I want to restrain myself from trying to get through this text tonight because I won't be able to, even if no one asked any questions, but I tell myself that I will be able to talk about it during the Dharma talks, so it's okay that you won't have this whole text to use. I wish you had it to use from the first, you know, from tomorrow morning, that you could use all the wonderful teachings that Vasubandhu's giving about how to sit zazen, but I can't express all the encouragement I see there tonight. Again, I could say this is about sashin and our practice in general. I hope that

[01:07]

this relatively short sashin can still be a great opportunity for you individually and as a group. I heard someone say something like, when you have alternatives, you can easily revolt against something, but when you don't have any alternatives, you can only go forward. I don't know, since you have alternatives to what I just said, you can revolt against what I just said, but I think there's something useful about that. So one of the great advantages of having one practice, if you can choose one practice that you do during sashin, or one way of understanding everything that happens, as an opportunity to practice uprightness,

[02:10]

then maybe you just go forward rather than rebelling against, I don't know what, something. Now, someone asked if I would go over this point where Vasubandhu says, thus it that is the accomplished should be declared as neither identical nor different from the dependent, like impermanent and so on. So we have our subject-object relationships, our sense of subject and others, we have these kinds of experiences. These experiences are examples of something

[03:19]

that arises dependently. The sense of self and other is an example of the other dependent, of another dependent event, something that arises by causes and conditions. So, the accomplished, which is the other dependent as something which originates by causes and conditions, that's the accomplished. It's like impermanence and so on. In other words, the accomplishment of impermanence. Impermanence is an accomplishment. Impermanence isn't the nature of phenomenal appearances and disappearances. Their nature is that they are impermanent things. Impermanence is an understanding

[04:29]

that things are impermanent, or it's a meditation on the impermanent things. And you can't have impermanence, you can't have this understanding called impermanence without impermanent things. So you can't have this accomplished, which is the non-discriminating wisdom, without these things that aren't really true. If you take away these conceptual events, these events which are just concepts, which aren't really the way things are, but simply the way things appear to be, if you take away these appearances, then there's no possibility for non-discriminating awareness. If you take them away, you don't have non-discriminating wisdom either. If you take away

[05:32]

what dependently co-arises in terms of our perception of what's going on, then you can't have the accomplished. That's what it means, that's what it means, impermanence and so on. Same way shunyata is emptiness, and Mahayana Buddhism is a deep understanding of emptiness. But emptiness is, or I should say it's the deep understanding, Mahayana is the deep understanding which is emptiness. It's a realization of emptiness, it's the actualization of emptiness, but emptiness, you can't have emptiness without something that's empty, in other words without things. So shunya and shunyata, anicca and aniccata, and paratantra and parinispana, these things are pairs, you can't have one without the other. They're not the same, they're not identical, but they're not different.

[06:34]

So is that enough on that point for you, John? Yes, thank you. You're welcome. So, in other words, it isn't like non-discriminating wisdom, there's nothing happening. Non-discriminating wisdom is to see how the process of discrimination is going on, clearly, without any imagination, without any erroneous imaginations about this process of perception, without any erroneous imaginations. For example, the erroneous imaginations are called parikalpita, it's erroneous imagination, and there's another term called abhuta parikalpita. Bhuta means something that's come to be. Abhuta means something that doesn't really happen. So there's an imagination of something

[07:43]

that doesn't really happen. Imagination of the unreal? Yeah. So that's an erroneous imagination, you're imagining something that doesn't really come to be. Imagining what does come to be, is what comes to be. In other words, your imagination comes to be, that's what comes to be. But since it comes to be, that's exactly the reason why it's insubstantial, because it comes to be. But since it's coming to be all by itself, something that comes to be is insubstantial. What else? That all by itself, without any attributing of substantialness to it, that's the accomplished. So the accomplishment also comes to be. It's an accomplishment. And since it's accomplished, it is not something final either. Okay, now the parikalpita, the imagination of substance,

[08:52]

which it says in Karika 20, is not evident. There's no evidence about this kind of fabrication. This is insubstantial in terms of characteristics. It doesn't have any characteristics. It's insubstantial that way. It's insubstantial in terms of... No, no, no, the three words before you said, what is the insubstantial in terms of... The imagination of substance is insubstantial in terms of characteristics. It doesn't have characteristics. It's empty of characteristics. What has come to be, what has independently co-arisen as a sense of self and other, for example, that has characteristics. It's not empty of characteristics, it has characteristics. Definite characteristics, which we can talk about, and which define precisely what the

