I looked this character up and this is written correctly. So I could tell the story that the Zen tradition is cared for by the oral transmission of stories. So there's birth stories.

[01:02]

Like I told some stories about the birth of Buddha and there's other stories of the birth of Buddha. Like, you know, that Buddha was born in India 2,500 years ago and so on. But then there's also the story that Buddhas are born... all over the place, and the way they're born is they're born from a wish, which is completely free of any conceptual clinging. So when we are having our wishes and our wishes have conceptual clinging, they're different from the type of wish that would give rise to a Buddha.

[02:05]

But when there's a wish to open and demonstrate and awaken beings to Buddha's wisdom and help them enter into Buddha's wisdom, when there's a wish like that, with no conceptual clinging, then that's the kind of situation, that's the main condition. That's not the only condition because, of course, the sentient beings are a condition too. Innumerable sentient beings are conditions for the arising of the Buddha. Or we say the one great condition is when you have a lot of sentient beings and then you have a wish arising among them or in relationship to them. this kind of wish free of any conceptual clinging, which means an emptiness, which means a state of awareness where there's no conceptual clinging. That's an emptiness, which is also an emptiness joined with a wish.

[03:12]

Then the Buddhas are born. That's the story of the birth of the Buddha. And then there's a story that the Buddha who lived in India, that that Buddha taught that there's rebirth. So there's stories of rebirth, and there's stories of past lives. Also those are stories. And all these are stories, and stories are conceptual narrations. So the stories are not the same. Well, the story of the arising of the Buddha free of conceptual clinging is not the same. It's not the same kind of thing as the story. The story is a skillful device coming from those who are free of conceptual clinging to help them realize freedom from conceptual clinging, joined together with compassion.

[04:23]

Freedom from conceptual clinging is a kind of knowledge. It's a knowledge joined with wisdom. Is it a cognitive knowledge or an intuitive one? It's not a dualistic awareness. So it could be called an intuition. So anyway, there's all these stories. And then there's the issue of understanding them. And I talked about this on Sunday, but I forgot to say in my efforts to make the talk not too long, I forgot to say the first, when you're meditating on the stories in order to understand them, the first step in meditating on stories is to give up.

[05:41]

all involvement with the stories. So if you hear a story, whatever the story, from anybody, anytime, or if you have a story in your own mind, no matter what the story is, the first step, well not the first step, but the first step in meditation after listening to the story is to give up all involvement with the story. and give up all involvements with all other stories while you're at it. And then, and thus enter into a deep, sincere serenity. And then when you have this deep, sincere, flexible, ready mind, then You can turn your attention away from giving up involvement with the story, with a particular story, with all stories, and turn your attention towards looking at, examining, analyzing the story.

[06:55]

story of the Buddha, story of how Buddhas are born, stories of the self, stories of all the teachings that you can hear about. So that's a short story about how to understand stories. Give up all involvement with them, enter into tranquility, and then get involved with them again. And when you understand them, then give up all involvement with them again. So you join your involvement with them, which has come to fruition as wisdom, then you give up your involvement with them, which was based on giving up involvement with them, And the wisdom which arises from that, then you rejoin that with not being involved with them.

[08:05]

So that you rejoin the wisdom which was based on the tranquility, you rejoin it with the tranquility so that the wisdom and the vipassana and samatha are joined. And then you enter into the full direct realization of the story. direct understanding. If the story was a story of delusion, you would be understanding it and you would be realizing it too, because you would be realizing the non-duality of the story of delusion and the story of enlightenment. The story of delusion and the story of enlightenment are non-dual. The story of delusion is that the story of enlightenment and the story of delusion are dual.

[09:10]

And the story of enlightenment is that the stories are not dual. And in the actual enlightenment, they're not dual. And in the actual delusion, they're not dual either. So that's an instruction not so much about the teaching but more about the teaching of the meditation practices. And another way to speak of it is that you make efforts in tranquility, you achieve tranquility And then you give up the training in tranquility.

[10:17]

And then you might, for example... you might feel like you notice some relationship, some relationships. Like you might notice a relationship between mind and objects. So then you might examine and study that relationship between mind and objects. And study means something like, you know, Like you're aware and something happens to you. You didn't necessarily say you were going to study it, but you do. You cope with it. You interact with it. You notice it and you're aware of your interaction with something. But you're in a state of tranquility, so your coping is actually insight work.

[11:25]

And you didn't necessarily make the decision, but you did make the decision when you, in this story I just told, when you realized or when you thought and confirmed and maybe discussed with your meditation teacher that you were fairly tranquil, then you stopped making the kind of effort that you had been making. You abandoned certain aspects of mind. Is that how it goes? That's how it says in the sutra. You abandon certain types of mental attention which you've been able to be continuous at. So now you're standing there without your previous training, without your previous discipline, in a state of calm. And then you start being aware of your interactions. You start to become aware that you are involved with things. And now you've entered into wisdom work. The type of awareness, being aware of your relationship with other beings and being aware of the relationship between your mind and objects is the same kind of thing that you'd be involved with in insight work.

[12:49]

It's just that if you are not calm, it's not insight work, according to the sutra. But once you're calm, when you start to become aware of these relationships, you're actually doing, you're actually analyzing and examining and becoming more and more aware of your relationship with other beings or your mind's relationship with the things it knows. And this is insight work. But it's sometimes good to consciously notice that that you consciously notice, I'm practicing Samatha, it's starting to come to fruit. I talk to the teacher, the teacher says, okay, you can give up the training now for a while. And then just, should I do anything particular? Maybe not. And some people don't talk to their teacher, they just enter into tranquility.

[13:51]

And although they've been, what do you call it, they've been kind of continuously attentive to, for example, the mind, the uninterrupted mind, they've been continuously attentive to giving up discursive thought, and they become calm, and in their calmness they forget the practice that they've been so good remembering. Somehow they just stop practicing continuous mental attention to nondiscursive silence. The discipline breaks and they look at something like a peach blossom or they hear something like a pebble hitting a piece of bamboo or they hit their toe on a rock and it hurts. and they see the relationship.

[14:56]

They didn't mean to, but they have insight. So it follows the same structure as the teaching, but they didn't consciously sign up for that exercise program, and yet it occurred. So sometimes somebody might say that spontaneous Somebody might say it's spontaneous insight, and I would say it is spontaneous but not uncaused. It's spontaneous in the sense that there's not some outside intention coming in to do the practice. It just arises because the conditions are there. Well, maybe that's enough of that kind of story about the practice of meditation.

[16:07]

And then now I'd like to say something about how one of the main teachings of this chapter and of this sutra this teaching of, what's it called? It's called cognition only. Is that what it says in this translation? Huh? Cognition only. It could also be called concept only or consciousness only, mind only. And in this sutra, it's written... vijnapti matra. Vijñapti matra means concept only or conscious construction only. And then sometimes you have this tra on the end.

[17:13]

And vijnapti matrata means you're actually attaining that mind-only situation. You realize it. Could you repeat the translation again? Translations? Could be concept-only. Matrata would be the mastery, would be the state of. Actually, there's vijnapti-matra-citi also, the mastery of the state. of concept only or conscious construction only. And I hate to really erase this Samatha-Vitarka-Vichara thing, but there they go. And then we have, what I'd like to suggest to you is that this teaching

[18:15]

emerged, it looks like this teaching first emerged in the world in this text, you know, in terms of writing. This is the first text this teaching appears in. This is Vijnapti Matrattha in chapter eight. Where does it come from? And so I think an interesting story about where, this is a birth story of this in a way. is that it comes from Buddhas and Bodhisattvas interacting with living beings. So in one sense the story could be, well, the Buddhas interact with the living beings, particularly humans, and then the humans And then the humans write this down in some language that they can write in.

[19:31]

It's one way to say it. But a slightly different way of saying it is that the relationship between the Buddhas and living beings is a reflection of this teaching, which also would then lead human beings to write this teaching down. But this teaching is not just like, for example, a Buddha could teach people that two plus two is four. Well, even that falls into this category. But anyway, maybe there's something you could teach people which wouldn't be the same as your relationship with them while you're teaching them. But in this case, this teaching of conscious construction only is like the relationship between Buddhas and sentient beings.

