This morning I watched, Marie-Louise and Sophia and I watched the news briefly about Israel and Palestine and so forth. Yeah, and so Sophia we generally don't want her to particularly watch the news. Particularly the American English language news is usually pretty gruesome. So I'm monitoring what's appearing on the screen, thinking about noticing what's appearing on the screen. And she's quite interested. But one can wonder, what's she interested in?

[01:05]

She doesn't know what Israel is. She doesn't know what Palestine is. And when they say a soldier was killed or there was a car bomb, I mean, she doesn't really know much what that means. But she's looking at it. And there's faces and people talking and, you know, so forth. And it looks to me like she's really trying to make sense of it, but she had, you know, compared to me, Louise, and I, or any of you, she has... tiny percentage of the information we have that makes sense of the story. So, yeah, I'm watching and wondering what she, what is she seeing? Now I mentioned this work Nicholas Humphrey did with this chimpanzee named Helen yesterday I mentioned.

[02:33]

The visual cortex was removed and so his professor thought that the monkey could not see. But the chimpanzee, he discovered by being affectionate with it, playing with it, fooling around with it, rolling around as a young graduate student on the laboratory floor, he noticed them. The chimpanzee actually could visually relate to things. So he took her out in the parks in London. And she climbed on things, went up and down stairs, and, you know, was a normal chimpanzee, more or less.

[03:45]

But it seems the chimpanzee had no consciousness of what they were seeing. But she was seeing. And since then, I don't know if that was the first time, but some human beings, as I said, have this condition called blind sight. So... They invited a woman from Asia or the Near East, I can't remember, who had this condition, blind sight. And she had dark glasses and she walked with a cane.

[04:45]

And I can't remember how they kind of discovered her, but they... She was very intelligent and from a poor family, but had taught herself to really function and be some kind of professional person. So they raised money, brought her to London, and taught her that she could see. So she could actually, she learned, like Helen the chimpanzee learned, to actually go up and down stairs and do things. But she couldn't, but she swore she was blind.

[05:46]

All during this whole procedure, which went on for, I think, nearly a year. She kept saying, I can function visually, but it means nothing to me. And I believe she became depressed and was going to commit suicide. She'd heard all these wonderful things and read, I guess, Braille, that... that visual people enjoy, colors, light, etc. And she got more and more depressed. At some point she said, I'm stopping this. And she put on her glasses, dark glasses, and took her cane. and lived the rest of her life.

[07:06]

She's a professional person of some kind now in London. The rest of her life is a blind person, up until now. Okay. Now, the point I'm making is, I think, obvious. is that we have to be able to give meaning to things, to have relevance for things, and less to function. So you can't have no, you can't have some sort of pure consciousness with no reference to your experience. without any reference to your experience.

[08:19]

So when I define consciousness I define it as its job the function or job of consciousness is to give us a show us a predictable world A cognizable world. A chronological world. And a world that's coherent in some meaningful way. And this last is the one I'm speaking about now. Okay, now, so this is a definition you've, most of you have heard many times that I've given of consciousness. Now, someone said, I heard someone said, nobody, I don't know, but someone told me a while ago that in the

[09:20]

seminar you had for three days or so when I wasn't here, a Winter Branches seminar. Someone said, or some person said that, well, Bekaroshi has been teaching this Abhidharma all along. Yeah, I for sure think I have been. If there's a difference, it's that I'm trying to find ways to speak about this in the paradigms of Western culture. If there's a difference between how it's presented in Abhidharma texts and what I'm saying, No, I think what we will have to sort out here is

[10:32]

some relationship between the definitions I'm making of consciousness and self and awareness in contrast to consciousness to see how this relates to the factors of consciousness and awareness as presented in the Abhidharma. One main difference would be the emphasis I place on awareness as a parallel way of knowing to consciousness. Now, I've noticed how difficult it is just to define a dharma.

[11:54]

And I think it's pretty hard to bring any clarity of Dharma into our experience. unless our sense of continuity is located in the breath, body and phenomena. Now in recent years, I don't know, five or ten years, I've been emphasizing this bringing the sense of continuity out of thoughts into the breath and body and phenomena.

[13:16]

Now, and I've made clear, I think it's possible to do, and there's a way to do it. Now, if we're really going to proceed in these Arbidharma studies... I think you have to be able to do this. If you can't do it, you're just going to think about these categories. You can only have a kind of flimsy intellectual idea of a Dharma... If your sense of moment-by-moment continuity keeps being in your thoughts.

[14:20]

Now, this is a whole system. The Abhidharma is a kind of system. An attempt to make the practice accessible as a craft and not just through some overwhelming enlightening experience. So it's not in the realm of religious heroes and geniuses or lifetimes of practice. And because, you know, usually, for instance, the traditional Tibetan view is it simply takes many lifetimes to realize yourself.

