Catherine asked me a question that I thought I might start out with. Well, as you were expounding on the sixth consciousness, I remembered that it's frequently said about infants that they don't have a sense of separation between themselves and others. They feel continuous with the person or object out there. So I wondered how that... Why don't we see if this group of people has something to say about that?

[01:12]

What do you think, folks? Do you understand what the point is? You heard about this thing about, they say that about babies? Modest. We spent quite a while on, does the baby have this one?

[02:32]

Now we want to know, does the baby have this one? And now we have another question is, do frogs and lotus pods have these? Let's do one at a time, shall we? So this is, let's ask about monists now. Does the newborn baby, or perhaps, a newborn means there's two kinds of newborn. One is the kind Eleanor has. Kind of inside the womb, or at the moment of conception, and then there's the baby that comes out of the womb. You can take your choice on both, or take one at a time. So what do you think? What's the story? This is reported. Somehow we've got this report that little babies don't distinguish between self and in the womb, they don't understand something like, if you make a loud noise or something, the baby will look in the womb and you will move away from it.

[03:44]

So they're able to discriminate, I want this, or I don't want this, or this is nice and this isn't nice. So that's the kind of discrimination that's happening. I guess I'm confused on that. Isn't it necessary to have monists in order to have sense consciousness? Is it necessary to have monists in order to have sense consciousness? Well, I would tend to believe it for this. I would like to tell the lie for the time being and say no. It's not necessary. Which, I mean, that means yes, you're lying. I know that. Yeah, that's right. Yes means it is, even though I lied. But to make it simple, I want to say that you can have So you have the vishaya, the field, and what kind of diamonds are found in the field?

[04:58]

What diamonds do you find there? If I list there, oh, here it is. Colors and sounds and smells. Colors, sounds, smells, touches and tangles. That's what you find in the sense of vishayas. And taste. And taste, taste. Then you have these things called these endrias, these receptive capacities. When the receptive capacities interact with the vishayas, when they play in the field, this magical thing called consciousness arises. Then you have consciousness of the vishaya, but as soon as this consciousness of the vishaya is not a vishaya anymore, it's called an alambana. Because the vishaya, the colors... It's only if you talk Sanskrit. Yes. In other words, the organs play in the fields. When the organs play in the fields, it gives rise to consciousnesses.

[06:04]

But then the consciousnesses are aware of the fields, but what they are aware of is now changes the name and becomes objects. So they're called alambana. Alambana means something that you can hold on to or grab on to. So you have, if it's a sense consciousness, you have awareness of these objects and the organ acts like Manas acts. In other words, the organ now is that which separates the awareness from its objects. Okay? So you could say you don't need Manas at that time. And what is the difference between Manas and Manas? Manas, in the sense that I'm, that's why I told a lie, Manas is like when you have mind consciousness and mind objects, and then Manas is the ability of the mind to separate itself from its own material. See, mind can, there isn't an organ called mind organ that you can find, except that mind can separate itself from its own field, and we call that the mind organ.

[07:14]

is sometimes called manendria. In other words, the mind acting as an organ which can separate consciousness from its own field. So really there's consciousness which embraces all phenomena and it can be aware of all those phenomena as though they were objects of itself through the magical performance called manas. which if you pictured mind as a huge surface, it would be some kind of like surface in between the mind and the rest of the mental material, between consciousness or awareness and all the impressions that can come on it. Or you could picture mind as a big circle and cut the circle in half or anyway, barficate it in some way and then have the awareness part look over Monus is what splits it. So monus forms the same function as the organs. Now if you say, is there monus there? Monus is really there because monus is a dead sense organ.

[08:18]

And there's dead sense organs and sense consciousnesses too. So monus is always present. But it's not active, but it doesn't need to function in the mind. But you can argue with that if you want to, but the point is anyway, Manas does, in a moment of mental consciousness, what the organs do in a moment of sense consciousness. Does that make sense? Well, to a point, can you have Manas without sense? How's that Jorgen? In a given moment there may not be a sense of consciousness, but the moment before there must be a dead sense mind.

[09:29]

So then part of the causation of the possibility of a laya is a great deal of sense consciousness going on for a very long time by a lot of different creatures. So that's part of the causal, you know, what... I wonder if babies dream, like if they dream they have to have manas. Do babies dream? They never really stop. They just open their eyes. So anyway, we still haven't... I'd like to stick with this one a little bit now. What's this business about this that people say they don't separate their self from the field? What is it? How is it that... What's the difference between that and not having a manas? This is a point, yes.

