So I want to talk about this psychological teaching of Mahayana Buddhism. This is as it's taught in the Lankavatara Sutra and in various other Yogacara texts, and also it's taught in here quite nicely in the Blue Cliff Record as an example of a Zen text where these Zen monks have a very nice understanding about this Yogacara psychology. So maybe it's good to start with the text here. This text has no pointer, it just starts right in.

[01:02]

A monk asked Jao Zhou, Does a newborn baby have the sixth consciousness? And Jao Zhou said, Like tossing a ball on swift-flowing water. Does a newborn baby have the sixth consciousness? And Jao Zhou said, It's like throwing a ball on swift-flowing water. And later a monk asked To Tzu, What is the meaning, what about this throwing a ball on swift-flowing water? To Tzu said, Moment after moment, non-stop flow. To Tzu is different from the To Tzu in our lineage. This To Tzu is a disciple of, what's his name, Sui Yun, and Sui Yun is a disciple of Dan Xia, and Dan Xia is a disciple of Shudo, Shudo Sekito Gisen. And To Tzu and Jao Zhou had quite a nice relationship actually.

[02:13]

So after Jao Zhou said that, people got around, and some people went over and asked To Tzu. So this case here is nice because you have two Zen teachers talking about this same issue, and then you see you have the straightforward Lankavatara teaching in this commentary, plus you can see some Zen people trying to talk about it in new imagery or new language, just according to their understanding. And the mix of the descriptions here is very nice. This is a very good case to study psychology, Mahayana or Zen understanding of Buddhist psychology. This case is very good. I think if we went through it slowly, it would take quite a bit of time.

[03:16]

But I would like to sort of go through it a little bit. But before doing that, I think I'd like to also give some real fundamental background stuff, and that is that one of the images that occurs quite a bit in the Lankavatara Sutra is the image of waves on the ocean. I think the image of waves and how waves function is really good teaching for us. Again, this is kind of psychological consideration because, at least for me it is, because I always had a little trouble in physics understanding that waves don't move horizontally, but actually waves move vertically.

[04:21]

You know, waves in water, but also like electromagnetic radiation doesn't move horizontally. Waves don't go like this. They go like this. But I always had trouble with that because, of course, it looks like they go. And if you stand on the beach, it looks like they're kind of rolling at you, right? But actually the waves aren't rolling towards you. Each wave is going up and down, up, [...] and the next wave, up, [...] up. And that's exactly the same as us. We don't actually go like this. We go up and down here, up and down here, up and down here. Do you understand? I mean, now I'm standing up here, and then I'm not standing up here anymore, and then I'm not standing up here, and I'm not standing up there anymore. Now I'm down there and up here, right? Do you understand?

[05:24]

That's like a wave, huh? We don't understand. Well, you know, if you have a surface of water like this, that's called death, right? There's nothing happening. There's nobody there, there's no waves. Now, if energy hits this, like if wind hits this, or if the moon's up here like this and very strong, this water is attracted by the moon, and the magnetic force between that body and this body, the energy of that magnetic force lifts this water up. This water goes up. Okay? It just goes up. It rises up, just like a person just stands up. But it doesn't stay there. The energy doesn't hold it up there.

[06:28]

It just can hold it for a while, and then it lets it go. And the energy moves. And then this goes down. But when the energy moves, then this goes up. So when this goes down and this goes up, it looks like this. And then the energy moves again, so then this goes down, and this goes up, and it goes like that. Excuse me, it goes like this. And then it goes like this. And it looks like this wave is going... But actually what's happening is this is going up and down, [...] This is going up, up and down. The way I understand it, why one person is going up and down when he moves from one place to another? He doesn't move from one place to another. That's the point. Exactly. How do you explain that? That is just an assumption from one side.

[07:29]

Right. Because I'm standing here now, okay? Now, the energy that makes me stand here can also produce movement, apparent movement. But what it does is the energy moves someplace else, like over to here. Energy is not there anymore, so that goes away. Why do you say this energy isn't you? Did I say that? Well, it moves, and you kind of said it moved, and you didn't. No, I inferred that. Well, it's the same with the wave. The energy is not the wave. The wave comes and goes, but the energy does not come and go. Energy is endless. Right. With the wave, we can see that it's just a force acting upon a certain sort of physical form. And it's the same with a human body. As a human, there is, at a certain point, a physical situation, which is you have these

[08:32]

bodies, these two bodies, right? And they come together, and they make an egg, and then a sperm, and then meat. That physical situation, when energy hits it of a certain type, it moves. It seems to move. It's activated. That's called birth. But it's just a physical situation. And then from then on, that energy keeps activating that situation. The situation keeps apparently moving, but actually it's going up and down, up and down, up and down. There's really no movement. But it looks like there's movement. Just like a wave. Don't you? When you look at a wave, don't you suddenly look like it's moving towards you? Well, the water comes in. It doesn't come in, no. But it's there, and it's, you know. It doesn't, really. That's the teaching. Okay. Yeah. Oh, I was just going to, I just thought of this example that, I don't know if it will help or make things worse, but it's like if you take a rope, or like a whip, and you go like this, and it looks like there's this like movement that goes like that, but the

[09:33]

rope is still there. But if, well, if it's like a whip, then you can take this energy that flows out there and like, hit something with it, or like, you know, most people that are really expert with full whips can do that. Jerome? The wave is like a series of vibrations. It's just like, really, like, the problem is the same. If you have a stream, if you decide to twang it like that, you see the stream going this way, but the stream is not moving. I know, but if you're standing there and there's no water, and then a wave comes in and sweeps yet to see, you know, water's coming in. When you talk about a wave, I don't see the analogy with a person, because when you talk about the wave, there's water here, and [...] you can talk about this water going up and down, and this water going up and down, so it looks like a wave, but you're one body. No, I'm not, but that's, you're talking about how, another way to look at it is, I'm talking about moment by moment, but it also applies to life after life. In other words, there's a life, you know, from a 70-year life. Persons seem to arise, and then they seem to go away, but they don't go away.

[10:34]

Just, they seem to, but then it comes up again. It goes up and down, endlessly, because the energy is never destroyed, you know. The energy of one life will never end, yes? So that's, you can say that each of those moments is death-like, death-like, death-like. That's right. So there's this momentary death-like, death-like, death-like, and there's also a, you know, 70-year, 80-year, whatever, death-like, death-like. Except that the space between the years is, between the life is not as long as the life, usually. Rosa? Well, I don't know if it matters, for the larger issue that you're talking about, but that energy is bringing water with it. The tide comes in, or goes out, and you end up with... No, it doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't? It doesn't. The water does not move horizontally. That's an illusion. Getting to where he's going. If there's a mark on the beach... Well, if you're talking about the water moving up on the beach, that's a different phenomenon. That's not a wave anymore. I guess that's a shorter phenomenon.

