disappear into emptiness. Okay? So, now what does that mean? It means, for instance, you would not make a distinction in Buddhism between id, ego, and superego. Because id, ego, and superego don't fold back together and don't disappear. It's like a Victorian warring family of father, mother, and child. So if you have id, ego, and superego... They're not clearly, you know, they don't merge back together and one doesn't represent the other. So we tend to make distinctions in Buddhism in which all the distinctions ultimately become empty. And so it's a different way of making distinctions. because all distinctions should inherently dissolve. And that's one reason the Ise shrine, every 20 years, is torn apart. The basic ceremony in Japan is to take a stick of grass, fold it together, make something of the grass, and then burn it.

[01:05]

You use the thing itself to make a form, and then you have the form disappear. And the Ise shrine is built, tied together without nails, every 20 years. Then it's taken completely apart and rebuilt as a kind of symbol that everything appears and disappears. Okay, I want to leave you with something Have I left you with enough? So if you make divisions in that way, it's understood in Buddhism that it helps you think because these thinking each resonates with the other and still disappears out of the realm of distinction into the realm of non-distinction.

[02:16]

Two points I would like to make. As I started to say earlier, each of you got here by some sort of vehicle or some means to get here. That's a causal connection in the world. But if I close my eyes and I open and I look at you, how did you get here? You got here because my mind is a condition that allows you to appear in my mind. That's in fact the case. If my mind wasn't here, if I wasn't here, you don't appear. no matter how many automobiles you have. So there is this causal connection, an exterior causal connection, but there's an interior causal connection that when I look at you, you appear. When I look at this colon, you appear.

[03:32]

When I look at this colon, this colon disappears. I'm sorry. And neither colon is the same. There's no oneness in colon. Although we might have the, is there an E in column? We could almost spell column. We could spell it. Anyway, spell one. Now, it's important in Zen practice to get in the habit of seeing your own mind. As I often say, it makes me happy because I rather like my mind. I'm used to it. So every place I look, I see my own mind. It makes me happy. And each of you appears miraculously in my mind. Now, am I seeing you? What is your name? Andre. Am I seeing Andre? Well, I'm seeing my mind see Andre. And if I practice with my senses, the word vijnana, which I started to mention, the word vijnana means to know things through their separateness together.

[04:40]

So if I practice with my senses, I can smell some quality of moods and emotions. That's in some ways how I started to practice. I noticed in high school I could smell people's moods. And I was so startled by that. Culture didn't tell me that something. I began to realize a lot's going on outside of what our culture points to. but I can see you, I can hear you. If you look at a tree and you see the leaves, as soon as you bring sound and the leaf together, you can see the leaf more precisely. There's an underlying synergy in the senses. But in any case, I'm seeing my senses. As I said, if I hear a sulfur-crested cockatoo, whatever my ears are hearing... is not what other silver-crested cockatoos hear.

[05:45]

They're hearing something else. In fact, if you analyze the sound of birds, they're like box fumes. They have a real complexity, but so compressed, our ears can't hear it. So when I hear the bird, I'm hearing my capacity of hearing to hear the bird, right? That's obvious. But we don't remember that. So if I'm looking at Andre, Andre? A-N-D-R-E? If I look at Andre, I know she's out there. but I'm seeing what my mind allows me to see of it. Now, the more I know, say I'm a little depressed and I see Andre is rather gray. I know she's not gray. I know it's within my participatory power to make it brighter, to make it clearer. So, and a particular, there's a particular non-gray, when I look at Andre, there's a particular quality to my mind that's different than when I look at Colin.

[06:53]

So a different mind has arisen. It's not the same mind. When I look at Colin, the mind that arises is a Colin Richard mind. And it's not just Richard. It's not just Colin. It's something we've done together. And in addition, Colin is looking at me and in fact not seeing me, but seeing his own mind seeing me. And so there's a kind of vibratory area here of these fields of mind touching each other. And in fact, we have a whole lot of them in this room. I don't know how many people are here, but let's say there's 30-something or so people. There's a lot of this going on here, but it's outside the realm which our coarse consciousness can perceive. But in fact, that would happen. So part of this is to know not only that I'm seeing my mind, and here we come to not knowing is near it. but also to factor in that more is going on than I can perceive, and to allow for that greater going on to also be present.

