I think it was a good suggestion of yours to speak about ritual. I started practice as Mr. Natural. Kind of resistant to ritual. Mr. Natural. Now I'm Mr. Ritual. Good afternoon. Okay. One of the things that have been kind of like sticking to the stars of the last 13 months.

[01:02]

But I brought... I did speak about it in practice period this spring and winter. But I only got started on it and I thought it's something I'd like to bring to our seminar here. And You know, I've spoken a number of times over every few years about the Alaya-Vijñāna. So partly I'm to see if I can say something about Alaya-Vijñāna again in a rather different way. You know, after lunch we started lunch late so I stayed here and took a little walk.

[02:15]

And I really love the trees of this forest. I don't know, there's some kind of, I find it stunning how each tree just stands there. And in the calmness of each trunk, I imagine and feel this network of roots under the surface. And I think if I lived here and could do it without hurting the trees, I might

[03:34]

dig some sort of hole or tube that I could go down 30 or 40 feet with glass and look at all the roots. I could let myself down in and there'd be insects What kinds of critters? Probably it wouldn't be random. There'd be some randomness and a lot of complexity probably. Maybe it would become a refuge for me like the whale in Murakami's novel, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Is it? You've read Murakami's books, some of you?

[05:01]

That's quite amazing, that book. He gets down in this well all the time, you know. But doing Zazen is sort of like a tube like that, you know, to get down and to seeing how the mind functions. Or it can be like that. Yeah, the entry is the uncorrected yet observed mind. So, I mean, I think we have to, for this discussion we have to have some ingredients. So let's say, you know, we have the, what I've often spoken about, the three birth minds.

[06:13]

I call them that, you know. Waking, dreaming and non-dreaming deep sleep. And let's add the ingredients which waking mind of, excuse me, consciousness and awareness and maybe we could add lucidity or lucid dreaming or something. Yeah. And maybe we can think of waking mind as not exactly the same as consciousness. These are categories and concepts.

[07:31]

And they've been... They're the result of... Generations and generations of... of theorists and practitioners. Now they didn't have the investigatory equipment of contemporary neurobiology. And it's great what they're doing, trying to study and locate brain functions. I hope they wire up the whole body and not just the brain.

[08:33]

They should see what's going on in the right toe as well as the left frontal lobe. But whatever these categories are, they were developed to... notice our functioning, and to share in practice to share the experience of practice as teaching with others. And it's not just generations of theorists, and not just generations of practitioners, but it's the generations of both, and generations of peer review.

[10:00]

Peer review. You know what that is, right? A peer review. A peer group feedback. So feedback from bodies in a field. There's no specific term for it. You usually use peer review? What? Let's use peer review. Sounds good. I mean... Christian and Nicole sitting here and Ravi and others of you are practicing, it's a form of peer review.

[11:33]

I can't get away with saying something that's too crazy. Nicole would say, not only have I not experienced that, I don't believe anyone can. Yeah, you would too. Okay, so this is good. Okay, so we have these categories of some I've just mentioned. Now I've often spoken about non-dreaming deep sleep. Surfacing in zazen. And yeah, I think this is a useful and accurate way to describe this thing.

[12:35]

Now, it's not so important if what I'm saying is exactly accurate. Because, for example, I'd like to identify lucid the mind of lucid dreaming, with waking non-discriminating consciousness. Let me say it that way. In a few months from now, I may decide I don't like that identification. But the point is not whether it's exactly accurate or that we develop the nomenclature for these things.

[13:52]

What's important is that it's close enough to a functioning close enough to a way of looking at how we function. So that we can notice our functioning. And noticing our function, I mean sometimes to some extent we make the shoe fit. But sometimes we can't make the shoe fit. The toes of our mind hurt. And then we have to kind of look at

[14:53]

Okay, but I think it's helpful to imagine that one of the things that happens in sāsana This process of zazen which generates minds that we weren't born with. Now I think that statement alone is riveting. It grabs your attention. Holds your attention. I like the way you're translating this seminar.

[16:20]

Because usually, or often, you just, if I zoom along, you zoom along. But this time you're translating more instrumentally. I mean, I say something and you're sort of taking it apart and putting it back together. It feels good. Okay, so I said that this is... riveting, to me, observations Because I had the idea when I first started practicing that practice was to work with the ingredients I was born with.

[17:32]

And I really didn't think that with the ingredients I was born with or developed as an adult I could create new ingredients that I wasn't born with. That could transform the ingredients I'm born with. Yeah, I mean, the ideas of emergence and so forth. But it's... It is something different to say... to feel that there's something completely new. Not just a development of what you have, but something actually new. We can call new.

