers when you're free of the distinction between them. And that is good. And preferring the good people over the evil people is not good. Because really you don't prefer the evil, the good over the evil. Some people prefer the evil over good. They know they're not supposed to, but they do. They just love evil people. And sometimes they hate good people. People get all these messes, right? When you become free of the distinction, You don't hate anybody anymore. You love everybody. You're not afraid. And you do do good and avoid evil, but not the way you did before, which was by being caught by the distinction.

[83:31]

So that's part of what's changed, is that understanding. So when I first did it, I was just trying to do good and avoid evil, and it was really hard. There was some success, but it was really hard, and I expected it to be hard. So, and it was. But I didn't understand the thing about getting over the distinction until recently. So that's the difference between this class and another class of somebody who's coming just to teach you how to do good and avoid evil. I'm not doing it just to do that. I'm doing it so you'll get over the distinction between them. and not just somebody coming here and telling you to help yourself and help others, or help yourself in a way that will help others, although I am saying that. Help yourself in a way that will help others, yes. Help others in a way that will help you, yes. But the ultimate point of this is to get over the distinction between helping and not helping, and self and others.

[84:42]

That's the ultimate point. Because until then, it's very fragile and easily lost, this project of good and avoiding evil. Because you have to work at it. It doesn't come naturally from who you are. So once you have nondiscriminating wisdom, then this comes naturally from there. And so it's more effective. Not to say that you're not helping people already. You are. You just can't see it fully. Because you see it through your stories. You see it through your intentions. But when you see it fully, beyond your stories, then you're fully functioning.

[85:46]

You've realized your potential. And you can help other people do it, too. In that way, we together can make the enlightened, we can realize enlightenment. So that's what's changed from the 13-year-old. The 13-year-old didn't get this point. One gets over discrimination by seeing the mixture of good and evil, or one gets over discrimination by expanding good? Well, first of all, it's not so much the mixture of good and evil, but the interdependence. They're not really mixed, actually. They're inseparable. They don't... They don't melt into each other, they're just not separate. The inseparable interdependence of good and evil you see if you study them. If you study the rare and the common, the high and the low, the good and the self, as you study these, which means as you study your stories of these, you start to see that things you separate are inseparable.

[86:54]

And you start to see that neither side are graspable. And that's losing the discrimination. Not losing it. Letting go of it. Because, again, non-discriminating wisdom is not not discriminating. It's studying everything. Or you could say loving everything. It's not liking everything. It's loving everything. It's giving everything your complete Undivided devotion, attention, respect, appreciation, everything. And that includes all your discriminations. When I give Gary my attention, there's some discrimination that I gave it to him.

[88:04]

A little bit of a thing there. When I give you my attention, there's some discrimination, because I'm giving it to you rather than the bell. But I do the same with the bell, and the same with the floor, and the same with the foot. That's the way of non-discriminating wisdom. You don't like to come up? You don't like to, though? You're so shy. It's probably just a story. Well, your shyness is not just a story, but your own story of your shyness.

[89:11]

And your story of your shyness, if you hold to it, makes it hard for you to see your real shyness. Okay, go ahead. Your real shyness. The shyness which the Buddhists see is the shyness which embraces all beings and which all beings embrace. It's a wonderful thing. It's totally wonderful. And you have a story of that shyness, which, I don't know, you can tell us the story if you want. Thank you. I never heard that before. Oh, good. Okay. Yeah, the story. Can I say it? Yeah, you can say it. I wasn't aware of it before until you said that. Can you hear me? That I've always kind of thought my shyness is something that was negative. And, you know, I need to fix it.

[90:16]

Rather than sell it. Rather than sell it? Yeah. Sell it? Well, you'd be a stand-up comedian and sell your shyness. People would pay to come and see you. Anyway, you felt you could fix it. That was part of your story. You had a story about shyness, that it was yours and you should fix it, and there was a negative part of the story. I didn't know you had that story until you told me. It's interesting, because now I'm understanding some of what you're saying, that by expressing the story, and first being aware of the story, and then expressing the story, then I could take everybody in, or whatever.

[91:18]

Then all of a sudden I saw everybody, if that makes sense. Yeah. So that's nice because then I don't feel so separate. I guess the reason, the question I have that brought me here is, I'm hearing you say, I'm hearing you describing two consciousnesses. One is the consciousness I have when I'm relating. And another one is, like, the consciousness? Yeah, and... It's the consciousness that arises from... In other words, this is saying that enlightenment is a cognition.

[92:23]

And it's the cognition that arises from the interaction between all beings. It is actually the interaction between all beings. Can I ask a question? When you say cognition, I think of intellect. Right. Cognitions come with intellect. It is human cognition. Human cognitions come with intellect. And they come with storytelling, which is, they come with intentions. There's a lot of different... There's a rich field of cognitive activity that comes with basic cognition for human beings. And that field is our intention moment by moment. And that's sort of where I'm trying to draw attention to this field of cognitive activity around what you can call an individual consciousness, which arises with an individual body interacting with individual sense phenomena.