[10:33]

I mean I'm sticking to this because I can just tell you what I think but I'd like to draw it out of this group. To understand it I have to know if Manas is anything more than the thing that says me and not me. Is it anything more than that? Yeah, I'd like to see, I'd like to talk about why, Catherine's heard this thing about studies of babies, and then she's wondering how does that relate to, it sort of sounds like they don't have 7th consciousness in a way, right? So I say they do have 7th consciousness in a sense, but what's the difference, why do they say this about babies? So is it sort of like, are they saying that if the baby has a stomach ache,

[11:33]

or it hears a noise, it doesn't have any, it doesn't know whether, it doesn't put the stomachache in a different place than the noise or something. Does, is that what you think, baby, that's what you think it would be, Catherine? Did you understand what she's saying? Something happening in its body, it doesn't have any sense that something happening in its body is other than something... Oh, it's unlocatable. Yeah, it seems like it would be unlocatable. Laurie elaborated what that would be like. So, I think he would say that a baby, if they have a stomachache, it wouldn't be all that different from hearing a bird in a tree. Or a slap. This is like... It's like that for us sometimes. Sometimes we forget, sometimes we don't know whether it's the gurgling here or the gurgling over there. Was that you or me? Right?

[12:34]

Sometimes we have a little trouble grasping ourself. Yes? Yeah, that would be one way to say it, is that they don't discriminate. So then you pick it up and drop it. Yeah, that's one way. You pick it up and drop it, pick it up and drop it. Right. That's one way. There has to be minus because there's... You see, with a baby, you have that going on, right? So you've already got that taken care of. That's going to blow the discrimination thing quite a bit. But there's another point that was addressed. I'll just say it. Babies don't have the concept of self yet. changes in temperature, the light outside, the mother's screaming or crying, Beethoven and so on, it's out there.

[13:53]

Everything, all objects of awareness are out there and a lot of those objects are inside the baby, inside what we ordinarily later call self, but the baby does not have a concept of self yet, especially when they're still in the womb. And for quite a while after they get out, they don't have a concept of self. Therefore, they don't discriminate self from others, because they don't have self or others. But they are aware of objects. It's just all the objects, it's just like the whole surface, the surface goes... Everything is aware of in one surface. So, that's what it's like to be a baby. They also don't discriminate between inside and outside, which also reinforces that sense of no-self and other. And they learn not only to discriminate, but they also learn, gradually, the concept of self, and to put the concept of self someplace. People put it in different places, and we're told, when we put it in the wrong place, to put it in a different place.

[14:56]

And for example, we start to not put salt in our mother, for example. We try that for a while, too. Right, they have a concept of self which is ... actually, their concept of self is not the self of a person, but the self of phenomena. They have the more basic kind of self-clinging which is called, you know, clinging to the self of phenomena. They don't realize the emptiness of things, but they do realize the emptiness of a person. They are just born with the emptiness of a person, but they do believe in the, you know, For example, they will respond to phenomena as though they thought they were real, but they don't discriminate among them the way we do. Yeah? So, like, we just finished 21 days of sitting, and every once in a while that those feelings sort of come up.

[16:05]

You mean those unacceptable feelings that you were trained out of? Well, I don't think they were acceptable at that moment. I mean, those little unacceptable weren't acceptable, The feeling of unlocatedness about this. I was wondering, is that a similar dissociation in terms of the process of meditating? I heard the part about these things coming up and then what did you say? Unlocatable. a feeling of it, a sense of unlocatability of the objects. In what? Related to meditation. In relationship to the Satsang, yeah. What do you mean? For example? For example, sound, hearing sound, or even... And you can't locate it?

[17:09]

Yeah, you can't, there's not a sense of of is that inside or outside? I mean, it doesn't even come up. What do you mean? You can't locate it or you didn't locate it? I didn't think about it. I mean, I think about it afterwards. Could you answer my question, please? Couldn't you find it or didn't you find it? There's a difference. Allocate the location? Yeah. Did you try to find it and not succeed or did you not try? Or did you try a little bit and give up? What happened? Well, I just thought about it. Did you find it or didn't find it? She didn't look very hard. It's okay to say that. If you don't look very hard, then it isn't that you didn't find it, it's that you couldn't find it, it's that you didn't find it. Couldn't find is very different from didn't find it. If you can't find stuff, that's called realization of emptiness.

[18:09]

If you didn't find it, that's just called something you didn't find. And sometimes you don't find things that you ordinarily do find, which is quite helpful, too. But to look for it is quite a different kind of project, a different type of meditation, than to experience that you didn't find it. Well, what I'm saying is that I wasn't looking for it. I mean, after ... Okay. So you had an experience, which is an important kind of experience, which is called, sometimes you don't find things which you ordinarily find. Sometimes when you wake up, if you're in America and you wake up in France, sometimes you don't find out where you are. You don't find you're in France. You don't find you're in America. You don't know where you are. You don't find it for a while. And then later, not too long later, usually you find it. But for a while you don't find it. You do find it usually, unless you really have a wonderful experience and keep looking and looking and looking and you don't find out where you are, and you have a wonderful realization of emptiness.