[15:42]

And Zen practice and some other Mahayana schools emphasize single lifetime realization. Lifetime in a single lifetime. Realization in a single lifetime. What does realization mean? Overall, it means freedom from mental suffering. And a feeling of an engagement with others that makes possible their freedom from mental suffering. Und ein involviert sein mit anderen, das es ermöglicht, dass auch diese anderen befreit sind von mentalen Leiden.

[16:54]

Man könnte sagen, dass es eine Art ist, sich um sich gegenseitig zu kümmern. Now let's go back to this idea. If this Helen, this chimpanzee and this woman both could see, but the seeing didn't make any difference unless they could make sense of it consciously. And I think we can take that as a fact. Okay. So let us assume then that we are both blind-sighted and consciousness-sighted.

[17:58]

Okay, then let's assume that we are sighted and conscious. Short-sighted? Yeah, you say the word sighted, you know. It's like short-sighted, you're blind-sighted. Sighted means you can see. A sighted person means a person who can see. Yeah, so a blind-sighted person visually can function in the world, but can't make conscious sense of what they're seeing. When you alter your relationship, when you say, are going through the world with a feeling of awareness instead of consciousness, what are you doing? Now, I've been emphasized that consciousness has structure and functions. Okay. Our consciousness usually, and you can kind of take an inventory of it, is the territory of self-referential thinking.

[19:51]

Okay, so one of the things you're trying to do is notice how often your thinking is self-referential. Okay, now I'm just trying to kind of trick out some territory here. So Sophia's watching the news about Israel and Palestine. And she has very little self-referential thinking, probably, because she doesn't know what it's all about. But she's probably trying to make sense of it, both as information. And she probably has some self-referential thinking, like, this person has a nice face, or I would like that, I don't know, something about it.

[21:11]

Now, can you participate in your own Noticing self-referential thinking, for example. Can you participate at the moment of naming something? Okay, now, I asked somebody to present the five dimers. Maybe I should say something about it right now, and then you're off the hook. The five dharmas assume that there's appearance. The four marks usually start with birth. And Mikhail, thank you for presenting the four marks. I was brave of you to just get up and do it.

[22:22]

Okay. So it usually starts with birth and there's some reason for that, but it could be appearance. Again, when you're looking at these teachings, Again, it's like you're swimming in this underground water, sometimes in a cave, sometimes in a lake, sometimes in an ocean. Sometimes the water is blue, sometimes green, sometimes red. You can experience this and get to know this territory But you have no idea what it looks like from the outside.

[23:25]

Strictly speaking, you can have no conceptual view of it because you're inside of consciousness. How can you see it from the outside? So be suspicious if anybody describes consciousness from the outside. Any system that does that. Because you're always inside consciousness. You're only inside the knowing. How can knowing know what it's knowing? I mean, know, you know, et cetera. Yeah. Now, Dogen has a radical statement. Which is not recognized for how radical it is, within Buddhism as well.

[24:37]

He says a fish swims, as far as a fish swims, it never reaches the end of the ocean. Ein Fisch schwimmt und soweit ein Fisch auch schwimmt, er gelangt nicht an das Ende des Ozeans. Und ein fliegender Vogel erreicht niemals das Ende des Himmels. Wir sind nicht Fische und wir sind auch keine Vögel. Und es gibt ein paar Fische, die kleine Distanzen fliegen können. They used to land on the boat when I used to be in the merchant marine. And there's birds that fly short distances into the ocean to catch fish. But the fish can't explore the sky and the bird can't explore the ocean. Even those that overlap.

[25:56]

We are not fish. And we're not birds. But we're sort of some human creature. Wir sind so etwas wie eine menschliche Kreatur. So Dogen means we human creatures can't reach the end of consciousness no matter how far we swim, fly, think. Und Dogen sagte, wir menschliche Wesen können das Ende des Bewusstseins nicht erreichen, egal wie weit wir schwimmen, fliegen oder denken. But just as birds can't explore... the oceans and vice versa. There may be realms of knowing right next to us that we cannot enter.

[26:58]

So we're not knowing the whole of the world. We're only knowing what we can know in consciousness. We can only know that with our consciousness. We can only know within consciousness or mind as a realm of knowing and noticing, And we can only know within that realm. Okay. So when you have a specific teaching like the four marks, or the five skandhas, don't try to map them on each other.

[28:04]

Don't try to connect them philosophically. When you see the Abhidharma over-systematized, So it functions on an intellectual level, philosophical level. You can't practice it really. They say in the different lists, this is the word for consciousness or this is the word for something. And then they say it's the same meaning in every list. It's not the same meaning in every list. You have to start swimming into the list. And as I said just yesterday, these lists were not just mnemonic devices.

[29:05]

They were ways to hold the teaching in front of yourself and realize it. Okay. So the five dharmas starts with appearance. And then naming. And you will probably notice that appearance and naming occur very rapidly. And naming is both a way to stop thinking and a way to start discrimination. So a basic practice in Theravadin Buddhism is you name. And I suggest you practice this. Whatever you say, you name. Was immer ihr seht, bezeichnet ihr.

