of words that I hope disappear into your experience. Now, let me just give you a couple of typical Zen phrases. Maybe after what we've done this morning, this afternoon, they'll make some sense to you. If you just see them outside of context, they say, what is going on here? So one is a well-known saying, it's . There is a priceless jewel hidden within the pit of the clusters of being. Now, we just talked about the senses. And the clusters of being are the five skandhas, the visdhyanas, three functions of self, the various ways in which we experience being. which give us an experience.

[01:02]

There is a priceless jewel hidden within the pit of the clusters of B. When are you going to let the spiritual light shine which transcends the senses? Do you have a feeling for this in the list of what we just heard? Although you do not hear it, Do not hinder that which hears it. When are you going to let the spiritual light, the priceless jewel hidden within the clusters of being that transcends the sense? And as I said, this is called great function. And you can begin to let things happen. Now, there's another phrase. when you have the eye which settles heaven and earth that sounds like a good deal when you have the eye that settles heaven and earth and you are most thorough going so that not even a thread slips through then you may attain somewhat

[02:26]

Okay. So now when your mindfulness or your sustained attentiveness is so thorough going, and when that is accompanied by, as we spoke, the experience of nourishment and completeness, heaven and earth does feel settled. So when you have an I, It means your senses, your third eye, your third ear. When you have an eye that settles heaven and earth and you are most thorough going, so that not even a thread slips through, then you may attain someone. So that kind of mind, that kind of knowing which settles heaven and earth, allows the world to be a scripture.

[03:31]

Everything starts to teach. So that's just to give you, after what we did this morning and this afternoon, a way of looking into the somewhat peculiar Zen phrases and see that they're really talking about something very clear and precise. very clearly, precisely, and hidden in the pit of the clusters of being. And we begin to see this difference in the meaning of common sense, a sense common to the senses and a sense common to others, that the more you had a sense common to the senses, you have something closer to this pit in the cluster of being. And that sense of settling and nourishment and completeness at which you experience also allows a kind of light or brightness.

[04:36]

We see the mind when we look at things. Okay. Okay. Now, what I wanted to do today is to get to the point where we could make some sense of this distinction between inward and interior consciousness. Now, when you ask little kid, They baffle kids, you know. Sociologists and psychologists are always doing something with their time, their grants. They're lucky. You'd like a grant? No. What's consciousness for? You know, something like that.

[05:40]

One of the most common answers all kids give is to keep secrets. Because we have a sense that it's interior, that we can think things which other people don't know. We fool ourselves to the degree to which we actually can think things which other people don't know, but most people don't know they know what you're thinking, so you're sort of safe. But the consciousness that we, what we call interior, I'm making a distinction between inward and interior, so I'll stick with inward. What we call inner, or I call inward consciousness, is primarily in our culture developed through reading. And reading is, you know, we each read separately.

[06:44]

We can read at various times. And you have a great sense of privacy in reading. But still, reading actually is developing not an inner consciousness, but an inward consciousness that is outwardly confirmed. And if you check on your own, what you would call your inner consciousness, you're always concerned that it fits with other people, is shareable with other people. or is consistent with the world that is presented to us by our senses. But as we know, there's a great deal going on in between the senses and beyond the senses. Again, the cellular phone calls in this room. And so if you start to practice, and you practice, if you just simply practice the vijnanas, and you begin practicing each vijnana separately, you begin noticing visual, aural, information, and so forth, and proprioceptive, bodily information, that is not consistent with

[08:12]

the way the world is usually presented to you by our eye-dominated consciousness. Now, when you start even having sense, and if you take psychedelics, you notice that the wall seems curved. Actually, the wall is curved. It's just curved very slightly. So when you begin to work very directly with the senses, it can be rather psychedelic. Now, if you are like most people are, you have a threshold. Although your experience is inward, you have a threshold beyond which you won't allow your experience to go. And when it goes beyond a certain threshold of the shareable, you start creating a lot of business for psychotherapists. Because you call up your therapist and say, I'm beginning to feel kind of nervous. Maybe I'm going crazy. I'm beginning to have these thoughts.