[20:40]

It's the way the Buddhas who have realized nirvana enter into samsaric existence. It's the way those who have realized what's beyond birth and death interact in the realm of birth and death. This teaching is a reflection of that relationship. It has, you could say, the same structure. So I've been using the term menju face-giving, face-to-face transmission. So face-to-face transmission of dharma, the face-to-face part, this just says menju, just says face-giving.

[21:43]

It doesn't say menju dembo. You know, dembo is like transmitting dharma. The dembo is contained in the menju. So the structure of menju, or the structure of menju is the structure of dharma. The dharma is about things meeting and supporting each other. So, number one, I suggest that Vijnapti Maitrata is a reflection of the menjya relationship between Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and sentient beings. The way Buddhas and bodhisattvas meeting with people and realizing Dharma is reflected in this teaching. Another expression like this, which is pretty similar, is called ji in Japanese or Chinese, ji-ju-yu.

[22:57]

This is self, ji, receiving, yu, yu, employing. So self-receiving and employing. is another way to describe the relationship between a person who has a self, but the self is not something that exists by itself, it's something that's received. And then it's not something that's held onto, but something that then is given away. And in the process of giving it away, you support other selves to receive, to be received. So this Jiu-Jitsu, this self-receiving and employing, which is also called self-fulfillment, this self-fulfillment, the self-receiving and employing, or the self-receiving and giving, is basically the same thing as Menju. This is the mode in which Dharma is transmitted.

[24:01]

So when beings meet, they receive self from each other and they give their self to each other. That's the way people meet. And that's the way Buddhas meet sentient beings. So that's another expression for this that relates to and leads to the appearance of this cognition-only teaching. And there's another expression, which is kano doko. And kano means inquiry or request or invitation. And do, I mean, and no means response. And doko means, do means path and ko means cross or meet. So it means that sentient beings' request for teaching is responded to or that the path of the Buddhas and the path of the sentient beings cross

[25:21]

and they cross at the request of beings in samsara being responded to by beings who have realized nirvana. And these beings who have realized nirvana are not interested in staying there, so they actually interact with samsaric existence. The path of those realized ones responds to the unrealized ones because the realized ones have this wish which is free of any ideas. So they have no idea that they should stay in nirvana or that they should help somebody rather than somebody else. So they just naturally, because of their wish, which has no limits on it, it naturally crosses paths with suffering beings. And that is another important idea which leads to conscious construction only. And also conscious construction only, once it appears, leads back to and tells you about Menju and tells you about Jijuyu, or self-receiving and employing, and it tells you about inquiry and response crossing paths.

[26:37]

And there's another term for this called avavada. And avavada means receiving and delivering or receiving and giving. And this avavada is also the, describes the relationship of receiving and delivering between sentient beings and Buddhas. And these descriptions, this description of the relationship between sentient beings and Buddhas, and also I told you about this, I don't have, I don't know if I can remember the Sanskrit for this, but I think it's P-R-S-T-L-A-B-D-H-E-S. I think it's a, is that right?

[28:04]

Maybe there's an A in here. Maybe it's Prishtilabdha Jnana, which again, this describes this mind that wishes to teach, but that has no conceptual clinging, this non-dual wish. to teach, the wish to teach sentient beings without thinking that they're separate from the wish or from the knowledge. So it's a knowledge which wishes to teach sentient beings, which is free of conceptual clinging. These concepts about the bodhisattvas and the Buddhas, you know, lead to the emergence of this teaching of vijnapti matrata. And vijnapti matrata is that mind and object are non-dual. So these actual processes, well at least I'm telling the story now, is that these actual processes between the realized and the unrealized, the actual relationship, is also the relationship of the mind of all beings already.

[29:19]

So the mind of all beings is such that it is receiving and giving. And when you realize that mind, you want to join into that giving and receiving. And when you join into that, that leads beings to make up teachings which describe the way the mind works. But the way the mind works is arriving out of the way the living being who has a mind is related to the entire universe. So our relationship with the universe, including our relationship to the parts of the universe that are trying to help us wake up to our relationship to the universe, is the same. The way we are is the same as the way we're helped. The way we are is the same as the way we're made. And the way we're made is that we also make everybody else to be made in the way that we're made. make everybody all our living beings and the universe.

[30:20]

So the universe makes us to be something that makes the universe to be the way it is. And it makes us have a mind which has the same structure as the universe. And in particular it also makes us have a mind which has the same structure as our relationship to those elements in the universe which are helping us wake up to that. And so this story, which can be unfolded further of course, is a story that one could meditate on and analyze and think about and talk about, converse about, argue about, test out in many other stories in a state of tranquility, which is what actually has been happening right under your nose for quite a while. And so now, in a sense, I'm telling some more stories about what you've been going through all along.

[31:20]

I more or less rest my case. Yes? I wish that you'd talk about... It is the wish of the entire universe. But it's also the wish of the entire universe to make beings, to make living beings. And in a sense, the story of the birth of living beings is a little bit different than the story of the birth of the Buddhas. Living beings have a different birth story, which is also another story to... Are we looking at windows and stuff now? Anybody who is willing to open a window near them is like, you know, a bodhisattva par excellence.

[32:34]

So the universe, it is the wish of the universe to have, again, it always opens people's hearts to say, it is the wish of the universe to make little, darling little grandsons and granddaughters who are really, who are born according to a slightly different process from the Buddhas. They are born not from the mind, they are not born from that same wish They are born from the wish to get something. And so they are born as sentient beings, not Buddhas. But the universe also wants these sentient beings because without sentient beings, we don't have any Buddhas. So part of the overall twist of the story is that in order to have Buddhas, you have to have sentient beings. So the universe actually had to make sentient beings in order to really wake up but the sentient beings are not awake.

[33:40]

So the universe had to make unawake living beings in order to make fully enlightened living beings, or fully enlightened Buddhas. So the universe, you could say, well, the final thing is the Buddhas because the sentient beings come first. But not really because Buddhas teach you that first and second is a conscious construction. It's not exactly first, it's more like It's more like interdependent. You can't have one without the other. There's no Buddhas without sentient beings. So the wish of the universe is to have sentient beings and Buddhas, but there's a possibility that someday the Buddhas would finish their job and there would be no sentient beings. But that would be, you know, a big adjustment for us. But the universe, I think, the will of the universe is to have all living beings wake up, and the will of the universe is also to have living beings.

[34:46]

And if I think about it, it seems like it was a big effort for the universe to create living beings. Living beings are really amazing, amazingly rare things in the universe. Even on this planet, if you just go up into the mountains or something and look around at the sky, or no, you don't go to the mountains, just look at the sky and You don't see that many living beings out there. But there are living beings out there, but they're rare. And then among the living beings, another rare thing is to have an awakened living being. But one awakened living being sets the whole mass of living beings on... Living beings are created by the will of the universe But they're also, because they're created by the whole universe, they're very fragile, very unstable, very precious, very rare.

[35:54]

And they can all be transformed into Buddhas. And I guess I would say I think that it's going to happen, that they're all going to be made into Buddhas because it seems like another part of the situation is that the universe not only wants all living beings to wake up, but it pressures them to wake up. And it pressures them by making them uncomfortable in their unawakened state. and it makes them uncomfortable that other people are unawake. So it tells them, if you want other people to be awake and yourself to be awake, here's the path. It seems like it's one step to say that for a human being with a mind, everything it's going to know is only mind. And it feels like it's another step to speculate whether there's only none, whether there's no things out there.

[37:10]

And I'm wondering, it seems like some texts make that second speculation and others don't. And I'm wondering if I see this. Well, one thing I would say, I think the easiest thing to say, first of all, is that it's not that if I say that there's nothing, I don't... Then you maybe think I'm stating that there's... Like there's a thing, there actually is a situation of nothing. And I wouldn't want to say that myself. I feel more comfortable saying that all things, all phenomena, phenomena are what we call the things we sense. So all phenomena, I feel comfortable saying, are dependent on mind. So everything that we know about is dependent on mind. But it's not to say that everything that is, and again we use the word thing, which is related to phenomena, but it's not to say what is or what might be beyond things.

