So I'm trying to speak about, I find myself trying to speak about Majamaka, what I would call Majamaka practice. And, you know, I really, I'm sorry, I really haven't digested how to teach this enough to feel I can be clear. Yeah, maybe for some of you it's interesting to... my trying to sort this out. But practicing something and teaching something are different. The phenomenology of it, the experiential of it, has to be turned into practice. has to be turned into a way to speak about it that doesn't violate the experiential truth.

[01:21]

And then that pedagogy, that way of speaking about it, has to be formed in a way that's accessible to the persons you're speaking to. As I pointed out to some people recently, you have to reverse that process when you practice a teaching. Now, in other words, when you see a teaching, you have to look at it and say, okay, this is a pedagogical version of an experiential practice. pedagogical version of an experiential

[02:48]

practice. So you want to get to the experience that must have led to the teaching. Then you can actually, once you come into the experience of it, you can look at the various forms the teaching takes and say, this one's closer to the truth. Yeah.

[04:04]

Yeah, okay. I don't want to launch into this somehow, but here we go. Yeah, I don't know if I can make these distinctions clear. All right, I often speak about... Let's see, I'll try to start here. Yeah, I often speak about that when you perceive something, the object of perception, the act of perception, points to the object and points to the mind. Okay, so let's look at that from the point of view of what we established, more or less, the last couple lectures.

[05:25]

The centrality of pace pulse in practice. Now, how did we get to there? We got to there from Samantabhadra. Because Samantabhadra is the bodhisattva par excellence of experience. of being immersed in experience at the pace of that experience. Yeah. So if you've lost a loved one, your pace is different. I remember I was in Austria once, in some little hotel.

[06:45]

Fairly one of the first few times I was in Austria. And I heard this band, marching band. And it was playing very slowly. And I realized somebody died. I didn't know, I'd never seen such a thing or heard such a thing before, but I said, someone's died. And pretty soon half the church and the coffin and the band all came through the streets. That's some kind of weight there. I think if I lift my arm... A weight. A weight, yeah. If I lift my arm... As I've said, that's body and it's mind and it's speech because I've asked my arm to move.

[08:07]

But it's also the earth itself, because I'm pulling away from gravity or giving in to gravity. And actually, although we don't really feel it, it's also the case... That we're pulling the mass of the earth as well as the earth is pulling the mass of the hand. And things happen to us where the earth or death or something pulls us. Or you get... You're informed that you have some illness that you may die from.

[09:12]

Yeah, your pace changes. And so there's this pace simply of... sitting in zazen, unable to move, unless you want to make a fool of yourself in front of everyone. Yes. So I think we can recognize there's a pace of each situation. Now, so I'm thinking about this mind, perception pointing at the mind and pointing at the object.

[10:30]

Okay, now, but let's think of it now as a double perception. I think it's a term in English we could say as a technical term. which means that for the adept practitioner, all perceptions are double perceptions, which means that you always perceive the object and the awareness. Okay, so let's just stay with that for a while. It's not something you do just occasionally. It's something that is the way you perceive.

[11:43]

All perceptions have a dual nature. Alle Wahrnehmungen haben ein duales Wesen. A double nature. Let's call it a double aspect. Two aspects. Doppelten Aspekt. Zwei Aspekte. Now, this assumes that you've stopped naming. Das setzt voraus, dass du das Benennen... Now, you can't really have this double perception if you have the habit of naming. Now, here's, you know, I think I make it too complicated here. So that's why I wanted another hour or two before I came down, so I could be less complicated.

[12:50]

But just let's take it that it's useful for your practice to develop the habit of stopping naming. Naming creates a conceptual world. And when you're in a linguistic consciousness, you don't have this double perception. And if you are in a linguistic consciousness, then you do not have this double perception. Why should we worry about this? Because the Madhyamikas had the idea of valid cognition. A valid what?

[13:58]

Cognition. Cognition, I even know that one. Yeah, okay, so... Okay, so, yeah, what's the idea of a valid cognition? Yeah, are we just scientists or philosophers trying to understand perception? We're philosophers just trying to analyze or understand perception. Okay, so the question, what the idea of valid cognition implies, is where do you want the mind to swim?