[09:14]

Now, a fact of meditation is you have to be willing or have the courage or the stability through sitting and learning not to move and breaking the adhesive connection with thought and action, which happens when you sit still. You begin to have some confidence like that, because you begin to have experiences that you're not sure others have, and it doesn't work very well to share them. The other person says, well, I haven't had, and there's a kind of competition start. Do you have that? Well, I'm going to have that experience in my next meditation. So it's pretty hard to share these experiences. Plus, some are new to you. You don't know about sharing them. And some are simply not shareable. They're not in a category of the shareable. So the point I'm making is that most of what we know, think of as our personal inner consciousness, is actually always, I call, inward, because it's outwardly confirmed.

[10:26]

That make sense? OK. Now, I can't get into, in this amount of time, signless states of mind. But when I'm looking at our double colon, and there's no mirror between them, if I'm looking at colon and colon, I'm seeing them out there, as I've said. I'm also seeing my own mind seeing them. And the more I see my own mind seeing them, we can also call that a signless state of mind. Because if I'm not dealing with the... Now, samadhi is a signless state of mind.

[11:30]

It's a mind without... It's a mind concentrated on itself... and maybe also a mind in which there are no images or thoughts. So that's a kind of classic signless state of mind. But there's actually lots of signless states of mind. A background mind, which is present to what's happening, but in itself is not the medium of thinking. It's actually a signless state of mind. In other words, it functions as a signless state of mind, even though it may have images on it. So, signless states of mind is a rather extensive idea and practice, not just limited to samadhi, but to minds that function through their signlessness, like the ocean functions through water as well as it functions through waves. If we imagine the water as being the quality of signlessness, it can also have waves. So, waves function simultaneously as water and waves.

[12:33]

Okay. Now, Dung Shan tried to point this out with a phrase, which is, clearly she sees her face. She's looking in a mirror, this person, he or she. Clearly she sees her face. There is no other reality. But unavoidably, she mistakes the reflection for her head. Clearly she sees her faith. There is no other reality. But unavoidably, she mistakes the reflection for her head. This is much like you said. When I'm seeing, is there someone seeing? Or is just seeing a seeing without an observer? Now, let's take this analogy of a mirror.

[13:36]

metaphor of a mirror. You know, cats and dogs don't, as most of us know, cats and dogs generally don't relate to images in a mirror. Some do, to some extent, but generally they don't. It's not clear they know it themselves. Probably they don't. But of course, if we gave a dog a smell mirror, a dog might recognize him or herself, because Dogs primarily smell, so this visual thing in there, it doesn't smell, so what kind of dog is that? So, I mean, it's not a fair test. We'd have to give a dog a smell mirror. Interesting idea. You can get a grant to develop it. Okay. But chimpanzees clearly recognize themselves. And you can test it by, for instance, if you put a red dot on a chimpanzee's head, the chimpanzee will look in, if it wasn't there before, and he'll start examining the red dot.

[14:47]

So clearly he knows that red dot is on himself. But when we look in a mirror, we're doing something quite complex. There's a lot of cognitive mapping going on when you look in a mirror. So when this person clearly sees her face, there is no other reality. What she's doing is pretty complex. But she unavoidably mistakes the reflection for her head. So when I look at you guys, I close my eyes. I open my eyes. And I'm seeing you, but you're giving my mind an excuse to appear. An opportunity to... Thank you very much. An opportunity to appear. And each of you is a pleasure, you know, really, to look at. Because my mind feels different on each of you.

[15:49]

Now, when I look at you and I see... my mind seeing you this would be equivalent to looking in the mirror and not seeing the reflection as my head but seeing the reflection as a reflection or as seeing the glass so when i look at you and i've developed the habit of seeing my mind when i look at you i'm developing the habit that I see the capacity of my own mind to see, hear, smell, et cetera, my own mind in a large sense, I'm seeing that what I'm seeing is a reflection within the capacity of my own mind, and I may begin to feel the field of mind itself. So it's one thing to see double column without it.

