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Zen's Big Mind Awakenings

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This talk delves into the concept of "big minds" in Zen Buddhism, exploring the difference between innate and generated states of mind. The discussion emphasizes the limitations of Western culture's reliance on externalized memory and phonetic alphabets in conveying Buddhist ideas, which are often rooted in experiential, non-verbal understanding. The speaker also touches on the nature of enlightenment, highlighting the difference between partial and full enlightenment and the importance of experiential practice to understand the multifaceted nature of the mind.

  • Lin-Chi (Rinzai Zen): Frequently referenced in discussions on sudden enlightenment and the practice of Zen.
  • Early Indian Yogic Philosophers: Their views on non-dreaming deep sleep as a state of profound integration and bliss are mentioned to emphasize traditional contemplative practices.
  • Mahayana Buddhism's Trikaya Doctrine: Discussed in terms of the Sambhogakaya (bliss body), Dharmakaya, and Nirmanakaya, highlighting efforts in Mahayana Buddhism to frame Buddhahood as more accessible.
  • Dogen: Cited for the view that initial enlightenment is the foundation for all subsequent experiences and realizations in practice.
  • Ezra Pound and Picasso: Used as examples to illustrate how artists reflect and return to their enlightenment experiences, indicating that such insights transcend religious or philosophical boundaries.
  • Pratyekabuddha, Tathagata Zen, and Ancestor Zen: These are outlined to differentiate methods and pathways to enlightenment within Buddhist traditions.
  • Systems Theory (Bateson and Maturana): The speaker parallels their discussion of self-organization and homeostatic systems to explain aspects of mental states in Zen practice.

AI Suggested Title: Zen's Big Mind Awakenings

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Our topic has become big minds. Now, unless you're practicing, there's not much point talking about this. It would be like trying to explain to someone who doesn't ever use a computer. What's RAM and scrolling and ROM and so forth. It wouldn't make sense to people. And also, Even in practice it doesn't necessarily make sense unless you have to teach or develop ways of teaching practice.

[01:05]

And I also want to speak about this in a way that possibly is useful to you as a psychotherapist. And I don't want to burden you with the idea that you have to practice meditation in order to benefit from this teaching we call Buddhism. But I think it is the case if you want to explore these minds that are other than thought.

[02:30]

You need to, probably need to practice sasen. Now, I'm not going to speak about the... the... various experiences in the purest sense of big minds and related phenomena, energetic phenomena and so forth. There's no reason. That only should be known and worked on through experience itself. So I'm mainly speaking about the... I will try to speak about the conception of big minds.

[03:37]

And... to the extent that they are a potential of our experience, and a potential vehicle for our experience. There's a language There's a language of, again, simply big minds. And there's lots of names for big minds.

[04:37]

Which are mainly for pedagogical reasons. But there's a kind of language of big minds itself, not the words that describe it. Now, I don't know if there's a lot to say about this or a little. Maybe like I could sum it all up in a paragraph. Or maybe we could be here until we have, you know, beards. Not you, of course. She looked worried for a moment there. So I'm happy to be interrupted at any point. Now the problem faced, well, let me say, I would say that our culture, our Western culture, is rooted in

[05:57]

The externalized memory of speculation. Externalized memory of speculation. Have I ever spoken to you about that before? No. Okay, let me explain what I mean. Because it relates to the problem that's faced by Zen and Buddhism. I would say that our culture mainly goes back to Greek culture. And I believe it's the Greeks who gave us our our phonetic alphabet. And they also gave us their culture in the sense that it was a culture which speculated.

[07:02]

It was a culture in the process of getting rid of kind of dogmatic mythological ideas and so forth. And the phonetic alphabet becomes an external memory. And when you use an external memory to write down what Eric and I speak about. And the next generation then can read what Eric and I spoke about. You can refine the ideas. So I think our philosophy in science basically develops from externalized speculation, a memory, You understand what I mean?

