Sorry to interrupt your study hall, but I thought for the next two touch-hour weeks, you'll have study every morning. And also, I found yesterday afternoon, yesterday morning, we're going in and out for Tocsons, so it seemed kind of like this material didn't get a chance to settle in very well, so I would like to they concentrate, they try to have you understand what I'm doing here is to help you meditate on the dependable arising of your experience. In other words, the dependable arising of the world. And so basically what, in some sense, Buddha's main emphasis was to teach dependable arising, because when you see dependable arising,

[01:01]

of your experience, you see Dharma. You see a liberating truth. So, yesterday I expanded on the communion between world and time. I drew that out. Showing how, in some sense, the world is... The physical world has two parts. It has gross and subtle parts. The gross part comes from karma. The subtle part comes from karma. The gross part is... Colors, sounds, smells, touch, taste, and tangibles. That's called the pajama loka.

[02:03]

And the subtle part is called the aqua loka. Dhanaloka is from the karma of all living beings from beginningless time, and the Sathaloka is from the karma of all living beings from beginningless time. This gross and subtle materiality is not itself karma, it's the result of karma. Every moment you're given the gift of having sense fields, colors and so on, and sense organs, eyes and so on. These are given to you, moment by moment. And karma is what we talked about, the action of an independent, it's the action of a being that conceives of himself as independent.

[03:18]

So from the interaction karma gives, The world has these two physical aspects. It also has a non-physical aspect, which are called the variety of worlds. Most of the worlds have this gross and subtle grupa. But then there's also varieties of worlds, like the six realms. You've heard of those? Those are the six realms exist in one of the three worlds. There's three worlds, basically, three big worlds. The world called Kamadatu, which means the world of sex. The world of Rupadatu, which is the world of fine material. And the world of Parupya, where there's not actually any Rupa anymore. In the Kamadatu, there's basically six types of six main modes.

[04:23]

You know those six main modes, right? Human, deva, fighting demon, fighting gods, animal, hungry ghost, and hell dweller. But these are psychological states that we all can experience, you know, in the next week. Or even today. So you don't have to think of them. But they also can be thought of literally as realms of beings who mainly hang out in different rooms. For us, the center of gravity is the human realm. Then in the next realm, the fine material realm, there are 17 different varieties of existence in that fine material realm. And then there's four more up in the non-material realm. So there's basically 24 varieties of worlds. Infinite variations, of course.

[05:27]

So those are also due to karma. Those of you probably easily understand that when you find yourself in a hellish situation, or in a situation where your insatiable desire, or a normal human situation, or in a divine abhorment, you can understand that that has something to do with your karma. If you don't understand that, well, you know, I'd be happy to talk to you about this, and even show you how to get in some of those realms. You know, we can get there very fast. Some of them, especially if going down is easy to go. Going up takes a little more work. And for most of those of you, if we just don't do anything, you'll wind up in the human realm. So that's karma, too. Anyway, so from the interaction of these two, there arises sense consciousness, right? Sense consciousness dependently co-arises with them.

[06:34]

So that's the first point. And so from the beginning, Buddha says, train yourself thus. So that means when there's a color, OK. When there's something seen, you let the seen be the seen. All right? That means you're present, you're awake, you're upright, something color arises, and you let the color be the color. OK? If you let the color be the color, And it actually gives that way for you that the color is just a color. You won't identify with the color. You won't locate yourself. You'll just be sitting with this color.

[07:39]

And you will see that this color arises with eye and with pot consciousness. and see contacts there. And you'll see a lot of other stuff. In other words, you'll see the dependant core arising of your experience of the color. When the color is just the color, when the scene is just the sea, you don't locate yourself in it anymore, you realize the dependant core arising of the sea. You see dharma and the end of suffering. So you've been working with that teaching now for most of the practice, teaching of satchas. A slight variation on this, in this presentation of the Buddha, where he said, you know, one time, actually,

[08:54]

Somebody said to Buddha, well, what is the world? What is everything? What is the universe? And he said, everything in the world is encompassed by these 12 interacting elements. And these are things I talked about before. Meditation on the Atenas. How do you meditate on the Atenas? You just be upright. And they're right there at front of you all the time, all day long. Every experience you have, there they are. There is color. And Irosy. Every moment where you see light, you see color, those two are there, but they aren't there alone.

[10:02]

Since you're experiencing them, there's also eye consciousness. But the ayatanists don't mention eye consciousness because the ayatanists are pointing to where they look to see the depending color rising of consciousness. You all have sense consciousness. but you may not be able to witness its creation. And its creation, by the way, in terms of direct sense experience, is not known to objective knowledge. But it does arise whenever there is actually consciousness occult. And one can actually witness its birth by being upright with its birth.

[11:05]

And this is where its birth happens. Now, this is a story of its birth. There's other stories you could tell of its birth. Stories that we tell of the birth of a thing is the dependent core rising of the thing. That's that mental agitation we talked about, which is the subtlest one of dependent core rising. So, eye consciousness, awareness of color, has three kinds of dependent core arising. One kind is, it depends on causes and conditions. What are the causes and conditions? Color. Eye organ. Gross and subtle materiality. That they're in contact. That there's life. And then there's dependent colorizing of high consciousness. The eye doesn't see. The color doesn't see. The consciousness doesn't see. The contact between them doesn't see.