[18:44]

So the practitioner is the adept practitioner. It is not just fine-tuning the ingredients you... But the ingredients are alchemically almost making a new mind. We can say a fourth mind. No, I don't think you can say to a client in a psychotherapeutic session, well, you're having trouble with your mind, but what you need is a fourth mind.

[19:49]

I've got one right here on the shelf. It's called psychedelics. No, no. That's what we thought in the sixties. So I've gone over this quite often. So basically the idea was, can we have a mind which overlaps the three birth minds? And, you know... Can consciousness overlap dreaming mind more than it does usually?

[20:54]

And that's exactly what happens in Zazen. And one of the things that happens in Zazen is Dreaming mind surfaces in the mind of awareness. Now, dreaming mind won't surface into consciousness. So let's say that we can call zazen mind, which is not consciousness, we can call it awareness. Yeah, okay. No, I'm not expecting you, if you've never heard me run through all this stuff before, to keep it all straight.

[22:10]

And although I think the distinctions are rather obvious, I started making a distinction between awareness and consciousness because I simply could not talk about zazen with people unless I did. But most of you don't have to talk about zazen with people, so... You won't use the distinction as much, but maybe it is a useful distinction for all. Okay. But I mean, even if, again, it's not hard to follow all these distinctions.

[23:35]

And I can understand, again, it's taking me years to decide on these distinctions. The point is, you can use them, or at least you can imagine Notice distinctions in your own experience. Obvious distinctions that we can't avoid like the difference in sleeping and waking mind. And obvious distinctions, we can notice that it's hard to sleep unless you're lying down.

[24:36]

So immediately you can see that modalities of mind or states of mind are related to postures. Standing up postures, lying down postures. Now, it may take some time to notice the finer tuning of posture and mind. It may take some time the finer tunings of postures and mind. But it's implicit as soon as you really notice that sleeping is a posture.

[25:41]

And zazen is a posture. And if you want to not move, you have to discover something close to this posture, because in other postures not moving is not possible. Or barely possible. Okay, so we can conceive of zazen as the beginning of a fourth mind. and the beginning of an articulation of the difference between awareness and consciousness. And as we discussed the other day, within the simple six words, six little words of don't invite your thoughts to tea, you discover the mind of intent is different than the mind of...

[27:16]

self-referential discursive thinking. And then you discover that the mind of intent is somehow Yeah, intention works in consciousness, but it also works without interference in awareness. You find that the mind of intent in consciousness can generate the mind of awareness in zazen. You know, at first you're just sitting and these things are happening. But as you begin to develop again a yogic skill of a non-interfering observing awareness,

[28:30]

You begin to realize you're observing the mind like you might in a glass tube, observing the roots and life under the ground of the forest. So you see that the mind of intent somehow is compatible with the same as, different than, yeah, than awareness. Now what I'm going through here with you and trying to do it within our shared experience, is what happened over some centuries in trying to develop the eight Vishnianas.

[29:58]

And Vishniana, by the way, the etymology is something like two... to know separately together. To know separately, to separate things, and through separating them, know them together. We're getting really good at this. Okay. But I don't want to just use these Sanskrit terms and traditional terms.

[31:05]

While we've been sitting here, that fly died. I don't think there's any life left in it. There is some life. Oh, he moved a little? Yeah, he's got some life left in him. Okay. Okay. Now, when we... When we sleep, when we take the posture of sleeping, and sleeping approaches, sometimes not as often as we like, I don't know why I go through this number about sleeping and waking so often, but I like it.

[32:26]

Maybe I'm very happy not to have to talk about zazen. We don't necessarily all share zazen, but we all share going to sleep, I think. And it's a way to sort of get in that class, too. Just as you're going to sleep. So generally there's a number of steps in which you can go to sleep. Yeah, the little images start appearing instead of thinking. And sometimes there's a little shudder of the body. Yeah, and breathing suddenly becomes involuntary.

[33:43]

And there's little anticipations of that. And yeah, you can sort of notice and even encourage the anticipations. And you can find a way to hold on to a certain part of consciousness. You can find a kind of non-conscious part of consciousness. And you can sort of hold on to it and go over the bump into sleep in your consciousness. It's a form of Zazen mind that you have learned through Zazen to hold on to, so it's not so difficult to find out how to hold on to it before you go to sleep.

[35:02]

And if you do, it's just like you have lucid sleeping instead of just lucid dreaming. Your body can be asleep and you can know everything that's going on in the room. Of course, if you practice zazen, these things are more easy or likely to happen. But if you don't, they still can happen. It's just... The ingredients we're born with. Suddenly you find yourself in the roots of the mind. Yeah. And getting familiar with that mind, which then also lucidly dreams, and allows a certain participation in the dreaming, but it's actually more interesting not to participate.

