I felt a little remorse about my conduct during satsang, and there were certain times when I felt like I wasn't being upright, or I was getting a little ahead of myself, or a little bit ahead of the situation, or not so much behind, but I tended to get ahead I think a few times, or get a little too interested in certain things that were happening, and I felt somewhat ashamed of myself. Since we were all trying to practice being upright, I felt like I fell down on the job

[01:08]

a few times, but I'd like to say a couple of things. One is that I felt like you did a really good job being upright in the zendo and other times, and in your meetings with me, I felt you were pretty upright, so I congratulate you. And then, when I was feeling this kind of remorse or shame about my lack of uprightness in some situations, I thought about now that you're feeling this way, now that you have this phenomenon there of an observation or some observation of your conduct that you didn't feel was really true to the situation, now what is your response to that?

[02:09]

And again, I guess I felt for a while there that I was not being upright in relationship to my awareness of my lack of being upright, and then I thought, well, that's not appropriate, that I may have missed a few chances to do the wonderful practice of upright sitting, but now that I recognize that, I can be upright in relationship to that recognition. I don't need to indulge in that recognition. And that, again, reminded me of something, and that is that for whatever kind of outflow you're into, for whatever kind of leaning or bias or prejudice you notice in yourself, part of the process there is to confess, when you notice it, confess it, just clearly admit

[03:28]

and describe what you observe, and you might actually feel bad about it, feel sad or grief or shame, and you might say, I don't want to do this anymore, I want to do the virtuous or the skillful thing instead of what I did. That's all part of the process, confession and repentance, but the Lotus Sutra says that the ultimate repentance for whatever kind of non-virtue, including the ultimate repentance for the most subtle kind of leaning that doesn't even get into an action or anything, but just a bias in your mind or a slight grasping of a preference or a slight indulgence in past or future, the ultimate repentance for all kinds of non-virtue is to sit upright

[04:37]

and contemplate reality. So in other words, if you notice that you're not upright, the way to repent for that is to sit upright, in which case you would acknowledge it as for what it is, and just uprightly face the situation. You wouldn't lean forward and sort of say, oh, I'm so terrible, I'm the worst student, or I'm not the worst student, but you know, blah, blah, blah, or whatever kind of reaction you have, you drop all that, and you just be upright and face your lack of uprightness. That's the ultimate repentance and it's kind of what I thought is to make you a little dizzy, but that the repentance for not being upright is to be upright. And similarly, when you're not upright, in some sense that's a

[05:42]

manifestation of lack of trusting being upright, right? You have your doubts that really being upright is where it's at, so you do something else, maybe to gather some more data to make sure, but whatever anyway, not being upright is a demonstration of lack of faith in being upright. But as I mentioned to someone, that doesn't mean you have no faith, it just means your faith broke down at that moment, or your faith not broke down, but your faith demonstrates its incompleteness at that moment. If it's complete, you wouldn't lean at all, unless it was to someone's benefit, and that wouldn't be leaning, because that would just be an example of non-attachment, it wouldn't be indulgence. But anyway, when it's a real case of doubt, what you do then is you

[06:42]

practice being upright in the middle of that doubt, so your faith uses the doubt as its place to sit, comes right back up again out of that doubt. So that's the basic way to develop your faith, is whenever it slips, practice being upright. Even if you're not talking about your faith in being upright, even if you're talking about your faith in something other than being upright, you could have faith in lots of Buddhist practices, you could trust a lot of different Buddhist practices, but in any one that you do, when you slip from it, just be upright in it, and that develops your faith in it again, that practice becomes reiterated, whatever it is, not to mention if it's just pure uprightness. Okay, I kind of said that before, but I wanted to say a little

[07:43]

bit more about that, because I actually did feel that. I felt kind of good that that was the worst thing I did during session, but still it didn't make me not actually feel bad about it. It's not so much I felt like I did a terrible thing, it's more like I missed some lots of really good opportunities to really enjoy being present and balanced, and really experiencing life in that mode, which is so wonderful that it feels actually kind of bad to miss the opportunity, because there aren't an indefinite number of them left. Of course, that can lead into major problems too, but it didn't during session for whatever reason, that I noticed anyway. Another thing that happened, which I found quite interesting, and I don't know if... are you tired

[08:53]

tonight? No. So let me know if this is too much, and I'll maybe talk about it in the morning, okay? But I just mentioned it now, this is not like a one-time presentation on this topic. You know, in some sense you can say stuff like, which I've said too, if you just bring the experience of an outflow up to yourself, you can just see an outflow, or you can just see or experience some kind of craving, and you can say that just to have it before you, you can say, and the awareness of it will, you know, end it. At that moment, it'll end it. Not forever, but at that moment maybe. And just

[10:01]

the same a little bit, the awareness of craving is all it takes to become free of craving, and therefore to end the condition for the arising of suffering. And that's kind of radical and amazing statement about Buddhism, the power of awareness. But this awareness, again, this has to be upright awareness about these leanings. It can't be like a leaning awareness about leanings. I mean, it can be, of course, but that's not the kind of awareness that actually ends the prejudice. So somebody was talking to me about this, and I forgot exactly how the conversation went, but one turn of it was that

[11:09]

this person was talking about, during the first doksan I had, I mentioned something, but we're talking about thinking of not thinking. And so he went and practiced thinking of not thinking. And he said when he did that, he said that actually it was like there was actually like no thinking. Seemed like thinking actually ceased. I think he said something like, and in that situation where the thinking ceased or there wasn't any, it seemed very big or something too. I think that's what he said. And he brought that up because I was saying that in uprightness, in sitting upright, Dogen says, you know, you cease all movements of the conscious mind, engaging of thoughts and views, thinking in terms of good and bad, pros and cons, all that stuff, that just