[15:01]

Do you want the mind to swim in the realm of valid cognitions? Or do you want the mind to swim in conceptual consciousness? And I think if you do zazen, You can see how pervasive, powerful, enclosing conceptual consciousnesses. It takes over the mind. The mind is not swimming anymore, it's imprisoned. Now, again, conceptual consciousness isn't bad.

[16:14]

It's just you don't want to be in prison all the time. Or you don't want to be stuck in the same house all the time. It's nice to go outdoors now and then. Okay. Yeah, someone said to me, conceptual consciousness is like an engine that's always running. There's nothing to do, but it just keeps running. You don't even need to think about these things anymore, but it keeps running. And how do you, you know, cut off the fuel line.

[17:20]

How do you drain the gasoline out of the darn engine? Well, you've got to somehow get outside of conceptual consciousness as your abiding place. Now, I don't know. I mean, I think this is quite simple, what I'm speaking about. But I may not speak about it simply, even if it is simple. And if it sounds too kind of obscure, just listen and don't think about it. Und wenn es zu dunkel klingt, dann hört einfach zu und denkt nicht darüber nach. But that's the best way to listen to lectures anyway, just listen and don't think about it.

[18:22]

Das ist sowieso die beste Art und Weise, Vorträgen zuzuhören, zuzuhören und nicht darüber nachzuhören. That's what Tsukuyoshi always used to say, don't think about what I say, just sit there. Das ist, was Suzuki Roshi zu sagen pflegte, denk nicht über das nach, was ich sehe, aber sitz da einfach mit. Yeah, now, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, but this is fun, fun for me, but I don't know, oh dear. Now, if you practice refraining from naming, yeah, and you can, again, I've often said, like, In Zazen you hear an airplane. Don't call it an airplane. Listen to it as music. Just find easy opportunities like that to not name it. And then get in the habit of not naming it. And sometimes, if you really get in the habit of not naming, the consciousness can sort of freeze.

[19:49]

It won't work. It's like you've taken the gasoline away. The gears are frozen. This is both a good state and a bad state. Okay. Okay, so... When I perceive form, I can take away all the aspects. Memory, associative consciousness, naming, etc. But there's one aspect I can't take away. What would that be? Duration itself. Time.

[20:50]

Okay, so if I look at that rock, or any one of you, actually everything's momentary, but I have an experience of duration. I can't take that duration away. because the momentariness of it can't be perceived. Anyway, these guys went through this kind of thinking, I think. I don't know whether they did or not, but I think they did. Okay. Just enjoy it, all right, please. I'm sorry, I'm embarrassed, but enjoy yourself.

[22:00]

Okay, so we take away everything, but time is left. Actually, we perceive the momentariness. But we can't actually notice we perceive the momentariness because noticing is tied to grasping. So we want to notice something and be able to notice it again and again and then we think we have perceived it. Now here's another example of adept practice. Now the skills of doing this are rooted in zazen and mindfulness. A lay person can practice this exactly as well as a monastic.

[23:15]

If you get the idea of it, the concept of it. Okay. Now, If we... Okay, so here's one practice is peeling the names off things. You know, you buy something at the shop and some labels you can't get off. You can get... cleansing fluid which would kill a baby at 60 feet. Kill a baby at 60 feet?

[24:18]

Well, I mean, some of these cleansing fluids you don't want in the house if you have a baby. And you can scrub, and it won't come off, you know. It's left with a stick here, right? And some of the labels peel off very nicely and leave no stickiness. I try to only go to shops which use non-sticky labels. Maybe people are afraid you're going to switch the price tags. Well, at first, when you try to pull the labels off, they're real sticky. So a lot of Zazen helps produce non-sticky labels. So one practice is peeling the names off things.

[25:37]

An eventually developing habit of not naming at all. Another practice is noticing and releasing. Now, we notice without... I've talked about noticing without thinking. But there's still a tendency to grasp. And that tends to freeze the mind. And if you practice noticing and releasing, something else happens.

[26:43]

Now, I can talk to you guys in doksan or individually or in tesho. And I can feel, you know, often your understanding is quite good, very active. And sometimes too active. And we don't see, and it takes a long time to see, that in this experience of duration, and we don't, when we look at the stone, we don't think we're perceiving duration. Because it's just taken for granted. And in like ways when we begin to take our practices successful to take away Almost all the aspects.