[08:20]

In other words, this is a key to developing a multi-generational wisdom or science. Okay, I mean, if you just... like Egyptians more did, these are the truths, you know, they're the same generation after generation. But when you say, well, maybe these are the truths, you're in a different world. Okay. Well, Buddhism is definitely a multi-generational teaching. But there's no phonetic alphabet. to carry the speculation.

[09:32]

Because it's basically Buddhism is about the interrelationship of signless states of mind. And signless states of mind, to keep the discussion simple, can't be written down in a syllabary or an alphabet or anything else. So at one time they had a system of I think 97 circles. All representing different states of mind or the interpenetration of one state of mind with another. No, I'm not going to teach you these 97 states of mind. One, because I don't We discarded that system a long time ago because it wasn't that good.

[10:41]

But also I don't know enough about it to teach you. I couldn't if I wanted to. And again, I invite you to, whenever something doesn't make sense, please tell me. Okay, so, again, let's go back to the roots of the possibility that there's a mind bigger than or other than thoughts. And although this is conceptually understandable, it makes real sense to us when we start to experience it.

[11:45]

No, I think I said enough about it, but I'll go over it again. It's the sense that there's a blank piece of paper under the print of a page. And the piece of paper on the whole is a fairly neutral vehicle. But when we start to practice, we notice that the background of consciousness is not a neutral vehicle. It has a presence. And it has an energetic presence. And it has a kind of pressure. And it can't be fooled.

[13:14]

Are you with me so far? This paper. This paper. Yeah. You can't be fooled. This empty paper that I'm saying by analogy is the emptiness of the background mind. Hmm? Because it's empty? It doesn't accept things that contradict emptiness. Okay. Now, it's also important, if we're talking about this, to make a distinction between given minds and generated minds.

[14:25]

Somebody said to me the other day, you know, you're an interesting lecturer but you're always painting six fingers on the hand. Well, this was a German who told me this. Really? Yeah. Putting six fingers on a hand instead of five. I asked this person who was who was an old student of mine, I said, well, what's my weakness in lecturing? He said, you paint six fingers on my hand. I thought it was great. I wish I could. So if you begin to see seven or eight fingers, you know, let me know. Yeah, yeah, that's what I think, too, yeah. What's really the difference between given and generated mind?

[15:42]

A given mind is like waking mind. All babies have some kind of waking mind. And they have some kind of sleeping mind. In fact, though, waking mind to a very great degree is generated. Until there's language, motor activity, interaction with your parents, the waking mind is very primitive. Yeah. So a given mind is something like, the main given minds are waking mind, dreaming mind, and non-dreaming deep sleep.

[17:00]

And probably we could say observing mind. And I think we can say original mind. That's one reason it's called original mind. Because it's a given. Now, if original mind wasn't a given, there couldn't be the theory of sudden enlightenment. That seems to be clear to Hans. So then it's probably really clear to the rest of you. I like to tease those who can take it. But all minds are in addition generated.

[18:25]

And some minds are only generated. Now we could say like, I don't know, a chess player's mind is a mind that... He wasn't born with a chess player's mind. But a chess player can look at a chess board and bring thousands of potential moves to play and you can't do that unless you generate that mind. Okay, now what am I calling a mind? If I call, if there's a chess mind, a tennis mind, a zazen, what am I calling a mind? Now we could talk about the qualities of mind, the faculties of mind.

[19:32]

Let's leave those out for now. Just say that what I mean by mind has two main aspects. It's homeostatic and it's self-organizing. OK. So let me give you an accessible example of what I mean by homeostatic and self-organizing. Homeostatic means it wants to stay in place. It wants to continue whatever it is. So you wake up in the morning and the alarm goes off. You want to stay asleep.

[20:42]

That's a homeostatic mind. It wants to stay asleep. Can I ask a question? My experience is, thinking about this homeostasis, is that, for instance, if I... Yesterday you mentioned our culture and that our culture wants us to keep us in a certain realm. Yes. And, for instance, if I have a distracted mind, the distracted mind also wants to stay distracted and wants me to, for instance, if I am distracted, I go into my car and drive, and to continue the distraction I turn on the radio. And so I can't, also the distraction is homeostatic in this way. I don't think so. I'll explain why, but you should say in German. My idea about that is that you just keep on feeding this distraction. Yes, that's true. In other words, I like your question.