[12:10]

ceases. And I was saying that in some ways it isn't that the stuff ceases, but that the meditation, in the meditation, in the midst of all that, the stuff ceases. The stuff doesn't get into the meditation. The meditation is just being present in the middle of all that activity, right? Remember that? That was my proposal. So in the meditation there's no thought activity, right? But that doesn't mean that all the thought activity stops actually, or I shouldn't say actually, because maybe actually is the way the meditation is. Maybe the meditation is really the way things are, and just all this illusion around you, but the illusion doesn't stop, I'm proposing. You could say it never really started, so it doesn't stop. But anyway, in the meditation there is no activity, but I propose that it isn't that something changes

[13:10]

out there. And he was saying kind of that when he did that meditation it was like everything changed. But then I said, well how did you know about that? How can you tell me about that? Was it just an intuition? Or could you actually think, oh, there's no thought? I said, you know, well which skanda was that in, that no thought? Which skanda would that be? Is it not in the skandas? So I guess it is possible to have an illumination that's not in the skandas, but that pervades the skandas, that illuminates the skandas even though it's not in the skandas, like it could be an intuition or an understanding

[14:12]

or an illumination that there is no thought, there's no thought activity, and somehow that can hit the skandas in which there is thought, and then you can think of that. How are you doing, sleepyhead? Is this too much? Well, it's a little much. So I'm not actually saying for sure about this, you know. Maybe he actually understood that when you practice thinking of not thinking or thinking of that which doesn't think, maybe you actually realize some kind of situation or you realize that there is no thinking or that really what's happening is non-thinking, that really what's going on is non-thinking, and that it's vast and that you can't think of that but somehow that can come into your five skandas where

[15:21]

you do have thinking, and then you can tell somebody about it. Is there any way you can tell whether you're just making that up or whether that was actually what was happening? Is there any way you can tell whether you're just making that up, that you're having this experience outside the skandas that were illuminating your skandas? No, no, you couldn't have an experience outside the skandas. Well, sorry, describe to me what you just said, that you have an awareness that there is this vast non-thinking going on. Is that what you said? Could you repeat what you just said? No, you can say what you said, it doesn't matter what I said. No, I want to hear your proposal again. If you propose something, that when you do this practice of thinking non-thinking, that you can have a certain kind of awareness. I want you to describe what that awareness is again. Well, see, that's what I'm saying, that's the trick here, is that if it's an awareness, then it's in the skandas. Okay, so what is it? What is what? This thing that you're telling us about. I'm not telling you about it, he's saying it, okay? You said it might be possible that blah, blah, blah, blah.

[16:21]

But, you know, in other words, it's possible to have an illumination that consciousness doesn't get into, but that illuminates consciousness. So it's an illumination? It's an illumination, but the illumination is not an experience. The consciousness in the illumination, there's no consciousness that gets in the illumination. But the illumination can come into consciousness. When it comes into consciousness, and then he comes and tells me, I'm giving him what he calls the benefit of the doubt, okay? That maybe some illumination came into his consciousness, and then he reports his illumination, which is, there is no thought. So my question was, how would you know whether you were making that up, or whether that was actually what was going on, or does it matter? Well, if I could just let that sit there for a little while, and just say a little bit

[17:32]

more about the conversation, and that is that I proposed to him that, you see, if he's telling me about it, that maybe what he's telling me about is an awareness. An awareness must be, you know, you can't just have an awareness. Whenever you have an awareness, you have five skandhas. We don't have like an awareness that's all by itself. You never have an awareness by itself. He said, well, couldn't it be just awareness? And I said, well, there is a just awareness, kind of, when there's awareness, there's a just awareness part of the awareness, but you don't have the awareness by itself. So, if you're talking to me about an experience, then it's going to be an awareness, yes, but there's going to also be four other skandhas, and then they're going to be thinking. So, when he starts talking to me about it, if it's an experience that he's telling me

[18:36]

about, then it's not going to have no thinking. Then it could have a kind of thinking, which is a thinking of a vast unthinkingness, a vast lack of thought. There is that kind of thought. And when I was talking to him, you know, see, it's possible that whatever he was experiencing was fragile enough so that it just collapsed back into ordinary experience, and then I'm talking about ordinary experience, and that's all he can report to me is now ordinary experience. And in that case, that's fine, but there's no way in ordinary experience not to have thinking. Because you never have just awareness. Awareness never comes up by itself, but it's possible that a person would be illuminated

[19:36]

by the reality that there is no thinking, because in fact, there is no thinking because there's no thinking by itself, and there's no awareness either, because there's no awareness by itself, and there's no form either, because there's no form by itself, and also there's no feelings, and none of the skandhas exist by themselves. So you could have a flash of understanding, which penetrates your five skandhas, about the nature of the five skandhas, namely that, for example, the fourth skandha, in which thinking is housed by categorization, that there is no thinking, because in fact, you never have just thinking. You always have thinking with awareness, and feelings, and perceptions, and all the rest of the mental formations and form. So now, how would you know that you weren't making it up? One of the ways you would know that you weren't making it up…

[20:38]

Now, you wouldn't know you weren't making it up, but one of the ways you could prove you weren't making it up would be how you handle the skandhas. And it doesn't mean that you didn't have an illumination, though. It doesn't mean that. You could have… You could be… You know, your five skandhas cooking along, as they always do, and suddenly a shaft of light comes in there and tells you that, for example, thinking… There is no thinking. Or you could have a flash of light comes in and says, there's no feeling. In other words, the second skandha, there is no second skandha. That could be a real bonafide, you know, shockeroo. And you might even experience… It might even be fun. It might even be kind of like spacious and a relief, because you might be in pain at the time.

