And eventually I stopped stumbling, most of the time. Is that, did that to you, to generate it? Yeah, I did that so, as a way of, kind of barometer, as a way of measuring. I let my body tell me what was going on. The body is, I find my body is much more subtle than my mind. My body knows what's going on much quicker than my mind does. so that I have to open myself to that information. It could also be that feeling, that things are too perfect for that feeling, I'm so healthy. It could be that sort of bodily warning signal that you are resisting change and maybe there's something I need to be doing for my body, in your example. Maybe my body's asking for something. The hubris is saying, no, you don't need it, you're fine. Yeah, I think that's one possibility, yes.

[01:04]

I think there's a lot of possibilities, and we can think up a lot of possibilities of how to interpret that. No, no, I think it's good. But the interpretation you choose would probably be more the way you function. The interpretation Paul chooses might be more the way Paul chooses. But Paul can learn from your interpretation. and vice versa. So I think that, yeah, you have to truly sense, because it could be this, it could be a rationalization, it could be a deflection, it could be an open, you know, it could be a lot of things, and you have to, it's a negotiation, that's a negotiation too. Yes? Yes? It seems like, I mean, I think this is what you're saying, essentially, but something like tripping and then buying yourself tripping more even. In a way, what you do is sort of open up, accepting, hey, this is a blessing in a way, because now I've got something that's teaching me. That's right, yeah. That's exactly right. Okay, let's sit for one or two, for the sound of a bell. As motives are complex.

[02:28]

We know that Janie is here because she loves us. And she has a glad I'm back from Europe. She's expressing her gratitude that I rescued her from the Santa Fe Pound. But we also know she's scared of thunderstorms. And if there's a thunderstorm coming pretty soon, she comes the most indoors she can find. But I accept her love, even so. The way we're sitting together is actualized bodhisattva practice. I mean, perhaps you were thinking about this or that, I don't know, or sleepy. But there's some kind of presence that I felt it down from way down the hall.

[03:38]

That we have sitting together. Perhaps if we continue sitting you can notice it more. Yeah, and sitting helps us notice it more. Being in a sesshin helps us notice it more. It gives us quite a tangible feeling. It's interesting how, you know, you don't know somebody, but you sit seven days beside them silently, and there's no question you have a feeling for that person. Might not be good. But you have a feeling for that person. Okay, now what would be... So this is actualized, I would say bodhisattva practice, actualized through the circumstance of sitting together.

[04:47]

But realized bodhisattva practice would be the ability to shift to that presence as the way you were with people in the world. Makes sense? The presence you... sort of there, that you sort of feel, that we can sort of feel, if that was the way you were with another person, and in addition talking and doing whatever is necessary, that would be one way to describe actually the mind of generosity. And I want to come back tomorrow to... We have the morning tomorrow. a little longer morning, slightly longer. I want to come back to the paramitas and to a bodhisattva practice in our contemporary society. Something like that I would like to.

[05:50]

But first I wanted to bring you this Buddhist Zen way of practicing using the four foundations of mindfulness, to allow us the opportunity to practice the paramitas. You know, we used to have quite a lot of mice in this building. We had a huge... pinion crop one year, an excessive pinion crop, and it led to an excessive number of mice next year. I don't know how many we were catching a day in the kitchen here. Does anybody remember? Four or five. Four or five, yeah. I don't think you were here even, Dan, when we had that real big mouse thing.

[06:53]

But, yeah. Anyway, they had quite a mouse thing, and they used to be in my room upstairs a lot. I figured out how they got in, and so it's sealed now. But in those days, they were in the walls everywhere. And mice are aware. I wouldn't say they're very conscious. But they're very definitely aware. And I would be in bed and I would hear mice. I learned I could not concentrate on noticing them or they would shut up. And I would want to really affirm, where are they in the room? But if I concentrated too much, they'd get quiet. So I'd kind of lie in bed there and pretend I'm not thinking about them. Because it wasn't just that if I sat up, they'd shut up.

[07:56]

As soon as I really listened, they could feel me listening. And they'd stop. That's something about, you know, that's something like bodhisattva practice. I never thought I'd use that example for bodhisattva practice. Little mice can be bodhisattvas. And I've told you the story many times of this fellow I know who's head of the grounds at Esalen and the frogs. Do you remember that story? He would sit in front of this portion about 50 feet to the left. There was a big pond full of one million frogs. And they'd all croak at once until he looked to the left and then they'd stop. He'd look to the right and he'd look in the middle and he wouldn't. He'd croak away. He'd look to the right. Croak, croak, croak. And it wasn't like they stopped. He said he was very... They didn't stop like one stopped and then the other stopped in sequence. They all stopped. It's similar to, you know, feeling somebody watching you from a car, etc.

[09:03]

So that capacity of animals... Janie knowing a storm is coming in a different way, I think, than we know a storm is coming. That knowing which can be developed, can be emphasized, can be brought forth by letting consciousness, the various ways consciousness takes control of the body and the mind, subside a bit. In a way we can say that all Buddhist practices, all Buddhist teachings are somewhere in this territory, because they're all trying to bring us into, I mean, adept practices at least,

[10:04]

where you're discovering this practice for yourself. They're all trying to bring you into some kind of fourth mind, as you know, that's not waking, dreaming, or deep sleep. Some mind that's more inclusive of those three. Some kind of, a new kind of mind that's always functioning, but is constantly being eclipsed by the power of our, useful power of our consciousness. the functional power of our consciousness, but not the knowing power of our consciousness. I mean, there's no real reason if we had the knowing power of our consciousness, why this couldn't be a quite perfect world to live in. most of our possessive ideas, I want this, I like this, I don't like this, it's all part of the consciousness.