[19:18]

But to look and actually come up with it, you can't find it, that's a conclusion of a certain kind of research, which is called realization of emptiness. But to look and not find it for a while, or I didn't find it, or some things like, most people need to find out what room they're in. So they keep working until they do, or they keep working until they're enlightened. Okay? But you don't have to find out where the bird chirped. So if a bird chirps and you didn't find it, then there was a moment when you didn't find it. In other words, your mind doesn't always do that. It doesn't. That's good to do. And you can do that with lots of independent things, you know, like birds chirping or sounds of trucks that you don't identify as trucks. And when the bird chirps now and you don't find its location, sometimes you don't even find that it's a bird. This happens. And the mind cannot do that. Like a baby's mind cannot do that.

[20:20]

It can take a break from that. We can take a break from that. That's good. It's different. It's a different experience from realizing that you can't find the sound of the bird. I have to do it with the seventh consciousness moving to the foreground a little bit? the thing that kind of experience you're describing I would say is like not this deactivated because because I didn't find yeah just a moment where you didn't where wasn't it wasn't functioning like finding and not finding or locating or not locating also it would also function like in moments when you what like the one you example you gave of not being In moments when you can't tell whether the gurgle is inside your stomach or inside the person's stomach that you're nearby, that's a moment of where seventh consciousness is not able to come up with an answer, sixth consciousness is not doing too well.

[21:21]

Now, if the sound kept happening, then you'd finally come up with a conclusion. It might not be the right conclusion, but you would come up with a conclusion. You can also get into a logical discussion with the other person and try to figure out who did it. I don't want to keep this up, but as you're talking, I remembered hearing somebody tell me that she can remember at the moment of her birth the awareness that her mother was disappointed, that she was a girl. So, can you have a... Don't cry. She can remember that feeling from that experience. I don't know if you'd say that that was an intention, or whether some people actually can experience those things. And if you can do that, is there a self? I mean, could you have that kind of experience of a sense of self? She reasoned back from having a self, you can reason back from having a self in this position that your mother didn't want to have a girl.

[22:40]

At the time the baby would not know that that was what her mother was upset about. The baby would just be picking up something from her mother which would be like blue or green or some hostility or something. You'd pick that up and you'd probably feel, you know, you'd feel that. That baby would definitely feel that. They're very attuned to that kind of stuff. That's like as important as milk, that kind of stuff. So they're very sensitive to that. But she wouldn't at that time, of course, say, my mother is disappointed for not having a girl. Later, when she grows up, she finds out that that was the reason, then reasons back to the moment and says, oh, that was it. You can do that. You can work your way back in time. that way to having ... you know, again, the reason why you can work your way back is because you're working your way back through your own karma, which is there, in the present. So you can work your way back, but at the time the baby doesn't think that way. An adult could come up with that conclusion. Yeah?

[23:44]

The meditation you're talking about, about kind But that's, you know, you're talking about the six consciousnesses before, but not before the six consciousnesses at all. Meditation I'm talking about could apply to a wider range of conscious activity than the example we're using. Yes. In the case we're talking about, it would apply to... Maybe the Sixth Consciousness is trying to find out, using the Sixth Consciousness, the location of something. The Seventh Consciousness is necessary to do that work. What I'm trying to get to is that the realization of self is in the Seventh Consciousness. Realization of self?

[24:45]

A known realization of self. Realization that there is no self, that's in the Seventh Consciousness. Again, there is not the realization that there is no self, there is only the realization that you can't find one. We do not say there is no self, because you could never come up with a conclusion that there wasn't a self. You never could come to that conclusion. I mean, you come to that conclusion, but you could never prove it because your research is novel. Yeah, but you could at least say, I haven't been able to find it and I've been looking very diligently for a long time. And at a certain point, the point is not so much that you prove that there isn't a self because you'll never be able to do that, forget that because somebody's going to come up with one as soon as you prove that there isn't the point is to convince yourself that you've looked long enough and to give up and really for yourself be convinced I'm not going to find it that's called dropping the self you looked long enough and you really looked and also you looked

[25:48]

right in the place where what you thought usually self was. You looked then. And every time the self happened, when you thought of Three-Divine, you looked for it and you never found it. And you looked thousands and thousands of times. And after a while, you were convinced. The only person you have to convince is yourself. Then you can start convincing other people. But you start convincing yourself. And you can't really convince other people. You can only encourage other people to try to find their own. And if they find it, then ask them to look a little bit more, ask them some questions about what they found. And then if they get depressed, encourage them not to get depressed. Encourage them to get depressed? No, encourage them if they get depressed. See, sometimes people look for the self and they don't find it and they get depressed. Sometimes they look for the self and they find it and you ask them questions about it and they realize they didn't find it and they get depressed. But they shouldn't get depressed because actually they're being successful in Buddhist meditation. But if they're prone to success, even though they're being successful, that doesn't help.