[93:38]

That's the cognition which we can empirically study. And that's the one I'm... That's the one you were studying when you came up here with this story and looked at the story and saw what happened. When you looked at the story, you empirically witnessed the difference... What happens when you look at your story differently, you saw that. This is an empirical thing happening with this individual consciousness that can talk and tell us about what this individual consciousness was going through. individual cognition with intellect. You were demonstrating it, you saw it, we saw it. Then there's another consciousness, which I'm proposing to you is a consciousness which we call enlightenment. And it is a consciousness which includes, it includes and is the relationship between all individual consciousnesses. So just like as my body interacts with the world, that way of interacting is a knowing, is a cognition.

[94:48]

Similarly, the way my body interacts with yours, yours interacts with mine, yours interacts with everybody else's, that interaction is another cognition, which is enlightenment. And that cognition can also be called Buddha, because Buddha means awakened ones. So according to that, innumerable enlightened beings are practicing together with each of us all the time, because we're always doing this together, all the time. And the message from them is that if we will study our individual consciousnesses, we will open to this mind of our infinite, supportive, peaceful relationship with all beings. Not just humans, and living, but also with mountains, rivers, stars, galaxies, black holes and everything. So, I'm hearing that

[95:54]

Those are the two types of consciousness. Yes, I understand. One is a discriminating consciousness. It's a discriminating consciousness. The other one is non-discriminating consciousness. And what I'm hearing now is that we use the discrimination to get to the... The discrimination is the study topic of the meditation which opens onto non-discrimination. So it isn't that we eliminate discriminating consciousness, trash it, hate it. It's that we study discriminating consciousness, and it's the launching pad to leap into non-discriminating consciousness. And also it's the landing pad for non-discriminating consciousness to come into discriminating consciousness. So those who have realized, or the realization of non-discriminating wisdom, in the realization it's quiet, but the realization talks, and then the non-discriminating wisdom comes into the discriminating wisdom and gives it instruction about how to become free of itself.

[97:18]

So if we didn't have this discrimination, that couldn't happen. That's right. That's why the Buddhas, or enlightenment, can't happen without discriminating consciousness, because enlightenment is actually the relationship among all discriminating consciousnesses. So, when you were talking about the discrimination... The universe did a good job. It made discriminating consciousnesses and thereby made Buddhas at the same time. You're saying the larger consciousness made them? I said the universe made the individual discriminating consciousnesses, and the way it made them is that they made each other, and the way they all worked together to create each other, that's the other consciousness that was thus created, and is thus being created, moment by moment.

[98:21]

So this also is a... It's always this way, but it's always changing at the same time. I was thinking that when you're talking about the... I'm sorry. I have a telephone call. I'm writing a statement. There's a stepping down ceremony at... at Zen Center now for the abbess, who I've known since she was a child. And I wrote a statement for her, for this ceremony, since I'm not going to be there. Yes? Well, I was just thinking that, like, I was taught that the human being is both physical Well, actually, I was taught that the human being is physical and spiritual. And cognitive.

[99:23]

I wasn't taught that. Oh, I see. I hear you. Yes, I would say physical, cognitive, psychological, and spiritual. You weren't taught that, but now you're being taught that. Well, see, you're putting more information into my consciousness, and it kind of blows my theory, because it's like I was thinking that, well, I'm actually in a study group now that I believe, and that is that we are actually, our true nature is spirit. And... that the physical, like you said, the universe created this individual consciousness that we relate to one another. And that's true too. But when you were talking about the distinction, I started thinking, it was just a thought that we make the distinction because we are in our physicality.

[100:35]

Like, I'm distinct from you. I use my senses, which come from my body. And I guess now you're introducing this cognitive element. So I suppose from the cognitive, that because I am physical, I know distinction. Because you're physical, you know distinction. And all these, the mountains distinct between good and bad. So I don't know, for some reason I just thought of that and I felt like I needed to, that was my initial, I don't know if it was a question necessarily. Well, I would say that the spiritual is the not being caught. What she mentions, the way we actually are made as distinct beings, in the way we're supporting each other, that's not a psychological thing. I'd say that's a spiritual thing. But also, it's a cognition.

[101:40]

And the freedom from the cognitions, from the aspects of cognition that come up with that, that freedom, you could say, is a spiritual thing. Because it's not really psychological. It's freedom from psychology. So I think we are spiritual, psychological, and physical. And our physicality is part of the reason why in our psychology we're into distinctions and discriminations. And the psychology is associated with... That's part of our makeup. It's neither physical or spiritual. Above, there's above. Well, yeah, the distinction between them, there's a distinction there, and to not be caught by that distinction is what we want to learn. Because I can get caught up in that and make a story out of that, rather than to really apprehend what's happening.

[102:50]

You can make up a story about it without getting caught in it, but usually you do get caught in your stories. So, you make up stories, which involve discriminations and cognition. Cognition comes with storytelling and discriminations. By studying these processes we can become liberated from these processes which are brought into being by our actual relationship with the world. These are processes which reflect but also tell a limited story about our relationships with the world. By studying these, you become free of the limited story and open to the unlimited beyond the stories. And that just happened. So would you like to do a walking meditation now? Thank you. And I'll call my wife about this statement.

[103:44]

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