[38:22]

It's not to say that there is no such thing, that there is no such reality as something beyond mind. It's just that all phenomena everything we know is dependent on mind. So I kind of like the quantum mechanics thing is that the world is, before interacting with consciousness, the world is a probability distribution. There's lots of possibilities for everything. So there's possibilities for all things, plus there's possibilities for the states of all things. There's possibilities for you and me, but there's also infinite possibilities for you, and infinite probabilities for you at a given moment. But when you're not a probability anymore is when you interact with the mind. And there's a lot of minds interacting with you, so you get precipitated as a

[39:24]

as a particle, as something we can know. And minds make you into a knowable thing. So to say that there's no knowable things outside mind, I feel comfortable with that. But there still might be all kinds of possibilities unmanifested all the time, all over the place. But as soon as mind interacts with them, they can be known and then they aren't possibilities anymore. their actualities. That's kind of the way I conceptualize it now, and that the universe is both probabilistic and manifested. And this dynamic universe has made beings who can know things and what they know occurs in this interdependent way and always dependent on mind. So there is this debate in Buddhism that a lot of schools say there are no external objects and no objects external to the senses.

[40:32]

into the mind, and that's an idealistic school. And then some people try to say, well, the idealistic school isn't really that idealistic. And some people say, well, yes it is. And then a softer version of it is nominalism. But then some other schools say there are external objects, but even the schools that say there are external objects still say that those objects depend on mind. So all the schools of Buddhism say that phenomena exist depending on mind. And some of them are full-scale idealism and others are not. Some are realist, some are not. And they're all stories. And not all of them agree that they're all stories, though. Some of the early schools of Buddhism, although they agree that things don't have self, they haven't gone quite as far as the Mahayana into fully exercising the consequences of non-duality.

[41:40]

So some schools would say that some of the stories they tell aren't just stories. So was there another comment out there somewhere? Yes. Could you stand up, please? Some days ago, polenta was burned at breakfast time. And... Polenta was burnt? Burned. Yeah, polenta burned? Yes. So... That's your story?

[42:44]

Is that a story? This is a story, and I make it short. LAUGHTER I just, I tried to follow my mother and observe where it goes to the kitchen and then, oh, the person was late. I didn't know who she or he, he made the polenta and then it's like, oh, he was, she was late and then, or forgot to prepare the polenta And then I just, I made the story, he was late, and then I had some compassion, or maybe it was his schedule, he was fired, or, and then I just tried to get off of that and come back, bring my mind back to them. I cut all the story about, and my judgment about, it barely followed up, and then I,

[43:48]

No, first I blamed him. And then I had compassion for and then forgive him. And then I cut out this story and it just comes back. I got to the point if the stove was so high, the temperature of the stove was so high. And after cooking out of this fridge, it was burning polenta. And my question is, is it the state of smelling just the smelling or seeing just the seeing? Is that when they want to get to the point? Because I couldn't still separate the burning and the smell. It wasn't just the smell. And my question is, when it's just the smell, it's just the smell.

[44:53]

We got all this judgment and labeling if that man is smelling the ceiling. So you smell something and then you feel like very quickly you think burned. Is that what you're saying? Yes. Well, if you had like smell and burned and they were very nicely tied together like that and you just let that be, that would be a pretty good training. I mean, you wouldn't be going as far as you went in your story. Just... And actually you could say, well, the smell was actually, the smell was burned. The smell was burning. The smell, it's charcoal smell. So you could just say, well, you did identify the smell as something burning or burning or burnt, burnt smell.

[45:55]

So just burnt smell, rose smell, chlorine smell, painful smell, pleasant smell. If you train your mind to smell that way, you're moving towards, in the smell there's just a smell, you're moving towards... training your attention onto non-discursive silence. So almost not say anything, maybe just burnt, painful, pleasant. You're getting simpler. You're giving up some of your stories. And then finally you get even more and more simple, so it gets more and more quiet around the experience.

[47:06]

So maybe you almost don't name. Of course, then people think sometimes that if you get back to the level of sense perception, and sense perception, when you smell, you don't name it before you have a chance to name. So when you smell, for example, if you're smelling burnt polenta, usually what you're aware of is a conceptual cognition of the burnt polenta based on a large number of smells of the burnt polenta. But at the level of each moment of smelling the burnt polenta, there's no naming there. But you do know it. And people think, when you get back to the sense perception level, that that would be like training in shamatha, giving up the stories about the smell. But that's not where you train on shamatha.

[48:07]

Because at the level where you can't do any discursive elaboration on something, if you can't do the elaboration, you don't train your mind. It's just not happening. So the times when there just isn't any conceptual elaboration, it's just not happening. But not because you're giving it up. Your mind doesn't get trained in tranquility. Because you're not really attending to it, so you're not really abandoning that habit. The habit's still sitting there, the habit of conceptual elaboration. Is that clear what I just said? No, I don't think so. So you're having some experience like there's some gas floating around the valley and it touches your nose and a cognition arises.

[49:12]

But again, most people, in that very fast little thing of when that gas molecule touches the sense organ in your nose and the consciousness arises. Most people do not notice that, but it does happen. And then another one happens and another one happens. But each one happens as a different molecule and a slightly different sense thing. But a lot of them are the molecules coming from the burnt polenta. So there's some series there. Then there's a mental cognition of the smell, and then there's a mental cognition of the conceptual type. And then you say, then you can say, you don't have to, but then you can say, burnt. You do say something at this point. Now you can label it burnt or bitter or sharp or even burnt polenta. That's the place where you train in the shamatha, though. The fact that at the sense perception level you couldn't name it the habit of the disturbing habit of addiction to discursive thought, it hasn't been touched.

[50:19]

It's just sitting there waiting to go into operation. When you have a chance to use it is when the conceptual cognition comes up. Because you build your conceptual palaces on top of concepts. And when you abandon that, then you start changing your mind. to be more tranquil. I don't think you can train at shamatha in direct sense perception until you're already in shamatha. When you're already in shamatha, then you could then you can see these individual flashes of sense perception, and then you could pop right from the sense perception into a conceptual cognition, right from the sense cognition. You could go directly from direct sense perception into conceptual cognition. But most people who can do that don't want to do it, won't do it.

[51:21]

They'll just reap in the information without commenting. So, is that kind of getting clearer? Yeah, actually, on purpose, on my mind, unconsciously, I wanted to see what happened, because the first thing that happened, it was just not there. So it was that simple. And I wanted to see how I can make this... You wanted to see how far you could go. Yeah. And you went pretty far. You could have gone farther. You could have gone farther, but you didn't. You didn't have time. Even when I come back, what is done was blabbering and whining. That is now. That's my question. It sounded blabbering.

[52:21]

There's still some labeling, yeah. And the simpler it gets, the shorter the story. And the shorter the story, the closer it gets to giving up the story. But even if there is a story, the stories can happen very fast. Like you can just say, you know, very quickly you can think of, almost without saying it, you can think of, you can have a vague sense of the history of the universe, just like that. Kind of like the history of the universe has a certain to it, you know. And so you can have that big, extensive concept happening very rapidly. And then you can let go of it, and let go of it, and let go of it, and let go of it. So the main thing is that you're constantly renouncing the stories, your basic response. Even though stories can pop up and be pretty big pretty fast, the more quickly and the more wholeheartedly you can renounce them,

[53:32]

the more continuous your attention is to, in some sense, the mind which contemplates all minds. And the mind which contemplates all minds, you could say, is the mind of renunciation. Because the basic mind is just knowing. It has no trips. It is deluded somewhat, but it's just knowing, knowing, knowing. It doesn't necessarily know correctly. but it's non-discursive and it's quiet. It just knows. It can know sounds, it can know stories, but it's not the stories. So you're training yourself. The simpler you get and the more you're willing to give up whatever stories. But sometimes you have to tell a few more stories before you can give up stories, right? I'll just tell two more stories and then I'll take a break for forty minutes. Well, maybe three. And then I'll try to give up stories for the whole rest of the period.