[26:56]

So you have to try to encourage them to uplift their spirits. And success may not be the thing that will uplift them. Maybe you should give them money. Although Jerome doesn't agree with the policy. Who doesn't agree with that policy? Jerome. Jerome. Yeah, if you're not, you're not the only one. Occasionally, anyway, in skillful means, you should give people money if it would help to encourage them so they don't get too depressed and give up the chip. Sleep sometimes helps too. Uh oh. You left yourself wide open there. Do you understand? Do you understand how I said you only have to convince yourself? You can never not find it.

[28:09]

You can never prove you never want to find it. You can only convince yourself. It's kind of like falling in love with somebody. Some people just take a few seconds to come up with the conclusion that it's worthwhile. Some people look a long, long time to finally say, OK, I'm in love. You can't prove that you should be in love, you know, there's no place where you can actually say, now for sure, this is it conclusively, this person deserves my love. You can't prove it, somebody has to say, oh no, listen, I knew this back then. No, you need to convince yourself and then you turn on the love thing and also you convince yourself and you turn off the self-attachment. And some people just live, some people just for a little while, you know, depending on how concentrated you are, and they don't find when they have to give up. So in those stories when they say, you know, bring me your afflictions, bring me your self, bring me your delusions, you don't know how many years there was between when he says, bring it, and the guy brought it back, and he came back and said, I couldn't find it.

[29:18]

Sometimes it's many, many years in between there. Some stories, sometimes they tell you how many years it was. Other times they don't tell you that. They just say, and he said, blah, blah, blah. But often it's 8, 10, 15 years in between those two steps. They looked, they came back and said, well here it is, and the teacher said, well let's see, again, what is that? Is that a feeling? Is that an emotion? Is that a concept? Is that a color? What is it? And then they'd say, well it's a six kanda. Do you know about the six kanda? Nobody knows about the six condoms. It's been outlawed. What did somebody say about when you're outside the law? Who said that? Bob Dylan. What? You live outside the law, you must be honest.

[30:21]

Oh, that's what you said? Bob Dylan. What did you say? Somebody said in one of our meetings about being outside the law. Last night, was it? Somebody said that? Yeah. What did you say last night? Who said that? Huh? You said that. Yeah, what did you say? I said when you're apprehended by the law, the first bet you're given is the right to consult. No, no. That's good, too. When you're apprehended by the law, that's good, isn't it? That's good. That's a good one, Gail. I think the first one is the right to consult. I think we need a scribe for American Blue Clipper. That's what I described to them. Okay, so. Alright, is that enough on that then?

[31:22]

That was Gusman's question. Good point, you can see it from there. Yeah. Does it have a major role in establishing a sense of self? Definitely. So what is memory? Is it one of the first five senses? Well, you notice memory is not on the Dharma list. Now, fear and memory are mental, they're composed of things on the list. They're like things that you make up out of these more basic elements. Memory is that you say something happened in the past. Fear is that you think about something that you think is going to happen.

[32:32]

Memory and fear are related then. But there's a sensation behind saying it. You make up the story when you say it, because you're going through a sensation. Memory is caused. Memory is conditioned. In other words, if now I go like this, I not only slapped my hands but I heard a sound. Now I can remember slapping my hands and I can remember the sound. Also when I hit my hands together, talking about memory now, in terms of memory, I felt my hands hitting and I can still remember that feeling. something I think of now and say that happened before.

[33:37]

But my ability to think of this thing now and say it And the storehouse consciousness is impermanent. It's impermanent. Well, one of the main ways it's impermanent is because everything is, so is it. The Buddha is impermanent too. Seeing is the storehouse consciousness, doesn't it? Yeah, well another possible ... Another answer is, Nothing can store it, you see, because storehouse consciousness is called storehouse consciousness, right?

[34:43]

A storehouse consciousness is going like this, kind of like, universe, bye-bye, universe, bye-bye. Every moment the storehouse consciousness comes up and the whole shooting match, all the possible things that can happen in this universe are there. and then it goes away. And because it came up and everything was possible, guess what happens in the next moment? Something just like it, except completely different, comes up, and where everything else is possible in that moment happens, and they're completely different. But everything that's possible is there at that moment. And what everything is possible in this moment has something to do with what was possible in the moment before, because it's conditioned by what happened in the moment before, but they're not the same possibilities. So that's what you mean by karma stores it?