[22:09]

And it's a question, you know, in my trying to go through this, I would have to have asked myself many times. There are various reasons why we resist the homeostasis of mind. Or even fear the homeostasis of some mind. And so the ego often tries to interrupt homeostasis. And a lot of other considerations. But primarily in one of the basic... obstructions to meditation, is that we have a kind of inborn physical and mental restlessness. We're born with the capacity for movement and direction.

[23:31]

But the other side of that is a kind of restlessness, mental restlessness. So I think that the distracted mind, which we also call monkey mind, is not homeostatic, it's constantly being interrupted from somewhere else. Anyway, that's my sense of it. Okay, so When you wake up in the morning and the alarm goes off, the fact that you want to stay asleep is homeostasis. But when the alarm goes off, And your sleeping, dreaming mind tells you it's a telephone.

[24:46]

And you're not answering telephones at this hour. That's an example of self-organizing. In other words, the dreaming mind has organized other information into its way of looking at things. So in Buddhism we would say any mental activity which tends to be homeostatic and self-organizing, we call a mind. Does that make sense? I mean, it's fairly simple, but... I mean, like right now, we are creating a kind of mutual mind.

[25:52]

That one of our jobs together is to make it homeostatic and self-organizing. And if somebody that we know comes in, they can probably come in without disturbing that. And if someone would come in who we know, then he or she could probably come in and wouldn't disturb it. they could easily, the whole thing could disappear. But if we can create a homeostatic own organizing, I prefer to self-organizing, a homeostatic own organizing mind here, the more that's present, the easier it is to understand things. Things are picked up in it and made sense of in it.

[26:56]

Okay. Good enough so far? According to your definition, monkey mind would be self-organizing as well as homeostatic. It's homeostatic in a sense, But a constant state of interruption is not exactly a mind. But it regulates itself by looking for different things to continue. Yes, that's true, except the mainly... those things are coming from outside the monkey mind.

[28:06]

The energy to do it is. The main part of our commerce is based on that. Yes, oh yes, that's right. To distract us, exactly. And if a monkey mind was truly homeostatic and self-organizing at some point it would have brought in enough distractions to stabilize itself and then it would just deal with those distractions. Monkey mind never reaches a stabilization. This leads me to another idea.

[29:14]

So in systems theory, the criterion of being a living being is that you are an open system. And open systems only stay alive if they take resources from outside. Yeah, it's to take resources from outside. . And to take this idea along, that would mean that if you have a homostatic mind, it would end up in a certain kind of perpetuum mobile.

[30:28]

Okay. Systems theory has reasons and a historical base out of which their ideas evolved. And out of that base, they have developed a certain language. I'm coming from a very different base. But I'm using language which overlaps with theirs. Because we have a limited vocabulary. One reason I say own organizing instead of self-organizing. But I'm trying to use some English language with a fair amount of exactness. so that we can get an idea within ourselves of how to notice the way we function.

[32:00]

We can't push exactness too far, though. And no sentence, no single sentence will sustain True exactness. It can logically be shown all sentences regress infinitely. When you take a sentence that's very simple, this sentence is not true, you can show that regresses infinitely. But you can in fact show every sentence regresses infinitely towards simplicity or complexity. So I'm doing the best I can.

[33:01]

But I appreciate the discussion because we have to have this discussion with ourselves. Does this make sense? What's the example, etc.? Walter? Walter? It's very provocative to say everything which is homeostatic and self-organizing in the mind is very provocative. Why is it provocative? There are chemical processes? Oh, no, no, I mean a mental state of some kind, mentation of some kind. No, no, no, I mean a mental state, a mental state. Now we could extend it further, but it's a much more complicated discussion to extend it to insentient. Right now the topic is big mind. Is that all right? Yes. Yes. Maybe a little explanation for Jake.