[16:54]

Colin without a mirror but it's also I'm seeing my own I know that you're a reflection in a sense although I also know you're out there so one step is to or in here because what we really got here is a big inside it's a mistake to think about the big inside we're all in a big stomach or or tathagatagarbha, this womb embryo. So when I look out, and so one step is I begin to see you as the capacity of my own mind to see you. But also this and this, this will perish. And you will, I'm sorry to say, but probably unless an exception is made, you will perish. But momentarily, we're both existing.

[17:57]

In the big sense, we'll both perish, but even momentarily, we're only existing. But this karmic act actually is happening and leads to other things. So I see this karmic act, and I'm participating in this karmic act, and I have something to say about the content of this karmic act, how loaded it is with associations or how much it's essence of mind. But I can also, there's this field of mind that's created, we call it ayatana, this field of mind that appears. I can feel the field of mind. Japanese has a word, ma, which means in between. You begin to feel the in-betweenness of things. When you look at As I've said, when you look at this and quickly say it's a cup, you collapse the field of mind.

[18:59]

And the field of mind energizes you. But as soon as you collapse it into a concept, oh, that's a cup, and you've named it and thought about it, you've changed the energy of the situation. This looks like we have to put that down. Okay. So one step is I begin to see you as a reflection, not as if I'm looking in a mirror at my own head. I'm seeing the capacity. If I look in a mirror, I see the capacity of myself to see myself. I'm not seeing my head. When I start seeing the glass, I'm seeing the field of mind. This is already quite adept. I mean, in other words, we're talking about enough yogic experience that you can hold physically and mentally, this kind of perception, kind of seeing and knowing, without being distracted and turning into conceptual thought.

[20:08]

This is the eye that settles heaven and earth. Sorry to keep using them as an example, but you're all such good examples. But when I look at you, I'm not really seeing the mirror. And there's also other things going on in the mirror. The towel rack behind you if you're in a bathroom, things like that. And this has a lot to do with a koan where you hope for kutei, Japanese, holds up his finger all the time. Lots of things appear around that peak. And as we spoke the other day, this quality of while we're talking, we also hear

[21:24]

In the field of mind, the more you have a field of mind, you hear the birds or popular songs in the kitchen or something, and they feed in without disturbance into the conversation. That's more perceiving the field of mind. So we have the mistaking the reflection for a head. We have knowing it's a reflection and knowing the glass. But that's still not a signless state of mind. A signless state of mind, we could equate in this metaphor to the silver behind the mirror, which sees nothing. It's actually no longer silver. It's vaporized aluminum. But it's the silver ring behind the mirror which allows the reflection to be, which allows everything to appear. And that silvering, we could say, is equivalent to a signless state of mind. Now that silvering is what I would mean, if we stretch this metaphor, by interior consciousness.

[22:31]

Now there's no language for this. You can talk about the glass, but you can't talk about the silver. You understand? But in fact, when you look in a mirror, you're actually seeing the silvering. You're not even seeing the glass. You're seeing actually the whole relationship. But each is more hidden. The glass, if you first see it as the head, the reflection is somewhat hidden because our senses tell us this is a head. Then you have to make a little effort to notice that what you're really seeing is a reflection. And you have to make a little more effort to notice that what you're really seeing is the glass, a field of mind. And then the field of mind would not be possible without this deeper signless or emptiness or mind itself, which allows everything to appear. And that's really what the word mind means in the deepest sense. That the condition, of course there's no mirror.