[30:52]

As you see it. Im Moment des Sehens. You're not just interrupting discrimination. You're also stopping training the habit of consciousness, the habit of noticing. The habit of consciousness. The habit of noticing. Okay, so the third dharma is discrimination. No. So normally the five dharmas are, okay, appearance, naming discrimination right knowledge or wisdom and suchness suchness is prajna is emptiness, form and emptiness manifest and unmanifest suchness

[32:31]

So here's a tiny little list that gets you right into full enlightenment. I can publish one of these books, self-help book, five easy steps to enlightenment. But no one's going, the cover might sell, but the contents would probably not. Because you've got to swim into this. Okay, so I would suggest one month of naming. You can change your life. Leaf, wind, floor, just get in the habit of doing that. And you let yourself, you think about things too if necessary, but your initial mind is naming.

[33:42]

Now, another way to practice this in the laboratory is your zazen. When you hear a sound, bird, airplane, whatever, you work with sound, it's easiest. Wenn ihr ein Geräusch hört, Vogel, Flugzeug oder was auch immer, und dabei ist das Hören mit Geräuschen das Einfachste. You'll see that almost instantly you know it's a bird that's making this noise. Dass man fast augenblicklich weiß, dass das ein Vogel war, der das Geräusch gemacht hat. That's called naming. Das heißt Namen geben. Almost instantly you know it's an airplane. And Dignaga says, you only know things as they are when you can notice without concepts.

[34:48]

I guarantee you, you'll find yourself not only free of mental suffering. For the most part, you'll find yourself alive in another way. And since the habit of naming is so fast, you've got to develop the habit to take the name off. That's why you have to get used to the habit of erasing the names. So in Crestone, for example, we have no civilization except planes on the way to New York and Los Angeles. You notice it, you notice it's an airplane, see if you can peel off the name.

[36:17]

As if the name was one of those labels in stores and you could peel it off. So you get skillful at taking the name off the airplane. Or as I sometimes say, the concept of the airplane is like a sweater. Take the sweater off the airplane. So you're trying to develop a skill when naming and appearance happen virtually instantaneously. You start going backwards, taking the concept of the name off appearance. Also entwickelt die Fähigkeit, weil Auftauchen und Namen geben so schnell aufeinander folgen, die Namen von dieser Erscheinung wieder, die Konzepte dieser Erscheinung wieder wegzunehmen.

[37:38]

Now, in some corner of your mind, there's still the sweater, the airplane sweater is thrown off in that corner, you know. But most of your attention and your feeling is with just the sound, independent of name or concept. If you want to understand the Abhidharma, you have to practice the Abhidharma. Wenn du das Abhidharma verstehen möchtest, musst du es praktizieren. If you want to practice the Abhidharma, you have to get skillful with these little things. Wenn du das Abhidharma praktizieren möchtest, musst du geschickt werden in diesen kleinen Kalten.

[38:42]

Both naming everything to stop thinking. Beides. Einerseits Namen zu geben, um das Denken anzuhalten. But also taking the name and the concept off the sense impression. In a sense, you have to undress the Vijnanas. And, yeah. Now, maybe we can make sense of Dogen's statement. Jetzt vielleicht könnt ihr Dogens Aussage verstehen. Continuous practice which actualizes itself. Unablässige Praxis die sich selbst verwirklicht.

[39:46]

Continuous practice which actualizes itself. Unablässige Praxis, die sich selbst verwirklicht. Is your practice, your actual practice, just now? Ist deine eigentliche Praxis in diesem Moment? Okay, now it sounds good. Klingt gut. Continuous practice, what's that? Unablässige Praxis, was ist denn das? That we have to know. Das müssen wir wissen. Which actualizes itself? What's that? Is your continuous practice just now? And then Dogen says, because we can ask, what is this now? Is it the now of be here now? No, Dogen says the now of continuous practice is not originally possessed by the self.

[40:53]

The now of this continuous practice is not originally possessed by the self. When Sophia is watching the news, the most part this news is her now at that moment and it's not originally possessed by the self the woman who could see but preferred to live as a blind person the now of her seeing needed to be possessed by the self.

[42:15]

Her eyes could see, but her brain couldn't process the seeing. as consciousness. So her now was not originally possessed by the self at least her visual now. But what would it mean then to have a now free of self-referential thinking? Have we enough problems? How are we going to sort this out? A lot of work's been done for us.

[43:46]

But it won't make sense unless we can practice. And it took hundreds of years, somewhere between 500 and 800 years to put this Abhidharma system together. Because they had to start from no starting point almost. So we have a starting point that they've given us. Now we have to learn to swim in it. Within categories that we can notice. And yet we also have to free ourselves from these categories. Okay, so there's appearance and then there's naming.

[44:52]

And then there's usually discrimination. Then if we can cut off that discrimination with right knowledge, appearance is no longer appearance, it's now suchness. That's the Abhidharma in a nutshell without boundaries. Thank you very much.

[45:27]

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