[12:08]

What is seeing? Seeing is a dependent colorizing of all those things. That's what seeing is. If you watch right here, you'll see where these things interact and where they do not interact. When they interact, they also merge. When they don't interact, they stay in their own space. They actually don't interact and they do interact. You can witness this if you just hop right and watch the door here. I often think of this, a painter said, he said, a lot of people think that if you understand, you can create. He said, I think it's more the other way around. If you can create, you understand.

[13:10]

But another way to say it is, if you can witness the creation of your sense consciousnesses, you'll understand sense consciousness. You'll understand the sense consciousness that seeing is a dependent core rising. You understand that color is a dependent core rising. You understand that I is a dependent core rising. And you understand that you're a dependent core rising. And then you will not locate yourself in the color anymore. You will not locate yourself anywhere. Vasubandhu, teaching Manarhita, said, Manarhita asked Vasubandhu, what is the Bodhi, what is the enlightenment of all the Buddhas? Vasubandhu said, it is the original nature of mind. What is the original nature of mind? It is the emptiness of the 12 ayatans.

[14:15]

It is the emptiness of the 18 doctors. It is the emptiness of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. It is the emptiness of colors, smells, touches, tastes, tangibles, and mind objects. It is the emptiness of eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, body consciousness, tongue consciousness, and mind consciousness. It's emptiness of those, all those. That's what the... original nature of mind is the emptiness of all those things. What is the emptiness of all those things? It is the dependent core arising. Dependent core arising is the only things, actually. It sounds pretty fancy, but the dependent core arising are the only things you actually have any evidence for. Those are things that you have evidence for. Things that aren't dependent core arising are just dreams.

[15:20]

So that's his teaching. And it starts with the Buddha's teaching of training in dustiness. Vasubandhu points it out too. Now Vasubandhu, all he said to modern Itta was, it's the emptiness of these. So I would guess that modern Itta had already been meditating on The sense fields, the sense organs, and the sense consciousnesses. The mind field, the mind organ, and the mind consciousness. He had already been meditating on them quite a bit. So what Vasubhagana said is the emptiness of those things. He woke up. I forgot to say the last line of the story. When he heard Vasubhagana say that the original nature of mind is the emptiness of these, he woke up. So he must have been grounded in these already, so with Lasibana said emptiness.

[16:26]

Or it's one of those stories where he said that to Manojita, then seven years or so elapsed, and then he awoke. I don't know. This type of meditation is where we're meditating on how the consciousness arises from the interaction between its objects and its organs. How that works, meditating on the dependent horizon of that, one realizes the emptiness of each one of them, and also then the emptiness of the separation between mind and object, which is also the separation between this and that, which is also the separation between self and others. All these dualities drop away. And so then they say, at that time, sometimes they say, just the scene, there's just the object, and there's no subject. There's still experience, but there's no subject, object, there's just object. Or you could say, there's just subject.

[17:33]

What's the subject? The subject is yellow. Then you walk around, yellow, Leslie, Marsha, that's your light, Nancy. What's yourself? You know? Susan. That's myself. You asked me what myself is. Leslie. You understand? So it's either there's no self-other anymore. Now, if you don't talk about if you forget about the object and you say, well, no. I mean, really, what's yourself? Then you say, even the 10,000 sages don't know. Because if you look back, there's nothing there, really. There isn't anything. But if you want something, well, there it is, the world. You can talk about it. So in a sense, you could say the objects disappear because the objects are no longer objects, because the objects are your life. So they say the objects vanish.

[18:34]

Or if you look at the consciousness, the consciousness vanishes. So this kind of language which you'll maybe run into in some of these meditation texts that are being passed out to you, this is what it means to vanish. Vanish means you understand the dependent core arising on the thing, and when you see the dependent core arising on the thing, there's no thing there anymore. There's just dependent core arising. It's just all the thing... is created by. You don't see the thing by itself anymore. You see it in terms of causes and conditions. And then when you see the causes and conditions, you lose track of things. So this lineage then is Buddha, Vasubandhu, etc. And then also in particular I mentioned the fourth ancestor and the fifth ancestor gave this kind of teaching, which I can go into more detail later. You don't have that in your handout. Then you can also see this teaching in the teaching of Tsongsa.

[19:38]

You do have that whole thing. And that Tsongsa article is the model that Dogenzenji used for his first version of Phukhansa Zeng. So in those different texts, you can see the lineage of this meditation. is meditation on the dependent core rising of subject-object, of mind and object. That's one lineage you can do. And again, some people read this kind of stuff, and sometimes they go into meditation, and they kind of lean into this kind of meditation, and they get brain fizzled. So don't try to do these meditations. Just listen to the instruction, read the text, and just continue to sit upright and still be quiet. And as the teaching becomes more and more sunk into your body, like if you read these texts every day, or even certain sections of them, on these core meditations on the pentacle rising of consciousness, if you have that deeply memorized in your body, in your brain, it'll come up.