[36:28]

And that yogic skill you can learn just as well going to sleep as in zazen, then becomes, learned going to sleep, quite useful in zazen. Because that lucid dreaming mind, the mind which allows lucid dreaming, is the mind also which allows more contact with dreaming during zazen. Not dreaming, but something like dreaming.

[37:30]

Okay. Now, going back to non-dreaming deep sleep surfacing in zazen. And we can call that When non-dreaming deep sleep surfaces in zazen, we can call that samadhi. One of the many things we can call samadhi. So, samadhic non-dreaming deep sleep. Okay. Okay. Now, you get a physical feel for that.

[38:36]

And it becomes then possible to allow non-dreaming deep sleep to also surface in your daily activity. Maybe daydreaming is a sort of touch of that. But somatic non-dreaming deep sleep is not about being sleepy. It's a kind of clear, still mind. that can be kind of the base or background of your activity. So it can be present as an ingredient in your thinking and feeling.

[39:39]

Okay. Now what I want to... propose, is in a somewhat similar way, conceptually similar way, you can allow So I don't have any words for this. Let me say, you can allow the birth mind, you can allow our mind we have at birth, the dreaming mind, close to birth, to surface in sasana. But that doesn't mean anything to say that exactly, because already zazen mind, we know, overlaps with dreamlike contents.

[40:53]

So what am I trying to find a way to say? Dreaming mind carries with it the concerns and interests of consciousness. So your your daily anxieties and interests and concerns are part of dreaming mind and affect what you dream about. As you all would know. I mean, you have something happens and you dream about it.

[41:56]

Okay, so I mean a quality of mind we can... What can I say? I don't want to call it dreaming. It's not dreaming. It's content similar to dreaming, but it's not... But it's not dreaming. Now we're getting close to the alaya vijnana. Okay. Now, and I'm defining the Alaya-Vijñāna rather, there's lots of different interpretations of the Alaya-Vijñāna. There's so many, I feel quite comfortable adding mine. Okay. I would like to say the alaya vishnayana is not the unconscious, first of all.

[43:25]

Maybe the unconscious is somehow... belongs somewhere in the category of a laya visionary. But I'm defining the unconscious in the more strictly Freudian sense. I guess I'm not a Freudian, but... as contents that have been conscious or could be conscious, as contents that are related to consciousness. The alaya vijnana is more everything that's ever happened to you, conscious or not conscious.

[44:40]

Now what I'm adding, to some extent adding, to the concept of alaya vijnana It's also everything that could have happened to you. With some likelihood. Yeah. Yeah. My simple example is all these car chases and accidents and explosions in movies are in movies because they're in our laya vijnana. In other words, every time you drive, you could have an accident.

[45:43]

At every intersection, there's a thousand or four or five possible accidents. And those possible accidents are kind of hovering there waiting for a movie to release them. Now the live vision is sometimes defined as the seed storehouse. And in that sense, the seeds are potentials from your accumulated experience. In other words, all of your accumulated experience is also seeds, potentials for recombination, new combinations.

[46:56]

And I think a useful concept, which I like to use in a number of contexts, is that things are folded together. As I say, maybe when you intend to wake up at 6.02 without an alarm clock, and you do it by intent, Maybe it's not a simple matter that somehow the mind of intent can proceed through sleeping mind to wake you up at 6.02.

[48:03]

As if some part of you is watching the clock during the night. But maybe 1245 and 602 are touching each other because they're folded together. Well, why not? 11.13. There's a complexity to our experience which is outside our ability to conceptualize. And the folded together concept actually is one of the most useful in trying to function within this complexity.

[49:15]

How can we define We can know certain things about the alaya vijnana. It's non-temporal. It's not chronologically organized. That's why you dream about your grandmother in some place she's never been. So it's a context of simultaneity. But it doesn't have the quality of being spread out on some sort of field or surface. It has an intricate complexity.

[50:16]

No, I know. I know. I just, I know what it means. I know you know what it means. Intricate is really this deep. Yeah, then it's subtle, you know. And it's complex complexity. Complex complexity. Intricate is like a watch or a lace or something. I'll think about it. That's all right. I'll tell you later. We all know. There's a peer review going on. Okay. But it's not finely woven. It's intricate. Well, like the St. Stephen's Tower, you know, Stefan's dome is intricate and complex. Intricate.

[51:38]

Intricate. You don't know the word? Oh, really? It's a fairly common word. Verwickelt. Eine verwickelte Komplexität. I just stood just recently in Vienna looking at that dome for quite a long time. This is the work of generations. You just can't think it in one shot. One of the most exciting extraordinary examples of Gothic filigree. So maybe You know, maybe we can think of a city as something that's folded together.