[35:44]

Yeah, but of course karma can't store it, because karma is transitory too. But karma is what transmits. That's the thing about the wave again, you know. The wave goes up and goes down, but the energy conveys then the birth of another moment. where anything can happen, however, within that tremendous pattern, that huge pattern of all possibilities, for an individual sitting in the middle of that soup, the likelihood of that individual doing a particular thing or feeling a particular thing has to do with what that individual did in the past. So karma is not only group karma, but it's individual karma, and we overlap. between the two. Some of the stuff we work with is group, alaya is group, but our access to alaya is individual. Where I dip into it has to do with my own karma, where you dip into it has to do with your karma, but what we dip into we all make.

[36:46]

So I dip into the same ocean that you do, but my point of access is determined by my individual karmic stream. So karma and this cosmic consciousness, this universal consciousness, both store it and they're both fleeting, in and out of existence, pulsing like that, changing. And in that field is something called memory, which in the present now, I say, this happened before. And there's various games that I have played with people since I was a little boy, by which I have come to the conclusion and you can get other people to change their stories by various kinds of games. Illusion games, kind of, just like magical, magic games. It's all magic. Some people are especially skillful at it.

[37:51]

Yeah. They can work great magic on people. Right. Some people are great historians because they're very skillful, other people are great, you know, literally magicians, and so on and so forth. And it has to do with understanding how you yourself do it. It comes from understanding how you yourself create your own magic. That's how you can get other people to be impressed by your magic. So is there any way to approach this energy? what we name karma. When you approach it? Yeah. I mean it seems that it too is transitory and yet it's the thing that goes across. The pulsating. It's the thing that goes across? No, nothing goes across. Just things go up and down. But like waves, the energy goes across.

[38:53]

That's what I'm saying. but the effect of the karma is energy, it goes into the next moment, but it doesn't cross over, just like a wave, see think again about waves, it's hard for us to think of this, the wave goes up and down, and the next one goes up and down, the next one goes up, it's not like the wave goes like this, but it looks like that to us, we see this wave coming across the water, we see this we see it. But there's something that's going forward. Are you asking if you can affect what's going forward? No, but I mean... Nothing's going forward. What's the energy then? If the wave goes up and down, then something goes forward. If there's movement like this, there's movement like this. The analogy is... No, no, because that thing over there didn't go there. Well, then the thing that was down here doesn't go up here.

[39:56]

There's only an illusion of going up and down, and because of the illusion of going up and down we think that this here goes over there. But I don't know if it's because of that, that because it doesn't go here it doesn't go up and down there, maybe so. This is all reporting, this is reporting how illusion works, this is all illusion, this is how we fall for this story. I mean, why does water... Well, I think basically what you're asking about is why do we see movement? Isn't that what we're asking about? I don't know. I don't think that's what you're talking about. I think she's talking about physical... physics. I mean, you keep using this... Are you talking about physics? Are you talking about physics? But we don't have to use waves on water to use his example.

[41:04]

That's part of it. Are you asking about physics? It's because of the tides. The tides are because of the moon. The gravitational attraction of the moon moves the ocean back and forth. Up and down. Yeah, up and down. It creates the illusion of tides. Seems like it's easier to me... Seems like easier what? To think about like sound waves or something. To use your analogy, the water seems more... It's harder to see the analogy. I don't know if this is connected at all, but the 8th consciousness is called non-evolving, and all the other ones evolve. Does karma evolve? Does karma evolve? I don't really understand that idea of evolving. Karma doesn't really evolve, no. Karma just keeps saying, of movement, karma keeps going, you know, karma keeps going.

[42:12]

But the other ones do because they arise and then descend or whatever. They what? They evolve? They evolve, that's evolution, going up and rising and descending. They evolve, in other words, they're evolution, they appear to evolve. But they don't, they, I mean, whenever they, it's like a wave, they just come up and then they go back down, they don't, like that wave coming up doesn't go into something else, which goes into... That's right, it doesn't. But it looks like it does, if you can see movement. If you connect this with this, then you can see this goes from there to there. But the only way you can connect this to this is, you say, this used to be there. In the present, you say, this And therefore you see movement, but really there's not any movement, you just say, this, and you say, that's movement. So there is this experience, and then there is another experience, and then there is experience to say, there were these two experiences, and you remember, you dream them up in the present, and you say, that's movement.