[20:49]

It'll be teaching you. You shouldn't lean into that meditation, because if you lean into the meditation, you're not letting just the thing be the thing. You're kind of like, well, I'm going to now go study this. It's too much. It will come to you. And then you'll see it. Don't go after this stuff. Just be upright, and you will be able to do this meditation. Some of you will spontaneously find yourself understanding this, without the slightest intention to do it. Others of you were wanting to be doing it and training yourself at it, but it would also have come to you by that kind of training. Okay, so that's that lineage. And the other lineage I want to talk about is the lineage up to this part, the karma part, karma and aspirations part. OK, but before I do that, I see lots of questions, so let's have questions on this part. OK, so I think Susan was first.

[21:55]

Susan, Juan, Tracy, Ramon, and who else right now? And Mark also, and Jeremy, OK? This might be very simplistic, but I'm trying to get my consciousness. Just, you know, the eye organ, the color, when you start registering color and then all red, should I give the eye consciousness? Yeah. Except that that's like, again, that's like what he called a, that's a, That's a good question. That's the conceptual version of it. When you're dealing with it at the level you've described, that's a conceptual version of the actuality of sense consciousness. Sense consciousness, you have no conceptual awareness of.

[23:03]

But it is going on, and it is the reason, it is one of the factors or conditions for you having this conceptual version of it. Okay? Working with the conceptual version of it, what you're actually doing is you're working with the last two ayatanas. You're watching the concept of the color color. concept of the I and the concept of the sense consciousness, how they arise, that's your mind object. And your mind consciousness arises with that. So you're actually witnessing the birth of mind consciousness with that. But the mind consciousness is providing you with a metaphor or a concept about something which has also actually just happened to you just before. So you work your way into the actual realization of the dependent core rising of your sense consciousness from your mind consciousness.

[24:14]

And my talking to you right now and conveying these teachings to you, I'm training you at the level of mind consciousness. It's coming in intellectually now. But as you do it with your mind consciousness, you will also do it to start to settle into doing it with your sense consciousness. Because as I told you, mind consciousness is, or as Tim brought up, mind consciousness is like a shadow of He didn't bring it up for that, but I said, the mind consciousness is a shadow. Its origination comes from, uses, it depends upon a shadow of the sense consciousness. So you have the shadow of the sense consciousness in terms of concepts. So yes, you're right. Work with that. That's what it's like, but that's not actually the dependent core arising of the sense consciousness. The actual dependent core arising of the sense consciousness is actually color coming in, not the concept of color. We don't know colors directly. We only know concepts of color. But again, the pattern by which sense consciousness arises is re-enacted in the level of conception.

[25:21]

So you're seeing the same pattern, and if you work with This dependent core arising of your mind consciousness, you also open up to the dependent core arising of the actual sense consciousness, but you won't have objective knowledge of them. Isn't that kind of a biological thing? I mean, when you color things happening in your eye, you don't feel it. Right. We cannot... It seems to be working quite well that we cannot be conscious of these actual biological sense processes, which give rise to this biological phenomena called consciousness, called sense consciousness. Mind consciousness is also a biological phenomena, but it is a derivative of sense consciousness. And mind consciousness we can know objectively. We have objective knowledge coming with that. So they're all biological functions.

[26:25]

But remember, according to the Buddhist teaching, biological phenomena, yes, these things give rise to these biological phenomena, but the biological phenomena come from biological phenomena. The biological phenomena come from the behavior of biological entities. which have consciousness, so the whole system. So life goes all the way around this. There's no break in life in this. So there's life leading to the material which gives rise to life. And there's consciousness which leads to the biology which gives rise to consciousness. If we understand the dependent core arising of these things, we are illuminated. about this wonderful world of interdependence, and we enter this wonderful world of the self-fulfilling samadhi where we understand how we teach the rocks and the rocks teach us, how we teach the grass and the grass teach us this incredible thing. But we can't know this objectively.

[27:29]

We can't actually know consciously, discriminating consciously, we can't actually conceive of. how, you know, we're teaching, how, you know, how, you know, the Buddha's teaching coming through me, being channeled through me, coming out of my mouth, and the grass is out there going, you know, and when they go, I tell you about it. Well, this is just, you know, where is this coming from? Who gets to talk like this? Well, Dogen's energy, right? He talked like that. So then we got this written down, so now I'm talking like that, and now you're hearing this, and pretty soon you'll be talking like that, and we'll all be crazy. Mark? Given that emptiness, what does it mean for them to be in their own states when they're not merging? When they're not merging, okay, in their own states, in a sense, in their own states, what? No.

[28:30]

That's right, there's nothing there. Exactly. When they're in their own states, there's no evidence for them. When they're in their own states, there's no evidence for them. There aren't any things in their own states. Things that actually don't have their own states, because everything's interdependent, when they are, they don't interact. When they don't interact, they're in their own states, but when they're in their own states, there's no evidence for them. You don't have any evidence for these things when they're in their own states. You have no experience of them. When the eye is kind of like over here kind of pouting, you know, and the color's over here saying, well, if you'd be nice, I'll come over and touch. When that's what's happening, that world we don't have any evidence for. That's not the world that we have evidence for. The world we have evidence for is where the eye and the color are like doing it.