[53:03]

I mean, it's a surface, but it's also folded together. Let's just imagine when back in the... late 19th century. And during the potato famine. I don't know when was the date of the potato famine. Was it the 20th century? I forget. Anyway, as you know, the potato populated America. You can grow more food per acre, hectare, with potatoes than you can with wheat. So when the potato crop failed, you can replant wheat, but there's more people than you can feed with wheat.

[54:11]

So lots of Irish and Germans arrived in America on boats In the Black Forest, where Yohannesof is in Hershey, grandmothers had to force one child not to go to America because somebody has to stay here. Who forced him? The grandmothers? The Kaiser. The Kaiser family? Did you say grandmother? One of my grandchildren has to stay. That's the Kaiser family. One of my grandchildren has to stay. So boats arrived, and thousands of people got off the boats, and they were folded together in what we call the city.

[55:22]

And it's like he took them, put it like this, and they all fell in together, and very rapidly they separated into Irish, German, Catholics, Protestants, criminal gangs, rich, poor. Yeah, it's really what happened. And that's what's actually in the Alaya Vishnana. You put all this stuff together and it starts organizing itself. So you never know, you grab hold of this and you've got all these things attached, which you didn't expect. This is six degrees of separation, which is usually two and a half. You're going too fast.

[56:23]

I'm sorry. Yes? Do you know what that means? That it is connected to someone in six corners. The idea that between me and every person on the planet there are five people who know each other. This kind of connection. And Roshi says that it is not six, but only two and a half. I'm not sure, it's two and a half. I think the mathematics, somebody's worked out that six, six is mathematically accurate. And through the same phenomena, I went to Rome And somebody... And I met the man who wrote the play Six Degrees of Separation.

[57:39]

So we discussed it quite a bit. Okay. So maybe we should... I should wind this... wind up this bird. This chronicle. Okay. Because it's time for a break. Okay. So what I'd like to kind of like is that with this way of looking at it, dreaming is not a free association, mind of association and so forth.

[58:49]

Are not doors or windows into unconscious contents, material. Or not only that. They're also kind of handles. That you can use to get a physical feel for, a physical hold on this... alaya vijnana, which sometimes takes the form of dreaming mind. And you can pull this with the handles. into consciousness or into the background of consciousness.

[59:58]

And Hakman Zenji, the famous Rinzai Zen teacher, He says something like to turn the mind upside down or something like that. I can't remember his phrase. So I have to throw a few more categories in here, but I'll be quick. So Hakuin really meant instead of Manas being the mind that meets the world, Manas is discriminating intellect. Can you say that again? So Hakon was saying that instead of Manas, and maybe we'll have to continue this some other century, I think I should also speak about Manavijjana and so forth.

[61:11]

So instead of Manas being the mind that meets the world, the world is first met with the Alaya-Vijjanyana. It's an extraordinary idea. We couldn't even imagine it unless we'd made these distinctions. And In my experience, true. In fact, in the way I've been working with it in the last few months, it's created a problem for me. Are you surprised I have a problem? Because it generates, you know, three or four years more interesting. Oh, thanks.

[62:30]

Okay, because the usefulness of manas is it makes clear, let's just say manas separates things. Manas makes you know whether you've done this in consciousness or only thought it. And that's really important to know the difference. And when you bring this whole alaya vijnana up into being present in consciousness, of course not all of it, but you bring up a significant gestalt of it. And it allows more complex and subtle decision-making.

[63:46]

Because you're making decisions, momentary observations, in the context of a very large percentage of your experience of what has happened and what could happen. Because you're making decisions, momentary decisions and big decisions. In a wider spectrum of your experience. In a spectrum which includes much of what you've done and what... what has happened and what could happen. Okay. Now the problem is, is that I find I'm not quite sure what I've done or what I, is that something I could have done or something I did?

[64:46]

I really have to, I'm trying to work out how to know the difference. Because things are so folded together that something I haven't done has ingredients that I have done. I know I did that part, but did I do that part? It's an interesting problem, and I'm still sane. I mean, I think so. I just acoustically didn't get it. Yeah, I said it's an interesting problem, and I'm still sane, I think so. Oh, that feels a little crazy. Okay. Now, of course I'm speaking about this because I imagine somehow this is part of the process of constellation.

[65:47]

Another word. Constellation is so... also eludes conceptual understanding. So I'm using that elusivity to explore other elusive things. It eludes. It eludes. Using that feeling of being elusive. To explore other things that are elusive. That might be folded out into a constellation. all that has happened in our incubated experience and all that could happen and at that level the confusion some of us have between our own life and others lives and life and death

[67:25]

Okay.

[67:34]

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