[07:58]

So there is this mind. Whenever I look at you, what's your name, Diane? If I look at Diana, a Diana mind arises and has a red teeth, kind of red nimbus aura. And what is your name? Janet. When I look at Janet, another kind of mind. And when I allow the particularity of each mind, Andre and Janet, and Diana's mind, there's a particularity. that I can feel more clearly than I can remember your name there's a particularity of that arising that's different in each case and extremely nourishing because I'm now being nourished it's not a generalization that you're out there I'm being nourished by the particularity of this field of mind and this field of mind and this field of mind and they're nourished in the immediate situation and that connectedness is nourished

[09:07]

and there's a kind of attunement. Am I making sense? No. We don't notice this because our culture hasn't pointed it out. Now I'm showing you a yoga culture which says, notice this. If you start noticing that whenever you look at somebody, you're seeing your own mind, you will start feeling differently and relating to people differently. So I'm saying you're noticing your own mind, you're already connected. There's various ways we're now beginning to establish a different kind of world that we're in, through using these phrases, like getting the hot water and cold water straight, using these phrases to contradict delusionary ideas we have. And this is a process called establishing an accurately assuming consciousness. Establishing a consciousness that's present before perceptions and conceptions arise that is accurate about how things exist. or accurate from a Buddhist point of view at least.

[10:10]

Okay, so that's one of the two things I wanted to say. And there's a particular point to that. I mean, at least, in other words, there's a great precision in that. When the Colin Richard mind arises, it's very momentary. It can't be grasped, but it's more real than anything else. So sometimes we call it emptiness. It's non-graphical. It's not permanent, but it's actually what's happening. And it's very precise and essentially timeless. And when I shift from Colin to Colin to Diana, I'm shifting to something very unique and precise. And you're a different Diana right now than you were a moment ago. And Colin keeps telling me, Colin, how are you doing? I'm not the same Colin I. Can I say hello? Hello? So that's one thing I wanted to say. The other is I've renamed us, not Richard or Diana or something, I've renamed us with our essential quality, this innermost request or way-seeking mind.

[11:20]

Now I'd like to rename the world. And I'm going to rename the world If we call it this three, something out there, right? That doesn't help us much. Let's rename it, call it, here I'm going to use a Buddhist term. Generally, I try not to use any Buddhist term. Tathagatagarbha. And Tathagatagarbha means that which comes and goes. It also means that which appears and disappears. It also means simultaneously womb and embryo. So it means the essential quality of this situation is that it's fertile, it's both a womb and an embryo, and it has movement in it. And that movement is both a movement toward and back, which is basically compassion and wisdom, and a movement of appearing and disappearing, which is form and empty.

[12:24]

Now the more you bring your body into the world in that sense that everything is appearing and disappearing as mind and it's also a movement of toward connectedness and a movement toward toward gathering everything in like gathering the whole ocean into a drop. That body begins to know the world as wisdom. So I've redefined the world and I've redefined who you are because way-seeking mind is the mind that allows you to act in the world, which is coming and going, appearing and disappearing, and both first. And Tathagata also happens to be a name for the Buddha. It's the biggest name for the Buddha. And Tathagatagarbha also happens to be, also means Buddha nature.

[13:31]

So you're entering into the world, opening yourself to the possibility of Buddha nature. And what we've done is simply say, let's redefine this as a function rather than as a thing. And we're trying to choose a particular kind of function. So, sure, go ahead. You can speak slowly, but... I'm not there. Yeah, I heard. Yeah, yes. If you have... Yeah. Yeah. Something like that, yeah. So let's come back to that after lunch. Okay? No, because that's a good thing. All right. You're not coming back? No, I'm not coming back. Okay, I'm going to go on. Radio? Radio? Basically, then, let me say that all of us, each of you were once babies.

[14:54]

And I'm sure we had no problem with it. I mean, Colin was probably dear to the babies. That was Diane. But as you get to be adults, as you start growing up, we start thinking, I like it. But we tend to, everyone likes babies. What happened when we become adults? Well, basically, I would say we no longer see each person as an embodiment of the truth. When you see a baby, the whole multiverse conspired to make that baby possible. Everything that the world is, is necessary to produce one baby. And when we see a baby, we feel that. That baby is a miracle, an embodiment of the truth. But as it becomes more separate and defined and uses language, the child itself loses their feeling of connectedness. And we lose our ability to see that.