[09:58]

perception is. And if you change the characteristics, you have a different... other dependent event. You have a different dependent co-arising, dependently co-arisen experience. And it's different precisely because the characteristics are different. It's just the assembly of the characteristics. So it's got plenty of characteristics, but because it's got characteristics, it is the dependent event. And because of that, it lacks its own nature. It has no self nature, but it does have characteristics. The imagination of substance doesn't have characteristics. The imagination of substance doesn't have characteristics. The things you're imagining have substance, those are the other dependent, they do have characteristics. So if you think of a unicorn, a unicorn is a perfectly good concept. It has characteristics. We may have some different sense of what the characteristics of a

[11:04]

unicorn are. We can talk about them and we can find out, oh, your unicorn's blue, mine's white. Yours is a powder blue, mine's white. And actually there's a few spots on the rump of my unicorn. The person may say, well, I don't know if you should... But you can talk about it in terms of characteristics. In your own mind anyway, it has characteristics. The imagination that a unicorn exists has substance, that imagination has no characteristics. And also, the imagination that unicorns do not exist, substantially, you really believe that, that's also a false and erroneous imagination. Yes? Just let me say this, that the way you imagine that they don't exist is indistinguishable from the way you imagine that they do exist. The actual attribution and the belief in the insubstantiality is indistinguishable

[12:07]

from the belief in the substantiality. The only way you can tell the difference is in terms of concepts which have characteristics. But the attribution of substance or lack of substance has no characteristics. If you look, you will see that. Excuse me. I think you answered my question, which is, at the moment that I come to the conception that all things are empty, that conception itself, in and of itself, is empty. I can't hold on to that. Is that true? And the realization of that fact means that it's empty characteristics that I can hold on to. Say it again? Well, if you tell me that all things are empty, and that they co-arise, and I can actually experience that fact, I'm now clinging, I'm now holding on. Excuse me, let me say, you hear me say that and you make a concept about what I just said. Yes, I make a concept and immediately I try to conceptualize and freeze that concept into something to hold on to, and see that I can't do it. Demonstrates what the

[13:10]

concept is stating. Is that correct? If you see that you can't do it, then you have just freed your concept about emptiness, which is a bad example to choose because everybody's got confused now. But anyway, if you can see that your concept of emptiness doesn't work for you to make that, to freeze that, then your concept is freed of the erroneous imagination. That's the same thing you were speaking about. Yes. But it would apply to something more, like your jacket or your name, is when you see that doesn't work to attribute substance to this concept, then the concept is free from the attribution, and the concept is simply co-dependently arisen, and then that's the accomplished, when it's free of the other thing. When you really see that the attribution of substance doesn't work, really doesn't work, to the extent that it's not really there, but there is something there which is dependently co-produced and doesn't have any pal there to make it substantial, that's called non-discriminating wisdom. And you can't have that without this thing, which can't hold any substance to it,

[14:16]

because the substance attribution has dropped away. It's freed. It's liberated from the attribution of substance. This is non-discriminating wisdom. And this is the opportunity of our sitting. And I'm willing to go into this, I'm willing to ask questions now, because I want you to really look at this. This is really subtle, and you can work on this. Yes? I'm a little confused still about this attribution of substance being without characteristic. Yeah. Because I think that, for example, if I have the impression of attributing substance to something, I can say, well, I treat it as something solid, I think of it as unchanging, I blame it for all of the suffering that I'm feeling at the moment. Wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. Blaming it for all the suffering you have, that doesn't sound like attributing substance to me. Well, I'm...

[15:22]

That's getting away from the thing a little bit. That's getting into an imagination, an imaginary... All the things you've mentioned so far, by the way, have characteristics. I meant, for example, an object of an emotion, so that I start to have an emotion of dislike, and then there's this so-called other before me, and I say, oh, it's so-and-so, and then I feel yucky, and then I think it's their fault. I understand. But go back to the original, to take something like a concept of I dislike, or even the concept of the other person, okay, right there. Right there, you can attribute substance to that. This does cause suffering, but the analysis that it causes suffering is not attributing substance. You can see that it causes suffering with or without attributing substance, what you've just seen. What I'm saying is, if you look, and anybody can see this differently, tell me about this, but I'm saying, if you look carefully at anything that you're aware of, and then watch, catch yourself attributing substance, catch the substance attributing to the thing. Now, what I'm saying to you is that the way that