[29:31]

And where consciousness is going, whoa, where did I come from? Oh, I see. When they interact, they merge. But when they merge, They have no independence. When they interact, they merge. When they interact, they give birth. They become parents and so on. This is the dynamic. When they're separate, nothing's happening. When they're interacting, they're not there anymore either. But things happen. And so in one case, when they're separate, we have no evidence for it. Everybody's happy because nothing's happening. And when they're together, we've got stuff happening, but everything's merged and you don't know, nothing's independent there either. So one case you have independence, And nothing's happening. In other case, you have interaction and no independence, but there's evidence for no independence. We have evidence for no independence. We have no evidence for non-independence for independence. We have evidence for non-independence.

[30:33]

We have evidence for interdependence. We have evidence for interdependence. We don't have evidence for independence. Independence is they're not interacting. Everybody's got their own thing. We're not interacting. There's no evidence for that. Nothing happens. No. Empty things we have evidence for. Those are things we have evidence for. The non-empty things we don't have evidence for. There's no evidence for non-empty things. There aren't any non-empty things. There's only empty things. But we have plenty of them. No shortage. I mean, most people don't have some shortage. Some people would like a few more, some of the empty things. Like, I'd like some more empty dollars. Or some more empty boyfriends. In fact, I'd like that empty boyfriend.

[31:41]

Okay, Ramon. Yeah, that's why he made that doctrine. Right! That's what Nagarjuna's most important teaching is. dependent core arising is emptiness. They imply each other. And the main way I'm trying to show you to realize emptiness of the 18 Datums, emptiness of all these things, is see their dependent core arising. If you just try to see emptiness, well, good luck. Sometimes just saying emptiness, you see it. A lot of people don't get it that way. But if you see the dependent core arising, you see emptiness.

[32:42]

That's right. But for a lot of people, for most people maybe, the pentacle rising is the door that they get to realize emptiness. But there are some people who are suffering so much, they're so grounded in their eye, in their ear, in their consciousness, they're so like, you just say emptiness to them and they go, they wake up right away. They're completely there meditating on the dependent core rising. So you say emptiness and they wake up. But most people, we need to kind of like, Buddha kind of like encourages, okay, now come on, pay attention to what's happening. Watch how things are dependent core rising. Come on, come on, come on. Get in there. And then you see the emptiness. It's kind of a, the dependent core rising teaching is a massage to get you into your life. Okay, I'll see now. I think Tracy was next and then Mark and Jeremy. Is that right? Did I miss anybody else in the first round?

[33:43]

Yes, Tracy. I'm wondering what you said about leading to this meditation and your brain fizzling because I walk the path and I feel like I'm being swallowed up by all colors. And then here I ask the question and I become very self-conscious and seeing that anxiety, I feel like it's followed up by that anxiety. Yeah, that's good. That's not leaning into the colors. It doesn't sound like leaning into the colors or leaning into the anxiety. There's a little addition I get kind of excited and how pleasant it is.

[34:50]

Yeah. There's a space. There's a space for just the colors. Yeah. So that's it. That's fine. That's the meditation. Just be swallowed up by the fall colors. That's it. They're just the sea. There's this... There's somehow... At one point, in other words, it's Tracy walking along, right? And suddenly, it's just like all colors. That's the practice. Now, if you try to, like, go... I'm going to go look at the fall colors... or I wish I'm excited about all colors, then it's not quite just all colors are the full colors. So sometimes you'll hear instruction, when objects arise, look at them. Maybe a thousand years ago that worked. But now when you say look at it, people go, and then they get this thing, oh, I'm looking at it. It's exciting, all that. I'm practicing Zen. No, you don't look at it.

[35:56]

When it arises, you are looking at it. You wouldn't know it was there if you weren't looking at it. It's wonderful teaching, but I think the way of putting it should be more, you should emphasize not like leaning into the object. Then you'll be, you know, you'll be emphasizing it's here, there. Swallowing up is good. Like when there's a color, when there's an object, there's just an object. You're swallowed up. When there's anxiety, there's just anxiety. That's it. Don't go out looking for your anxiety. No, just sit there like a good meditator and suddenly anxiety. Hello. Now don't lean back either. Don't, you know, don't say, okay, okay. Just anxiety, you know. How do you think? Maybe say, no. That's all right. But really, don't even say hello.

[36:57]

Just be quiet and sit there with the anxiety or with the color. Next thing. These things are happening. If you're studying this material, the teaching is there, ready to help you in any way you can. But basically, if you understand this teaching, then you will not actually be chasing this stuff. Because in fact, there isn't stuff out there. It's not over there. Over there, just a color, a color is not over there. The color is not over there. There's not here and there. When the color arises, it's not over there in the practice of suchness. And the color isn't over here, and it's not in between. There's just color. It has no location at that time. It's not color plus a location. It's just color. If you try to look at this stuff, now look at some of the other teachings, look at the consciousness.