[15:58]

So practice is to begin to see people again. Each person, first of all, as an embodiment of the truth. And then secondarily, and secondly, as a particular person we might dislike. If you see them as embodiment of truth, then the separation or dislike you feel is rooted in a different soil, and you begin to feel differently about people. Okay, so let's have lunch, and we're supposed to come back. Because what you're talking about is the ultimate ability of us all to be creative. Because in that exchange of acknowledgement and recognising in each other is the creativity itself. And it's an artist. An artist creates. But it's only any good if somebody can come back and engage in that playing ground between the two creativities which we've reflected in close behind.

[17:00]

And we do that as readers. You know, everybody engages in a book in a different level, but nevertheless we're engaging in creativity, and we talk about human creativity. Okay. Thanks. You have to make... In the afternoon we can speak about the four elements and the distinction between inward and interior consciousness. give you as much as possible an experiential feel for these categories and definitions. If you don't have a feel for it, it doesn't mean much. And one of the emphasis of Yogacara or Chittamatra teachings is that it's that is away from generalizations and abstractions. And they're only useful insofar as you can actually experience.

[18:07]

And I think one of the commitments to real study is to commit yourself to only study that which you can experience and practice. And let your study evolve as your practice evolves. Now I'd like to start out with a little bit of discussion or comments or questions. And I like hearing your voices. So if some of you haven't spoken, you can say something that's just part of our shared atmosphere. When you talk about practice, isn't the only practice sort of living? Or is it something special that you've got to do in order to appreciate that living more fully? It's actually more the latter.

[19:40]

We're in a culture which assumes there's something outside of the system. And you can have grace, or there's a natural way to be. We discussed this yesterday. There's no real idea about natural. I mean, is my haircut natural? You know, let my hair grow and it becomes matted, is that natural? Or is your haircut natural? I mean, what's natural? It's all a choice. Even if I let my hair grow and never touch it, it's still a style, a sadhu style. Yeah. But there's a quality. Zen tries to practice, start practice with things we already know, like attention.

[20:46]

Now, but if you bring attention to attention, you change attention. And there's some value in bringing attention to attention. So you're making a choice. Where does the choice come from? Well, that's another question. Let's not try to get into that one. So yes, something else? In other words, it's a relationship we develop. And for instance, in much of Asia, health is considered a function of intelligence. We tend to have an idea that everybody has a body, and they have a right to be healthy, and the doctors treat everybody equally. But in Asia, there's more of a feeling, if you know this brew and you know this herb to take and you know how to take care of your diet, you're much more likely to be healthy. So it's obvious that they're both true. There's a way in which we should make medicine available to everyone.

[21:49]

That's also a factor. If you're intelligent enough to take care of yourself and know exactly what to eat and when to eat, what to eat on Tuesday, etc., you're going to be healthy. It's interesting, you know, we have a culture based on rights, R-I-G-H-T-S, and in some sense you could say an Asian culture has a culture based on rights, R-I-T-E-S, that it's really a matter of initiation. You don't have a right, does a palm tree have a right to grow here? No, not unless, you know. The soil is right and so forth. But things can be known by initiation. And so we're now trying to initiate each other into this way of looking at things. We don't have a right to this, but we're initiating. I like the way your feet are doing something.

[22:59]

I knew somebody once in a session, it was so painful, that seven days of sitting. It's pretty soon they had pillows under each wrist. It's like a big production of energy, however, within the pillows you have there. Well, energy is particularly important in Japanese Buddhism. I think an emphasis on energy was added. It's one of the emphases, particularly Japanese. Basically what we're talking about is Chinese Buddhism. Tang, Song Dynasty Buddhism. But the way you practice with energy in Zen practice is you... bring your energy.

[24:04]

This is the chakra, heart area, the solar plexus. An area where caring and feeling, where you physically sense caring and feeling. And the face and the senses in this area is where we feel our thinking. And this is where you feel your energy. Where you can feel your energy. You have to locate it somewhere. And the chakras are about where you can locate energy or locate a sense of identity. I mean, it's hard to do here your shoulder, here your elbow, but you can do it here and here. So, is this making sense? Now, one of the things that Buddhism is saying is, in effect, design a world that helps you practice. And When the Japanese and the Chinese until chairs were introduced through Buddhist culture, everyone sat on the floor because sitting on the floor requires the culture to do meditation.