[16:25]

happens is indistinguishable, it happens the same way, because the quality we're talking about is simply pure mental fabrication, and there's no difference, the way you do that to anger, to lust, to John, to Janine, to Diagon. That activity is identical. It's simply characterized as simply just imagining something which doesn't come to be, which you put on top of things that do come to be. You have no way to apply it. The parikalpita always uses the paratantra. You never have parikalpita all by itself, either. You have it lost and absent, but then it's nowhere. As soon as it's functioning, it operates on the paratantra, it operates on the other dependent. That gives a different color to the variety of the substantial world, it goes from substance to substance to substance to substance, but the actual making all these different people into substances is always the

[17:29]

same fabrication. So, the first step is attributing substance, and then from that follows that it has a kind of solid feel to it, or that we put blame onto it. And all those are paratantras. And we can discuss those and look them up in the dictionary, and maybe even different dictionaries we can discuss and change the dictionaries. It's something you do it with everybody. It has a vast causal nexus, that's why it's empty of own being, but it's not empty of characteristics, it has lots of characteristics and we can discuss them together and communicate about them, and that's actually what we are communicating about usually. But the attribution of substance, it has no like qualities that vary from time to time, so it's empty of... of course it doesn't have any own being either, because in order to establish own being you got to tell me what it is. But it's empty even of the things by which you would ascertain that something doesn't have own being, and the only way to give it own being would be to do it to itself.

[18:30]

But you know you can do it to self to make it into a paratantra. And I don't know who was next, but was anybody out there? Maybe Albert's next. Was somebody out there? No. I think you're next. Okay. I'm confused about... So who else had their hand raised? John and Maya. Anybody else? Mark and Jean. And yeah, it was Robin a while ago. I'm confused about the difference between the paratantra and the third category. It seems like if the first category is the imagined, the erroneous attribution of substance to the paratantra... You can even take away erroneous. Okay, just the attribution of substance. And the third is just the second without

[19:37]

that attribution of substance. Why do you need the third? Why don't you just say, there is that which arises and there is the false attribution of substance to it. Or there is the attribution of substance to it. You don't need the third. In fact, you don't have the third. Great. Then why is it useful to use it in the discussion? Ask Vasubandhu. I'm going to answer a lot of questions. Okay. How is it useful to use it in the discussion? How is it useful for our practice? Well, first of all, before I say how it's useful, you don't need it. If you don't need it, I'll say you don't need it. If you tell me you need it, I'll give it to you. Okay. But if you ask me if you need it, you don't know you need it, I'm not going to force it down your throat. Okay. What's the use of it? What's the use of non-discriminating wisdom? Oh, Rev.

[20:37]

I mean, that's cute. But, you know, I was asking you an honest question. That just is in terms of... How are you feeling? I'm pissed. What about? I'm pissed because I feel like you're... What? Okay. What is this now? Are you imagining there's something real here? What do you see? What do you see? Well, I see you. And you think what? I think you walked in here in some sort of weird mood. And you, for some reason or other... Wait a second now. Just a second. I say... You asked me what I thought. That's what I thought. I'm not saying that I know that or that it's true, but... Do you think it's true, though? You know, I'm not sure. That was just the hit that I had. Well, let's look at this as a good example. Do you think it's true that your imagination, my weird mood, do you think it's... Are you giving a substance? Or were you giving a substance? I was. Are you now?

[21:54]

It's sort of in suspense. Do you want to ask any more questions now? I... Yeah, I still... No, I don't want to ask any more questions, but I would like a... like a one that I asked before answered differently. You want to answer differently? I'm all for non-discriminating wisdom. Sounds great to me. That's what Parinirvana is. Right. So, what's your question? My question is, isn't... Excuse me. Here's what I heard you say was,

[22:59]

if you have the... What do you call it? The par-tantra freed from erroneous imagination... Yes. Okay. Why do you need a third thing, which is non-discriminating wisdom? Right. Okay. And you don't need it, because once the par-tantra is freed of erroneous imagination, you don't need another thing. It doesn't say then there's this other thing. There's not another thing. That is non-discriminating wisdom. You don't need the third thing. That is the third thing. So... Okay. In terms of a way to organize thinking about this, could one say that there is the par-tantra that is either... That instead of there being three things, there are sort of three categories. There are two

[24:02]

categories of viewing the par-tantra or of relating to the par-tantra. That's right. There's two categories of par-tantra. One with imagination and one without. Or you could say one with non-discriminating wisdom and one without. But when you have par-tantra with erroneous imaginations, then you don't have non-discriminating wisdom. When you have par-tantra without imagination of substance, then that is the accomplished. And you never have par-tantra without one of those two. Is that right? Exactly, because look... See, this is my chalk. Here's... That first one was pari-kalpita.