[54:35]

And then maybe sometimes you're successful. Like, yeah, that was... Now I have a story. Now that it's over, I have a story that... There was a lot of stories. The possibilities for stories arose and I let them go. I let... I don't know how many. I didn't count them. But I just sensed that I just had a kind of a memory that there were a lot of stories, a lot of possible stories arose throughout the period and just there was a lot of renunciation. And part of the renunciation is I didn't keep track of all the renunciations or what I was renouncing. But I think I'm getting the feeling for training and concentration. And I feel... I feel that was a good period of training for the mind. And in periods like that, you may start to notice some changes. You might start feeling like what you heard tranquility is like. And then you can continue that.

[55:40]

Okay? Yeah. Yeah. I'm a little confused about, at what, so, you know, I'm sitting in the zendo, I'm following my breath, and a thought arises, or a sensation arises, and so, like, so then, I mean, do I want to, like, label that? I mean, is that... Is that extra, or is that a good training? Because I usually don't do... I would smell the burnt polenta, and then I would... I feel like I've been trying to condition myself to stay not even burnt or anything, just to feel that. What is that? Beyond like or dislike. That sounds good. That sounds good. And that's not... That sounds like giving up discursive thought, getting close to it there.

[56:48]

You're getting close to that non-discursive silence there. But for some people, sometimes labeling, one of the good things about labeling is that it stops the story at labeling. So they say pain, they feel pain, they say pain, and then maybe that's all they say is pain, rather than some other things they could say. I mean, you know, gazillions of things they could say besides pain, right? So a lot of stories could pop out of feeling the pain, but if you feel like I'm labeling the pain and that's all I'm doing, then maybe you snip the story at just pain, which is a lot of the renunciation there around that. So many stories that you just renounced when you just said pain. So for some people, labeling is a way to practice shamatha. Then, also, when you start to calm down because you've been renouncing all this storytelling and all this discursive thought and all this conceptual elaboration by just saying pain, pleasure, neutral, restlessness, anger, whatever, because you've been being very simple and giving up stories with that, then as you become calm

[58:09]

Now you can, now when pain comes up, you can say, when you're calm, you can say, well, what is it? You can look at it. What's the birth story of the pain? I think that that's when you shift into vipassana. So that's when you become... So shamatha, you feel the pain, you just feel it, you feel the pain just as the pain as much as possible. In the pain there will be just the pain. In the painful sound, there will be just a painful sound. In the painful sight, there will be just a painful sight. So, it says, in the seen, there will be just a seen. In the heard, there will be just a heard, right? But, when you see things, there's a feeling with whatever you see. There's a pleasure, I mean, there's a feeling with whatever you hear. There's a feeling with whatever you touch, and there's a feeling, a mental feeling with whatever you smell, and a mental feeling with whatever you taste. So painful touch is still pretty much getting close to in the touch, there's just a touch.

[59:18]

So then you become more and more tranquil that way. So that teaching you've heard, you know, in the seen there will be just the seen, in the heard there will be just the heard. You've heard that teaching before? So that's a teaching that Buddha gave. And the Buddha gave that teaching in this form of menju, face-to-face transmission. He says, in the seen there will be just the seen, in the heard there will be just the heard. And that first of all can be seen as tranquility instruction. So in other words, when you hear something, see if you can get to the place where what you hear is period. All there is in what you hear is the heard. And you can calm down with that instruction. But then that instruction can turn into an insight instruction. Because then you can see, well, he's also saying that in the heard... There's just a herd means there's not a hearer in the herd.

[60:23]

There's just a herd. Herd doesn't have a hearer separate from it. When you start to look at, after you've calmed down, you look at the herd and you've heard this instruction and you've been using it to renounce making stories about what you hear, right? And you calm down because you renounce the storytelling around your hearing and seeing and so on. So now you're calm. Now you hear, and you also hear that instruction. In the heard, there's just a heard. Now you say, what does that instruction mean? And what does the instruction say about what's heard? So first of all, following the instruction, I calm down. Second of all, the instruction tells me the nature of what I'm hearing. That is just the heard. It's not the heard by the hearer. So then, when I start to meditate on that, I'm doing vipassana. I'm doing insight. And then I start to realize, oh, then I don't identify the hearer with the heard or disidentify.

[61:33]

And then there's not like the hearer over here and the heard over there. So in that instruction, actually, you could say that the Buddha taught shamatha in the first part of where the person hears it. In the second part, he's teaching Vishnyapti Matrata, because he's teaching the people that what you see is not something that you can identify with or disidentify with. You're not the same as it, and you're not different. So this teaching of Vishnyapti Matrata was in that early teaching of the Buddha. You can see it there. I mean, I can see it there. Can you see it there? But the first part of it can be seen as just basic tranquility instruction. Once you're tranquil, then you would naturally start telling stories about the teaching. Then you would get discursive again about the teaching. You would say, what I just said, you know. Well, what's the relationship between my awareness and this thing? Well, he just told me that they're just a scene, so that's saying something about the seeing process.

[62:40]

The seeing process the seen and the seer. There's just the seen. There's not three different things there, the seeing, the seer, and the seen. There's just the seen. I can't find the seer. I can't find the seeing. And actually, I can't find the seen. Because it's not out there separate from, you know, so you start to realize Vishnyamti Matrata. You could realize that in that first instruction. But also, this teaching and this nature of mind which the teaching is about is the same as the relationship between the student and the Buddha. Their relationship is actually translated into the instruction. So here's the Buddha walking through town and this guy comes up. This guy wants to talk to the Buddha. He's requesting the Buddha this story.

[63:46]

He says to the Buddha, please give me a teaching. He's making a request in the kind of concrete world of samsara. And the Buddha says, you know, I'm busy. Later. There's not too many examples of that where the Buddha was, you know, Actually, there are a lot of examples of that, but I didn't write that many down. Usually... But this one, there's actually kind of like a little bit of a tussle there, where the Buddha, he has an appointment. I forgot what it was. Anybody remember? Was it lunch or something? Huh? You know, it could have been lunch. He could have been around begging, and he was going to lunch. It wasn't the right time, yeah. For some reason or other, the Buddha said it wasn't the right time. And this guy says, because this is a conversation in samsara, right? This is a conversation in birth and death.

[64:48]

So the monk says, but I might die this afternoon. The Buddhist says, well, that's true. Okay. So he gives this talk. Out of this relationship of request and tussle, there's sometimes a little tussle after the request. Then the tussle is part of the response. Then the response comes, the teaching comes. And this way of this request, making the teaching, and the teaching and the request, the Buddha and this ancient being, not being the same and not being separate. Then he gives them a teaching on how to realize their relationship. And the monk, he's not even a monk yet, this layperson immediately enters into understanding this And then he asks the Buddha if he can become a monk and the Buddha says, yes. And then he says, do you have robe and bowl? And he says, no.

[65:51]

And he says, well, go get robe and bowl, come back and you can become a monk. And he goes to look for robe and bowl and he is struck down by a water buffalo and killed. Just like he said might happen. And people hear about this and of course they're very sad to see this fine person having perished But Buddha says, don't worry, he's doing fine. You know, he had this good understanding in that he's still going forward on the path, don't worry about him. So the relationship is reflected in the teaching and then realizing the teaching, he's liberated from suffering. And the also liberated from suffering means he understands his relationship with his teacher. we're liberated from suffering really when we understand our relationship with the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. So we've heard that we're not separate from them.

[66:51]

We've heard that story and then when we realize it, we are free of suffering. But it's not just realizing it intellectually, it's realizing it as actually the structure of our mind. So the teaching about our relationship and the relationship and the nature of our mind are all the same. The truth is all pervasive. It pervades our relationships, our mind, our relationships with each other, our relationship with the physical universe, and the mind's relation to the things it knows. It's all one continuous process of interdependence. And so we can learn socially, We can learn, you know, interpsychically and beyond. I see. There was Charlene. Oh, there was Sylvia.

[67:51]

And then Charlene. Back up to Kimon. Back up to Kimon? Okay. If you must. Thank you. My second reaction was, well, maybe explaining is not just out of my wanting to Oh, I'm sorry. Almost like, then I thought, well, maybe also experience was something like, it was my very first breakfast ever. You're explaining now.