[25:10]

So this posture you're in, called Seiza, is an ancient Chinese posture related to the Tandem, this area of energy. And as I said recently, the reason Chinese and Japanese people don't put handles on their cups is not because they didn't think of it. It's because they want you to do things with two hands. And one of the first things I remember Tsukiyoshi saying, somebody asked him, what do you notice about being in America? Like people ask me, what do I notice about being in Australia? The first thing that made me really aware I was in Australia was when this hawk went overhead that was totally white. It turned out to be a sulfur-crested cockatoo. And it was noisier than any bird I'd ever heard in my own life. Ah! Wanted you to play with them.

[26:14]

They're very touchable. Yeah, well, he was really tired. And then there's the liar bird who imitates our little bit of chainsaw. Anyway. So see, she said that everyone here does things with one hand. And, you know, if I pass you something, I hand it to you like this. But when you put no handles on something... And also you have a hot liquid and you have to pick it up by the rim and the whole thing here. Hold it. And it requires two hands. And two hands change your energy. So if I pass this to you with two hands, I'm like turning a light that's in my body here to you. And what am I passing to you? I'm passing myself well at the bell. And this is something you can also practice when you're having lunch. Somebody says, pass me the salt.

[27:15]

And you can hear it. They want me to pass myself. And I'll use the salt as a vehicle. And you can pick up the salt and hand it to them in a way that brings your attentiveness to that person. So even though I'd have to use one hand, still the other hand is involved. So here she said, you want to watch a calligrapher watch what he does with his left hand. Because while he's doing polygraphy, his left hand is also participating. You mentioned that at the weekend. Have you finished? Yeah. No, I've never... But go ahead. Last weekend, and I wondered about that in relation to... I have a granddaughter who has an extricative material on one chromosome, quite unusual, and it's been watch and see and trial and error in terms of her upbringing. She's now four. But one of the things that she does is use both hands.

[28:16]

And if her... We've been told that she should learn to become one-handed... And it's all question mark, because my training in Feldenkrais would be great to be ambidextrous, of course, in terms of the whole cell, whatever. So I wonder about this, because she does exactly that. If she does something with one hand, the other hand is already participating. So I've wondered from my own background, but now when you say that, I'm also wondering. Well, genetically, I think we're capable of using two hands or one hand. Mm-hmm. If you're capable of only using two or only using one, then it's probably some kind of problem area. But still, if she likes to use two hands, it's great. So anyway, I'm just trying to find small differences that point to the differences between these cultures, because I think it's important to see the difference. For example, we count like this, right? Now they count in Japan?

[29:17]

Yes. They say, one, two, three, four, five. They bring it in to the body. They're tools. You're playing toward your body when you play, because your skill increases toward the body. And you push it away in the West. These are small differences, but they really are subtle differences in orientation. But they're accessible to us. You can count this way. Or you can use two hands to pass them. We reinforce these views with things like it's dangerous or something. Then it may be more dangerous, but still. Yeah, I mean, parliament and opposition. So we're lucky to have this choice of these two civilizations, which have developed slightly different ways, but significantly different ways of discovering something.

[30:30]

What did you say? I didn't really go ahead. I'm really more interested in that. The broad sense of the word being maybe relevant to the word continuity, which brings the relative and the absolute, which is where our discussion tended to go at this morning, into some kind of context. Maybe the energy is the key. I'm using separateness, connectedness, and continuity here, not in the general sense of continuity, but as it's a function of self. As it's a function of self, continuity for us is primarily Western to our story. Our story. You say, I'm a kind of person who can get through this. That's relying on your story of who you are. And the story of Jesus, the story... I mean, story is embedded in our culture. It's not so embedded in Asian culture. That's one reason psyche, which is basically story, about your story and evolving your story, is... There's no real psyche at this point.

[31:46]

There are functions that are overlapping. We're all human beings. But we think, discover ourselves differently. The whole region, because the creation culture, there's a lot of story coming. Yeah. And all you know, with this script, went from generation to generation to generation. Because there was no break of law. No break. Maybe your story has got a Western connotation. Well, I don't mean, again, the general sense of story. I mean that who you are is the story of who you are. How you grew up, what you did, your experiences, etc. But this also exists in Asia, of course. But I'm convinced the emphasis... Well, just let's say I do Dotsan.