[11:37]

That's why it's a little difficult to understand, because in a wave, the water does not move. The molecules of water stay in one place, just going up and down. That's right. But when you move your... Also in a... But when you move your body, the molecules that make up your body go with you, with the energy. No, they don't. They do not. That's the part that's hard. They're located in a different place than they were to begin with. Those molecules... They're not the same. They're not the same molecules. Some of them are. None of them are. When you go from one side of the room to the other, none of them are the same. None of the molecules are the same. None. Is this physics or is this... No, it's physics. It's physics. It's physics. It's physics. Physics also says they're not the same molecules. With this, we're fooled by the waves too, aren't we? Well, not people who study that kind of thing. Not people who study it and then finally believe it. They aren't fooled.

[12:38]

But people are fooled by... Yeah, because it looks like that. It looks like this is a wave, and this wave moves over there. And it looks like that water is going over here. And now you look at a person and you think this water here, these molecules here are going over here. Different water. But it's different. That's the point. And also we think that this person dies. We think this person dies. And then what happens? Someone else is born. We think someone else is born? That's inconsistent, isn't it? But those are the two alternatives, and both of them are the cause of our suffering. Those two views. One view is that this person goes over here now. And this is the same person, basically, who just moved a little bit and brought a lot of this stuff with him. That's called eternalism. The other view is this person goes over here, and this person is annihilated, and now here's a new person.

[13:41]

And now this person is annihilated. That's another false view. Neither one are correct. It's not correct to say that I die, and now you don't see me anymore. And it's not correct to say I keep going on. And it's also not correct to say that this wave is moving like this, that this wave is now this wave, or that this wave is now this wave. That's not correct. And it's also not correct to say this wave disappears and is not there anymore. Those are two ways you can see it. And if you look at human beings, we use those two philosophies to apply to our lives. Namely, we say this is the same person walking around. This wave is moving, we think. And the other one we say is that we don't want to use that one anymore. We say, actually, this person is actually destroyed. It's gone now. That's the end of it. These are two extreme views. Neither one of which will lead us to freedom. But we alternate back and forth between those two according to what we learned in school.

[14:45]

Now, you might come up with that without any education, but I don't think so. Or a perception. What you're telling me about this is something I thought when I was a kid. I used to run up on the time machine. I was into science fiction and stuff. And I used to read, when I was 12 or 13, physics books. So it was kind of stupid, but I read them anyway. And then I thought of this idea that was really a wild idea. It's totally like this. When I used to think about it, it was like, if this is infinity, like you say, everything is totally infinite in space. And the Earth is an infinite space. We're an infinite space. It would mean any object you throw never moves. Like, you're just in your mind that it moves. If I throw this over here, in an actual way, it didn't really move. I just think that it moved. And I remember I used to think about it a lot. And then I'd go, hmm, this seems interesting. It's similar to that. It's like throwing a ball and it's sort of flying away. Helen, what do you say? That's what I said. I said what's different between you and them. What difference do you mean by going there?

[15:52]

Well, the difference is that this person is not walking over there. That's the difference. And yet I'm not saying that I'm destroyed, and now this is a totally new thing here. Things aren't completely destroyed. And things don't go on. Things are changing all the time, and yet not destroyed completely. And we have a lot of trouble grasping that with our being. We would prefer, intellectually, to come down one side or the other of that. If things are going to change, okay, well then, let's have them be destroyed then. Or if they're going to change, then let's have something that goes on. But if something goes on, and it doesn't get destroyed, then it's eternal.

[16:52]

So we actually want to have things be eternal, or we want them destroyed. These are the two things we would like. Because then we would be able to sort of, conceptually, with our little brain, understand reality. Wouldn't that be nice? Jerome? It's something like, are you the same person today as you were when you were a child? Yeah. It's like that. Is it the same body you have today as you did when you were a child? So I'm bringing this up because... What? Yeah. I think this is really a dumb question. Oh. Does it have anything to do with mountains walking? Does it? Yeah. If you want to understand about mountains walking, you should examine your own walking.

[17:54]

If you can understand your own walking, you'll be able to understand that mountains are walking. In other words, if you can understand that this is not this moving over to this, and this is the same this as it was there, if you can understand what walking means to you, you can see that those are walking in the same way. They're walking exactly the same principle. Those are going up and down too. Blah, blah, [...] blah. But we don't think they're moving horizontally. Right? We don't somehow think that way. Why don't we think that way? Because we didn't learn that in school. They didn't tell us that. What? What? Is it possible to understand intellectually? You said we want to come down on one side or the other, because that's what we can understand intellectually. You can understand intellectually, yes. It is possible to understand intellectually, but you cannot actually conceive of it. In other words, you can't get to it through an intellectual process,

[18:59]

but having gotten to it, you can... Yeah, you have to understand it with... Your intellectual processes can't be... You know, don't get banished from the... Intellectual processes are not exiled from liberation. They get to share in it too. But they can't encompass what's happening. They can't make up a little... kind of like a story about it that's going to work. But I mean... Because the mind, the conceptual mind, keeps trying to get it over to be eternal or annihilated. It wants those two versions. The actual reality, we can't figure out how to deal with it. So, yes? It seems to me that, taking the other side of both, it seems that both are there. It seems that through the changes of birth and death, there is some sort of continuity.

[20:00]

Yeah, that's what your thing was about. That's what I think, yeah. And I don't know whether that continuity... It's not identified with a particular personality or a particular shape, even. But there's a feeling of continuity. But the feeling of continuity is something that's also going up and down. The feeling of continuity is not continuous. Well, the feeling of continuity isn't continuous because I only realize it when I'm... You haven't held it as an object. You only realize it when you're realizing it. When you say, oh, there's a feeling of continuity. At that moment, then that's when you feel continuity. But that itself goes up and down. That itself is not continuous. That's just another idea that you have. Oh, continuity, or Barbara. Well, then it's inconceivable. Yeah, that's right. But it... a real continuity is inconceivable. Yeah. But the concept of continuity is conceivable.

[21:04]

And that is going up and down like everything else is. And you can also have a story about how that's going up and down and it looks like that's moving along too. This is the magic of our mind, right? That we can see waves moving along and see people moving along and see movies and tell stories and remember the beginning of the story even though the beginning was told several minutes ago. I can remember it. Well, we can't remember it. I mean, we say that we remember it. So the intellectual part, then, is not... I mean, you can't experience that through the intellectual except to describe it, and that's just going up and down. What again? We were talking about how does the intellectual aspect enter into it because the intellectual aspect is part of the chain going up and down.