[43:26]

That's what we do. Like the consciousnesses are all just divisions and the names that we give things and I'd say maybe like the Alaya Vinyana seems like there's no movement in that because it contains everything and nothing changes you know at all. I put all the stuff into it but it's already got it all in it. That's right, there's no movement. But the other ones, the conscious, the other consciousnesses and those are just descriptions for things so those really move. The other consciousnesses do not move. However, they are stories of movement. They are stories of partial circuits. And partial circuits look like there's a flow. So like if you draw a lion, again, a lion is really the big boss, but a lion is silent. Alaya is the government of the whole thing, and it's silent. The ultimate government is silence.

[44:28]

That's what really is government, is silence. That's really the story, okay? Now, alaya is affected by these partial stories here, okay? There are these partial circuits inside of alaya. And in early Abhidharma, they have all these dharmas. All these dharmas are partial circuits. Faith is a partial circuit. Ordinary faith is a partial circuit because you have faith in something. That's dualistic faith. You have concentration of something on something. That's a partial circuit. You have anger towards something, or you're trying to avoid something, or you have attachment towards something. a diligence as opposed to lack of diligence. You have exertion or laziness. These are all partial circuits. Therefore, all those dharmas have outflows. They're all apparently moving.

[45:31]

They're like this. That's the story. You feel like it should go all the way around, but it doesn't. Therefore, you see a flow. You see, a gain or a loss, that's outflows. It's a basic misunderstanding that we have, and there's 72 types of basic misunderstandings. That includes all the basic misunderstandings you can have, that they want to say. Okay? They all have outflows, they're all partial circuits, and all of them together at a given moment, in this school, all of them together in a given moment, don't have outflows. The total system, the total ecology, the universe, or in Yogacara Buddhism, the alaya vijnana, does not have outflows because the total system does not gain or lose anything. The total system is silent and still and doesn't move and doesn't gain or lose.

[46:37]

It's pure. However, when you start cutting it in two and making discriminations, Then it starts to get waved, you know, and you see these illusions, you start seeing these partial circuits, and you go, wow, a lot is happening there! But you're just seeing these partial circuits. And as an observer, once you split it down to two and you start discriminating all this stuff, you can only see partial circuits, you can never see alaya. You can only see through the illusion of the partial circuits, and by seeing for them, and when you don't fall for them, you see a lie, because you don't see partial circuits. You see what a lie is like by seeing that all the partial circuits are empty, and they aren't really leaking, and that's what a lie is. Essentially, a lie is silent and still, not moving, not leaking. So the path exists in the liar or in consciousness and the practitioner of the path never sees anything but partial circuits, but the path is a pattern in this field of leaking dharmas which itself does not leak because the path is in accord with the totality, with the total ecology of a given moment of consciousness.

[47:59]

When the child is born, they have fired a weapon and the child did not flinch. But if you jab the baby with a long needle and fired a pistol, the child would be conditioned. And it may, if it really existed, the child may never again release or escape. That's the fortunate thing about things is they don't really exist. That's why we can eliminate them. I want to talk about this flag example, but first we'd like to hear from Tom Johnson. Yes, Tom? So I'm just trying to describe something that is kind of like... So this relationship, or this principle, is kind of like this one, but it's not the same.

[49:32]

And I have a question as to whether things are really conditioned, or whether they just, in a given moment of consciousness, or... It's just... One moment, the pattern is... the total pattern that moment disappeared and the next moment it arose, that we are not able to distinguish the difference. Wait a second now. I didn't follow that. The reason why I didn't follow it is because I thought you said that one moment is so similar to the other one that we can't distinguish the difference, but the one you say it's similar to, again, you're just saying it's similar to. I can't see the difference because they're so close.

[50:52]

It's insane. Now it's going to get a little difficult with this. Because this illusion does not occur in moving things. The same illusion is happening if I see something that appears to be still, right? This table is still. This table is a table. But actually, that table is gone, right? But what I'm saying is that So what do you propose? You may not see what's conditioning it, but I can see that at least it's conditioned by the fact that you saw it. So your activity, your karma of the act of seeing can allow you to imagine again and again.

[52:01]

same kind of wavelength, so I can maintain the illusion of me, and I can maintain the illusion of the state at the same time. You can maintain the illusion of yourself, and then in another moment you can maintain the illusion of... Well, I'm sort of scientistically being fooled into thinking that I'm the same Right, that's the same trick, right. I guess I'm having trouble with the idea of conditioning. Conditioning conveys to me passing something on. present is conditioned by the conditions of the present.