[32:47]

Dotsan is the interview. If I do Dotsan with a Chinese person or a Japanese person who was born in China or Japan, if I talk to a Western person, they talk to me about... how they feel, what's in it that hurts, or this is good or bad, or they think this or they think that, so a lot of thinking. And if I talk to an Asian person, they tend to tell me about their experiences in meditation themselves through images. And they tend to emphasize intention and willpower and what they intended a lot. They're much more concerned with what they intended and whether it happened than their feelings and moods and so forth like that. And it's actually quite a significant difference, and the difference becomes more pronounced when they meditate. Isn't the idea of intention continuity? Yes, intention is an idea of continuity, sure.

[33:48]

But is that intention based on what kind of person I am, or is that intention based on the world itself? It's already continuous, something like that. Yeah, I come from a tradition. My dad, I mean, my Tibetan buddies are primarily South Chinese. I believed quite directly to them. But I've never had any exposure to them. So I'm interested because we have a very similar teaching. Well, it's exactly the same, just this thing that works, which, you know. If you see the connectedness and everything instead of separateness and everything, you see the links between the teachings from all the different traditions. They're all telling you pretty much the same thing, but in different styles or flavours. And the continuity relates. in what I've been taught in my tradition, is the energy connecting the ultimate.

[34:58]

And that's where I'm interested to hear what you say. But I'm now speaking about these as the three functions of the Western self. Yes, right. But I'm not speaking about it as a Buddhist self. Yes, just three functions of mind, not even any type of self. Now, every culture has to somehow establish these three functions. There has to be an experience of continuity, there has to be an experience of some kind of connectedness, and there has to be an experience of separation. Now, if you want to practice with these three categories as functions, I would suggest, again, that you hold each one separately in view for a few days. Notice how you establish separation. Notice when you look at somebody, whether you think you're separated or connected. Notice, you know, in any way that the idea of separation comes up. And many of us have a feeling of almost a glass wall between us and the world and other people that we can't quite really feel connected.

[36:01]

And generally then spend some time noticing how we feel connected. And often for us it's in the realm of behavior, of politeness, or saying nice things, or saying thank you and stuff like that. But usually when we make an effort to be nice, it's based on that we're separated, so we have to be nice to establish a relationship. Now, there's another possibility of connectedness, which is, you see it very clearly in Chinese Taoism, is that we're attuned to each other, and you can become more aware of that attunement. And that's more at the level of energy. And so if I want to attune myself to the world, I have to shift my sense of identification out of my thinking mind. Because the thinking mind always, the word consciousness, which I use, S-C-I means to separate into parts.

[37:10]

Consciousness is that function of mind which separates things into this and that and so forth, here and over there. And when you think that way, you don't have much feeling of connectedness. Now, the experience that I think all of us have had probably is sunbathing. I don't know how much chance you're going to have of your sunbathing, but I guess it's very hot in the sun. But say you're on the beach and you're sunbathing. Pretty soon, you hear kids down at the beach, you hear seagulls, things are happening. You don't have a sense of time or distance. Do you know what I mean? Well, that's very much like a meditative feeling, a feeling of connectedness. But such a feeling of connectedness, you may lose a sense of time and end up quite sunburned. It's a nice feeling of this spatial feeling of the different sounds and so forth.

[38:18]

Well, that's a feeling of connectedness. You're feeling the field of mind. You're not discriminating. Seagull or children's voices, they all kind of merge. Now, let's go back to... In continuity from the whistle... point of view is primarily through our story and by story you mean what we're I'm just trying to tease it out what we're saying in the moment rather than the kind of concept of like we're born with a certain story like the big stream to live through which of those um I think we establish on if you you're going to have to explore this for yourself how you establish continuity But when you get up from here and walk to that door and then get in your car, if the continuity is, oh, this is me driving home, this is my car, this is, you know, et cetera, that's all a kind of story of who you are.

[39:28]

You own the car and you're going home. And, you know, if you ask me to define this too specifically, it can't be done because all you human beings are the same and the words sound the same. Yeah, that's your story. That's your story, yeah. That's the distinction. Yeah, right. Now, Now, everybody has a story. But when you look at Buddhism and say there's no emphasis on story, and the Buddhists are very quick to say, stop thinking, cut off your story, cut off your emotions, etc., or it sounds like they're saying that, that's a different world than we're living in as psychotherapists.