[22:08]

Actually, I'd like to discriminate between intellectual and conceptual. Intellectual is not the same. I would like to say intellectual is... I would like to have intellectual be discriminating between things and conceptual be like putting things in categories. Conceptual is like things are destroyed, got them out on that side, or they're eternal, or they're neither, and neither is not very useful, but that's reality. And intellectual is to discriminate between those two. It's a discrimination between eternalism and annihilationism. And to say it again, intellectual... That's for convention. Let's say that intellectual is... Let's have that be the discriminating faculty. Okay. Okay? That can discriminate between, for example, taking the view that this person is destroyed now

[23:13]

and now over here you have a new person and that the previous person was destroyed. Well, it wasn't really destroyed because what enlivened that person has something to do with what enlivens this person. The fact that that person lived there is now carried forth into this new person, just like past lives are now carried forward and past karma is now carried forward. I see. Okay? I see, yeah. What about the conceptual? Conceptual would be to take a position like, well, it's the same person, or it's completely not the same person, and now the previous person was destroyed, and there's no connection. That would be one conceptual position, and that's called annihilationism. Or, yeah, and the other one is called eternalism, meaning the same person's walking around. It's the same person moving from here to here. Now this, I'm saying this because this is related to this ball

[24:14]

and it's the flowing water, you know, and these consciousnesses. But there's no end to our karma. It's beginningless and endless. All the energy that has ever been alive in one life never will stop. There's such things as, like with waves, there's the end of the beach, I mean, there's the end of the water where it hits the beach, but that's a whole new thing called water hitting beaches. It's a different kind of thing you've got to get into there. And there's also friction, like if you put boats out in the water, which will also make things more complicated, and then you'll have, then that energy will be, you know, absorbed and related to the friction. The boat will pick up some of it and so on and so forth. And also with lives, after we die, sort of in our usual sense, the various effects of our life have all kinds of interesting innuendos with other kind of forces and create various kinds of macrame of physical and psychic energy.

[25:15]

So it's complex, but none of the energy is ever lost. And it doesn't take all of the energy, it doesn't take all of the effects of our 70 or 80 years of life to activate a new life. It just takes a certain kind of focal condensation at a certain point to activate it. Because that's just one effect in your life. That's just one of the effects, right. One of the effects of your life is to produce a new life in terms of a new individual. Another effect of your life is, for example, that while you're still living, you produce maybe the physical basis for other beings for the lives of other beings to activate new lives, namely your children or whatever. Another effect is that you teach Dharma or something, or you build buildings or drive trucks and produce pollution in the air or something. These are many of the effects of your life. And then after you die, these effects keep going on. One of the effects is that you produce one more life. I didn't know that.

[26:17]

How do I know that? I don't know that. Why do you say that? I think it's the best story around. And if anybody has a better one, please tell it. I've noticed also in my studies that all over the world they tell the same story basically. All the different peoples have come up with the same story. So I kind of like telling old stories and I think this one's a really good one. It is a story about how illusion functions. It's not a... It's the Dharma of illusion. Just like the story about waves is the Dharma about how waves function and how they look and also recognizing how they look like they function. Yeah. So how do we define that thing that keeps going on and has effects? We call it Karma? In Yogachara Buddhism it's called consciousness. In the Mahayana Abhidharma,

[27:23]

the Mahayana psychological teaching is called consciousness. But it's not consciousness. I'll explain that in a minute. In the Abhidharmakosha, in the earlier Theravada Abhidharma, it's called Karma. The definition of Karma is what? Action. Action. Well, that's not the definition, that's the translation of it. Karma means action. The definition of Karma is cetanā. Volition or... The definition of Karma is the confirmation of consciousness in a moment. That's the definition of Karma. That says that Karma is that looks... Karma is this. You say confirmation. Confirmation. Confirmation. The lay of the land of a moment of consciousness is the definition of Karma.

[28:25]

The definition of activity in this world, which is the basis of the entire world, is based on activity or Karma. Karma is what makes this whole thing appear. The definition of it is the apparent confirmation of a moment of consciousness. This isn't a confirmation. Here, here's another one. But it includes the future. I mean, there's a... It includes the future, definitely. See that? Guess what you think is going to happen next. You think this wave is going to go over here and turn into this and then turn into that. See, that's what this means. This confirmation makes us think that this is going to happen. Why? Because that's the way it looks. It looks like it's going to go down. Because it looks like it just came up. So, in every given moment of consciousness there is a pattern which either looks like it's moving someplace

[29:27]

or it looks like you can't tell if it's going to move someplace. For example, right here, if you zero down and take this picture right here, when it's right there, you would say, hey, I'm not sure where it's going. But if you take a picture right here, you'd say, I think it's going to go down like that and move over this way. That's karma. Karma is the illusion of movement in a moment. Actually, in the present, there is no motion. Yeah? I was just going to say, how is this connected with time? Because the motion... In the present, there is no time. So, the motion depends on some concept of duration. Yeah, motion depends on the idea of time. So, what does that idea come from? How does that... Well, that's... Ideas are part of karma. So, karma is... I don't know which snapshot you want to take,

[30:27]

but take a big one. In this picture here, okay, is one of the things that's in the picture. In every moment of consciousness, every moment of consciousness has an idea in it. A concept. A notion. Okay? That notion could be that this is going that-a-way. Therefore, you've got time. Therefore, with concepts, you can have time. In the present, you can have time. Actually, in the present, there's no time. And no movement. But there can be an idea of movement. There can be an idea or a concept of movement. With that little pal, we have the ability to create the illusion of motion, of movement, of future, of past. Because once you've got this, you can have that. And this. Of course, you don't really have it. You just know that it could be there because you can have a concept which can say,

[31:28]

Well, since I've got this, I could have had that. Which is right. I mean, that's a perfectly good concept. But it's just a concept. It's not actually something that's happening. And it's down here, too. You can dream of that. So, in the present, there is- It's static, but it's dynamic. It's static, but it's dynamic. It's dynamic because, in the present, you can dream of past and future through concepts. In every moment, you have a concept which you can use, if you wish, to specify time. Not every moment do we spend- do we use up our concept money on time. Not every moment do we use it for that purpose. Often, we use the concept for color. For judgments. But there's so many, many, many, many moments. The way we're- This picture of our life is that these moments are changing so rapidly that in one second, we have lots of moments which we are willing to dedicate

[32:29]

to establish what time it is. And we have still- And we have plenty left over to establish that there's a past. Which I mean, still to make sure. Yes, there is a past. Don't worry. And also, we have plenty of time- plenty of moments to dedicate to- Yes, there is a future. And then we have plenty of moments to dedicate to figure out how the past and future- what kind of confirmation that makes. All this is done in- All these conclusions and calculations occur in motionlessness. Yes. Yes. Does this begin to explain- And again, remember, this is throwing a ball on fast-moving water. Okay? Yes? Does this begin to explain what you meant by we pretend that we remember the beginning of the story? Right. But it seems a little different because it's just a data. A story. How come- Are we recreating this idea of the story? If so, how come it's got specific parts? Yes, definitely, we are recreating

[33:29]

the specificity of the story. And how come it has parts? Right. You're essentially saying that memory is actual. Memory is actual, but what memory is is not memory of something in other times and places. It's memory. Memory is to say that that happened. For example, our memory of yesterday is not memory yesterday. Our memory of yesterday is what we say happened yesterday. That's not what happened yesterday. And our history of the universe, or of our people, or of our life, is not what actually happened, but it's what we say happened. Right. Okay. But the memory, the actual part of it is that we recreate the same storyline. We say we do that. But we don't. we have some of the same characters. Pardon? We have the same characters. We say we do that. That's another story. What do you mean by memory is actual?