[27:55]

The time aspect is left. Because we take it for granted. And the time aspect is subtly my time. And a subtle sense of ego is still there. Subtle self-referencing is there. How this practice is going to benefit me? How can I accomplish this practice? Because I'm used to accomplishing things.

[29:08]

And what will I accomplish by practicing it? We don't even notice those ideas are there because they're completely taken for granted because we perceive time as our time. So I think you see the problem. And the early bajamakists saw this problem. And so how do you take away this duration as my time? Wie nimmt man also diese Dauer als meine Zeit fort? This is also part of this idea of valid cognition. Das ist auch Teil dieser Vorstellung von der gültigen Kognition. And valid cognition is meant to bring you into the pace of the world. And so that the mind swims in valid cognitions rather than swimming

[30:15]

in useful but limiting conceptualizations. Now, one time I was walking along 1960, two or three, And I smoked, but I didn't inhale. That's true. I mean, I wasn't Clinton. It was true. It was too harsh. It felt awful. But everyone smoked, so I would smoke and I'd blow it out my nose. And I, I've told you this story before, some of you, and I was walking along some railroad tracks that led to this warehouse where I worked.

[31:49]

And I threw this cigarette at walking home from lunch and I crunched up this cigarette package and threw it on the railroad track. And then I had a conflict of perceptions. My job in the warehouse was partly to clean it. I swept the aisles and things like that. create the whole situation, but it dawned on me that I thought God was going to clean this thing up.

[32:55]

A huge broom reaching out of the sky. Thank you, God. Anyway... I thought nature was going to absorb it or something. I don't know what I thought. After about two steps, I realized no one's going to clean that up. Well, I know no one's going to clean it up, so why did I throw it down? And I realized I thought there was a difference between outside and inside. Not such an important insight.

[33:57]

But because I was practicing, it changed my life. I went and picked up the cigarette package and saw through the conceptual world. And I looked through the term world. I had other experiences that kept confirming that in various ways. Yeah, and when you, someone said to me, these poems, north, south, east, west. Yeah. Isn't that the same as no before and no after? That's right.

[35:01]

Where is north, south, east, west? Where is outside and inside? Where in actual valid cognitions is before and after? And this whole world of outside, inside, before and after, etc., is all rises from naming. And we don't see the world of valid cognition. We see a conceptual world. And sort of through the conceptual world we have some experience of a world that touches us. Somehow through the terminology we have an experience of the world that touches us in a certain way.

[36:10]

As is sometimes the case when I don't have anything to say. I end up saying what I didn't have to say over a long period of time. And it's the time is over. And I'm just warming up. Yeah, I'm sorry. You get your money back. Andreas says, yes, he'll take it. Okay. Okay. The mind can become unfrozen.

[37:20]

This freezing is one state, one state of practice described in Zen tradition. And it sometimes breaks and you feel a tremendous fluidity. Everything is in relationship to something else. And nothing is anywhere. As I've said, the experience is something like we're all falling, but falling at the same speed. And maybe some things are falling at a slightly different speed. We can't notice them. And we're all here in the sashin. falling at the same speed.

[38:40]

And if we can kind of sense with this pace pulse, if we can kind of sense at this pace pulse, the speed at which we're all falling, we have an intimacy that's unequaled. A new way of perceiving. And the Madhyamakas approach this by saying, first of all, there's this double perception. And when you notice, like take the leaves, the leaves, the leaves falling.

[39:41]

Branches weaving. When we have the regular experience of a double perception, you perceive the awareness and the leaf at the same time. There's a subtle movement out of the house of consciousness, out of the ego and my time, into the time of the world, The momentariness of the world.

[40:52]

And you really feel... You have some feeling like you know the world as it is. It's a very deep valid cognition. And it's also called thusness. Mm-hmm. And when you begin to feel yourself in the pace pulse of the world and not the ego in the house of consciousness, you begin to be in the... Don't worry, it's okay. Your double perception opens you to the dual nature of everything. The dual nature is its momentariness and its interrelated patterns.

[41:59]

And this is outside the conceptual patterns of consciousness. It enters you into the world in a new way. And enters you into the world in a new way. Thank you, Samantabhadra. Thank you, Samantabhadra.

[42:39]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_73.91