[53:21]

All right. But at the same time the nature of the present that the condition present that we have is that we we have to think that there's a past. We cannot come up with the present without the past. We need memory. But I'm just saying that what we remember is not what happened. We cannot bring up this we cannot we cannot function We cannot be honest about what we are unless we have past, but the past is not the past. However, we need the past. In other words, the past is not something that happened before, but we need to have something we say happened before, and we are conditioned by what we say happened before. I need to say that I know how to walk because I walked before in order to walk. But the walking I think I did before that allows me to think I can walk now, I never did. I just say I did that walking. But if I don't say I did that walking, I cannot stand up. I cannot be me.

[54:24]

I cannot function with you. that what you say it was that affected you actually is what actually happened. Can there be any conditioning without, what I'm saying is, without a concept that there was a past, the concept that there is conditioning is useless.

[55:28]

That's not true, the kerosene shape is conditioned by the gas. You can have, in Buddhism present, right? But you have to also have past conditions. In order to actually be honest about who we are, in order for liberation, we have to admit that we think of something that happened before. Not just before a little while ago either, but a long, [...] long time ago. That's the only way we can figure out what we are. Is the real truth that there was no before? The real truth is We have no idea about before because we have absolutely no access to it. We only have our idea, a present idea. That's right. You cannot get at the past mind or the past anything else. You cannot do that. No one knows anything about it. No one ever did. Even Buddha doesn't know anything about it. In fact, Buddha said, I can't get at it. However, he didn't say, I don't have a past.

[56:32]

As a matter of fact, he said, I have beginningless past. And you can't figure, you can't be a Buddha unless you understand your beginningless past. But that doesn't mean you have to think that the beginningless past that you're imagining or you're dealing with, that that's something that happened then, because you can't get at what happened then, but you can get at the past that you dream you have now. And you must get at that and honor that in order to free yourself. As a matter of fact, if you do get at it, and if you get at the right one, you realize that you are hopeless. In other words, if you get at your past, you get at ... what do you get at? The present. You get at the present, yeah. The full story. The genetic matrix, the past does not go away, and our genetic matrix is the residue of the totality of what survived.

[57:44]

But certainly the ideas, right now, we had better understand they're not representative of reality. But the genetic matrix, there it is. And chemically, they may be able to produce chicken people. in the idea sense, to me is representative of this. And here we are. Okay, now I'd like to say something about the flag. Although it's not directly related, it's a little bit related because you brought it up, didn't you? Everybody agrees, right? Proving that it really happened. I think he said balloon, not blood.

[58:49]

Okay, you see if you can get everybody to agree. Balloon? Balloon? Yay, balloon! Okay, will everybody agree to balloon? Actually, I want to talk about bells, because, you know, the argument is that the sixth ancestor came upon these two monks and they said, you know, one said, the flag's moving, the other one said, the mind's moving, you know, one said, the flag's moving, the other one said, the wind's moving, and he said, the mind's moving, right? That's pretty good. But, earlier, before that, What is it, the 17th ancestor and the 18th ancestor were talking about something similar. He said, when the hammer hits the bell, is the hammer making the sound or the bell making the sound? So, someone said, the mind is making the sound. But Dogenzenji says, the sound is making the sound.

[59:55]

The mind is making the sound, it's still not You know, you do things in stages, right? Sixth Ancestor did his job and then you take one more step. Still a little dualistic, but under the circumstances he was just starting out with forgiveness. It seems like the more conclusive or inclusive those things are, the less usable they become. That's right, so then you go back to the wind is moving. Realistic Buddhism, then you go Critical Realism, then you do Idealism, then you do Madhyamaka, but then you start over again.

[61:02]

You can't hold on to the position, you have to keep moving around, or at least stepping backwards down the ladder a little bit. Is the sound making the sound of mountains or mountains? Is that going around? Yes, yeah, that's right. But then you have to start over again, after that. Did it say the sound existed before and after? The sound of the fall of heaven? Did it say that? I don't know. Is that true that the sound exists before and after? There's a past and future of the song. Maybe that's what it means. I thought it was a famous quote. Maybe it was a quote. But maybe that's part of that same story. different sometimes okay I don't remember I mean I remember that but okay we have a few minutes left before 11 o'clock in the end yes original guard

[62:28]

Any other questions about all this stuff here? I just have one. You just have one question? Really? No, I have one. Cheers. Is the life of nārāyaṇa the same as the collective unconscious? Is it the same? No, it's more than the collective unconscious, I think. But that's just because I want Buddhas to do better than I do now. I don't know, does the collective unconscious include plants and animals? Does it? Yes? That's a Dharmakaya. Can Dharma find eighth consciousness? Eighth? Alaya-vijnana is the sum total of all karmically created.

[63:45]

total collection of all karmically created is non-dual with the uncreated is dharmakaya. In other words, the total system of the alaya is the purity of alaya. Because the laya contains everything, it has the total dynasm which makes everything in it empty, and that emptiness is what unites all that created stuff with the uncreated, and that connection through the emptiness of phenomena, through its very nature, by being total, that's the dharmakaya. And the awareness of that is the Sangho Rakaya, which is what we call reward, the reward of practices that you can be aware of.