[34:29]

I mean, what memory actually is is that we say that such and such happened. That's what memory is. But that's not to say that memory remembers something that did happen. Okay, then why is John or Peter a consistent character in the story of what happened yesterday? Because we say so. But why John? Why not Sam? It can be Sam if we want us to change our history. Human beings, the human mind and the mind of the human beings can do whatever it wants. You can change a name from Sam to Peter to Sam to Peter. People do that all the time. We don't. Unless they don't want to. If they don't want to, then they don't do it. Then they say, no, it's the same name. John, John, John, John. In other words, they say the John I said today is the same John I said yesterday. They say so. Unless somebody comes and says, no, it isn't. And they have an argument and one is more clever than the other and the other one gives up. I don't understand

[35:31]

how we can find our way home if we don't have something else going on. I don't understand how we can find our way home if we don't have the same signals as it were. How we can find our way home? Because we say we get home. That's how we get home. If we don't say we get home, then we don't believe we're home. Some people say, I'm not home. Odessia says, I'm not home. This is not my home. And she says, oh, yes, it is. I just sort of, you know, made it sort of hazy for you for a little while. I just sort of covered it up for you. So I don't believe you're Athena either. But he all the time is actually jiving her too. And she says, I'm not going to fall for your thing either. He tries to get the goddess to switch over to his side and say it isn't Ithaca. But when he realizes when he realizes he's home is when he decides he's home. Lee? Hi. In order to have movement,

[36:31]

you have to have things which move. And I think that things abide. And that's a problem. And a time is things which exist over a period of time past present and future. You have to have a thing which abides past present and future. And we like that because we want to hold on to something and continue to exist. That's sort of rooted in suffering. So movement is rooted in suffering. And it's associated with abiding. So is suffering do you think do we suffer because we're afraid to die each moment? Yeah, we want to maybe not the idea that we are going to die. I think as animals it's very functional. When a hawk sees a pigeon it computes and comes in on it that thing's moving and wants to eat it. So it's functional too. It has to do. If you want to play the game with other living creatures

[37:32]

you've got to play this game. You've got to play delusion. If you want to be in the practice community you've got to be delusional. Some people don't want to be in the practice community because they don't think they're deluded enough. It seems undeniably to function. Pardon? It seems undeniably to function. It seems undeniably to function. Oh, it seems, yeah. It seems to the hawk that the pigeon is capable of being overpowered and is edible and is going to be at a certain point at a certain time in the future. And that works. So the question is how can we play this game and remember that it's a game? How can you play your part

[38:33]

without falling for it? How can you be a hawk without falling for being a hawk? How can you be a person without falling for being a person? So that you can also be a hawk. You know? That's the key. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is just more the same. Yeah, well, that's fine. And actually, this wasn't what I was going to say, but... It's your memory. You can say it's not what you're going to say. Well, I forget actually the sequence. Anyway. See who's in charge? She can say she remembered or not. Well, anyway, so we play so we do this function so that you can look at each other back here in this volume. Right. At the same time what we're doing here in this class, etc. is

[39:33]

with an idea about image record. So what you're teaching at this point is to remember stillness. Right? To remember stillness or to figure out what is stillness in the midst of all this movement. You know? Like throwing a ball in fast-flowing water. We choose to come into this world to play the game with other living beings. And if we're Bodhisattvas we come in to keep awakening through all this stuff. So we have to learn. Being honest is actually a full-time job. I mean, that's about all we can do is be honest about what we're doing what we're up to how we're functioning. And I think if we're honest we also get ourselves in situations which are going to keep uprooting our preconceptions and our lazinesses. I think honesty will naturally lead us into classes like this where we'll discuss things like this or something like this.

[40:34]

Or we'll be in an acting class where people will push our button and question us and ask us whether we know what movement and stillness are. Are we talking about dependent origination? Yeah. Yeah, we are. But I kind of I kind of feel like dependent origination is kind of like changing the topic. Dependent origination is not a psychological you can use psychological this psychological discussion points to dependent origination but if we start talking about dependent origination we're going to jump out of psychology all of a sudden unless in other words I like to talk about dependent origination in this context. But these ideas of duration and your body moving seemingly moving from one place to another or the actual seeming... How that happens how we create that illusion is dependent co-production. But rather than

[41:37]

talk about that philosophical term and get over into a more philosophical discussion I just like to say yes it is we are talking about it but not get into it. That's good. Because you you know yes. I still have a not quite sure like how we avoid having a like to say energy moves on or pattern moves on or the karma moves on how that is not something substantial actually moving on. Something seems to I don't I can't quite define how this is not something substantial moving on. This is why it's it should be slippery because actually nobody knows what energy is actually. All you can do

[42:38]

with energy is measure it and the way you measure it is by waves going up and down. But you see that also shows that energy is not although although it seems to be it is what seems to be moving if anything is moving that's moving but it's not constant because you can't you don't know what it is and all you can do is measure it in terms of what effects it has. The same with karma we don't know what it is and it's constantly changing. But see constantly changing does not mean of course it doesn't mean well I shouldn't say of course it doesn't mean some people think yes there's constant change but something's continuous. The other one is yes there's constant change and there's nothing continuous. Something's continuous is not right and nothing continuous is not right. Constant change is the teaching which seems to be emphasized as that's what's really helpful if you understand

[43:38]

what change is and keep avoiding that change means yes there's change but something else goes on or yes there's change and that means that nothing goes on. Again we want to get to those two things yes there's change but something's going on. So karma is beginningless and endless and yet it isn't eternal. Was each moment conditioned by the previous moment? Yes. So that's the fact I mean that's that's why you were why you think you remember because each moment is conditioned by the previous moment so there's a residue. In both directions too. The past is conditioned by the present. So there's a residue because you say there's a residue. Yeah. Well because it is conditioned. And also because it's conditioned. And also because it's conditioned is exactly why I'm free in the present too. If I wasn't conditioned if the present wasn't conditioned by the past in other words if in the present I didn't condition my present by the past then my present

[44:39]

wouldn't be so conditioned and if it wasn't totally conditioned then I wouldn't be free because if it wasn't conditioned then it would have some reality by itself and if it had reality by itself well I'd have to be stuck with it and that would be it reality. It's conditioned but it's different. It's conditioned but it's different. Yes. What? How is the past conditioned by the present? How is it? Because me over here in the present and you over there in the present we are totally in charge of the past. And also we are totally conditioned by the past. It's in both directions. We are in charge of the past. We are in charge of the past. Nobody else has anything to say about the past but us here right here in the present. We the living are the bosses of the past. We are the bosses of history. That's right. We can say what it is. We, us livings. But we're conditioned by the past. And we are totally