[38:02]

If you look at the consciousness, it vanishes. Yeah, that's right. But if you look at it, it won't vanish because you're going to be leaning into it. You're just going to get this fuss, this, you know, you're going to bring your greed for good meditation into your meditation. So don't do that. Just listen to this teaching and forget it. And then just be prezzled. And so the experience you sound, you told, sounds good. Sounds good. Just color. And sound. They're just sound. That's a good way to deal with these things, right? When there's sound, how is it? Sound. Now maybe it's not that way for you, man. Now maybe it's sound plus sounds over there, plus exciting, plus blah, blah, blah. Maybe it's sound and I have my meditation instructions, sound and me. Okay, fine. You're training yourself. For it to be just sound when there's sound. Just the herd. That's the train.

[39:02]

Sounds like heat actually just fell into it. There he was. There was just the seed. The autumn seed. What? You were saying... No, no, I said, if you ask me, who am I, I'd say Mark. You're the expert on that. If you're talking about for me, it's a mind object. And it doesn't appear that often. Jeremy?

[40:07]

It's somehow easy for me to imagine in terms of the sense consciousness. There's a proof of subtle materiality that can contact the consciousness arising from that. But it's a little bit harder for me to imagine to find out just concepts. Well, in part, we have no evidence for it being in part. It's hard for me to imagine them coming into contact with mind. You know, I'm visualizing the thing that the mind is producing concepts, not that mind consciousness is the meaning of consciousness, and every mind has receptivity. So I was wondering what gets me to say to that, or what the major concept is apart from mind, although we, I know there's no evidence for it. We only have evidence when it's together. But it sounds like they could, you know, that... There's something separate about concept in mind. Yeah, right. Again, I would use the word consciousness here, okay? You just said, of course, consciousness isn't separate from concept, right?

[41:13]

You said that, right? Right. Consciousness is not separate from concept. But there's a difference between concept to consciousness. When consciousness arises, it never arises without concept. When mind consciousness arises, it never arises without concept. When mind consciousness arises, it never arises without actually samadhi. When mind consciousness arises, it never arises without adverting decision. When mind consciousness arises, it never arises without certain mental factors. So, when a moment of consciousness arises, it comes up with a complement of standard, universal mental factors, and also variable mental factors, which vary from consciousness to consciousness.

[42:14]

And one of them that always comes up is concept. You never have one skanda come up. When the fifth skanda, which is consciousness, comes up, the other four come up. So you have feelings also. Always have feelings. Every state of consciousness you have a feeling. Which means you always have judgment. Good or bad. Every moment of consciousness has that. So what's the difference between the consciousness and these mental factors? It's one pair of the oddness, right? Mind and mind, doctor? Yeah, right. So mind, you know, this is the mind-consciousness thing, right? The consciousness always comes with these mental objects, mind objects. But really, it's one thing. It's the actual conscious experience. So there's consciousness and there's actually the full conscious experience. This particular type of consciousness is determined by this, and you could say contents, or you could say it's sweet.

[43:20]

It's accompaniment. Either contents or accompaniment. It's alongside or inside. Anyway, when consciousness arises, it always has feelings. It always has impulses, we say. But that's a category for... That's the main thing it has. It has a shape. Its overall shape it has. It always is a shape. And its shape is determined by what kind of feelings there are, what kind of concepts there are, and what kind of impulses there are. Like, is there anger there, or greed there, or confusion there? Okay? So consciousness doesn't just, there isn't just like awareness, but there is awareness. And the awareness always has built into it duality. Because it has the shadow of its birth. It has its history of being born from duality. So when this kind of consciousness comes up, it is dualistic consciousness. It is always dualistic consciousness because of its history. So one of the things that arises with it is its history. Its memory.

[44:21]

Its birth from duality. Its birth from reality. in terms of mind consciousness, and its birth in terms of being an evolution from sense consciousness, and it has the history of sense consciousness being an evolution from physicality interacting, and it has the history of the physicality being a result from karma. So your dualistic consciousness, every moment it arises, has the history of the universe in it. It has the history of the evolution of consciousness in it. That arises with it. never just the consciousness. And what arises with it is determined by your practice. It arises without consciousness. And the quality of consciousness, the quality of experience is determined by these mental factors, because awareness is just awareness. But then awareness is touched by duality, fundamental duality, fundamental ignorance, fundamental confusion, concepts, feelings.

[45:23]

and various influencing factors, and there's an overall shape. And every moment of consciousness comes with this chaitana, this overall shape. So every moment of consciousness has thinking. But thinking is not the same as awareness. Thinking is the shape of the awareness. And the shape of the awareness, then, is the template for this illusion of karma. OK? Is there a story in there about conceptual originality? With a lot of these things, it feels like they're kind of just there and you're aware of them, whether it's a history and you're aware of it. But is there some understanding of things that aren't there that come to be there? Does that question make sense to you? The issue of originality? Well, for me, I guess right now, in response to your question, what comes from me is that if you look at the contributing conditions for an experience and all the different things involved, generally speaking, in that realm of the awareness and

[46:45]

its history, past karma and all that, that accounts for, that's the story of how you have this particular complement of material which surrounds this particular concept of this particular imagination. And that isn't necessarily deterministic, but anyway, it's determined at that moment. Can you know some originality come? Well, yes, because there is something which is outside of the story. It is called dependent core rising. It is called emptiness. It is called the total picture. And that can come into this little picture. So we can do amazing things that we wouldn't be able to account for by this little story I just told you. The story I just told you is just a little circle of water. But in a sense, there's no originality outside the total picture of the universe.