[40:33]

So we have to be cautious so we don't use Buddhism to deny our story. Because as Westerners, we need to mature our story. We need to know who we are through who we've been. And I see people, when Zen is poorly taught, damaging themselves with the idea of cutting off thoughts, emotions aren't important, and so forth. And it's nonsense. It's just not true. Did I get it right when I thought you equated consciousness with separateness? That is, I got the feeling that when you talked... Yes, I'm equating consciousness with separateness. I would only think of that as one part of consciousness, mainly the analytical part of it, where you divide things back into separate entities.

[41:36]

A little bit of affection is a kind of consciousness which allows you to see things whole. Yes, but then I would call that awareness. I'm using a technical term. So you can define consciousness as loaded awareness or structured awareness. And you can define awareness as unstructured consciousness. We do not have wisdom. In Tibetan they have a great way of saying it. They say stem is the ordinary heart, which is what you just described. And Rigpa is the pervading, all-pervading consciousness that embraces everything. And they categorize it that way. In English. Not only do we not have words for it, our own language has become simpler and simpler. For example, common sense now means a sense common to others. Right?

[42:39]

What did it originally mean? A sense common to the senses. But we've lost the ability to know a sense common to the senses, so the word shifted into this sense common to others. Now that's a very big shift in culture where you see your own sense to a sense common to others. That's a very different sense of who you are. That's an enormous loss, isn't it, on our part? Because if we had a thing that was conscious to all other senses, the integration would be overwhelming. Where we've evolved to. Well, I think... Believe it or not, I partly blame democracy. And you can blame, you know, commercial democracy. Because, I mean, I'm certainly for democracy, don't get me wrong. But democracy asks all of us to share the same mind so we can create a common culture.

[43:43]

And that means a typified mind if we all share it. It's the expense of an awful lot of attention. It's the expense of a lot of subtlety. You know it comes well. Yes, it is. It's uncommon. That's a good example. Do you want to explain the difference? Well, it's no longer common. Succinctly put. If you don't have the words to explain your fear, It was very difficult to grasp. When I became aware of these, for example, I think in India, for what I was told, there were nine words of something for nine words for consciousness. It's a huge difference in vocabulary to what's available today.

[44:47]

And it struck me that perhaps, especially in the English-speaking languages, where even English as the vocabulary is shrinking, you know, after you've hit your foot with it, that this could make it much more difficult to grasp unusual concepts. Yes, no, I agree. And it struck me that perhaps in some of the Asian languages, we use pictograms. They're called pictograms. You don't have to work. There's rehab. But perhaps that prevents the person from getting into the point where you have to divide everything into bits. You don't name all the bits. It is there totally. Can you want a picture? It is thinking in images, perhaps, rather than in words. I don't know whether people can relate to it, but at the point I recognized it, it was helpful for me to realize how difficult sometimes these subtle concepts are to explain. Well, let's continue with what you brought up. If MacArthur tried to simplify Japanese

[45:57]

And they did simplify it to 2,000 characters for newspaper reading, although a scholar might know 30,000. Shakespeare had a vocabulary of 30,000 words or 36,000 or 40,000 words, something like that. And what's your vocabulary? I mean, a vocabulary is the ability to make and hold distinctions. If you can't make and hold distinctions, you... Forget the words real rapidly. Now, the woman who's been my partner the last 10 years, Ulrika Greenway, is a scientist, and she went back to teaching recently, science. She was out for eight years practicing doing things. And so she had an eight-year absence. She's a molecular biologist. And she says the kids now cannot hold an idea in their mind.

[47:01]

She's basically teaching college science. Hold an idea in their mind and examine it. Eight years ago they could. She could present something to them. They could hold it in their mind and look at it. And she's convinced as tellers. She's convinced as tellers. They can't hold a concept and examine it. So they can't do science the same way. It's a simplification of our culture. Now, the Japanese resisted MacArthur and wanted an alphabet because basically they intuitively and some, I think, consciously understood that it will simplify their brain. It will simplify their mind because the complexity of language develops the mind. And using pictographs, characters, and speaking develops both sides of the brain. So if a Japanese person or a Chinese person has a car accident, they may lose their speaking, but they won't lose their writing.