[23:39]

There's no mirror for all this to happen, but we can use this as a metaphor because there's a certain level that everything here is this silvery. But it's not within, it's like the dimensions of both four. They're folded in outside our senses. Now, Zen practice and the lineage of Zen is about developing an understanding, a signless state of mind. And so at one time, because we don't have a phonetic alphabet or an external memory system like we do for inward consciousness, because inward consciousness we can talk about, conceptualize, but interior consciousness, this distinction I'm making, which is not confirmed by outward consciousness, There's no confirmation of it. It is itself without confirmation.

[24:44]

There's no way... How do I teach this to you? Or how do I show this to you? I'm doing the best I can, but Dung Shan left us a phrase. Clearly she sees her faith. There is no other reality, but unavoidably she mistakes... the reflection for her head. Now, if in the context of the practices associated with that, you practice with that, Dung Shan is trying to give us a route so that way-seeking mind will discover how to allow ourselves to be in this state, assign those states of mind, which is like being in, which is also we could say, to... See, I can't really say it. To be in a state of emptiness, but you can't say a state of or mode of emptiness.

[25:51]

But to know these signless states of mind is wisdom. So that's why we have this title, Wisdom, the Practice of Inward and Interior Consciousness. Because they thought I was saying the same thing. But I want to make some distinction between consciousness which is confirmed by outer consciousness and consciousness which is confirmed through itself, which doesn't have content which can notice itself. So much of the enigmatic quality of Zen sayings is to point at this which can't even be pointed at because it's not even a mirror. Now, what use is this to you as therapists or as living beings? I don't know.

[26:52]

Tomorrow, when do I talk about the three natures? Sunday. When I speak about the three natures, the three natures are a Yogacara formulation, a teaching that is really meant to discover how emptiness functions in the exterior world, when you see the exterior world as a manifestation of three natures. So maybe on Sunday, Sunday? But I don't want to, you know, if any of you are here, but everyone else is so good, you should go to their groups, too. Yeah. So I'm not sure. Confirmation. Yeah. Or, yeah, okay. When a teacher is working with a student, the practice of confirmation from the teacher to the student, or when he or she recognizes the student to be

[28:03]

It's within the realm of the interior. Okay. It's signless, but it's we say without marks or signless. It's timeless, but we're living beings. It's still within the realm of experience. It can't be conceptualized, but it can be felt. So let me try to... A lot of these things we're going to have to work at by indirection. Let's go back to one of the basics of yogic culture, basics of Buddhist yoga. all mental phenomena has a physical component. All sentient physical phenomena has a mental component.

[29:15]

One of the... Now, Yogacara and Majjamaka work together in this, but Yogacara emphasizes the experiential quality of everything, the experiential quality of emptiness. So, When you're practicing meditation, say, let's just, I'm just shifting a little bit. So you're practicing meditation, and through paying attention to your breath and relaxing and letting thoughts come and go without identifying them and so forth, and then concentrating a bit and maybe thinking about lunch or something like that, sometimes we find ourselves extremely concentrated. We don't know how we got there, actually. Now, you can do specific practices to produce concentration. Zen doesn't emphasize that so much. Zen emphasizes, at least the way I practice, is the fundamental mental posture is uncorrected mind.

[30:30]

So there's not a doer of your practices. you keep the line. But you notice, so now we're talking about words as reports versus words as language. Words as reports, this feels good, is not, that's not a problem. You can get to the point where you don't need words as reports, but words as reports doesn't generate a conceptual, sequential consciousness. It just is, oh, this feels good or it feels bad or whatever. So you have some knowing that at some point you feel quite concentrated, say in a sesshin or just sitting. Now, instead of trying to map out the path to that state of mind, and following that path again to get there, which usually doesn't work, Better not to look at gift meditation in the mouth.

[31:31]

You can remember the feeling of that state of mind. And that's actually called dharanic memory. And dharanis are related to the idea of dharanic memory. And dharanic memory means you have a situational memory, a seed, which calls forth something. So you remember the feeling of that state of mind and then you can go directly to that feeling and that state of mind unfolds, blossoms. Does that make sense? Okay. So if a teacher was practicing with somebody and the teacher wanted to know whether this person really noticed signless states of mind or not, you generate the feeling, you generate a sign of the state of mind in yourself, and you see what kind of response they have to it. And if they think that it's just boring and nothing's happening, then you... Does that make sense?