[47:47]

But whatever story I tell you is really just a little circle of water. And that would allow for all kinds of things to happen here which won't be accounted for by the story I just told you. Including the story I just told you that there are things happening that won't be accounted for. But that's part of the reason why you know there's more than... There's more than this story because things don't behave exactly like the story, and that's part of how I don't want this to be too systematic, because if it's too systematic, you're going to get tight, and then you're going to start closing to revelation, even though this is supposed to be instruction on revelation. If this gets too systematic, you won't allow yourself to have certain revelations. There's another reason why I say, just kind of forget this, okay? Okay. In some sense, what I'm teaching you here is just so you can cope with all the teaching there is in the world. Just so you can cope with all the Zen teaching without grabbing it.

[48:49]

So I'm offering this to you to see if you can leave it alone. And if you can leave it alone, it'll help you. But if you grab it, then you'll limit yourself and block the very revelation which they're given in order to help you with. So the story I just told about the Pentacle Rising is just a story to give you some sense of where to look, what to be open to. Not even where to look, but what to be open to is better. Because if I tell you to look, you're going to be starting to close down. So I'm telling you more about how to be open so that when these things happen, when Dharma comes and knocks on the door, you won't think, oh, how weird, get out of here, you know? You know, like when you start seeing the dependent core rising in your consciousness, you won't say, well, no, I don't want to see this. You'll say, well, it's not like I was looking for this, but it does sound kind of like something I was told would be good to see. So, thank you for coming. It's more of a welcoming openness to the dependent core rising rather than like going hunting it down.

[49:53]

So that's why I'm trying to be careful not to make this too systematic, but warn you a little bit so that if you happen to see any Dharma, you won't reject it because it looks so weird. Because it's supposed to look kind of weird, because it's not going to look, you know, like your regular, old, substantial, graspable, painful life. It's going to be like poor Tracy, you know? Like, what is he? He's being swallowed by colors and losing weight. What the fuck? And like, you know, does anybody have something I can poke more holes in my belt, you know? Here I am, you know, I'm just poor little meat, anxiety all over the place, you know. You know, here I am, am I losing weight, you know? How much more weight am I going to lose? You know, what's going to happen?

[50:57]

You know? We don't know. But if you can stand to be swallowed up, you will be just fine. Just fine. There'll be no worry. Your practice will go on forever if you just get swallowed up by all of a sudden jump in. It's about being defensive. It's a pinnacle horizon. Is that all the questions then? On this tall section, yes? Anna, thanks for getting up. There is no space for things people themselves. No, things are themselves, but the way they are themselves is that they are dependent core-risings.

[52:04]

In other words, when I'm talking about full self-expression, I mean you express yourself as the person who all of us help you be. So if you express yourself and I'm not helping you be that way, this is not full self-expression. Do you know what I mean? But what need is there for talking about in Jesus? What need? No need. I'm just telling you about emptiness so you can defend yourself against it when you hear it every morning. You know? So you can defend yourself against emptiness by being open to it. That's the only reason why I mention emptiness. So you can be open to it. Because it's flying all over this valley. Haven't you seen it? You know, it's in the sutra books coming out of people's mouths. You know? It's written in calligraphy here and there, you know. And all these little leaves and rocks are going, emptiness, emptiness, emptiness. So I'm just mentioning it just to sort of encourage you not to be closed to it, which is a way to defend yourself against emptiness, is to not be closed to it.

[53:13]

If you're closed to emptiness, then you're in trouble with emptiness. Huh? No, I want you to be susceptible to emptiness. That's the way you defend yourself. Emptiness will hurt you if you fight it. Because you're empty. Because if you fight emptiness, you're fighting yourself. That's why I mentioned it. Yeah, go ahead. Well, if you say, I'm only dependent on rising. So... Can you say it louder, please? Can you say it louder? I'm only dependent co-rising. I'm only a dependent co-rising. Yeah. Yeah? If you say that, yes? Emptiness is another aspect to describe that. It's not exactly another aspect. It's just another word for the same thing. But it seems to me that we have to talk about emptiness because of this clinging to substantiality.

[54:19]

Yeah, so it is nice to have both words, isn't it? Now you have dependent core arising, but you've got emptiness, so you don't make dependent core arising into something. Even though dependent core arising will show you emptiness, still you can make that into something. So that's another part of what Nagarjuna points out, is that the emptiness empties the dependent core arising. Because Defendant Core Rising really isn't a thing either. And also, emptiness is also empty. Yeah. So that's why we say emptiness. So you can be ready for the emptiness of everything. Even emptiness. Even Defendant Core Rising. Even Enlightenment. Even Buddha. But most of all, even, you know... Huh? What? I'm just kidding. Not that. That's the one exception. That's the one exception. And then the emptiness of that is also empty. So that's why you don't have to be empty and you can be nice and solid.