[45:40]

conditioned by the past. So we're not totally free of it. No. Because we're conditioned by it we're free of it. Because we are totally determined by it we are free of it. It's both ways. And the past is free of us. Is consciousness the same thing as energy? Or is that just a metaphor? Consciousness is in this case there's two kinds of consciousness. One kind of consciousness is what the Yogacara people or the mind only people call that which is that which is sort of conveyed. It's not the consciousness of the consciousness in the present. That's why when they say you know if you hear stories about we're alive and then we die and there's this thing called this bardo you heard about bardo the book of the dead bardo is the way the Tibetans say antara bhava bhava means being

[46:41]

and antara means intermediate. So in Abhidharmakosha they teach that there's six kinds of being. There's birth being or consciousness. There's birth consciousness the moment of conception. This is a this is this threshold thing right? There's seven there's six types of thresholds. There's the threshold where this where you don't have like a living being but you have just somehow the effects of life interacting with a fertilized egg. At that moment you have what's called birth consciousness. This is what's called knowingly and willingly this is the bodhisattvas knowing and willing taking birth in the world. Okay. That's what's called birth consciousness. It's defiled. Then you have after that you have a living being and there's a little zygote there and it's got consciousness just regular old human consciousness however it doesn't have eyes and stuff yet so they say here a newborn babe

[47:42]

okay that's the newborn babe the zygote the fertilized egg at conception has the sixth consciousness but of course they they aren't so like saying well you know this is a nice day or you know god mom turn that record off or whatever. They're not doing that. That makes sense right? We don't expect zygotes to do that do we? And even when babies come out of the womb usually they aren't doing that for quite a while. They're just sort of like wow wow wow so they're very nice that way they're not [...] into good and bad even after they get out into the air atmosphere but they have the sixth consciousness right? okay so that's so we most people most of their lives here have this kind of consciousness I mean have this this kind of consciousness which is called ordinary waking consciousness and they also have what's called sleep consciousness there's three

[48:42]

and then they also have what's called samadhi consciousness in between each one of these consciousness there's a threshold so for example during sesshin you get into samadhi consciousness and at the end of sesshin there's a threshold there a little door and you jump out of sesshin and it's called ordinary consciousness and you go yuck and then and then it's time to start getting into a sesshin and you kind of sleep consciousness sleep consciousness first there and then time to sesshin but you're still in ordinary consciousness and you jump over another threshold into another ordinary consciousness called yuck sesshin but then somehow you slip into sesshin consciousness somewhere there in the sesshin and there you are but you don't necessarily know it until you come out of it and then you jump over the threshold again back into ordinary consciousness and you say yuck in between the sesshin and the ordinary consciousness is intermediate consciousness and in between the

[49:44]

the the sesshin and the ordinary consciousness is intermediate consciousness and in between the ordinary life consciousness and death consciousness which is another consciousness is another intermediate is intermediate one of the six? yeah intermediate so there's life there's birth consciousness the special consciousness which you do once a birth once a once a body then there's and then there's and then there's ordinary waking consciousness sleep consciousness Samadhi Consciousness, Death Consciousness, and Intermediate Consciousness. But there's another consciousness. Oh! I'm sorry. These are six types, which are different from the eight consciousnesses. Yes? It just seems that there's another consciousness that either includes that, or... Includes all those, you mean? Yeah, or it somehow is related, and that's what I'm... because I sort of have a sense of continuity about it. And regardless of whether or not, in verbalizing it, or feeling it from moment to moment, that's the up and down, but there's a...

[50:48]

I don't know, maybe it's just a fate of something, that there's another consciousness that includes that all, that includes the memory of the past, present, and future, and... It makes no sense. But it just feels that way. Right. Well, then we have... Now we have a teaching of the eight consciousnesses, right? Yes. Which is the Yogacara thing. Which is the six? Who gets that one? The six is both the Yogacara, both the Abhidharma and Theravada, both the early Buddhists, that in Abhidharma Kosha, the early Buddhist psychological teaching, there are these six types of consciousness, right? Also in the Yogacara, there are these six types of consciousness. But these six types of consciousness, let me say... Let's put them... Like you have these eight kinds of consciousness, right? And in a given moment, you could have several of these eight happening, and they would be under the heading of one of the six. So like the one of the six, that's like a basic state of mind.

[51:49]

Right. They're like the basic... The eight consciousnesses are like the machinery of every moment. They're evolving constantly. You'll see in a minute. But in these six, there are eight consciousnesses. These six are like... These six have to do with this illusion of forward movement. But the eight are happening in the moment. Not all eight happen in the moment, but you'll see. So anyway, the eight are five sense consciousnesses, named after the organ. We name them after the organ because the organ is called the sovereign. The organ is the boss. So you have eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, body consciousness, and mind consciousness, which is discriminating consciousness. Whenever you have one of the six, one of the five sense consciousnesses, you also have mind consciousness. So in a moment of... In a moment of the experience of seeing a color, you would have eye consciousness, and you would have mind consciousness, which is called mano vijnana,

[52:50]

and you would have manas, which is... So you have these one through five, and in a given moment you would have, at most, one of these. And then you have the sixth consciousness, which is the discriminating consciousness. That's the question here, right? Does a baby have this sixth consciousness? And then you have what's called the seventh consciousness, which is called manas. And manas has the job of bifurcating our life, which is the same as saying bifurcating consciousness. It is a source of ego. It is a source of the practical and almost, like, indestructible ego. It never is destroyed. As long as we're alive, we have ego every moment. There's always this manas, and every moment we have this manas. And you have an eighth consciousness,

[53:52]

which is called alaya vijnana. And alaya vijnana is that great thing we use to every moment, if we wish, to create the history of the universe. Because we have the alaya consciousness, which we are constantly in touch with. Every moment we have it available to us has all the possible images of the cosmos in it. And every cotton-picking living creature has alaya vijnana. Worms have it. Worms have access to the entire field of images of the universe. So that's why you can dream up any story, and you can go for any story. No matter what story you hear, you can go for it. That anybody could ever think of, you can go for it, or you can also rebel against it. Because not only can you understand what they're talking about, but you have other stories available to you. So there's no, some stories being more accurate than others?

[54:58]

That's just totally an idea? I mean, it seems like you can have a story that works or doesn't work. So it's just more useful. You have a story that doesn't work? What's that like? Well, like, the stove's not hot, you know? That's a thing over here with a story attached to it, which says that one doesn't work. Yeah. That's it. That's the only difference. Right. You have sort of, what are they, non-functional stories, which you arrive at their non-functionality by a story which calculates that they're non-functional. That is not a good story. That story doesn't work. That story over here, this one is right. Okay, this is the story. That one's not. Stories work. If they don't work, they're not stories. The story's going on and on. Yes? I can see how mind consciousness, that's the second or the sixth, can exist simultaneously with any of the first five consciousnesses.