[68:55]

I was trying to do everything. More than yourselves. I came earlier. Almost like all those stories. You started the polenta too early. Even before I applied, I was feeling every three minutes instead of five minutes. The fire was really, really low. It was fine. And sometimes what I want to say is that sometimes no matter what, something happens. I saw that. I saw. I said, oh, no. So that is to say that sometimes just practicing, dropping the story as you instructed, but sometimes it's also helpful to know exactly what were the conditions outside to receive this explanation.

[70:00]

Yeah. By the way, I'm sorry. But that is to say that... But sometimes, no matter what, the story still goes on, also in the mind. With the polenta, this comes back to one question, which is, the story comes, and no matter what, the story keeps coming. Sometimes, no matter what, the story keeps coming. And in that moment, I feel like a child asked to be done something that he's not able to. And just somebody explaining, so it's, oh, oh, okay. Oh, that's what's happening. All right. You understand what I'm saying? I don't know if I do, but I heard a lot of stuff there.

[71:05]

So you stated several opinions, but I just want to say you said sometimes it's useful to do something, and then you said what it was. And in some sense, whatever you do is useful. Sometimes, you know, whatever you do is good in a way. But that story you told about, you know, thinking about, well, how does this happen or something like that, sometimes it's good to... I'm just pointing out that if you do that storytelling about whatever, okay, if you do that storytelling based on some training in not doing any storytelling... that then that storytelling will be wisdom work. But if you do that storytelling without having, first of all, given up storytelling for quite a while and entering into tranquility, then the storytelling doesn't have as much of a chance of being wisdom activity.

[72:21]

But the same storytelling under the auspices of samadhi turns into wisdom. Same storytelling. So sometimes it's very good to tell a story about whatever. Yes. And even if you're not in tranquility, it's still somewhat good to tell stories because it's good to keep your storytelling capacity functioning. Because you're human and you need it. You're going to need it to be a Buddha. You need that storytelling capacity. Buddha would have told a lot of stories. So it's good to be able to tell stories. It's good to tell stories. But I'm pointing out a very important type of storytelling or a very important time to tell stories which not too many people have a chance to experience. And that is telling stories when you have previously trained yourself in not being involved in any stories for quite a while and you're very calm.

[73:30]

then you're in the kitchen and you're very calm. And then if you have a story about cooking the polenta and it doesn't burn, that story can be a wisdom story. And if the polenta does burn, that story can be a wisdom story. And you have to tell the story in order to understand the story. And wisdom is understanding stories. Wisdom is understanding stories. And wisdom is understanding stories which originally you believed as real, which is delusion. I mean, you believe them as not just stories, but that the story is actually what happened. That's a delusion. But enlightenment is about delusion. So if you want to know about delusion, tell your story. And notice where when you tell your story do you believe your story. So I'm a woman, I was born here and I did that, that's my story. If I believe that story, then it's a delusion. But if I'm calm, I can look at that delusion and say, that's not true.

[74:40]

I could tell a lot of different stories and none of them would be any more or less true than this. I mean, none of them would be more or less what happened. There are stories which are more or less true, but none of the stories are actually what happened. It's the thinking that the story is what's happening that's false for various reasons. So that's part of what I want to respond to what you're saying, that sometimes it's good to tell the story, sometimes it's good to get involved in the story, but the time to get involved in the story which promotes the wisdom is when you already have a lot of experience with completely giving up your stories. And you become very calm. Then, when you tell the story, you have a new type of experience called wisdom. Then you start tapping into this process of where you wish to help people with no idea of how to do it.

[75:40]

And then there's the next part of what you brought up. Almost like a question. I don't really understand that it's under the light of wisdom that we want to tell. If we want to tell a story, it's under the light of... Tranquility. Then the storytelling will be wisdom-provoking or wisdom-generating. My basic question was about, it seems like it's very different, the instruction of dropping and turning the guide inward to see the mind that reflects all mind sounds different than spending a little time with the story to sort it out. It does sound different, yeah. It's actually very different. What I'm saying is that sometimes... People are already... Sure. Well, like, what is it, Devon said, where is Devon?

[76:46]

Devon said, well, that's what we're doing here, right? Namely, where some of us are being discursive about these teachings, we're sorting out these teachings, not in a state of samadhi. And it seems somewhat helpful to have these discussions to get certain things clear. like about how sense perception leads to conceptual cognition and all that, and where and when it makes sense to apply these teachings at different times. And all this can happen before you're in tranquility. We can learn in a somewhat less concentrated state. We can still learn a lot. So that's useful. And we're doing plenty of that, fortunately. Learning languages requires this. So some of that is already happening, and more of it's good. And then the same sorting out can occur after you're tranquil too. So you can sort out before you're tranquil and after. It's just that sorting out before doesn't have much of a chance of flipping into insight. Because you're basically, you know, your capacity to see is diminished by your instability and tightness and distraction from where you are and what you're talking about.

[77:58]

You're telling a story but you're not really listening to yourself. where you listen to other people's stories, but not really. Because you're telling stories while you're listening to their stories. You're saying, you know, they're wrong, or this is stupid, blah, blah, blah. So it's hard to hear the story, because you're telling stories faster than they are. Let's see, who was next? Maybe Charlene, I don't know. Who else? Charlene, and who else? Yes? Yes? On Sunday during the question and answer I asked a question to which there was a response, now is really not a good time. Yeah. Cool. And you didn't say, yeah, but I might die this afternoon. And if you had, I would have said, okay, well, right after this is over, I'll talk to you. But those people, other people were kind of trapped in the room, and they didn't have the vocabulary.

[79:02]

Because you didn't just ask for any old instruction, you brought up some special terms. If you had asked for just any old instruction, you got it. But you wanted to talk about those terms, and I felt those other people would have been stressed. if I started talking to you about the other dependent and the thoroughly established and the conceptual clinging and how they work together, they wouldn't have been able to follow. I think that would have been hard on them. But if you had said, yeah, but I might die this afternoon, I would say, well, just give me a few more minutes. You know, just a few minutes more, right? And then we could have done it. Want to do it now? What? What? It's okay. It's okay? You might die. I feel like I'd be sad if I were a water buffalo, so... Yes?

[80:07]

We were passing around, so it's not too much. Water buffalo. And one way we talked about it, and I heard you explaining it, was when Samantabhadra and Vipassana are united, we are entering the one-pointed mind, and that knows that this object, this image, is cognition only. One-pointed mind is another word for realizing this. That's a ta. Is it a ta? Yeah. Mm-hmm. So the question is, is that a state? It sounds like a state. That disturbs me. That there are two states, shamatha as a state, vipassana as a state, so united and another state occurs. And that's kind of strange. I think in some ways I feel more like shamatha as a state and vipassana as like an illumination of the state.

[81:12]

So Samatha is kind of like, it's kind of always the same. It doesn't really vary that much. It is kind of like a state. Whereas the Vipassana, the insight, the light can always be different because it can illuminate the variety around the Samatha. The Samatha is always the same characteristic of whatever state you're in. So it's actually a state. So they're not both states in a sense. But the union of them, the one-pointedness, is a special kind of shamatha. It's a shamatha that's united with an understanding that the object of awareness is cognition only. The object of the samadhi is cognition only. So it is illuminated by that understanding. But that illumination by itself isn't a state.

[82:15]

It's more like a mental factor called wisdom. It's an understanding, but it's not a state. But shamatha is kind of like a state, yeah. Also the non-state of non-shamatha? Yeah, non-shamatha is the state most people are in all the time. We do also say that samadhi is omnipresent, so samadhi is always there. it's always there and unrealized in most people. Most people do not realize the one-pointedness of thought. So vijnapti matratha is realized when you realize one-pointedness of thought, which means when samatha and vipassana are united. So we have to go through this process to realize the way we usually are. In vijnapti matratha, Is it steady? The realization of it is not steady, but the fact of it is steady because the fact of it, the fact of vijnapti-mantrata is our actual relationship with the world and with Buddhas and bodhisattvas.