[25:03]

This is pari-kalpita. The first piece of chalk. I know. Pari-kalpita. You don't have pari-kalpita by itself. There's no such thing as this by itself. Pari-kalpita is imagination of substance. Imagination of substance. It's not just imagination. Imagination is unicorn or Albert or weird state. Those are imaginations. Is that right? Chalk. See this? You see the chalk? That's an imagination. Pari-kalpita is not... And that's pari-tantra. You see this element out here. That's pari-tantra. At least, if you attribute substance to it, then it's pari-tantra with pari-kalpita.

[26:04]

So that's one situation. Very common. All right? This is ordinary situation of misery for human beings. All right? Now, if you take away... This is one situation. Situation number one. Okay? The other situation is pari-tantra by itself. That's the other situation. Those are the two situations. There's not a third. There's just what's happening, what has come to be, with or without imagination of substance. Those are the two situations for our life. When you have one, it's called deeply sunk in misery. When you have the other, it's called non-discriminating wisdom. Those are the two possibilities. Pari-tantra is there in both. In other words, things are dependently co-arising moment by moment, because that's a moment.

[27:05]

A moment is a dependently co-arisen something. But he says it's not identical to the dependent. It's not identical to the dependent. Right. It's not identical. How can you make that identical? Can you make this pari-tantra identical to something? This is fun. I think this is fun. Can you make this identical to something? Try. Go ahead. Make it identical to something. Can you? Anything. To itself. You can go to itself. Yes, right, of course. That's what it is. It is identical to itself. Anything else? But he says it's not. He says it's not. He didn't say it wasn't identical with itself. He said it wasn't identical with pari-nispana. Pari-nispana. The accomplished isn't identical to the other dependent.

[28:05]

Okay. All right. The accomplished. What is the accomplished? Where's the accomplished? Where is it? See it? You see it there? It's accomplished someplace else. The accomplished is not different from this, because this is the accomplished. This is the accomplished right here, because there's no pari-kalpita. So that's accomplished. But the accomplished isn't identical to that, because it has… Then it wouldn't have characteristics. Huh? So then it wouldn't have characteristics. No. If it was identical. No. It would be something other than this. That's what it would be. The accomplished does have characteristics, you could say, because accomplished is the paratantra, which has characteristics, without the attribution. This is so wonderful. Here it is. This is a dependently co-arisen something. Okay. Whatever. Breath, body, pain, another person, whatever. Something has happened. And when it happens without attribution of substance, it is the non-discriminating wisdom.

[29:11]

But non-discriminating wisdom isn't something here. Here's non-discriminating wisdom, which is identical to that. But it isn't separate, because that's the content of it. This is the content of it. This is inseparable from it. But it's not this thing, like I'm over here looking at it. It's not like that. It is just this. It is radiant dependent emptiness. That's what it is. So, but it's not, it's not different from it, because nothing, you can't, only thing you can make different from this is another paratantra. It's the only thing that can be different. Parikalpita can't be different from this either, because parikalpita has this for content, it's content too. Except parikalpita imagines that it is separate. But of course it's not. I think Robin actually was remixed, even though she missed her turn. I got this a week ago and now it's gone. That's the way it is. That's really the way it is. It's very elusive. Very elusive.

[30:12]

What did you say? On what, an example of a dependently co-arisen event without laying substance and then what that Well Albert just, Albert just tried it a little bit here. He, he, there was a dependently co-arisen concept in his mind that I was in a weird state. All right, that's something that dependently, it arose with him being in the room, with me coming into the room, with you know, Christina coming into the room, with this night before session, many things contributed to this concept he got called weird state. And I guess he came up several times for him or something. And at a certain point, I think I mean, wait a second.

[31:19]

Or am I getting ahead of myself by trying to get to that? No, no. So you want to know what uprightness looks like? Yeah. What would uprightness be in that situation? Uprightness is, you say, I am imagining that this person has a charge. And I don't move. And that's right. And then again, you might say, I imagine it again, that there's a charge, this person has a charge. Now, if you then start noticing a charge in yourself, then you say, oh, I know, I noticed it, I imagine a charge in myself now. Now, my imagination of my charge in myself is based on different type of experience though. I actually feel something in myself. And so, actually, I notice that I believe this. And I feel this energy change around that belief. Oh, now I notice that the energy change has gone away, that actually everything is calm.