[32:48]

Yeah. Yes, it does. I've just been blocked by the story of the mirror. Were you saying that you can't attempt to generate something even if the person hasn't identified anything as being in a state of that as a teacher you couldn't generate a state that was close to it like some of you once had some sort of state and I suppose I'm asking this from my background in process learning and psychology and I realise how much it's drawn from things because that's exactly what we do is try to amplify from a situation which is say if we were

[33:59]

training people in extreme states. We would find a state that was in some way close to that if they hadn't experienced that, maybe looking at a flower, maybe having a dog at some time or whatever, and get the sensory grounded feeling of that and encourage them to unfold that. That's very similar. I think Arnie Mandel's work in general and his whole idea of dreaming up and the way in a group different people have to take different roles, and you may be irritated by somebody asking certain questions, but if they leave, someone else will ask those questions, because that role needs to be fulfilled. And so, I mean, what Mendel has to say about dreaming up and about this, what you just mentioned. But I was wondering, because you said, in Zen, what the teacher would do is generate that in the teacher, you mean, and get the response. So what we're doing is the other way around, is we're, endeavoring to get to something as close as they have experienced and generate that and unfold it and complete it.

[35:04]

I understand. I don't want to... Now, am I asking you... I'm wondering, am I getting it right? You would say the teacher does it and doesn't do it with the students. I don't want to tell you everything teachers do. But it doesn't make that much sense to explain it, you know. It's much more fun to do it. Okay. When do we get the opportunity? You have to come back for a month. You're trained or something. You know, I haven't got it yet. Yeah. Good. But coming from the world of psychotherapy, initially with... seeing the mind. I was thinking about the observing ego. But when you talk about the silver or silver ring, is that in any way similar or different to Buddhist concept of suchness?

[36:05]

It's very similar. Very similar. And then from there when you talk about a signless faith, is that similar or different to The experience of all. Of all. Of all. Of just a kind of... You see, experience of all, you can't describe it. You can only visit it. And it's only... Okay, if that's... Yes, I would say. And thusness is a kind of technical term for seeing mind on everything. And then you see there's a sameness to it. Because I look at you, but I'm seeing mind. And I look at you, and I'm seeing mind. So there's a particularity, but also a sameness, and that sameness is called thus. And, okay. So what we've done is we've tried to discover in English some ways of using English that point to

[37:16]

Buddhist experiences or Zen practices and so forth. And we've tried to talk about those things not just through language but also through experiences that are familiar to us. Now, when you begin to practice these things and have a feeling for it, then practice really begins. And you're in a territory through way-seeking mind where these things start coming together in ways I can't, millions of ways, I can't explain. I can only give you a sextant, you know. I think Mayakovsky has a poem, a little short poem, three lines, it goes something like, emptiness. wings unfold.

[38:18]

Charting your course in the stars, carving your course in the stars. So we're carving our course in the stars, but all of it, you know, we can, I'm just trying to give you a sense of the practice, but you're the one who flies in. in this medium, this fluid medium which we all are. Well... I hope I don't do that to all of you.

[39:36]

We get a lot better. I can't remember exactly what she said, because it was going to be on today, but she said that you were very admitted today, Frances, and that you found the excuse that some people weren't getting it. And then we've gone a long way today, and you've introduced you know, to places and thoughts that they may never see. And I suppose my question is, you know, you explained at the outset how you would be teaching people, you know, so that the experiences would confirm the ideas, that's the way. And I'm just wondering whether we haven't opened up to, you know, so much territory that's not so heavy in our society.