[83:36]

Is it uninterrupted? It's uninterrupted. Cognition? It's Cognition only is uninterrupted according to this teaching. All your cognitions are cognition only according to this teaching. That's uninterrupted. So it's a realization of the uninterruptedness of... No, it's not so much a realization of the uninterruptedness of it. That's not so much a part of this. But the idea of uninterruptedness... that understanding is cognition only. There isn't an uninterruptedness out there separate from your mind generating uninterruptedness. That's cognition only, understanding that. But I can say that there would be no interruption in it because that's the nature of mind. Like the Buddha said, I have taught that mind is fully, fully what? Fully what? Fully distinguished by being cognition only.

[84:44]

That's the way mind is. You can always say mind's that way. That's what Buddha teaches. So again, the Buddha teaches that mind's this way. But the Buddha teaching is also the mind's this way. So this is the host within us. This is a host within a host? I don't know. Let's see. It's 10.30 now, and if we went to the Zendo, we could practice sitting meditation. Want to go? How many people had enough? Raise your hands. How many people would like to hear a few more questions? It's a tie, I think, wasn't it? Maybe the people who would like to go can go and sit. And if people want to stay, I'll stay a little longer. Okay? Does that mean the dog should go? What? Does that mean the dog should go? I thought you said, does that mean the dog should go?

[85:46]

Thank you. Are you the dog? I'm the dog. So then the dog should go. But actually, don't take the dog in the Zendo. I wouldn't dream of it. You wouldn't dream of it? No. Never. Really? Not even my dreams. Not this thing. I took Rozzy to a Shosan ceremony one time, remember? Here. Yeah, she went to a Shosan ceremony and sat with me. So now... I remember that. You can dream of that now. When you're the abbess, you can bring Rozzy to Shosan ceremonies. Should I go? I think they can do okay without the candles lit for now. Okay, so let's see. Jerry? When you talk about insight and talk about it as something discursive, my kind of experience is... Insight isn't discursive.

[86:54]

Yeah. But you need to use discursive thought to create insight. For example, examining what something is, looking at something is, actually looking at it and wondering what it is, is somewhat discursive. It feels sometimes to me that it comes very quickly. What? Something comes very quickly. It comes very quickly. A feeling or a sensation will come. Yeah, things do come quickly. And the insight is nonverbal. I didn't say insight was verbal. I said it arises out of discursive thought. So the discursive is just acknowledging here's this It could be that simple as, here's this, and you actually look at that statement and have an insight.

[88:01]

But insight isn't a word. Insight is, understanding is not a word. Understanding is understanding a word, usually. But usually when you're practicing tranquility, if a word arises, you renounce getting involved with the word. And then another word arises, and you renounce getting involved with the word. Like blue arises, and you renounce getting involved with blue. Pain arises, and you renounce getting involved with pain. And that's training in tranquility. In insight, you might say to yourself, that blue is . That blue is cognition only. Or when you meet, you see someone, or you see the floor and you say, that's myself. What I'm meeting is myself. You might say that. And then you might have understanding of what you just said.

[89:01]

And also an understanding of the floor or the wall. You finally understand that the floor and the wall is not separate from you. You understand. But the understanding is not, the floor is not separate from my wall. The floor is not separate from me. That's not the understanding. But that you would understand that, maybe. When somebody said that, you would understand it. Or you might say, the floor is not separate from me. You might say that. But I would say that after. Yeah, after. I would discourse afterwards and probably tell a long story about it. Maybe so. At first you might be kind of unskillful at describing your insights. And that's part of what sometimes people do is they have insights and then they talk about them and their teacher says, don't you really mean this?" They say, oh yeah, that's better. And pretty soon with the teacher you wind up saying it just right to what you experienced. Because you start talking about a new experience and you use your old language and it doesn't apply anymore, so it kind of doesn't fit and you don't notice it, but the teacher notices it.

[90:07]

I don't think that's what you mean, is it? Don't you want to drop that, take that pronoun out of there? Yeah, that would be better, or something like that. So another talk about this is this place of conscious conception, conscious construction only, or all these different relational situations. In that actual situation, words don't reach that process, because this is a place All these processes are places free of conceptual clinging. So no words can reach the actual process here. No words actually reach the place of cognition only. But this place can talk. All these, Menju can talk, Jinju Yozama can talk, Kano Dogo can talk. This kind of knowledge the Buddhas can talk.

[91:10]

Out of this relationship words can come, but no words can reach the relationship. But you need words to get yourself into realization of the place. And those words need to come in a state of tranquility. But not necessarily super deep tranquility as I was saying last night, because if it's too deep, You can't use the instructions to get yourself to the teachings. Yes? Can you elaborate a little bit on the concept of a host within the host? Could I? I don't feel up to today. I'm tired. Go talk to Susan. We have the migraine. Yes? What story would you... Excuse me. Judy. Yeah?

[92:14]

Yes, or the other day in the cafeteria you said that... Cafeteria. No, I think cafeteria is better action. Okay. We should have trays. I understood you to say that it was possible that I might have not had discursive thought and still not have been in the state of tranquility in the example that I gave you. Say it again? What I just said are the examples. You don't have to say the cafeteria part to say... When we were talking the other day, I understood you to say that it was possible to not be in the state of tranquility, but still not have any discursive thought. Yeah, right. That's what I was saying earlier about at the level of sense perception, everybody's doing sense perception, but not everybody's tranquil.

[93:22]

So how do I know when I'm in the state of... Excuse me, let me say a little bit more. And the reason why they're not tranquil is because even though they're having direct sense perception all day long, not every moment, but all day long, pretty much, they aren't giving up discursive thought. And you can't give up discursive thought during sense perception unless you're already extremely concentrated. Because you're not aware of sense. You can't be applying a practice at a place where you're not even aware. But you are aware at the level of conceptual cognition, plus at that level you can also hear the teaching to do that. So at the level of direct sense perception, you could be tranquil, but you wouldn't actually be able, unless you're already concentrated, to give up discursive thought at that time, because you can't apply discursive thought unless you're present with it. So you could be tranquil in having direct sense perception, but you couldn't be giving up discursive thought, generally speaking, during sense perception.

[94:25]

You can only give it up, for beginners anyway, you can only give it up at conceptual cognition. Okay? Now you can continue. Well, I'm wondering how I would know if I'm in... a state of tranquility appropriate to begin studying the teachings. How you'd know? Yeah. Well, you wouldn't necessarily know until you were fully enlightened. But you might have a feeling like you were really calm, and you go to your teacher and say, I feel really calm. Would it be all right if I, like, got involved in some thinking about the teaching? The teacher might say... Okay. Or tell me about how calm you are. And then they might, you know, tussle with you a little bit to see if you really can handle that tussle calmly. So this is supposed to be kind of an even calm all the time, not just sometimes?

[95:27]

An even calm all the time? It's an even calm, well, like it's like When you get into Samatha, you might get in a situation where you have several trillion moments of tranquility in a row. But that's not all the time. That's just like for maybe like an hour, or two hours, or six hours, or a day and a half. But most people, it doesn't last for a week unless they would go back and re-charge by giving up discursive thought again. Usually there's sort of a time limit. But a week is an awfully long time to be tranquil. Yeah, I was thinking a little shorter time. Huh? I was thinking a little shorter time. Well, you know, but it depends. If you get really tranquil, if you get quite tranquil, your tranquility might last for an hour. That would be a long time.

[96:28]

An hour of tranquility would be a long time. be a lot of moments of feeling relaxed and alert and buoyant, you know, and calm and like porous. Well, I'm still not getting this riddle. If I'm supposed to be tranquil before I study and it's that hard to be... No, it's not so much before you study, it's before you do insight work because you're already studying. You've been studying for a long time. We're talking about how do we make your study into insight. Because you know, sometimes you're studying and basically you're just nervous and trying to get something out of Buddhism, right? Well, that's not insight work. That's just ordinary, greedy, you know, acquisition of more power, you know, make yourself smarter or something. But it is studying the same material that you would study if you were calm. If you're calm, you might even like the study more. You might say, boy, this is really interesting stuff, and so is this.