[32:22]

And I notice I have just stopped believing in this. I just let go of this particular view. And the energy just went flat. Flat means not dead. It just means there's a huge ocean which is calm now instead of tumultuous poison land. And I say, oh, uprightness is the observation of what's going on. And then in the next moment, in the next moment, you can also be upright and notice that you've been hurt. And it isn't necessarily that you've been hurt by your outflows either. A bee might have bitten you or someone may have punched you. You can feel that. And in that case, it's not necessarily not upright to back away from that injury. Including psychological? Yes. You can be upright and back away. You can back away without leaning backwards. You can take a step without retreating. You can be present with each step forward and each step backward. Again, if you have no alternative, you only move forward.

[33:28]

Can I pursue it just a little? Sure. This is relevant. So the beast thing is a physical hurt. Yes. But it's hard to understand if I don't attribute, it seems as though if I didn't attribute substance to a psychological state that's coming at me from the other person, then I wouldn't experience it as a sting. That's where I'm at. That's what confuses me. If someone screams at you, your skin might contract. Your eardrum might experience pain. If they say something to you with a certain nuance in their voice, your heart might really ache.

[34:29]

This can happen without attributing any substance to the pain or to imagining what they were up to when they said that. You can feel pain without saying, for example, I think they said a mean thing and believe that what they said was mean. In what description? What do you mean by description? Describing the state to oneself, analyzing the state to oneself in a gross way is problematic. No. Describing the state is part of the paratantra. You're always describing states. That's part of what gives rise to a state. That's part of what makes the concept that you're aware of is saying, I feel pain, I feel pleasure, they're screaming at me, they're complimenting me. This is part of the paratantra. These are paratantra examples. But talking about what that might mean

[35:34]

to myself. No, no, no. Wait, wait. But as each thing happens to attribute substance to it and believe that this is real, that this is really what's going on, that they really are mean, that they really are cruel, that they really are kind, or that I really am neat, or I really am a jerk. Rather than, what is this? It's the attributing of substance which causes the outflows. Experience of pain is not necessarily an outflow, even though you should probably take care of yourself if you're in pain. You can experience pain in your knee, uncross your knee, or leave your knee crossed, make a good or bad decision about that pain without any outflow, without any influx, without any charge. If you have a pain in your knee and you attribute substance to it, then there will be outflow. If you deny it, that's also attributing substance to it. That's an outflow too. So descriptions are inevitable. They're constantly being co-produced.

[36:37]

You can't stop it. It's the life process. But at any point that you attribute self to it, which is the same as attributing self, substance is the same thing. Independent existence to an experience, like rather than a dependently co-arisen oppression of this person and the monster, then the outflows start happening. And when that happens, you know that you've just done it, that the paritantra has been infected by the parikalpita, that the dependently co-arisen reality, which is empty, has been overlaid with a belief in a substantial existence, independent existence. There will usually be a physical effect to that shortly after, which you may or may not notice. It's good if you can. And you can notice almost simultaneously with it. And that's good because you're getting closer to catching yourself in the act of erroneous

[37:40]

imagination. And again, if you catch yourself in the act of erroneous imagination, you're still in trouble, but you know you're a troubled person. You know that you're somewhat disqualified from sanity at that moment, on that case. Is there a hand? Did I see a hand? Yes? So it seems that what you're saying is that there only is paritantra. However, when we have parikalpita, that's paritantra too. I won't say that. I just say that the paritantra itself is the liberating principle. Paritantra by itself is liberation. But I don't deny that there is the imagination of what isn't. If I deny that, then I deny suffering. Because of emptiness, because of dependent co-arising, human beings can imagine what isn't

[38:47]

and suffer. I don't want to say that isn't the case. If I do, I think I'm getting nihilist. So I say there is a reality. It's a conventional reality, but there is a reality, a truth to the fact that people imagine stuff that isn't. So I want to affirm that conventional truth. Ultimately, there's just dependent co-arising, and that's liberation. Based on that, you can attain freedom. We have to first of all admit that there's something more than that, that we imagine substance and there's misery. So that's the relative truth upon which we can understand this ultimate truth. That's why I said to John too, work on the relative truth. The relative truth is you're walking around all the time attributing substance to stuff, you're having outflows left and right. That's the relative truth which you should study very carefully. If you study that, the ultimate truth will start teaching itself to you. But it won't expound itself to you, hopefully, until you've mastered that level. Because if you get the ultimate truth too early,

[39:52]

you can just overlook the fact that you're suffering, which is not good, if you are. And you are, I think, as far as I can tell. But again, I don't believe that. I just don't deny it either. I will continue to try to relate this teaching to your meditation practices a week. I think it's possible to do that. I really feel that these next karakas are very much to do with the Zen teaching of just sitting. So I hope that's possible.

[40:34]

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