[55:58]

But it seems like Manas would just sort of alternate back and forth real quick. Alternate back and forth? Between the first one itself to keep that illusion that it actually doesn't exist. It can't exist simultaneously. And that's the one that says, I see you. I am seeing this. I hear this. Well, it's the one that says, this is consciousness here, this is consciousness, and that's the object. Manas is the thing that functions just to split, to make the mind as though it has a way to relate itself to its environment. Or it produces an object. Right, that produces an object. Simultaneously with the other two, or is it just like, it's just like, real quick, oh, that's... It's simultaneous. Simultaneous, yeah. There's no break in it. And this is what you call, this is the functional, practical ego. This Manas, at its root, when it first starts functioning, this is a practical ego.

[57:04]

This is the ego that we need in order to play with other living creatures. But it's a very thin and essential function. It's just that simple thing of splitting the consciousness so that consciousness can have objects and can revitalize. But we don't leave it that way. You see, we, for example, even a child, if you go to a child, even a little baby, even a zygote, and you go up to it and you turn sunlight on the mommy's tummy, the zygote will sort of go, you know, and if you turn the lights off and scream at the mommy, the zygote will go. And then the same thing happens with a little baby. If you turn the temperature of the room up a little bit, they turn red, and they're red. And if you turn the temperature down, they turn blue. I mean, they're very responsive to those little things. However, they don't say, oh, I don't like that when I get cold, and I like it when I get warm.

[58:06]

Or, this is too warm, or this is too cold. They just get warmer and colder. Just like sometimes if you say to me, oh, you're really, you're so kind and such a nice habit. And if you say, oh, you're a lousy habit. My body will keep reacting just like a baby. You know? That happens from the moment you're born until you die. Namely, you react differently to different stimulation. And is that number seven? No, which is that? That's six? That's seven. I'm sorry, I got confused there. No. That's just that it's different information. You react differently. And you need Manas in order to get information, because if you didn't have Manas, there would be no kind of like anything coming in. It would just be like, this would be happening, and so what? Nothing would be aware of it. It would just be... That's a lie of Vijnana, right? Lie of Vijnana's already got all the compliments in it, and all the insults.

[59:07]

What happens to Manas when there's no object of mine? Manas ain't there no more. Manas' function turned off then. So if there's no object of mine, there's no life. And there's no Manas. And there's no ego. But there was a fifth, or... Which ancestor was... Hopefully all of them. Constantine. Constantine. Had no object of mine. Right. So there was life. Having no object of mine means he understood his mind. Namely that those objects are not really objects. They're just a part of the mind which can receive the attention of another part of the mind. But he didn't see them as objects. He didn't see them as objects, right? So Manas wasn't active. Manas was not oppressing him. He understood the Dharma, and he wasn't being tricked anymore by his equipment. And when you're not tricked by your equipment, then you're at ease.

[60:09]

You're just functioning along like a kid. That's why it says, does a kid have this... See, Manas is always there, and his sixth consciousness is always there. He didn't say, yes, it does have a sixth consciousness. Because the monk already knew that a newborn baby, even a zygote, even a worm, has a sixth consciousness. So he's asking, you know, in a little... I have a sixth consciousness, you have a sixth consciousness, does a little baby have a sixth consciousness? Well, yes it does. Well, this is in a little baby's consciousness. Sixth consciousness is a little bit different, isn't it? Well, yes it is. But in a little baby's consciousness, it's like throwing a ball instead of flowing water. And the teaching in here is... This is a very important point. The teaching in here is, they say in the commentary, Zen adepts should have a consciousness like a newborn baby. Okay? Which is Manas is still functioning, because that has to happen there in order for life.

[61:14]

See, the ego is that which originally is the same as the insurer of the life of this creature. The ego is the guardian of life. Originally. That's practical, right? Because the ego is what is splitting... The Manas is what's splitting consciousness and therefore making possible awareness. And that's life. And the constant reiteration of that split is the essential activity for conscious existence. But that's all that we need. And that's all a baby has. Not only do they just split it flat out and nothing more than that, but even the discriminations they make around that are just momentary. Okay? That's very healthy. That's what they say here, we should get to be like. Now what I'm saying is, I'll say that right now before I forget,

[62:14]

that that is also a little bit, or a lot, dualistic. That we should be like a baby. But, they still say that. Now that's what we have to deal with. Is that some Zen teachers are saying, you should get to that kind of consciousness. And that's exactly the kind of consciousness that most attracted me to Zen. It's when I heard about Zen monks who had actually got to have that kind of consciousness, where their minds were just like a baby, namely they... It's hot. It's cold. But that's it. And then that's gone, you know. It moves along. Yeah? I'm sorry, I'm getting confused between the sixth and the seventh. I thought you described modesty as the bifurcating. That's the seventh. That's the seventh, right. And the sixth is the discriminator. That's the mind consciousness. It can discriminate among mind objects. How can it do that without the seventh? It can't do it without the seventh. The seventh is like an organ?

[63:17]

The seventh is possible. The seventh is the organ. The seventh is the mind organ. The seventh, actually, it gives a little twist for you. The Abhidharmakosha says, the Manas is the just, deceased, sense consciousness. Oh my God. That's a terrible slip, right. It is the just, deceased, sense consciousness. So sense consciousnesses occur and set the model for... Sense consciousnesses teach mind how to act as an organ for itself. According to the Abhidharmakosha. That's really neat. Yeah? Buddha Gosu said that the Manas cannot arise, cannot come from the forefront to the eye consciousness, or to one of the five consciousnesses. Right, that's what he said. Does that mean also that the first five consciousnesses are pure consciousnesses? No, because what you can have is, you have one of the sense consciousnesses, right? As soon as they cease, they set the example for Manas. So that is not simultaneous?

[64:17]

Well, just a second. Now this could be a mind consciousness. I mean, in other words, the object could be a mind object. The ceasing of the sense consciousness sets the model, shows the mind how it can split itself in two, because the mind has just now split itself in two with a physical object, okay? But if it's another sense consciousness that comes up, then you have that a sensory event has set the example for the Manas, and another sensory event occurs, but Manas is learned from the past sensory event. And now the next Manas learns from the previous sensory event, okay? So it's the same as you have in Dharma, right? I mean, it's different terms. Well, I don't want to see the difference. It seems like the same. They both say that Manas, that this mind organ, what it is, is that the mind organ is the just previously... In other words, the mind organ is the memory of how the physical organs work. It's a dream. When there's no physical existence around,

[65:23]

it's the dream that you can do that. And therefore, that dream is the mind's way of splitting itself in two when there's no external object. And Yogeshwara says, even in physical situations, that's what's happening. And the difference between what we call a physical sensation and what we call a mental sensation is that it's a different way of dreaming. So the Manas learns... The Manas is the... yeah, in that sense it learns how to do its job from the way the sense organ did its job. But the alaya doesn't learn. The alaya doesn't learn, no. But alaya evolves. The alaya is constantly perfumed by the current delusion that I've produced. So, you have the alaya. If we're going to have an experience, okay, we've got to reach into alaya for our ideas. So we reach into alaya, oh, now I have experience. Now that has an effect.