[34:18]

The system theology has two levels. On the content level, So just as an explanation for Jack, also in systems theory there are two levels. On one level there is this nourishment for the system which comes from outside. But the further development of Bateson and Maturana goes on the organization of the system, the spiritual level. is dealing with the organizational level of systems, which is a more mental level. And this level is called self-organizing, homeostatic, and structural determined. Closed in a way that there is no instructive interaction so that I cannot influence the new system.

[35:34]

He cannot change in an instructive way unless he... Of course, what we have as a functioning being is layers of... homeostatic, self-organizing, own-organizing minds. And big mind means a mind open to everything that might come in. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Now, I don't want to dismiss anyone's comments or

[37:02]

And if we can refine this language, I'm happy to do so. But I'm trying to create a kind of feeling for the functioning of a mind, simply like a sleeping mind or dreaming mind or so forth. In fact, there are many, many aspects. I'm just picking these two to give a sense of how we can notice when a mind is functioning. Because when we notice it, we can begin to work with it. For example, maybe... Let's see how we're doing here. Maybe... I'll just stick with, for a few minutes now, these basic given minds of sleeping, non-dreaming, and so forth.

[38:17]

Because these are the three given minds, and we incumbent upon us as self-explorers Und als Selbstforscher wollen wir diese Geisteszustände studieren. Und eine Art, das in der Praxis zu studieren, und das ist nicht auf die... is that we study the transitions between waking, sleeping, sleeping, waking. And you begin to see, and we've talked about this before, how when you wake up, you can decide to go back across that line into dreaming again.

[39:45]

Once, for instance, you go across the line that you start bringing in sensory information like the birds, a car, and things like that, you almost can't go back. It's very difficult to go back into sleeping mind. Because waking mind listens to the sensory world. Or it listens in a different way. So you can begin to, by noticing things like that, you can begin to notice the difference in function and structure. between waking mind and dreaming mind. And the more you notice the difference between waking and structure function and structure in these two minds, you can begin to feel the difference.

[41:00]

And the ability to feel the difference is also related to physicalizing the mind through breath practice. And dreaming minds have locations in the body in particular places. And you can begin to discover these. And the more you can feel the difference in structure and function and viscosity perhaps, between sleeping mind and dreaming mind, or waking and dreaming, you can then begin to not merge but enfold one mind and the other.

[42:10]

In other words, you feel the particular way in which waking mind is self-organizing, etc. And then you can begin to more consciously bring waking mind into your dreaming mind. And you can have more explicitly conscious lucid dreaming. Now, when you have a lucid dream, you're not merging waking mind and dreaming mind. You're enfolding waking mind and dreaming mind. They don't mix like water and water. One's like oil and the other's like water. Do you understand what I mean?

[43:29]

So you can almost make a little capsule of waking mind that goes down into the dreaming mind and observes, you know, but it doesn't mix with it because it's a different stuff. The more you study these things, you can really notice that these are different minds. And they don't mix. But they can enfold. Likewise, you can... bring dreaming mind enfolded into waking mind. And I think something like that is going on when an artist, for instance, can stay in the mind that's coming up with a poem while they also type.

[44:31]

Or the tricks various artists, painters have to keep painting while they listen to music or can do their daily life. Makes them paint while they're... No. These pre-Buddhist Indian inner scientists said that that non-dreaming deep sleep is in a mind of extraordinary integrative and extraordinary bliss. And they said that we needed this mind, we needed this experience on a daily basis to function.

[45:51]

But we forget it. as soon as we forget it when we wake more thoroughly than dreaming, then we forget dreams. Now, I can't prove that what these Indian yogic philosophers said is true. Because if it's so thoroughly forgotten, how would I know? But I do know that when zazen mind approaches a state very close to what I imagine, no dreaming, no mental activity, no usual mentation, a tremendous feeling of bliss begins to occur. And again, what I've just done is, from a point of view of a Buddhist, answered the question of these early Indian philosophers, okay, we've got these three minds, can they merge, can they mix, etc. ?