[21:38]

And you suddenly sort of see this vast openness in this little pain box you're in. Things like that could happen. How would you know that it was just making it up or not? So you could go somewhere between totally making it up, just sort of like fabricating any other thing, or it could be a little bit fabricated, or it could be a lot fabricated and a little bit like a real insight, or it could be such a big insight that when you're talking to me about the skandhas, you would talk about them in a very… What do you call it? Illuminated way. So, it turns out, we then started talking about situation, and this person's discussion of the skandhas was… I mean, he studied enough to be able to talk to me about them and for me to be able to talk with him about them, and he really did not prove his illumination in the way he talked

[22:42]

about the five skandhas. His illumination, it wasn't strong in the way he talked about the five aggregates. It wasn't strong. But he knows… See, the nice thing is he knows enough about the five aggregates to demonstrate his grasping. By talking to me about the five aggregates, I could see that the way he feels about them is like he's a super grasper. I mean, he's not the only one, but most of you can't show me that because you don't have the vocabulary to show me that, if you are that way. I mean, you may be able to show me your attachment to your body, if I were to test it in some way or another, like, I don't know what, push you off a cliff, pretend like I'm going

[23:45]

to push you off a cliff or something like that, then we'd be able to see it. But I don't do that too much, right? But discussing the five aggregates, I can see that the person is totally grasping them left and right once they've learned the vocabulary. So, he was talking in this way which his illumination of that there isn't any thinking did not hold up at all in his discussion of thinking. So, whether he made it up like 100% or whether he made it up 99% or 50% or 20%, in other words, whether he had like a 1% illumination or a 99% illumination, whatever the case, whatever was left was enough for him to, in his discussions with me about the five aggregates, demonstrate a considerable amount of grasping. And that's kind of what I want to talk to you about to show you what it's like when somebody grasps five skandhas. But you might not be able to follow it because you're sleepy or because you don't have

[24:49]

the vocabulary. But I'll give you a little sample of it if you want. But before I do, are there any questions? I saw some hands raised. Was there some hands? No. I had a question. Yes. It just came up when you were discussing awareness. I was curious, which combination of the skandhas is that or which particular skandha is that? Or attention, I was curious. Well, I would suggest that we use the word awareness to apply to the fifth skandha. Not the first, not the second, not the third, not the fourth, but the fifth. And not use it for any of the other ones. That's what I would suggest. And that's making awareness basically synonymous with discriminating awareness or discriminating consciousness and also just regular consciousness. And can I ask two more questions?

[25:51]

You can ask two more questions. What about bare attention? Would that mean also bare attention? Bare attention? Well, do you mean mindfulness by that or what? Attention without thinking. Yeah, mindfulness. Well, we can say attention without thinking. Okay? This person, by the way, came to my room later this morning and said, maybe, how about mindfulness being awareness? Sometimes they call mindfulness awareness. Well, we can say that, but actually mindfulness, there's two kinds of mindfulness you can talk about. One kind of mindfulness is a mindfulness which is in the fourth skandha, which is called smriti or sati, which is kind of like a remembrance of what you're meditating on. Okay? Like four foundations of mindfulness. Mindfulness of body, which includes your posture, your breathing, you know, things

[26:51]

like that. Mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of mind states, quality of consciousness, and mindfulness of dharma, which means mindfulness of five skandhas and things like that. Mindfulness for noble truths. So mindfulness is like, in one sense, remembering to pay attention to various meditation topics or remembering to pay attention to whatever's happening. So just attention, you could say. Now, when mindfulness, and mindfulness is sometimes said to be equal to, sometimes it's equal to wisdom or prajna. But prajna, generally speaking, not necessarily prajnaparamita, but before you have prajnaparamita you're supposed to have prajna. In other words, before you go beyond prajna you have regular prajna. And regular prajna, one of the basic, one of the kind of understandings that you have

[27:52]

to, I think I do not have to, but I recommend you learn, and then, what did I say, did I say definition or what did I say? Understanding. One of the understandings of prajna I would suggest you learn is the most basic one, before you go on to something more advanced. And the basic one is, prajna is discernment of dharmas, is discernment of what's happening. Dharmas of the little d or the big d? Little d. Like, for example, prajna is to notice, for example, that you're upset, that you're in pain, that you're not angry or you are angry, that you're concentrated. So it's similar to mindfulness in the sense that you're noticing what's happening and discerning, and in fact we do discern. And it's, again, it's a big deal to us. We care a lot whether it's pain or pleasure. You know, and we will do a lot depending on which one it is and what's related to it,

[28:56]

right? We seem to know that. But even though we will, like, big time make effort to go towards or away from certain kinds of pain or pleasure, we don't necessarily discern that there's pain or pleasure. We are not necessarily mindful of that we are feeling pain and we're trying to get away from it. We're not necessarily noticing it. And you don't need to notice it to get away from it, to try to get away from it. As a matter of fact, sometimes it helps not to notice it, because if you notice it too much, you might hesitate for a moment in doing some selfish thing. Anyway, that's prajna and mindfulness is related to it, closely related to it. In the Abhidharma system, in most Abhidharma presentations, if you look on the list, prajna is not on the list. And there is something on the list, sometimes called mati, which means discernment, but

[29:59]

that discernment is not necessarily at the level of discernment that we use the word prajna for, because it's not developed enough. Prajna is the, you know, accurate discernment. We save the word prajna for when you clearly see what's happening. Okay? Do you have some more questions? Well, no, it gets a little tricky. I mean, there's sensation, and you wonder, well, what is the awareness in this situation? A lot of times I find myself wondering, what is the awareness in this situation? But in fact, perhaps it's just thinking, reflecting on one of the skandhas reflecting on another of the skandhas. Whenever you have an experience, basically what's happening is that consciousness embraces the whole situation, embraces the other four skandhas, and from the other four skandhas, consciousness is relating to something in one of the other four aggregates as its object.