[66:24]

One of the effects that it has in Yogeshwara is that the effect of it is that that dreaming, which I needed to get a seed out of alaya to have this current experience, now the fact that I had that current experience based on this stuff I got out of alaya, I send a little effect back to alaya and alaya changes by the way I used what I got from alaya. And then the next moment, I pull something else out of alaya and make another experience and then the effects of that is that goes back into alaya. So alaya is evolving all the time. It seems like after you've had a certain amount of experiences that everything that you drew up out of it would be tainted by your previous experiences. But alaya is described as this consciousness that doesn't evolve and if it involves the whole cosmos, I mean, there's unlimited amount of experience there which you could draw from. Isn't there? Or do we always keep drawing? But alaya is said to be the only one that doesn't evolve, right? Well, it doesn't evolve like the other ones,

[67:26]

but alaya too changes because it gets perfumed by our life. I just have this image of this infinite thing, like space and us throwing all our ideas into it. Yeah, that's right. It's infinite and we're throwing our ideas into it. And it changes because it evolves in that sense. It doesn't evolve like the other ones. The other ones revolve, I should say. Not just evolve, but revolve. They just turn us around and around. Alaya is constant and yet it's changing. So alaya is kind of like what you're dreaming about. Is the process you just described what you're describing is by mind only? This is part of the story, the mind only story that you've just heard. Yeah. I don't want to say this is the whole mind only story, but this is an excerpt from the mind only, and this story. When you have the Buddha interfering with mana,

[68:27]

does manas stop then? Manas, mano vijñāna dhātu, and all the sense consciousnesses, they all disperse at death. Not just Buddha, of you and me too. When we die, we attain parinirvana too. You will all attain parinirvana. Okay. The difference would be what karmic impact this life we're leading now will have after our parinirvana. Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha did this special little trip. He did this special twist and turn at the end there that he didn't cause another birth. That was his job for this eon. And the Buddha, that's Buddhologically speaking, a little special trick that the Buddha of the eon does

[69:29]

is they don't get born again in that eon. There's no other Buddhas for that set. The next one is called Maitreya. However, he has many disciples who attain basically the same level as him. Huh? They chose to go ahead and create another life. Yeah, and they keep being reborn. Those are Bodhisattvas. But they actually attain the same level except that they're dived right back in again, knowingly and willingly, into the soup to carry on the Buddha's teaching. And that's part of the Buddha's teaching is that's the way Buddhas work. They come in, they give their teaching to their disciples and then they do this little trick at the end such that their karma doesn't produce another baby to go, Hi! But the Bodhisattvas who inherit the teaching, they go right to the top of the Buddha's teaching but then they dive back in again. And they do that for the eon until the world is destroyed and then another Buddha comes.

[70:31]

Yeah? So is the way of visionary, the piece of the machine that allows the non-randomness of the story? Because is that what allows the non-randomness? I suppose, yeah. It also allows the randomness. The randomness and non-randomness are both contained in the laya. The laya's got the whole... all the good stuff and all the bad stuff, all the organized stuff, all the disorganized, all the chaos, all the randomness that there is in the universe is in the laya. That's why we have at our disposal all we need to be great artists, great Buddhas, or super monsters. Yeah? Is anything random? Well, random, you know what random is? Do you know how they do that? They have a way, there's a way to generate random events. Tell me. Well, it's sort of, you know, mathematically. And even if you can't talk about mathematically, the description of how you create random things is not random, right?

[71:37]

But you and I, when we sit zazen, can dip into a laya, into the random part of a laya, and come up with stuff. That's called being creative. To raid, as Gregory Bateson said, to raid the random. Reach down there into the laya. How about that? Look, they didn't do that. Never saw that before, did you? If you don't raid the random, then it's not creative. But we can do that. And children do it all the time, right? And we sort of tell them to stop that. You know, that's not the right word. Like, you know, Simone came over and drew me some pictures, you know, and she's just raiding the random. Somehow, you may not want to get into it, but I would be interested to hear at some point what Buddha likes to say to abortion. Like, the birth consciousness and all that.

[72:39]

What they have to say about it. You may not want to get into it now. Yeah, it's too interesting. I would destroy this class. Okay, so, I want to say a little bit more about manas. Namely, manas splits. And to live means that manas is there. You have to have that. Otherwise, consciousness just goes blank. It's like the eye, you know. If the eye stops moving, you can't see anything. The eye is constantly moving in three different ways. Constantly. Even when you close your eyes, it can keep moving at least two ways constantly. It's always moving because when light comes into the eye, as soon as it hits the retina, it activates the retina, if it's of sufficient strength. And then, if it shines in that same spot again, the retina will not go off again. It just stays off until you release the light off of it. Therefore, you have to move the light to another area of the retina, and let that impulse go. And another one will not go from that same spot until you give it some break. Because it can't recuperate its chemical power

[73:43]

to convey messages. You keep the light on it. You have to move it to another one. And that one can shoot off. So, for that reason, the eye keeps moving constantly. And shooting, therefore, the light keeps hitting different parts of the retina. Almost never hits the same place successively, you know, in the same moment. The same is true of consciousness. If it's not hitting a different spot, it goes flat. Nothing will happen. So, moment after moment, you have to make that split. Otherwise, you have what's called a non-experience, which is not very important to us. So, there may be huge non-experience patches in the middle of our life, which I don't know anything about. And they don't cause any trouble. Unless you're driving a car. But that doesn't even cause a problem either, because the car is not happening then either. So, that's not a problem for our life, somehow. But for the part where we are alive,

[74:44]

Manas is functioning. And its basic function is very practical. In other words, it makes possible the Bodhisattva's existence in life. It is also basic. It is a delusion. Because it's splitting consciousness and making possible the illusion that the field or the object is separate from the subject. Basic delusion. So, the baby has the seventh consciousness? Baby has seventh consciousness and baby has sixth consciousness. He says, does the baby have sixth consciousness? Jaya does not say yes. He tells what it's like for the baby's sixth consciousness. He has the baby's sixth consciousness. And he said, it's like throwing a ball on swift flowing water. He just says how it is. Rather than telling you, yes, it does, he tells you what a baby would do. What if you said, go out and ask a baby, does the baby have sixth consciousness? What does it do? It goes, fart. Fart. Anyway, it keeps being a ball on swift flowing water. That's what it is.