[47:07]

My own answer is that you can bring non-dreaming deep sleep into an observing consciousness. And you can unfold these minds in each other. And when you do again, you start a process of being which is different when the minds are not enfolded. Okay. So I can say this which I think is true. It's true in my experience. And I think it makes intuitive sense to you. Because I've tried to find as precise as I could language to make this clear. Like distinguishing between merging and enfolding.

[48:15]

Because strangely and wonderfully, these minds seem to be so self-organizing and homeostatic that they retain their own nature, even in the midst of dreaming or... They retain their own integrity even in the midst of another kind of mind. Okay. Now, it's almost break time. So we've created a situation now where I can give you a description of one kind of big mind. which is probably to various degrees accessible to you as practitioners, is that when one practices,

[49:50]

fairly regularly with a fair amount of stillness and stability, this sense of bliss begins to appear. I think for most people, they don't know how to, they don't really recognize it as bliss at first. For example, they finish zazen and their body feels soft. Or their skin feels like a baby's skin. Or they start noticing they feel grateful for things for no reason. Grateful that water comes out of the faucet. These are all examples of a growing bliss that arises through meditation.

[51:10]

And this, if you practice enough, begins to pervade all your actions with a sense of gratefulness and appreciation. We could image it as saying we're letting this non-dreaming deep sleep surface through the aperture of zazen. And mindfulness practices too. and begin to touch everything of our life. Now, when we specifically cultivate that, generate a mind around this experience of bliss, That's called a bliss mind.

[52:19]

Or it's called the Sambhogakaya body. And it is the body in between the dharmakaya and the nirmanakaya. Do you all understand the three bodies of Buddha? What you've been missing all these years? But when you practice, you're actually to various degrees entering the Sambhogakaya body. Now, once you begin to cultivate a body based on bliss, it begins to, just like Dreaming mind organized the alarm clock into a telephone.

[53:29]

Bliss mind begins to organize the way you see things and feel things in a particular way. It's also called the reward body. Reward body is another word for bliss body. Because it seems to draw all your merit into it rather than your negative karma. It's the body that seems to draw what you've done in your life that's been good, or the good parts of the bad parts, seems to draw it into how you function. and you begin to feel actually very good about yourself in a way that

[54:42]

is really related to how you function and want to function. So this bliss body or bliss mind begins to have a real presence in us. And we're not born with it. We generate it. Maybe that's enough before the break. Are we all blissed out? Or not? Yeah, maybe, I don't know. I'm sure that there's more. Yeah, right. Thank you, I'll have it.

[55:45]

He's upset, wants food, you know, etc. But a true bliss mind has the stability to maintain the bliss despite problems. That's why there's no sense of regression to an oceanic or baby mind or pure mind. That's nonsense in Buddhism. However, the taste and... Doronic memory, Doronic means a physical memory. The bliss of infancy and puberty. pre-language childhood may definitely resurface, I think it does, in Zazen.

[56:55]

But that's a kind of source, a spring, a quellen, but it's not what we want to return to. Does that make sense? Yes. Lin-Chi, you have the image of the newborn baby with the long silver hair. Yes. Does it connect to what you said? Yes, yes. So, I mean, now when you... Now Gerhard brought that up, you can see how Zen uses an image like that, that you wonder, what's that about? But if you work with the image, what we've just been talking about comes up. So, something else?

[58:20]

I'm happy to talk to you about this. You know, I don't get too many chances to talk to anyone about these things. I mean, in traditional Zen practice we don't talk about these things like this. Okay. Yeah. I'm supposed to understand them in order to teach, but I'm supposed to give images like the silver-haired baby. So the danger in that is to talk about this so explicitly is that... Yeah. So he considers it's a good thing to talk about these things, but on the other hand, which he emphasized right now,

[59:44]

is that there is also the danger that you said... I feel. I feel. He feels. Now I know I can go on everything to do something else. I understand. I feel it in myself. It's with ambiguity. Sometimes it helps in the practice. I never read it in a book. And so it gives a momentum towards practice, and there's another part when you say, okay, now I know what's behind the door, and maybe the television program is more interesting. It might be, you know, if it is. Please enjoy yourself. Germany is not playing now. Austria is playing. So there is this World Championship and Australia is not playing. Oh, really? And you're sitting here with me? I'm at the T4C. Oh. Big minds, bigger than football.