[40:37]

Well, let me ask. To some extent, what I'm talking about is new. You haven't thought about it this way, I would say, right? But wouldn't you also say it feels familiar? Yeah. Okay. So if it feels familiar, then we're already grounded in it in some extent. It's just we haven't noticed it or given it sufficient importance. And I'm trying to speak to these things in ways that you recognize as familiar, even if you've never thought of it that way. Now the problem is not you. The problem is you live in a society in which the momentum and inertia is going in different directions, other directions. So it's very hard to hold this when everybody around you is doing something different. And I don't think this is negative. I think, as I said the other day, that participating in our society and going along with people is compassion.

[41:50]

When she meets a thief, she becomes a thief. Because the way to join somebody is to be the way they are. But if you do that, lovingly with people, pretty soon you lose your own sense of practice. Now, that's why people go to monasteries, or why people have a sangha. So I think it's to keep a sense of, until you are really grounded in signless states of mind, I think it's pretty much necessary to practice with other people some of the time. I don't think it's necessary to be in a monastery. I mean, I think if I kind of had two semi-monasteries, I'm happy if you want to come and visit for a while. But I don't think that's necessary.

[42:52]

What I do think is necessary, if you really want to practice, is to find two or three other people that you sit with at least once a week. Or something like that. Something like that is necessary. It's also very helpful to have a good friend in practice. Not necessarily somebody you discuss practice with, but you feel them also in practice. Because we need a kind of confirmation. If our society doesn't give us confirmation, it's pretty hard to continue. So you need one or two other people that you feel share this, that you share this with. I made a decision, for instance, when I was in Europe, that I wouldn't teach in any city that didn't have a practice sitting group. Because I found, like one city I taught in quite a bit was Zurich. And the seminars were always the biggest seminars. They were always, practically speaking, the ones I made the most money because Swiss people pay more for a weekend than anybody else in Europe.

[43:59]

But the sitting groups... So I had 90 people, you know, and so I felt luxurious afterwards. I'd go out and buy a shirt or something. But they started sitting groups, and it was quite close with the Mendel community there. And the groups would peter out after a few months, so I just stopped going. Because I find if I go to a city like Munster, say, Hamburg or various places where I used to, until we had our home center where I came every year, at least once. If only three or four people are practicing throughout the year in a group of 60, it makes the whole group different. There's something that happens with three or four people sharing a sense of communality or sharing a sense of the Dharma, Sangha, that permeates and gives permission for everyone to come into it.

[45:03]

So I can actually work with those three people and develop that feeling through the group. If I'm with a group like you, I don't know very well. It's very hard to get the feeling in such a short time as this morning, which begins to allow us to have a mutual permission to hear these things, to practice them. But, you know, when you have a phone call and you first talk to somebody on the phone, you actually say a few sort of things. You're actually tuning into their voice and making a connection, and then you start talking about what you want to talk about. So, you know, when we practice together, we're trying to find an attunement, and once that attunement is there, we can then start. Like I said earlier, the teacher notices when the practitioner is beginning to have a feeling of completeness and nourishment in their activity, and then you know they're more open to hearing the teaching.

[46:06]

But that's also much like this phrase, when you have the eye that settles heaven and earth. And if you want to work in this Zen way with things, you just can take a phrase like, the eye that settles heaven and earth. At some point, you'll begin to say, Yes, your chest will feel like heaven and earth is being settled. So you have to have a kind of patience and bringing a practice, holding a practice in view. And when you hold a practice in view, you're also generating a background mind. You're generating a mind more of awareness and less of consciousness. So just when you do something like that, you're not only doing what The phrase is, but the phrase itself is transforming your mind. So I think we've talked more than enough.

[47:08]

They say that when a Zen person talks too much, their eyebrows get long. Go under these two eyes. So, you know, this is genetic, though. So it's two minutes to five. So I'd like us to sit a little bit. Do you mind if we sit a little past five? Such a pleasure to be here with you. I'm getting attached to Australia. Well, at least you guys. I don't know if I'm getting attached to Australia. I hate to admit I'm getting attached, but what the heck.

[48:12]

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