[48:04]

If we have an accident, we usually lose both, because it's the same part of the brain. So to make your language complex and not simplify it is to make the human beings more complex. But our whole effort is to make everything simpler and easier for everybody, which is very egalitarian, but we're lowering the denominator of our society. Yeah. One of the outcomes that I've noticed on practice is that the mind can't grasp more and more complex things. Wavering. Yeah. And could there be an opposite movement in Ulrich's absence from teaching in which she had been practicing for those eight years and becoming more still and more complex and more able to grasp? Well, she was the... She was the youngest PhD in Germany in the sciences and B-star scientist as a kid. And she was extremely good. In fact, she thinks she's lost something. Your point is good.

[49:08]

But I think she's quite sure that it's the kid, not her. She's convinced she used to be better at playing. Now, her acres of advertising. Veldenkrantz was on about exactly what you said, Nosho Veldenkrantz. I mean, it was by learning more about the body and being able to develop more distinctions about the movement and the possibility of the body that the brain would increase. He often said, I'm not on about fixing sick bodies, I'm on about expanding consciousness. Yeah. So that's what I'm trying to do here in this short time, is make some distinctions. which allow us to think with more accuracy, feel with more accuracy, how we're existing here. And partly I'm just throwing this out as an experiment. You can do with it what you want, but I'm opening the possibilities to you through my own experience and study.

[50:12]

So when you look at a Japanese or Chinese character, right, Or just let's look at the syllabary. Na, for instance, Japanese has a phonetic syllabary, which is one of the differences between China and Japan, is that everyone can read the way they speak, which is not true in China, because everybody speaks differently and they have a common language. So it's one of the most big differences between the two cultures, is the simple thing of having a phonetic syllabary, like the Greeks had a phonetic alphabet. But when you make na, you make it like this, and it floats in space. It's integrated by the space. And when you learn to draw kanji or characters, you make a space and you draw in that space. The space holds it together. All Western numbers and letters are like two book fours. They all touch, you know, K. You don't have K floating out in space. And if you do, we have a hard time reading it.

[51:16]

We have to touch it together. Yeah. That's a quality of our mind. We want to see this. We don't join things in the space of the... Those are big differences. Big difference. And when you read that way and you see all these characters holding their own little space, and one character is made up of several characters, and taking different forms, simplified forms, etc., and they have several kinds of writing systems, you are making people more subtle. And in Japan, for instance, there's about 80 ways to say I. Because they define I, or who you are, according to your situation. I'm now a talking to you person. Or if I'm talking to my father, I'm a son person. I'm talking to my mother, I'm a son person in relationship to a woman.

[52:18]

I'm talking to you, I'm a friend person, etc. All those are different I's, and that gives you a different, you don't have such a solid idea of I. And we have a theological implication in everything. For instance, what do we say? We say, it reigns. Has anyone ever discovered this it? You know, my daughter comes in to me and she says, Dad, it's raining out. I say to her, It is? Would you go out and find that it? And she looks at me and she says, Dad, quit being so zen. But we always assume there's something doing these things. But actually, rain is raining. Rain's raining. We can't say there's an it doing it. But our language always implies a doer outside the system.

[53:21]

Yes, that's what I'm getting to in the afternoon, inward and interior consciousness. The language for that would have to be Sanskrit. My commitment is to do everything in English. And because this notion of God and the Creator being separate, it's even in our language, it's in our letters, it's all... The crucifix all just changed. It's the whole idea that somehow we are born separate from our original nature, which has caused the whole of our culture or everything that we have, all our suffering, where we do everything, everything.

[54:22]

Even it is raining. Can't even have that. Yeah. I think it's important for us to be critical of our own culture, but let's also appreciate our own culture. It's an extraordinary civilization that Europe, coming out of Greek culture, has developed. I mean, science is an extraordinary achievement. And as I said the other day, I think it comes back to the phonetic alphabet. that the Greeks developed in their demythologizing society and creating an external memory system through language which examines speculation on language. If you examine ideas over generations, you produce science, you produce philosophy. I mean, it's an incredible achievement, Western culture. And we also shouldn't idealize Asian culture. that this is somehow... Asia has plenty of problems. Boy, the first year I lived in Japan, I was pissed off a good part of the time. I come to love Japan and Asia, but there's infuriating things about it if you're used to another kind of freedom.

[55:28]

So what's interesting is how these cultures are going to come together. And we're the experimenters. No one's ever done this before. yeah i have a question you talk about demystification demystification well you were talking about reducing reduction yeah and external and at the same time isn't in a way that's what you're doing because if you're using clarification with distinction and you're using terminology or trying to define things then in a way um you're also demystifying the experience. And in a way, from someone's perspective, you could see that as reducing. I beg your pardon. No. No, no, it's all right. You have a point. No, you have a point.