[55:21]

It's fine. Because it's no better to be empty than not to be empty. And we don't prefer, you know, dharma over not-dharma or liberation over not-liberation. We have no preference. In other words, we're really free. Okay, can I... Yes? Yeah, I would say dependent core rising is auspicious, do not violate it. There's not a difference between them? Besides being different words? I don't know. I really don't know. Anyway, do you see any merging? Put your hands together. Gosh, sure. Don't buy it.

[56:25]

Can I go on just a little bit here to the next part? The next kinds of teaching? Everybody, a little bit? The next part... By the way, in order to do this kind of study, renunciation is very helpful. To drop anything that interferes with this type of meditation. To drop those activities which are distracting you from paying attention to this. And also Norman's talked, too, when he said, to mature beings, part of what it takes to mature beings is to know yourself, to know your ordinary karmic self.

[57:27]

Remember he said that? To know your ordinary karmic self. That's riding the karmic horse, riding the karmic bull. To know that karmic self without exaggeration, or underestimation, just as you are. That requires renunciation. Just put aside everything and just know yourself for what you're doing. So here, the next set of meditations is Yaoshan, where he talks about not doing anything and thinking of not thinking. And again, it's interesting to notice that these two aspects of studying suchness then are the two ways that Dogen wrote the Phukhan Zazengi. So the first way he wrote it was more along the lines of meditation on the subject-object dualism.

[58:29]

and meditation on how consciousness arises from subject-optic interaction and seeing that distinction vanish. Its early version was in that lineage. Its later version was in the Yaoshanda version of not doing anything and thinking of not thinking. In a sense, this meditation on karma is grosser. It's not as subtle as watching the subtleties of your mind as it gives rise to these concepts of self and others, as it dependently co-arises in relationships to the concept of self and others. Because karmas can be pretty heavy-duty and pretty gross. It's easier to see in a way. And then one step back from karma, or not one step back from karma, but the subtlest version of karma is thinking. So again, thinking... In thinking, in a given moment of consciousness, is the shape of your consciousness.

[59:38]

Do you want to see your mental karma? Just turn around and look at the shape of your mind. Look at the impulses there. Look at the inclinations. When you look and you see the inclinations, when you see the impulses, you are studying your thinking. Now, he said, think of not thinking. Sometimes people try to look back and they look into their mind and say, well, there's the thinking. Now I'm supposed to see the not thinking. Okay. Start by thinking of the thinking. Okay. You study the thinking, you study the thinking, you study the thinking, and you study the thinking, you study the thinking, and then you'll see the dependent core arising of the thinking. When you see the dependent core arising of the thinking, then you're thinking of not thinking. But it's not just the not thinking, which is the dependent core arising of the thinking, okay? The dependent core arising of the thinking is not thinking.

[60:42]

Which is pretty good stuff. And it's always going on. Whenever there's thinking, there's also the dependent core arising of thinking. Does that make sense? In other words, whenever there's thinking, there's not thinking. In other words, whenever there's thinking, the thinking is empty. All right? But it's not, that's when Yaoshan's sitting, it's not just not thinking. So what kind of thinking is there? Okay? It's not just not thinking. That's what kind of thinking. It's true that the kind of thinking that's there when Yaoshan's sitting, the kind of thinking is that there's not thinking. But that's not the sitting. Meditation of Yaoshan, the sitting meditation of Yaoshan is thinking of not thinking. It is another kind of way of being. It's being absorbed. It's not just that you're relying on the fact that your thinking is empty and that everything is empty and everything is dependent and co-arising. It's not just that you're relying on that there's Dharma everywhere. You're thinking of the Dharma. You're thinking of it. So your thinking is directed towards thinking of how your thinking is happening.

[61:49]

In other words, you're studying the dependent core rising of your thinking. In other words, you're studying the dependent core rising of your mental karma. In other words, you're studying karma so thoroughly, you see that it's not karma. You see that when you're sitting, you're not doing anything. You see the not doing. But you're meditating on the not doing. You're tuned into channel not doing. You're tuned into channel not thinking. And that's called non-thinking or non-doing. It's a celebration. The meditation is a celebration. It's a way of being that's celebrating the emptiness of your being. It's a way of being and it's a way of acting and living that celebrates the fact that we don't have to do anything to be Buddha. But Buddhas don't skip over noticing what's going on. And if somebody's up to some karma, well, they notice it. Little kid runs in front of Buddha. Hi. Can I have your piece of chalk shirt?

[62:53]

But Buddha's not like giving the piece of chalk to be a Buddha or looking at the kids so to be a Buddha. The Buddha's celebrating being Buddha by giving the piece of chalk. It's something the Buddha can do to celebrate the fact that the Buddha doesn't do anything to be happy. This is just happiness. But if you skip over paying attention to what you're doing, You're not appreciating your life. So study it, study the karma, study the karma, and you'll understand karma is not karma. Study the thinking, study the thinking, you'll understand thinking is not thinking. Then you're thinking of not thinking, you're thinking of not karma. And again, don't try to go into Zendo or walk down the street and say, okay, now I'm going to try to think of how my thinking isn't thinking. Again, that causes brain damage. If you really push it, it could be actually major. Usually most people just start getting a headache and feeling overheated pretty fast and stop.