[31:05]

So in a given moment, consciousness is aware of an object. Okay? That's the mechanical presentation of Buddhism, Buddhist mechanical presentation of experience is that awareness has an object in every moment of experience. An object can be a sensation. That's just it. A lot of times, you know, you sit there and think, well, that awareness must be me. And you said thinking has an awareness of an object. But I'm wondering, perhaps there is no awareness. Perhaps there's just thinking and the object. You see what I mean? Which of the skandhas is that? Thinking, again, the way I would say the vocabulary is thinking is not the awareness. Thinking is something within the five skandhas called the pattern, the shape of the five skandhas is the thinking. Thought is the awareness. Thinking is the type of pattern that's embraced by the awareness. And thinking is the prototype for action.

[32:07]

But awareness is not a prototype for action. Awareness is basically the same every moment. Awareness is just the impression of what's going on. Thinking is the shape of what's going on, which then becomes the template for what we imagine to be the action of what's going on. Well, when you say thinking, do you mean some, you know, kind of like a verbal line that runs through your mind when you say the shape of the other skandhas? One type of action is verbal karma. And the verbal karma, when verbal karma is at the level of not being spoken, but in your mind, that's called, that is thinking. That's thinking. Yes. But what about when you occasionally have experienced something without thinking?

[33:08]

There's no such, according to what I'm teaching you, the basic teaching, which I'm not going to skip over, okay, the basic teaching is you do not have experiences without thinking. There's no, you do not have experiences like that. Well, what about these illuminations that you're talking about? Illuminations are not experience. Like it says in Gunja Koan, do not imagine that this gets mixed with your perceptions. So you're saying you don't have an experience without this verbal line running through your mind? Right. Well, I've had experiences that, that ended as soon as the verbal line went through the mind. A word came, but prior to the word, there were, they were these, whatever you want to call them, illuminations, whatever. I mean, but they were absent of thought. What I'm saying to you is that you have an experience, it's not absent of thought.

[34:11]

That's what I'm proposing to you, that there are no such experiences of absence of thought. In that single moment? In any moment. There's no experiences of absence of thought. Absence of thought is a kind of illumination, but there's no traces of consciousness in the illumination. So you're saying that you're just not noticing that you're thinking? You just think that you're not thinking, and then you think that you start thinking at a certain point. Now, I can't quite say, I'm not saying that everything that happens to us is verbal. I'm just saying our experiences, what we call experience, okay, is thinking. Because whatever experience we have means that we are aware of it. It doesn't mean conscious, but we do have conscious experiences throughout the day, non-stop, except in certain trances.

[35:13]

All day long, we have a conscious experience. Now, there isn't all this going on, but that's the realm in which we have experiences, that we are aware of. If we have a direct experience of something, a really direct experience, without labeling it, without conceptualizing about it, is that non-thinking? A non-conceptual experience is an oxymoron, is what I'm suggesting to you. You're saying it's impossible? It's not impossible, it's an oxymoron, because experience means there's conception. Experience means there's five skandhas. So, what you're proposing is that now you're going to propose that there's a kind of experience that doesn't have five skandhas, and what are you talking about? Okay?

[36:17]

That's what I'm saying. First of all, let's deal with the world of five skandhas first, before you try to get out of that one. There may be, for all I know, realms of experience that have nothing to do with the five skandhas. Okay? There may be. So, what I'll say is that what I'm talking about is the realm of experience that the Buddha was concerned about being released from. The realm of experience that the Buddha was concerned about being released from was the world of thinking, and in particular, the world of thinking where there's clinging to the thinking. Okay? The Buddha was concerned with suffering, and suffering is the five skandhas being grasped. Okay? So, when somebody tells me that there's no thinking, then I think, okay, now, are we

[37:24]

going to talk about something that's beyond the five skandhas? Okay, if so, fine. See you later. It has nothing to do with them released from suffering. It has nothing to do with the Four Noble Truths. The Four Noble Truths are about suffering. Number one, right? Suffering is clinging to the five aggregates. So, without getting ... I don't know what you want to call it, but without talking about if there is ... Esoteric. Esoteric. No, this is esoteric, what I'm talking about. What you're talking about is quite, you know, I'd say New Age. Occult. It's occult. Occult. Or whatever. What I'm talking about is very esoteric. Almost nobody in the world can talk about this. This is esoteric. But, it's grounded in experience. These five aggregates. These five aggregates are what the Buddha pointed to as being the source of suffering when they're grasped. Alright? This person tells me that he had experience of, like, no thought. The word is no thought. Okay. Is that important or not?

[38:27]

I don't know. Maybe it is. But, when he starts saying awareness and stuff like that, then he's back in the five aggregate thing. And, if there is such a place as no thought, can you apply it to the realm where there is thought? And, he couldn't. I haven't even been able to get yet. I'm not impatient. But, I haven't got into demonstrating to you how he worked with the five aggregates. We're doing that a little bit right now. But, I just want to focus on the point that, in terms of the Four Noble Truths, the first stone of suffering is connected to the five aggregates. So, if there is a kind of experience outside the five aggregates, the Buddha wouldn't talk about it. He didn't say there wasn't. And, I'm not saying there isn't either. I'm just saying, when you start talking to me about it, you're back in the five aggregates with me. Unless you're telling me you can actually talk to me without being in the five aggregates. And, I don't think you can because, how are you going to hear me and respond to what I'm saying? How are you going to speak English with me if you're not in the five aggregates?