[60:48]

Yeah. It's a matter. Yeah. It's big. Okay, you've understood the difference, the importance difference between a generated mind and a given mind. And if you really understand that difference, you get it, you can see that this difference over-emphasis on sudden enlightenment is nonsense. It's become a kind of, for many Zen folks and the Zen schools, a kind of dialectic to put down other schools. There's no doubt there's sudden enlightenment.

[61:51]

But that sudden enlightenment isn't the full enlightenment of a Buddha. Okay, maybe Gerhard, you could stand up. And you could stand up. Since you taught me sculpting, we'll do it. So, I'm the observing mind, right? And this is thinking mind. And this is original mind. So I tend to identify myself, observing, with thinking minds.

[62:52]

Through some circumstance or I suddenly come face to face with the original mind. And what the original mind does is turn me around and suddenly I see thinking mind and I no longer identify with it. That's sudden enlightenment. But I have not matured. Still my body still got the same habits. My mind is still got the psychological habits. All I've done is seen through. It can become the basis for everything else, but it's not yet full in one.

[63:52]

So it's often called a turning around. And often it's accompanied by a tremendous, not always, Often accompanied by a tremendous feeling of light or joy or other things. Because you suddenly are freed from a whole lot of stuff that you've been kind of holding your energy in with. and all this comes up. All this energy comes up. And it can be such a powerful experience of truth, it then becomes a measure of everything that happens afterwards.

[65:03]

And the more you have the character and capacity to stay with that measure, it transforms your life. But it's still only original enlightenment. It's not full enlightenment. Mr. Original Enlightenment? And this thinking mind who has just transcended it? Well, that wasn't a true sculpture because we didn't play it out, but you get the idea. And that's what is called Pratyekabuddha? A Pratyekabuddha is someone who is enlightened entirely by accident or chance.

[66:11]

And enlightened through the phenomenal world, not another person. There are three sources of enlightenment. Aren't you amazed that there's so many things we can keep talking about here? There's three of this and seven of that and two of that. But you know. We take it for granted when we study science or something that there's that kind of thing. There's enlightenment through phenomena. There's enlightenment through phenomena. through another person.

[67:19]

And usually through the realization of another person. And there's enlightenment through... your own inner experience. And the enlightenment through phenomena is called this pratyeka practice. And enlightenment through... When the practice... emphasizes enlightenment through meditation. That's called Tathagata Zen. Not that you need to know these things, but... That's a simple way to spell it.

[68:25]

And the other is generally called patriarchal, but we don't say that anymore. We say ancestor. And the other is called patriarchal, but we don't say that anymore. The word Tathagata means thus coming, thus gone. So the coming and going of birth and death, coming and going means Tathagata. Tathagata just means when you look most closely at reality, it disappears and disappears and disappears. And that appearing and disappearing is our essential nature. And when you experience that through meditation, it can cause enlightenment. Now, enlightenment through phenomena is considered the least might be, who knows, it made the most joyful, how can you say, but it's the least relevant to other people, I know.

[69:55]

in the world. This is more relevant. You know your meditation experience, you can share it with people, you can teach. But it's not as deep as realization which occurs with another person. But then you really know how to relate to others in practice. But in fact, most Zen practice and realization is a mixture of these two. And you can usually tell whether the person is more on this side or this side. Usually this has a much... person who was enlightened through another teacher, through a teacher, is usually much brighter, more

[71:09]

more precise in the way they do things. But this is the real ancestor, of course, means the lineage. So it's deeper for two reasons. It's deeper because the complexity of one's experience through another person transcends one's experience with oneself or phenomena. By complexity, I mean the number of surfaces, the depth. And also this is more clearly related to the lineage. to the enlightenment that's passed from generation to generation.