[63:59]

But it's really, don't do it. Just do your regular, just pay attention to what's happening. You'll notice you're doing, eventually you'll notice that you're doing some karma. You eventually notice it. When you notice it, fine, that's it for the moment. And you'll notice it again and again. The more you notice it, the more intimate you get with it, the closer you're getting to realize, oh, karma, oh, that's how karma happens. Oh, it happens because I got a me over here who does it and blah, blah, blah. Then you're on. And you start to see its dependent core rising. And you start to see, oh, karma is not karma. I get it. But don't go try to look for karma that's not karma. What you'll get is doing karma without even seeing you're doing karma. And it's a very strange kind of karma that you'd be doing. Just do your regular karma. Regular karma like, I'm walking to the zendo. I'm eating. I'm sitting. I'm... blah blah whatever this ordinary stuff that's fine stuff just study that study study and but i'm saying study i'm pointing you know my fingers i'm pointing but really i don't mean to lean into it just be upright and just receive the gift of how it's happening and as you understand more and more intimate without leaning into it without running away from it never go away from your karma never go away from it always be attending it never go after it just be close

[65:17]

Don't do anything to it. It will reveal itself to you. It will reveal itself to you. Like, what is it? Cactus. The great Czech meditator. You don't have to move from your seat. All you got to do is, like, sit still. You don't have to sit still. All you got to do is be quiet. You don't have to be quiet. All you got to do is wait. You don't have to wait. Just be present and aware. and the world will come and unmask itself to me. It will roll at your feet in ecstasy. It has no choice. It will reveal itself to you. But if you're going around picking at it, saying, OK, come on, let's see the emptiness. Let's see the pinnacle horizon. That's kind of like a Zen student way of running around. So you're at your seat, but don't mess around. Just sit there. Non-manipulative. Just let the scene be the scene. Let the herd be the herd.

[66:17]

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Okay, okay, okay. Gradually, he'll say, hey, let's take the mask off for her. Let's do the roll of the feet in ecstasy thing for her. Because she's not trying to get anything out of us. Let's show it to her. Okay, here's the pentacle horizon. Ooh, thanks. That's it. Don't be greedy for dharma. Be dedicated to done. Be on the side of the law. Yes? What was your point again about... Oh, yeah, ask that question. When I was talking to Jeremy... Oh, no, I was just saying that the artist said, usually people think, oh, if you understood, then you could create.

[67:22]

So a lot of artists trying to read books or go to classes to understand what art is, right? Well, that's nice. If you could understand, yes, you would be able to create. It's true. But he's saying, better, first of all, create than you understand. Of course, once you understand, once you understand which arises from creation, then you create again. But the place to catch on, he's saying, understand how things are is in creativity. Then, of course, you continue to participate in creativity, but how things arise is a way to understand. Then, of course, you can join the creative process and kind of like, I saw your name to it. I gave money. Get fed. Once you plug into it, you can get fed for it. Even though you've been fed all along, you can now get fed more and get rich because now you've plugged into creativity. It's a really great deal. So here, if you can see how anything in your life arises, if you can watch, if you can see a thought arise, catch it like when it's kind of like, okay, no thoughts, and then kind of like, hello, this thought.

[68:34]

See like a baby thought. First little sprout, you know, that first little bamboo shoot. Very educational. It's not that it's that cool. It's just like you saw it when it was born. When you see things born, you really appreciate it. You know, when you see something born, you really think, oh, how precious. It doesn't matter what it is. If it's a baby girl, it's like... And if you really are really there when it's born, you'll never abuse that thing. And that it's a bamboo sprout, or if it's a pot, whatever it is. And actually, every experience has that birth. Every moment of your day, every experience has a little kind of... If you're there, it's kind of like, oh. Every face you see has a little sprout. It becomes great bamboo, right? But like you said this morning, if you try to make bamboo rope out of a bamboo sprout, it's not going to be very good rope. You got to let the bamboo grow up. But it's also important to let see the sprout, because if you don't see the sprout, you won't appreciate the bamboo and be able to make good rope either.

[69:44]

So you got to catch the beginning and not capitalize on it. And then also use it later when it's appropriate. So that's why he says, You know, even if you realize it's unborn, how can you still stay on the side of life? Okay? Even when you realize life is unborn, how can you stay on the side of life? That's this morning's case, right? Well, you stay on the side of it to stay with while it grows up. Okay? Don't just like, okay, I'm born, okay, cash in. Stay with it for a while. It is precious. So catching things when you're born as a creator is very helpful. And then you plug into the creative process and then follow it through for a while. And then maybe there's some time for cropping, you know? Unlimited wealth, right. I knew there was a point in this.

[70:48]

Climate getting. Yeah. Okay, so the administration of Tassahara has kindly let us have this class today and have work meeting late, so we don't want to abuse that privilege, so we should stop now.

[71:03]

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