[39:30]

I think you're in the five aggregates when you tell me there was no thought. So, then you can talk to me about how there was no thought in the realm of five aggregates and I can see, if you really know about no thought, something beyond the five aggregates, you can show me because it'll work in the five aggregates, won't it? But, I think this is really important. If there isn't anything beyond the five aggregates, that still doesn't mean that you couldn't work with five aggregates in this way which wasn't attached to the five aggregates. Could you follow that? No? Has that lost you? No, not in the sense it's just like, oh, I'll never get it. If you just lost it there, you might have been sort of close to it. Let's try it one more time, okay? You don't have to have any knowledge of something beyond the five aggregates to be working with

[40:32]

the five aggregates in a way that is not clinging to them. You can realize a non-clinging way of working with them without any kind of extra five aggregate kind of experience. But this person or anybody else that has any experience which they say is outside the five aggregates, an example of something outside the five aggregates would be no thinking. You can't have no thinking in the realm of five aggregates, or no awareness, or just awareness. You can't have that in five aggregates either. So, if you come into the house of the five aggregates, which is normal human experience, then let's see if you can work with five aggregates but with no attachment. We can see this because of the way you talk about them. Yes? What happens to the thinking when you don't cling to your five aggregates anymore?

[41:43]

Is that what you're saying? You're saying that if you work with five aggregates without any clinging, your thinking will change? Is that what you're saying? What will express yourself to lack of clinging? Will it express itself in your thinking? No, it won't necessarily express itself in your thinking. It won't necessarily. It might, but it won't necessarily. The thing that happens when you stop clinging is not that you start thinking differently, necessarily. You might not start thinking differently. Do you know what happens when the clinging stops? Do you know what happens? This is a test. What happens when the clinging stops? Please, let her answer. What happens when the clinging stops, Christina? It's just nothing. What? It's just nothing. No, that's wrong. Get more answers. What happens when the clinging stops?

[42:47]

Talk. You probably get it. You don't want to talk? I don't know. Suffering stops. That's what happens. That's what this whole thing is about. It's when the clinging stops, the suffering stops. Okay? That's the point. It's when the clinging to the aggregate stops, the suffering stops. Now, does thinking have to change? The thinking is changing all the time. But will it change in a particular way? If it does, it's clinging. Then thinking is like under this kind of program, it's supposed to change in some way. No, the thinking does not have to change. The thinking is released. Everything's free. That's what happens. The impact. The impact of the thinking changes? I mean, it's not thinking just because of the thinking, but it's also not grasping. The thinking isn't part of a grasping system anymore.

[43:58]

It's just the five skandhas going, five skandhas going, five skandhas, bye-bye. Five skandhas, bye-bye. Five skandhas, bye-bye. Life turns into five skandhas. That's what life is like then. No clinging, no suffering. Five skandhas are one lotus after another. That's called freedom from suffering. It's called life without suffering. It's called nirvana. It's called not cyclic existence. That's what it is. That's what happens when the clinging to the five aggregates stops. Now, if there is an illumination that comes into the five aggregates, which helps it not cling, like you suddenly see there's no thinking, because in a sense, it's right, it's true that there's no thinking.

[44:59]

It's true that there's no thinking. In other words, there's no fourth skandha. There's no fifth skandha. There's no sixth skandha. There's no third skandha. There's no first skandha. There aren't any skandhas. It's an illumination you could have. Because in fact, there is no such thing as feeling. Because you never have feeling, you always have awareness. You can't have feeling, you always have to have awareness of feeling, otherwise you wouldn't have a feeling. So you don't have feeling, you have feeling and awareness. But you don't have feeling and awareness, you have feeling and awareness and conception. You don't have just them, you have form. You have smell, touch, taste. You don't just have that, you have all kinds of other mental formations. And you have thinking. That's what you have. But you never have thinking, you have awareness. You can't have thinking. You cannot have thinking, because of thinking and awareness and feeling. In other words, you never have one of those things. They never exist by themselves. They all come up together. You never have any of them. And when you don't cling to them anymore, you realize that. Or when you realize that, you don't cling to them, either way you want to put it.

[46:02]

When you see how they dependently co-arise, you don't cling to them. So, if somebody actually did have an intuition, not from some other place, actually. In some land outside the five skandhas, but sort of right in the middle of the five skandhas. Here I am, sitting here, being a human. Suddenly, I get illuminated. Not from outside the five skandhas, but I get told about the five skandhas. What do I get told about the five skandhas? Of all things. Guess what I get told. I don't get told, you know, green is purple. I don't get told there is no color. Well, actually, I could get told that. I don't get told green is purple. I don't get told that thinking is feeling. I get told there is no thinking. Gorgeously vast, too. So, it never did sound like an illumination. But, when I checked it out, I felt like it really wasn't an illumination. That it was just an idea, and the idea was no thinking. So, rather than thinking of not thinking, what he was thinking of was the idea, no thought. That's what I saw. But, in the process, he showed me something very important,

[47:05]

and that is that I think what is much more helpful than to try to study the five skandhas is to study our attachment to the five skandhas, which means to study how we keep thinking, always in terms of the five skandhas, in isolation from each other. That's what we do. Or, in little sub-teams, sometimes. Like, okay, alright, well, it's consciousness and its object, but keep the thinking over there. Or, thinking, but forget about consciousness. When you start looking at the whole thing, you can't get a hold of it, and we're not used to that. So, rather than try to pretend like we can actually study the five skandhas in their interdependent, ungraspability, why don't we just study our clinging to the five skandhas, which means study our suffering. Which means studying our suffering isn't just studying our suffering, it's studying our clinging to our experience. And, I keep trying to make our experience into something graspable, manipulable, improvable, you know, and so on and so forth. So, it's nice that you can learn the vocabulary,