[97:30]

And when you're tranquil, you pick it up and you read it, and you're not distracted. You're just like, I think I'm going to read this, and that's what you're reading. And you're not jumping all over the place. And so it's much more effective. Or if you're sewing your robe, you're just a little sewing machine. It's very nice. But you can also sew not being in a tranquil state. And it's still somewhat pretty darn good. As a matter of fact, when you sew in a non-tranquil state, a lot of people start getting tranquil because sometimes they aren't thinking about their boyfriend while they're sewing. Sometimes they're just like... Because if you start thinking about your boyfriend, the needle kind of goes weird, you know? And then the sewing teacher comes over and says, oh, you're thinking about your boyfriend, huh? Take those out. I said, namu kie butsu, not namu kie Michael.

[98:33]

Like those little beads, you know. So when you do that, you start getting more constant and less discursive. Generally, most people do get less discursive than normal when they're sewing, don't you? Most people do that? A little bit less discursive, or way less discursive. And then when you're done sewing for a while, you probably may feel a little tranquility, which you weren't trying to get by sewing, but you may notice it. Hmm. So when I'm to carry this further... And then after that, if you went from sewing to studying, you might notice your studying was qualitatively different, that you were much calmer. And the calm could last for, like I say, pretty long, like five minutes is pretty long. But usually five minutes doesn't follow from five minutes of giving up discursive thought. Usually you give up discursive thought for forty minutes and you might get a flash of shamatha. But some people Because they're really experienced at tranquility, they can practice tranquility for a short time, train in for a short time, and quickly go into it.

[99:41]

It doesn't take as long. The more experience you have, the faster you can get into it. But to first get into it, you have to overcome this huge habit of discursive thought, so it takes a long time to really get over it for an extended period of time. Then when you do, then you can study before that, But that is not vipassana. That is intensified effort concordant with vipassana. It's not vipassana itself. It's still wholesome activity. But not all wholesome activity qualifies as vipassana. Vipassana is a higher state of vision than our usual because it's in a special environment of tranquility. And tranquility is quite a feat in itself. Just to get tranquil is wonderful, right? Because then you can do all kinds of wholesome things, one of them being to apply yourself to these teachings, like it says, to apply yourself to the teachings which you have already learned. and you apply yourself to the teaching in accord with the way you've learned them. And you learn them by talking more with your teachers and so on and friends.

[100:45]

So you can, before you do vipassana, you've already been studying and trying to like straighten out the teachings. And then you enter into shamatha and then you, when you're calm in shamatha, then you review the teachings and look at them again in this new state in accord with the way you learned them before you were in that state. But you could have also been in Samadhi when you were originally learning, too. So after a while it gets to be a cycle of hopefully, you know, you're doing study or you're doing Vipassana work and then you had to reactivate your Samatha machine every now and then to revitalize your tranquility. And then you go back and you're tranquil again, you go back and do insight work in the tranquility And hopefully before the tranquility goes flat, you put more, you, what do you call it, you vulcanize it, or not vulcanize it, you, what's the word, you pulmonize it, you pump air back into it, the tires pop up again, and then you go back to drive down the Vipassana road, and then before too long you pump it up again.

[101:56]

So you, after a while you have a pretty steady thing. That's why we have daily zazen for those who can do it. Now maybe you don't need it every day, but Just to make sure, why don't you do it every day? Reactivate, reestablish your tranquility on a daily basis so that throughout the day you're practicing Vipassana. And for some people, they haven't yet got Samatha, so they have to do practice periods and stuff to get a hang of it. So that's why we have a practice period for you to get a feeling for Samatha. And then, practice it. And then when you realize it, use it for your insight work. Does that make sense? Yes, very much. Thank you. You're welcome. Yes. Following on that question, what story would you tell about that transition from where the words and the conceptually elaborated understanding of the teachings makes a kind of a leap, it seems, to a non-conceptual

[103:04]

becoming a teaching? Well, the... The process. The... When we first understand these things, the understanding is not words, but the understanding is mediated by concepts, but it's not necessarily mediated by words. But by concepts, yeah. You have an image, for example, of the state where... For example, you might have this image of this... of this wish to benefit beings and be free where there's no conceptual clinging. You might be able to actually know that state, but there's still some conceptual mediation in knowing that state and realizing that state. It's kind of imagination of it. Yeah, imagination of it, but correct. And you actually know it. You're sure of it and you know it. You actually know it. But there's still a little bit of conceptual mediation of a state of no conceptual clinging, for example.

[104:07]

But you're not, the understanding is not words. But there's still a little bit of confusion with the image of it. So then we have to remove that sign, that image. And that's why we have to rejoin it then with the shaman to practice again. At that moment where the... So that the insight work is like shamatha work. So shamatha work is like insight work. So somehow we have to make the giving up of conceptual, we have to make the giving up of discursive thought like the insight and make the insight like giving up discursive thought. So... One story maybe would be that the mind is so used to and trained in this way, this conceptual way of seeing truth, that the transition is not that big a leap, or that... Yeah, training and giving up discursive thought will help you when it's there.

[105:18]

The shape of the mind is already in place so that when you give up any conceptual elaboration about it, the shape of the mind basically stays the same. Yeah, for a while. but it's impermanent still, so it will change. So that's why you have to keep shaping it in that way so that it will be easier and more quickly brought in alignment with the understanding of freedom from believing in concepts as being what is, and thereby being able to look at the world beyond the way we grasp the world So what time would, according to the schedule, if we had ended at 10.30, the period would have started at what time? It would have started at quarter of 11. At quarter of 11?

[106:22]

So the period goes till... goes till when? 11.20? Goes till service. No, 11.20. 11.20. 11.20? Yeah. So we have a half an hour until the next period starts. Okay, any other questions? Did you just say... Pardon? Yeah. Did you just say it's okay to imagine the state where you don't have any concepts, that you can have a conception, elaboration? Is it okay to imagine that state? Actually, it's okay to imagine anything. You can even imagine Razzi and Zendo if you want to. So go ahead and imagine anything you want, please. Even imagine me doing something stupid, which you've already done, I hear. So you can imagine whatever you want. And you can imagine all kinds of wonderful states, but that's different from actually understanding the state and seeing the state.

[107:29]

But when you first see the state, usually, if you never saw it before, you see it through some image of it. That's the first way. But it still works. You're correct. then you need to find a way to remove the image and be with the state without the conceptual mediation. I just really wonder if that's not making it harder to meditate. If you actually ponder signs, if it doesn't make it harder to remove them because you're so into it. It does make it harder to remove signs. Signs are always hard to remove. It's just that If you use certain signs to get certain information, then you didn't use those signs for that purpose before you used them. So you're actually introducing some problems into your life that you didn't have before. Right, like meditating on emptiness with signs, like having a sign of emptiness.

[108:31]

Exactly. And most people, a lot of people don't have signs of emptiness, so they don't have problems with those signs, but also they don't understand emptiness. So those who understand emptiness need signs of emptiness to find emptiness. But you still don't understand emptiness. No, some people do understand emptiness. As far as I know, all the people who understand emptiness understood them with signs first. You meet the Buddha, and the Buddha gives you a sign of something, like they give you a face. But you can't meet the Buddha without a face. You're walking around, you don't see any Buddhas, okay? Then the Buddha gives you a face. But you don't see the face. So the Buddha says, here's a sign. Put the sign up and then you can see the face. Now you get to see the Buddha, but you didn't see the Buddha before. So now you have problems you didn't have before. You have the problem of having a sign of a Buddha. So now you've got to get rid of that.

[109:31]

You didn't have to get rid of it before, but also you didn't have a Buddha before. So, I'm sorry that having a Buddha means, first of all, you've got to have a sign of a Buddha or an image of a Buddha or a concept of a Buddha. Also, sitting. Before you have a sign of sitting, you don't have any problem with sitting. Or before you have a sign of a grandfather who goes to the zendo, you don't have a problem with the sign of a grandfather who goes to the zendo. But you do have a grandfather who goes to zendo that you know about. But before you have a sign of a grandfather that goes to Zendo, you don't know you have a grandfather that goes to a Zendo. You don't know about it. He's there, but you don't know about it. So Buddha's there, being in this wonderful state, and you don't know about it until you have an image of it. Because all of the Buddha's right there all the time going, all the time going, you don't know it because you don't know about your direct perceptions of Buddha. They're too fast. But Buddha's like zapping you all day long.