[75:46]

Now, the point I'm trying to get to, I keep slipping away from, is that this Manas, the seventh consciousness, is the practical ego. But, as a baby, or whatever age we are, mommy goes, and mommy goes, and because of mommy going, goo goo goo, we go, and because she goes, we go, and there's a negative and positive feeling which arises in association with that stimulation. We are aware of the stimulation because we have ego. In other words, because we can be aware of the stimulation, as an object, we can have a feeling about that object. And we have a negative feeling about those, and we have a positive feeling about those, which is fine. But, after we have a lot of negative experiences and a lot of positive experiences, we start to build up a little bit of extra stuff. And we start to not only react to that, but we, because our present ones are conditioned by past ones,

[76:48]

we start to actually build up a little sort of extra flesh, or flabbiness, around that basic practical ego. Why is that? Hm? Why? Well, it's by the karma of going through that experience over and over, and also by noticing that people are telling us that you can do something about these kinds of experiences. For example, if you do this, you get more of that. And if you do that, you get more of this. People tell us that. And as we learn language, we learn, Oh, you mean if I do that, I'll get more happiness? We say, Yes. You know? I'll give you more of that positive reinforcement. As a matter of fact, I'll even give you food so you'll be able to continue to live if you'll sort of cater to my needs. This is your mommy or daddy talking to you. They're the main ones, right? They're the ones who you sort of, you notice somewhere along the line that the maintenance of the body depends on something that they give you. You start to notice that. Which is also fine. But then they start making deals with you. And telling you

[77:50]

that they'll definitely keep this up if you also do what they want. So then you start saying, Well, okay. Puffing up around the ego and developing all kinds of heavy-duty habits. So then this nice little practical ego starts getting fatter and fatter. It gets so fat after a while that you kind of even get names for it. Like you say, mine and me. Stuff like that. You put me and mine plus your regular name and serial number and driver's license and everything starts getting squished around this basic little necessary thing. And it's a good place to store everything because that will always be there. And all this stuff is basically dedicated to keeping the life going. But all this extra puff is not necessary. Actually, you will never die as long as Manas is still there, you will always be alive. But the experiences you're having

[78:50]

may or may not be what you would like, especially after you hear that it's possible, if you hear this story, that it's possible to alter the kind of experiences you have by behaving certain ways. That is not true. I mean, it's true that if you alter them, but it's not true that you can control more of these nice ones than these other ones. As a matter of fact, it actually makes things so that even when you have positive experiences, you feel lousy because you got all this puff around the outside. So actually, it's the cause of our misery. It's this inflamed thing. And the more inflamed it gets, the more difficult it is for us to say, well, it's just an idea, or just a basic function of consciousness, and all I have to do is just keep objects going and I'll stay alive. And so we keep carrying this heavier and heavier thing until finally it gets so heavy that somebody tells us, well, that's really the problem. And we say, oh, maybe so. Maybe so. Or we hear a story about somebody who gets insulted and says, maybe so, and gets complimented and says, maybe so. And we say, now that could be needed. Who is that guy? Oh, he's a Zen monk. Well, gee, that's interesting. How did he get to be that way?

[79:52]

Well, I don't know. I guess he just sort of sat a lot. What does that mean? And you get into it, right? But what I want to point out is that we have another teaching here. Besides the one of you should be like Hakuin, and when they insult you, you just say, is that so? And when they compliment you, you say, is that so? In other words, there's a teaching, you should develop this kind of consciousness, which I'm not arguing with. I'd like to go into it in more detail. Is that ball in fast water? Huh? That kind of consciousness? You should develop ball in fast water. And is that, in the Hakuin, that story, is that ball in fast water? Would you say? Is that an example? Yeah, ball in fast water is like a baby that doesn't, that doesn't say, oh, this is good or this is bad. It doesn't mean that the baby doesn't get, when you insult it, or when you compliment it, they do. They react just like a healthy animal would. You know? Or if somebody slaps it and it hurts, it's quite normal,

[80:53]

healthy, living creature. They don't think they're not supposed to do that or anything like that, they just react. They don't keep it. Huh? They don't keep it. They don't keep it. It's just a ball in fast flowing water, moment after moment, flowing. Is that also like the story that felt in the book, the man who used to take his wife for a room or whatever? For a hat. The second story you mean? About that guy you couldn't remember? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's what he was like. Except that, except that he had defects so that he, he couldn't function with the rest of us. So what we want to do is be able to play the game with the other living beings and not be caught by it. He couldn't play the game. That's why I say he didn't seem to function all the way. But he attained what would be nice for us to attain. But I want to also point out that we have another teaching which is very strong and very dear which is, I haven't even yet practiced the Four Noble Truths. This practice is quite a bit more subtle

[81:54]

than that. Okay? Four Noble Truths is some of the practice which you might get into and would lead you up to what I'm talking about here. This is a rather subtle practice which these people, these yogis, these adepts, Zhao Zhou and his friends here have attained. You can tell by what they say. Very nice things that they say here which are coming from their experience and you can tell I think it's coming from their experience because, you know, nobody told them to say this stuff. Nobody said this before them. They just thought of this stuff. You can tell by their words where they're coming from. They're coming from this consciousness. They have this sixth consciousness. We all have this sixth consciousness but they have a baby's sixth consciousness. Namely, they have these experiences and make the discriminations but that's it. We all do that. Babies don't try to get away from it. We shouldn't try to get away from it. They don't try to get away from it but babies and these adepts just throw the ball in the water. So, they see monisterness as the same kind of illusion as the movement of the waves.

[82:54]

Monisterness is like that too. That's the way they discriminate. Namely, they just do it and let it go. That's what a baby does too. And when you can do that, guess what happens to monisterness? What happens to monisterness then? It loses its flab. It loses its flab. It goes in a... It gets... It's just a device. It gets trimmed down more and more because you realize that you're... You know, you don't stop long enough to get into the habit of thinking you need anything to keep living. You know you can just experience this and go on to the next one and you know your memories are just like that too and you can have memories of continuity too and just let go of them. You know, if you need them they'll come back. If you need a story of continuous... something continuous you'll get it again. You don't have to sort of say, okay, I've got to bring it along with me and my... You don't have to bring anything along actually. Things are flowing

[83:57]

very fast and the ball is the ball. And if you feel more like that you also will be able to let your monist... Your monist is going to function anyway, but you'll let this extra accretions around this practical ego, you'll let them drop away. So this kind of exercise or attaining this monist, this type of discriminating consciousness is a therapy for our ego to trim it down to realize what it is to see what part of it is necessary and what part isn't. But, in the background of this practice is Buddha. And Buddha is... hasn't even started to practice the Four Noble Truths yet because Buddha doesn't need to practice the Four Noble Truths, but Buddha is willing to give the Four Noble Truths. When Buddha gave... just before Buddha gave the Four Noble Truths he never heard of them. He wasn't practicing the Four Noble Truths before people asked him about them. He just sort of tried to figure out well, what can I say to him? So he reached down into the Laya Vijnana and got... reached into the random area and came up with this cute little thing. There's suffering, it has a cause,

[84:58]

and there's an end to it, and there's a way to do it, there's a way to end it, to experience the end of it.

[85:06]

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