[48:06]

because then you can demonstrate your attachment. And, in fact, we do keep dealing with our experience in these outflowing ways, in these partial ways. We look at one thing in isolation of the other thing. We tend to do that, or at least part of the picture in isolation of the other, and that's what makes possible the outflows. Because whenever you look at one thing by itself, aside from this dependent co-arising in your mind, you can grab it, and then this fluid transition, this gain and loss thing starts happening. You can't gain and lose in relationship to totality. And, totality operates, you know, every moment in our ordinary experience, but because we grasp, we see it partially. Because we can't grasp the whole thing, because you're not outside of it. That is one of the reasons. So, it would be nice to see just the five aggregates,

[49:09]

because you'd be enlightened right there. But, in fact, I think the way to see the five aggregates, without any attachment, which would be the end of suffering, is to work at it through seeing that we approach the five aggregates already with clinging, and watch how we cling, and as you watch how you cling, you actually can see something, you can actually see what you're doing, rather than see what you should be doing, or pretend like you're doing what you should be doing. But even if you pretend that you're doing what you should be doing, like seeing an aggregate, if you talk, if you report what you're doing, then it can be shown that you're actually, you're not seeing clearly, because, in fact, you're grabbing one thing, which is impossible to do. You cannot grab one of the aggregates. He did all these beautiful things. He says, well, first there's awareness. No, it's not first there's awareness. You can't squeak awareness up a tiny bit ahead of anything.

[50:12]

Like, first there's awareness, and then right away after that there's an object. No! You can't get the object up there and sort of wait for the awareness. They can't come up, you can't get the awareness, the slightest bit aroused, without an object. Awareness would be totally dead, it's totally dead until it's got an object. Now, after it's got an object, does it wait a little while before it comes up to play with it? No, the object can't get up ahead of the awareness. You can't, like, object comes up, waits. No! There's no object of awareness before awareness. They come up exactly at the same time, but they don't come up just together. There's always a feeling, too. You don't have a feeling come up ahead of the object. Can you have a feeling without an object? No. Those three must come up together. And not only do they come up together, but their relationship comes up with them, too. They don't wait for their relationship to come up until they're up there and well-situated, and then they say, now let's hear about our relationship.

[51:13]

And then when they have a relationship, then there's a pattern, so thinking comes up right away with them. And there's some concept about it, because consciousness doesn't deal directly with things. It always asks them to translate into something that they can deal with, namely concepts. So then there's perception, and concept, and thinking, and feeling, and contact, and relationship. All that happens simultaneously. None of it waits for any of it to come up together, and they all go away together. That's an experience. Now, if there's other kinds of experiences that aren't like that, I'm not going to argue, unless you talk to me. And as soon as you start talking to me, you're going to be back in the same box, the experience box. If you're talking about other kinds of experience, you have no way to talk to me about it. I have no way to talk to you about it. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time refuting it, because it doesn't bear on the problem, because the problem is in the realm of the five skandhas. That's where the suffering we're talking about, the Buddhist suffering, there may be other kinds of suffering,

[52:15]

but the Buddhist suffering happens in the five skandhas. That was good enough for Buddha. When he got rid of that suffering, there was no other kinds that he worried about. There may be suffering in the realm of no-thought. But no-thought is not like another realm in Buddhism. No-thought is what illuminates you about the nature of your thought, because your thought is no-thought, in the sense that your thought is none other than the rest of the skandhas. No-thought means that the skandhas are interdependent. No-thought means you can't grasp your experience, because you understand your experience. That's what no-thought means. It doesn't mean there's no thought. It means whatever you think your thought is, is a partial version of it. And that kind of thought does not exist. You could also say no feeling. You could also say no awareness. You could also say no form. You could also say no perception. Any of those would be fine, but actually they put the emphasis on thinking, because thinking is the overall picture,

[53:17]

and thinking is the basis of karma. So it's a really important one to emphasize, because it's the overall pattern. So, I don't know... I don't know if you can stand this, but anyway, I just thought that was terrific. And in some ways he was the smartest and the stupidest person in history. I mean, his mind is very bright and active, and it's terrific. And it's so perfectly... It was horribly wonderful to see the power of attachment. He'd bring up this and go, and then I'd say, but look, and then he'd go, well, how about this? It was terrific. Just terrific. And it's wonderful when a human being

[54:21]

can demonstrate human thinking and human activity like that. It's just like, that's the stuff that you use to get enlightened. And most people won't expose themselves like that. It's just terrific. And it's so horrible to see, too. But it is the stuff, you know, to actually show the actual working of attachment to the actual guts of experience, the actual building blocks of an experience, and to see how we attach to it. It's a sutra. It's a sutra. As a matter of fact, there are sutras just like this, where this guy comes in, and he talks to the other monks, and he says, well, actually, it's one of the more famous sutras, it's about this guy who says that there's this thing called consciousness that gets reborn. You know? What's the name of that sutra? No, that's...

[55:24]

I'll look it up anyway. Anyway, and all the other monks say, don't say that, brother, don't say that. The Lord Buddha would be very upset if he heard you say that. He says this, that there is consciousness. You know? So he thought, well, since there's rebirth, there must be this thing that goes on. He thought that since there's rebirth, there must be this consciousness that goes on. So then he thought, well, there must be this consciousness by itself. Because there must be something that goes on. What is that something, consciousness? So he wasn't proposing rebirth, because the Buddha said, yes, there is rebirth, but he was like saying, well, since there is, there must be like this thing called consciousness. Don't say that, brother, don't say that, don't say there's this thing called consciousness. The Lord Buddha did not teach that. He said, oh, yes, he did. In other words, that there is consciousness rather than consciousness arising with the other skandhas. So they brought him to Buddha