[110:33]

Come on, come on, come on. Wake up, wake [...] up. But too fast. So you have to like get a big heavy concept like after Buddha's whacked you seven times, then you've got this big heavy concept. Buddha! So now you've got this concept, big, heavy concept between you and this wonderful Buddha, but now you know it at least, you've got a hold of it. I've got a Buddha, I've got a Buddha, I've got a Buddha, okay, okay. And then after a while you know you have a Buddha, and then after a while you've got to, you know, chuck the sign. And the Buddha is telling you, chuck the sign. But the Buddha first of all says, hi, I'm here. You know, so the Menju, first of all Menju is like, find the face, right? and then the men just get rid of the face. All these things originally, they're like ways of making contact, but you need signs in order to be aware of any of this stuff.

[111:35]

And you use signs to get more and more deeper understanding of all this stuff. And then when you have a clear, correct understanding, then, as the chapter eight says, then you go through a process of removing the signs. And there's a section there which you, so many of you have seen already, where they systematically go through and talk about how to remove different types of signs that you put on this wonderful stuff. But before you realize this stuff, you don't have problems with signs of this stuff. Before you meet certain people, you don't have the problem of signs of those people. Before you know certain things, you don't have the problem of the signs you use to know them, which is nice. You don't have those problems. But it's not nice that you don't have those relationships and those knowledges. That's not nice. It's too bad. It's suffering. But you're right about that. Yes? Yes. What are the signs that Buddha provides as the theme and the words, whatever you see as consciousness?

[112:47]

By the way, it isn't so much that Buddha provides the signs. Our mind, the nature of our mind is that the way we are is our mind actually, our wonderful mind has the ability to come up with signs by which we can grasp things. It isn't exactly that Buddha gives us the signs, but Buddha allows us to put signs on Buddha because Buddha understands that in order for us to get to know Buddha, we have to use signs just like Buddha used signs to get to know his Buddha or her Buddha. So Buddha doesn't really give the signs exactly. Buddha is part of the program of our relationship to have a mind that conjures signs so it can grasp things. Yes? The question was, would one of those signs for seeing Buddha be a teaching that what you see is consciousness only? Well, that teaching In order to grasp that teaching, you have to assign of that teaching.

[113:51]

That teaching is not assigned, but in order to cognize that teaching, which is happening to you all day long, it's coming to you, but in order to grasp it, you have to put a sign on it. But the teaching isn't assigned, but we need signs to get the teachings. Do you see the difference? Not quite? Yeah, I mean, I see that the sign isn't the teaching. I'm wondering if that is an example of one of those, or a sign of one of those, if that's an example of a sign. I didn't follow what you just said. Are you going to explain what he's saying, Chris? I was going to digress slightly or add a clarifying thought to what he's saying. Okay. Can I try it now?

[114:55]

In my experience, one of the characteristics of mind is that it can give a gift every now and then of an image. a sign that explains the teaching. It's not the teaching itself, but it's an image that's so fresh or different or something that it is showing itself in a particular way. So some signs you're saying are particularly fortuitous because they seem to be the sign by which you understand the teaching. Yeah. So then you got the sign of the teaching, and it's a really nice one because with that sign you actually understood the teaching. But I still don't know if that took care of your question or not. I'm not saying... I guess to bring it down a little, if I...

[115:57]

work with this sign of the teaching that whatever I see is cognition only. That seems quite helpful. I recognise it's just a sign of that teaching, it's not what I'm actually seeing. I'm not actually realising and understanding that what I see is cognition in advance. Having that in my mind, I find it may be quite useful. For example, if I find myself not being very nice to someone or thinking not nice thoughts about someone, that thought may come in and I find that kind of helpful. The thought of... that it's cognition only, it's not anything other than me. Right. That thought comes in and helps you, yes. As I was saying, it's that useful way of practice. Yes. Even though it's still working beside in a deluded way. Yes, I think it is helpful. And you might be doing that, and it would be nice to do that in a state of tranquility, too.

[117:05]

Yes. And so now it's getting like 20 minutes before to be in the Zendo. So you can gauge how much time you need to get to the Zendo. Yes? Jeff? I think this is ordered in, like following up on what I asked you last night. And if someone realizes or being realizes that... or there's nothing more than the object, they'd realize that. Yes. Can that being make the mistake of confusing an image with the object? When you first realize it, you probably will be confusing the image with the object when you first realize it, because you'll first realize it with conceptual cognition. Because it's with conceptual cognition that you apply the teaching that this object is not separate from the subject.

[118:13]

And so that teaching, or the image associated with that teaching, like, you kind of say, oh, I see it! I get it! You really understand it, but there's kind of an image mixed in there, and you confuse the image with the actuality of this truth, of this teaching, I should say, or this meaning. So you actually touch the meaning, and the meaning touches you, and you're transformed, and it really is wisdom. You really do know it. You not just hear the teaching and say it makes sense. You know it. You're convinced. And the other story no longer applies. but you still have an image by which you're seeing it. And you do confuse the image with the thing, which is a little bit of a mistake. So again, when you understand that things are impermanent, that's correct. When you see the impermanence of things, that's correct.

[119:18]

But when you see the impermanence of things, I don't know if I said this very well last night, when you see the impermanence of things, The impermanence of things is not the impermanent thing. See? The impermanent thing is not the impermanence. The impermanence is a concept. Impermanence is an abstract noun, right? The thing isn't an abstract noun. The thing is an impermanent thing. when you see the impermanence of an impermanent thing, you're actually seeing a concept, which is correct. You're seeing a correct thing about a person is that they have this impermanence zapped onto them. Then next step would be remove the image of impermanence, which was right, and see the impermanent thing. Does that involve direct perception? Yes. That would be direct perception.

[120:21]

So first it would be conceptual cognition, correct conceptual cognition. Then, removing the image, you'd have a direct perception of an impermanent thing, of a particular impermanent thing. And you'd understand. And that understanding would be under the heading of having an understanding of impermanence. in general, and now you see the specific impermanent thing. And then there's no mistake, because you're looking directly at the impermanence without the conceptual mediation, or the impermanence manifesting in this particular sensory experience. And there's no separation between it. And at that level of realization, you realize this, too, at the same time. So you use it... With object-oriented images. Yeah, exactly.

[121:22]

Okay? Got it? Been struggling with this for a while? Okay? So now you have like about 12 minutes before you get to Zen, though. Huh? Yes? Jeff's question is just now, and earlier you told the Zen stories of the... person who sees the peach blossom or hears the stone hit the bamboo. Yeah. So in those kinds of awakening that doesn't appear to be based on this kind of conceptual teaching, but which can be talked about in terms of this kind of conceptual teaching. Yes. It seems a little different from what you were just saying, and I just want to clarify that. It doesn't seem like any consciously Vipassana sign study work was going on.

[122:22]

Yes. You don't hear that talked about. You don't hear that talked about. And then this occasion of the reception. But you do hear talked about. If they're talking about the story. Yeah. If you just hear the story, then all you hear is the story. Right. But if they start talking about the story, the Zen people will say, but there was still this thing. You know, this guy was walking around, sweeping the ground, but there was still this thing. What was the thing? It was consciousness. There was still this consciousness besides the world. And then when the rock hit the bamboo and he heard it, then there was not this thing anymore. So some people, when they talk about that story, They talk about this. They don't necessarily have vision, help, and mantra, but they're talking about the same thing. Yeah, but for the man with the broom. Maybe he'd never heard about this. That's what I'm saying. He came through this experiential place without any of the teachings before him.

[123:28]

Right. And the people who wrote this down, the people who wrote this teaching, these are people who are coming from Menjoo. They had a Menjoo. They had a Jijuyu. They had a Kanodoko. They met this Buddha. They had this meeting. And out of that meeting, they wrote this. This is a philosophical expression of an actual relationship between mind and the sound of a pebble hitting a bamboo. The actual way that that is, the person may not be able to get this teaching. But some people who have that experience then write a sutra. because the meeting they're having with the Buddhas is such that the causes and conditions are there. Part of the reason why Zen people didn't write sutras is because the sutra was already written. And so they said, hey, all I've got to do is just keep sweeping. That's a good idea, Lev.

[124:31]

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