[65:00]

You can actually have a direct awareness of the non-duality of each one of these partial circuits and the unconditioned, and it's a reward because you individual and the total with the uncreated that then get the reward called the Gnostic experience of that. Sometimes it's called like light and Dharmakaya like space. You can't be aware of Dharmakaya. We can't be aware of dharmakaya. Dharmakaya is the true body. Sambhogakaya is the highest manifestation of enlightenment. Dharmakaya is the true body of enlightenment, the truth body of enlightenment.

[66:04]

The truth is that this stuff that we see in these partial circuits are non-dual, would be uncreated. And it's through studying these created things that we understand their actual causation, their actual total causation, and therefore we have access to the other side. But the truth is there before, after, and during this whole process. It is not aware of itself, but you can be aware of it, and when you're aware of it, this is your reward for study, called Sambhogakaya Buddha. And then if you acted out that, act that out in some life, that's called Manakaya Buddha. You guys are your Manakaya Buddhas to the extent that you act on your awareness of the true body, and your awareness of the true body is the highest manifestation of enlightenment. But it's not the true manifestation of enlightenment.

[67:06]

The true manifestation of enlightenment isn't defiled by awareness. But also, there's no way to catch in on it, except through this high manifestation called the Sambhogakaya. That's why we need these three bodies. Dharmakaya isn't mirror like wisdom, mirror like wisdom is Sambhogakaya. Reflecting the totality which is all phenomena and therefore

[68:08]

but it's all right there. The uncreated is not someplace else, it doesn't have to move over, it doesn't have to get out of the way, because it doesn't take up any space or interfere with anything. So it actually is non-dual, it's right there in everything. So not only is the unconditioned wherever it wants to be, including wherever anything can be, But also the Buddha nature, which is the whole story of the relationship between the unconditioned and the conditioned, that Buddha nature reaches into everything too, into everything. And that's why it's good to think of something that you have trouble seeing the Buddha nature in and put it on your altar and bow to it every morning and say, It's a good practice.

[69:33]

I recommend it. Do you know anything that doesn't have Buddha nature in it that you can think of? Or anybody that doesn't have Buddha nature? None of you do? You don't. You don't know anybody? How about you? Well, you know what? You got a problem. Yeah, I'm looking at you. Very much about zazen. Very, very, very, very much about zazen. Even in zazen is good nature, and even in not zazen is good nature.

[70:35]

That's most important. Again, when you're doing zazen, if there's any not zazen in the area, which some people have told me they've seen, As a matter of fact, they've told me that they've seen it very nearby. They've seen it in Nazazen. Remember, that too is the Buddha nature. Buddha nature reaches into the Nazazen. Therefore, the Nazazen is very closely connected to the Zazen, because you know Zazen has Buddha nature in it too, right? So the Zazen and the Nazazen are connected by Buddha nature. And if you remember that, then it's kind of like they're just one Zazen. I'm a little bit confused about stillness and movement. And in sitting it just appears, movement just feels continuous.

[71:43]

And I guess this is when the word unlocatable came up for me. Well... I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing at something Lisa said. Anyway... But, so anyway... I was like, I... I just... I actually, I felt like there could never really be still. But yet there was a feeling of... And when you talk about ... That's it. Stillness is that thing other than movement. That's good. Although it's hard to find it because it's, you know, doesn't really do anything to tell you that it's there. But it is that thing other than movement. So in all the movement that you see, just find that thing that's not moving. That's what we mean by not moving. That's it actually. There's nothing that's not moving I guess is what ... No, that's right. There's nothing that's not moving.

[72:48]

That's right. There's nothing that's not moving. Remember that folks, there's nothing that's not moving. You should find that nothing. But it's hard to find, right? But it's right there around the movement. It's that thing besides the movement. Okay? It's right there. Isn't that the thing that allows us to know the movement? Yeah. If it weren't for... If it was all movement then we wouldn't know there was anything. That's right. If it were all stillness we wouldn't know there was any movement either. They did, that's part of the causation of this class. All those tests that I took. And what's the story?

[73:59]

Well, it feels like there's always a right answer. And that you keep posing questions. And there's a way of saying if it's right, a way of saying it's not quite right. And that's very frustrating. If you sort of have a sense about it, and you don't necessarily deal in the discrimination of the precise language. Are you feeling frustrated? What's going on? I want to know what the story is. We could start the hot air balloon. What did you say? We could start the hot air balloon. There you go. Let's have a hot air balloon.

[74:38]

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