[56:25]

and he said, who taught you that? Did I ever teach you that? I never taught you that. I always taught that consciousness arises codependently with the other four skandhas, you know. So even the, you know, when we hear, when we hear, when we see the world, you know, we think, oh, there must be awareness, like this guy's talking to. Well, then there's just awareness. Well, then you hear about just sitting and just awareness. In fact, just awareness, that's right, just awareness is liberation, but just awareness means that awareness dependently co-arises. That is, in other words, just awareness means there is no such thing as awareness, because just awareness means that it's just awareness. In other words, it's no more or less than awareness, but what is awareness? Awareness is of objects and arises with these other things. That's all it is. It's nothing more than that, but that's nothing because it's codependently co-arising. It's not something more than just awareness. That,

[57:26]

he's right. But the language, the language of just awareness, which is exactly liberation, gets turned into just awareness, means there is a thing called awareness. Do you see how that works? Like you can make just sitting into a thing. Even though just sitting means there's nothing to it. It means it's just totally free of the form of sitting. That's what just sitting means. It's perfect realization of emptiness of sitting is just sitting. Just sitting means you don't add substance to your sitting. You don't make your sitting into something. That wouldn't be just sitting. That would be sitting substantialized, sitting reality-ized, sitting, you know, substance-ized, whatever. No, it's just sitting. That's all it is. It's just, you know, wearing a zafu out. That's it. But there's no such thing. That's why it's our practice. But can you demonstrate how you do the same thing? It's, it's wonderful to be able to do that. And it's,

[58:31]

and it's embarrassing too, because when you usually, when you first do it, you don't notice it. Otherwise you wouldn't say it. I feel kind of embarrassed for whoever this person is. You do? Yeah. Go ahead. I said I feel embarrassed for whoever this person is that you're referring to. How can you feel embarrassed about this person? I just did. What do you imagine? I imagine that they feel bad. Why would they feel bad? Just imagining it. But what do you imagine? You imagine the person, just tell me, tell me about your imagination of the person. Well, in my imagination, first of all I'm trying to figure out who it is. I'm glad it's not me. Oh, wait a minute. Okay, yes. And then I'm imagining that they feel bad because they're, they're, they're thinking that they're being criticized or being made fun of.

[59:35]

Does that mean you imagine that they're in the room right now? Well, I'm hoping they're not in the room, actually. Well, they might, they might not be in the room. Didn't that help you narrow down who it is? No, I still feel bad. Even if they're not in the room. It's not so much that I want to know who it is. I mean, that's part of it. I don't know. I didn't even hear what you said. I didn't say anything. I, I. You feel embarrassed? Yes. I just wanted to know. You feel embarrassed to me? Well, but I think if you, do you feel embarrassed to me talking to you? No. That's fine. I'm in the room and everybody knows about it. Well, you're in the room and also you're in the room so I can ask if you're embarrassed. No, I'm not embarrassed. Okay, fine.

[60:41]

This person, if this person, I could have this person come up and talk with me in front of you all. That would be possible too, right? And then it would be a sutra, maybe. Because then you could all hear it and it could be repeated. But it's kind of like a sutra because this person had a conversation with me, just like out of the sutra. So, a lot of these stories in sutras are stories which you could imagine somebody would be embarrassed about, but in fact, those are the stories where the Buddha often taught, where somebody had a misunderstanding and then the Buddha would show, and the person would demonstrate it with energy and so on, and that would be the occasion for the teaching. And you could be embarrassed for that person, but you can also realize this person is one of Buddha's disciples and also the vehicle for the teaching to happen. Yeah, I guess not knowing whether or not the person actually learned in that interaction, I didn't quite get that. I just thought that they were kind of foolish. Well, it's not exactly foolish. It's more than foolish. It's more like prototypic human cling to the five skandhas. This person demonstrated this wonderful example of how when you learn to speak the language of the five skandhas, then you can actually, the way you talk about it, your attachment then becomes demonstrated.

[62:07]

Whereas most people are attaching to the five skandhas, but they have no idea what that would mean. They're doing exactly what this person demonstrated and they're doing exactly what Buddha said, but they don't know... The Buddha had trouble finding other ways of telling people how they were attached other than talking about the five aggregates. He had similes and homilies and stories about how it worked, but basically he was always talking about how people attach to their experience. That was his basic definition. So this person taught me about how to teach. Now, this person might not be in the room. I don't know, I don't want to say because that would out-locate them, but they're probably not in the room, or if they were in the room I probably would have cleared it with them. So usually if I'm talking about somebody, we're cleared for that to happen, or they're not around, or they're dead. Well, I hope they learned something from the interaction.

[63:08]

Well, I hope they did too, but even if they didn't, I did. And the fact that I did means that all of you can. You can learn by what he taught me. He taught me, not too long a period of time, he taught me many, many examples of how people come to the five aggregates in these ways which, you know, it just was great! Especially to demonstrate how the language of liberation gets turned into the language of attachment. Like, you know, just sitting, just awareness, you know, just bare awareness, this kind of stuff can get then turned into something which is like isolated by itself rather than, in fact, just awareness, just bare awareness means actually that there's nothing added to the situation, that there's no clinging. And therefore there's not such a thing even as bare awareness. That bare awareness is like just what's happening with nothing added to it. There's no such thing as bare awareness on top of what's happening.

[64:13]

But yet when we hear bare awareness and how great it is, we want to get bare awareness. Which isn't bare awareness, it's like this thing we've got on top of what's happening, we've got to peel that away and just sort of let that drop away and then we've got what's happening, that's bare awareness. But when we hear about that then we make that back up into something and cling to it. So we cling to the five aggregates and there's an understanding of the five aggregates, we cling to that. So anyway, I appreciate you mentioning your embarrassment and worry about this person, but this person is fine, aren't you? This person is fine. And because this person is such an excellent student, this person has been used, what do you call it, ex-officio, in-officio, non-officio. He's been used many times in many classes, within present and non-present, because he's so active in the practice that he offers these opportunities all the time. So he's used to it and if he had any attachment or self-concern, which he doesn't necessarily have, but if he did he would be very happy to become basically an instrument of Buddhism and what do you call it, a fixture of the unfolding of Buddhist teaching in America.