[72:24]

So this is the most fundamental reason why I need to teach. Does that make sense? Does that make sense to you? What kind of phenomena could that be which bring forward this first kind of... Oh, the sound of a bird. Nature. I mean, we are physical bodies, we're part of nature. as being part of nature, the truth of this whole situation can become apparent to you. And I think that my experience is that most artists are artists because they've had enlightenment experiences.

[73:35]

Their art reflects their attempt to return to that experience. But they have no ability to bring that experience. they tend to go back to that experience which caused the experience. You can see it in Ezra Pound's poetry, for instance. There's a constant return to a certain luminous experience over and over again in his poetry. And there's all kinds of junk in between it. Interesting junk sometimes, but you know... And I can almost all, I can spot

[74:48]

what kind of experience most poets had, because at various points they describe their experience over and over again in different words and things. And I think I could tell you what the different experience Picasso had from Matisse. Yeah. But Buddhism says, okay, this experience is not a Buddhist property. This experience is something that happens to human beings. But it's a deep, validating experience. And it opens you to really looking at things with new eyes. So we say there's no real Buddhism without enlightenment. But Buddhism isn't only enlightenment.

[75:55]

And there's all kinds of enlightenment. There's enlightenment that you never notice. And then there's original enlightenment, which is the idea that, in fact, we are all enlightened, but we don't know it. And generally, for instance, if a person decides to practice, they're doing their life, and at some point, for one of those augenblicks, It lasts no length of time, but your life goes another direction. You decide to practice. Okay. this is what I'm going to do.

[77:07]

If you unpack that experience, it was an enlightened experience. Didn't have much space to develop, but that turning was an enlightened experience. Dogen's point of view is that all subsequent experience, understanding, and subsequent enlightenments are versions and openings of that initial enlightenment. Okay.

[78:08]

Are we okay? Get some food? I mean, I sometimes don't... As I said to Christina earlier, sometimes I have the feeling, I don't know if I'm just talking in the dark or... Is it making sense? I don't know, because this is things I work out for myself and work out practicing with people, but I seldom talk about it like this. Maybe I sound like a loony. I don't know. So I should, for your sake, I should tell you what the three bodies of Buddha are. Since you have one. They're going to charge us extra for all the paper we're reading. Now, the importance of these kaya leaf body.

[79:59]

And Dharma means Dharma. And Sambo means something like reward or bliss. And Nirmana means something like manifestation. Now, the historical importance of this is the effort of the Mahayana to make, I think I talked about this in the last session, didn't I? is the effort of the Mahayana to make Buddhahood accessible. Although this may seem extremely obscure to some of you, it's actually the effort of these folks to their compassion to make Buddhahood accessible to us. I mean, the historical Buddha was a human being.

[81:06]

But he seemed to have been, you know, or once in a millennium type person, a very extraordinary person. But whatever he was like, he was soon mythologized. And he became such an exceptional human being that he that no one could attain it. As I said during the Sashin, I mean the Buddha in the historical, in the early Buddhism has 32 marks.

[82:11]

In your case, 34. Okay. But I don't know anybody with the 32 marks. Now, I know I have a small percentage of one of them. Which is the Buddhist supposedly has a... tuft of white air between his eyebrows. Yeah. Well, I have one or two, sometimes three, but it doesn't call right. But the 32 marks include other things, too.

[83:26]

I mean, for instance, his arms are supposed to reach to his knees. Maybe in lotus posture. And he's supposed to have 45 teeth. Well, actually, I've never counted my teeth. And my dentist has probably messed that up. Already. And my dentist has probably messed that up. And the Buddha also supposedly had, and they give quite a vivid description of it, which I don't think we do of Jesus, a very particular kind of virile member. A particular kind of virile member. Yeah, and its length and pointedness are back and forth as well.

[84:38]

And I didn't mention this in the sachet in which... But first of all, this does exclude a large percentage of the population. And the Buddha also has

[85:16]

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