[56:36]

And I have to be careful that, and I sometimes am embarrassed by how clear I try to be. But I'm trying to use clarity to get free of generalizations. I have a reason for asking that, because when you were talking about allowing everything to be as it is, I don't know how to say that, it's about the best I can do, and at the same time the image that came up for me was the eye of the storm, or I was thinking of Zen archery, and how does the arrow reside in what you're saying, you know, like the Have you ever seen a Zen archery contest? No, but I'd like to. So, yeah. The emphasis is so much on the process that they commonly drop the arrow.

[57:39]

I mean, they stand and they lift it up and they pull like this and they have the bow and they take one look and they concentrate and then the arrow falls. LAUGHTER They don't even release it, you know? But they get something to that, you know? Kind of amusing. I'm expecting more like pedagogues. You see something, and then you contradict yourself, and then you fix something else, and then you destroy it, and then you fix something else. And I do that story then. I'm just doing my thing, yeah. Well, I'm trying to make distinctions. I'm trying to also make clear that these distinctions arise from our experience and that making the distinctions, we can then, even though we name them, we can peel the names off of them and let them merge back into non-distinctions.

[58:54]

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. Could I make a point? Yeah, kind of. It's a little bit like being across a person with one particular video and you work with that thing and you learn techniques to work with that thing and you struggle with learning your techniques to work with that thing and then suddenly, one day, someone gives you a job to do and you're not scared of it anymore because you don't have to think of the technique anymore. You just do that thing. You don't have to think, now I'm going to apply this technique to it and now I'm going to apply that technique to it. But you can't do that until you've gone into the technique and learned them. So the idea of natural in Asia is closely related to discipline. That you are most natural when you're disciplined. A great tennis player is very natural, but it's through discipline. Yeah. Now there are certain rules of how you think about things. We don't have much time left. If we can end at ten minutes. But there are certain rules about how you think that If you... To understand things, we have to provide things in this part, right?

[60:01]

Mm-hmm. Now, the word visioniana, for instance... You're wrong. You're wrong. Let me say why. It's because there is no way to be free of views. There is... There's no way to be free of views unless you have a practice that frees you from views. But you need the understanding to bring the view to your views that free you from views. Right. Okay, yeah. When your mother leans over and looks in your cradle, she's establishing a way of looking at the world, which may be delusional, may be accurate.

[61:03]

So you have to have practice to free you from those views. I don't necessarily understand that practice intellectually. You could just do it and then not. No, you can't because you can't. Yes, you can. How did you do it? Because you can learn ways that you can learn techniques that you do. You don't have to always go by the intellect. There's other ways of learning. I agree. Well, that's what I was trying to say. All right. Okay. Okay. Okay. It works very well to trust a teacher or trust a teaching and just do it. It's the best way to learn.

[62:05]

You would not be able probably to teach yourself if that's the only way you learn. And by learning that way, and one of the problems with Japanese Zen is it's been learned that way for generations and then not further clarified in other levels of understanding and it slowly gets simpler and simpler. And also, we're in a Western culture and I think we have to be able to recreate Buddhism, not just practice it or understand it. And if we can't recreate it, we will not make it our own. So I think, particularly for Westerners, we have to understand the practice, but not understand it. For instance, in Zen, in Tibetan Buddhism, we have lan ren, lan ren. We have no, we don't give anybody any idea of where they're going. So we feel that each of you will discover, has the potential to discover, maybe something Buddhism has never discovered before.

[63:21]

I'm not telling you where you get to. I'm just telling you what way-seeking mind is and how to open yourself to that. Now, I am... I would say that what I'm doing right now is trying to present to you in an articulate way the first five years of my practice, 35, 40 years ago, because it's taken me 30 years to be clear about what I was doing. But I did it without understanding. I had some kind of intuitive feeling. Basically, I did it without understanding because I had faith in the practice. But Buddhism is profoundly analytical, as well as other things. But that's one part of it. So one of the rules is that when you divide things into parts, and as soon as you divide things into two, you have three.

[64:30]

You have combinations of two and one, two and et cetera. But when you divide something into parts, this part, say you divide this into this, right? The rule, kind of the rules are, is this has to also be that.

[64:50]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_86.45