[65:35]

He is, that's what he is, because he's getting out there and putting his thing out there, he's all part of you now, his practice has now become nourishment for all of you. And if you would come forth like that you would then become a resource and a nourishment for many other people too, just like he did. He taught me a lot, because I actually was more thinking of studying the five skandhas, like trying to study the five skandhas, but now I realize that almost no one can study the five skandhas, because what everybody does is they don't have five skandhas to study. Almost no one has five skandhas to study, but almost everyone has Upadana five skandhas, Upadana pancha skandhas, clinging five skandhas, the five skandhas of clinging is what most people have. And that's what you can demonstrate, if you wish, and you can be a resource by, and you can learn from that. So he probably learned something, but then what he said this morning again made me feel, you know, he was still struggling to get a hold, you know, to try to find another word that maybe could do it.

[66:46]

It's not, what do you call it, it's not incorrigible, it's irrepressible. And irrepressible is different from incorrigible. Irrepressible means you keep offering new opportunities for corrigibility. Do you understand what I mean? The human spirit you keep trying to categorize and grasp, that may be, what's the word I use? Irrepressible. Irrepressible, but it can be educated. Maybe when it gets supremely educated it doesn't offer any more opportunities for education, I guess. But until then, it keeps expressing itself and it can't be stopped. And it keeps expressing itself until it's totally educated. And this person is very, you know, it keeps coming out and offering new opportunities and new angles for, not for repression, but for education.

[67:51]

It's awesome. You look slightly shocked, Jim. Huh? Just sleepy. Just sleepy, oh. Well, it's getting close to the sleepy time hour. I don't know, this is maybe hard at night to talk about this, but... What? It must be irrepressible. What? It must be irrepressible. It may be irrepressible, but it could have been redirectable. I had several other things I could have been diverted onto here. But that was really wonderful. So, study the dependent co-arising of the Upadana Vaiskandas, which is to study the dependent co-arising of birth and death. So, I realized that I had a tendency to think about teaching and discussing with you the dependent co-arising of the five skandhas, which is the dependent co-arising of nirvana.

[69:05]

But actually, it's also so that when you see the dependent co-arising of the five aggregates of cleaning, you see the dependent co-arising of birth and death, and seeing the dependent co-arising of birth and death, that is not seeing the dependent co-arising of enlightenment. Seeing the dependent co-arising of birth and death is not seeing the dependent co-arising of enlightenment, but seeing the dependent co-arising of birth and death, that is the dependent co-arising of enlightenment. Seeing how birth and death dependent co-arises, that's seeing, that's the dependent co-arising of enlightenment. You can't actually see the dependent co-arising of enlightenment until after you're enlightened. then when you're enlightened you see the

[70:26]

So, we have to admit our lack of complete vision, but as we admit that, we start to see the dependent co-arising of our incomplete vision. Seeing the dependent co-arising of incomplete vision, that's liberating, that's the complete vision of our incomplete vision, that's the complete vision of the arising of our suffering, which is not such an attractive meditation topic, I mean, you know, until you find out that that's probably the most appropriate one. And so that's what he really helped me see, because he was, and I was joining him, he was meditating on the five aggregates, that's what he was intending to do, as a way to discuss his understanding of no thought, or no thinking, but when he tried to discuss the five aggregates, he never discussed the five aggregates with me, he kept talking about one at a time, and

[71:31]

actually trying to prove that you could talk about one at a time, because that's actually what he thought. Like I said, he said, well first you have this one, and I think we all have this, so I guess that's enough. This is about the Eightfold Path, right, what I'm talking about? This is what's called Right Understanding I've been discussing tonight, this is about Right Understanding. One teacher talks about creating space between the five aggregates, so you mean by… Right, by making space between them? Space around them, so you see them almost… Well, you could show me what you're reading, I can maybe see it in context.

[72:46]

Because hearing it out of context, it sounds like, what do you call it, heresy, to create space around and see each one by himself. The Buddha always talks about, first you define the five, even to define an aggregate, okay, is an act of, in a sense, it's an act of anti-Dharma in a way, but the Buddha did that, I think to some extent, but he didn't say ever that this is by itself. But in order to notice the points of the story of interdependence, maybe you have to define this, but as soon as you define it by itself, there's outflows. So I don't know what this person means by making space around it, that space would like make this thing isolated, then I think that would just reaffirm our usual way of thinking, and our usual attachment to each individual one, and enhance outflows and craving.

[73:48]

But maybe there's some other meaning there, that if I read it in context I would see what the person's trying to do in terms of helping people meditate on the five aggregates. But again, I think there's an irrepressible tendency to try to enlighten the situation, rather than to admit how much delusion there is. And even some Buddhist teachers try to teach how to manipulate the situation into enlightenment rather than admitting how delusion dependently co-arises, and I think Soto Zen is more like admit the delusion and wake up there, rather than try to get rid of the delusion. But there's other schools which seem to talk about getting rid of the delusion, so maybe that way works. I don't know. For them, it's possible that it's kind of like a trick, that they kind of get people involved in trying to do this impossible thing, and then they play it all the way out, and

[74:52]

they finally say, oh, see, it didn't work, did it? The person goes, oh, I get it, oh, great! But maybe they enhance this natural human tendency to isolate the skandhas and play it all the way, and then finally it just all falls flat, and then they break down and the pinnacle arising just comes flooding in. So, the point is, what enlightens them is what counts. So, I don't know, I'd have to look at the situation. Okay? Thank you.

[75:29]

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