[11:15]

Clearly, if you can kind of let that... that habit, which is rooted initially in likes and dislikes, and then becomes... you know, united with the structures of self, I think if we were all bodhisattvas, everyone on the planet, we'd live in a kind of paradise. People would get sick, things like that. But still, we'd be living in quite a different world. And it's in a funny way that perfect world is just under the surface of this world, just under the surface of the consciousness of this world. And the many structures we put up to own property and be... You know, and I myself, you know, we have to raise quite a lot of money to buy this property around us, and I've been totally engaged in other things.

[12:24]

We put it aside, and suddenly I think, oh, we'll lose it, and I start... Luckily, I actually... I can feel myself getting into that, and I say, okay. Still breathing, it's all right. If we don't get it, it's... that this... It's almost as if in each of us is a bodhisattva that we sense, actually, I mean, not a... We sense in ourselves that we'd rather be less possessive or we'd rather... We don't like what it feels like to get angry or something like that. All of that is, in a way, saying we'd rather be Bodhisattvas. But it's not like, oh, we want to be good.

[13:25]

It's we'd rather be the way we feel somehow we are. Except we have these kind of habits. And the aspiration for enlightenment is a recognition that we feel somehow that's how we are. One of the most powerful teachings to kind of work with this, to uncover this, is the four foundations of mindfulness. It really requires us to be just where we are.

[14:28]

Simple things like that are necessary. I mean, this bell doesn't have any problem. It's just where it is. We have a problem. I'm sitting here, but I could easily not be just where I am. I mean, it sounds stupid, you know. Maybe cows and dogs are better off than we are. And I do think cows and dogs have more access to what I would call the Sambhogakaya body than we do. Otherwise, it would be very difficult to be an animal. You'd get It's the booby prize for being an animal. Excuse me for trying to be funny. And there's a good reason why the first foundation of mindfulness is not the mindfulness of phenomena, but the mindfulness of the body. So through the first foundation of mindfulness, and coming back to it over years, and coming back to emphasizing it, coming back to a deeper and deeper sense of its

[15:53]

of its value, and you mean all this emphasis on the hara and all that, you know, forms of talking about the first foundation of mindfulness. Just a there-ness, a here-ness. I mean, first of all, I mean, it's obvious, but still, first of all, you know you're here and not anywhere else. But it's funny, the more you know that, it has an effect on you psychologically, emotionally. And it kind of relieves you of fear. Because much of our fear is what's going to happen to us somewhere else. And the more you, even in the case of fear, something happening, a building burning or somebody attacking you, the more you're just here, the more your attacker is a little bit, what's going on here? But the more something very basic responds to the danger, rather than the kind of fear that occur when you're running through all the possibilities that might happen.

[17:04]

You're dealing with what actually is happening. So from all points of view, it makes tremendous sense to consciously, intentionally practice the first foundation of mindfulness. And I've given you various ways you can kind of pour this attention into the body and its activity. Until you don't really feel that there's an inside-outside distinction. The what-ness is a continuity. The what-ness appears as your body, and the what-ness appears as Chris, and the what-ness appears as the tree. So you feel here and also located. So we now bring our attention to this habit of liking and disliking, but we're now bringing our attention to this habit not from the point of view of mind, but we're bringing our attention from the point of view of the body.

[18:22]

And now the more you're stabilized in the first foundation of mindfulness, the more there's a kind of real... to pleasant and unpleasant, and a kind of thin mental quality to likes and dislikes. And then by finding there's three categories, and it's not just like pleasant and unpleasant, there's neither. And the more you can find that place of neither... Both neither like nor dislike and also neither pleasant nor unpleasant. There's a kind of stop. We can even call it a kind of timelessness. Something feels stopped. Things feel in there. Each thing is in its place. And each thing feels like a family member. It's a big family. Phenomenon is a big family.

[19:27]

Phenomenon. And that stop, discovering that stop that's possible through the stabilization of the first foundation of mindfulness and then neither pleasant nor unpleasant, it's again a kind of stop or pause or form itself. Now going back to Dan's observation that You need to have some way to clue yourself, and you know, as I said earlier, there's each, all mental formations have a physical component, and you can feel that physical component, but also you can simply have the sense of bringing your attention to form itself. Sukhya Rishi would say, things just as they is.

[20:30]

This thing's just as they is is also a dynamic of the second foundation of mindfulness when it's neither like nor dislike. And so, again, coming back, those of you familiar with the skandhas, the form skanda, if you want to stabilize yourself in a particular mind, of one of the five skandhas, say, if you bring yourself to a simple form, the way a rock is, or a flower is, or the way the breeze is, it then allows you to move from that to perception only. Or you can take that away, or you can go to associations or you can go from just observing something in its particularity, it's a kind of like shifting into neutral.

[21:34]

You're using a skill. You're using the skill you have of the pause or the stop to then... Like, then use that as the place where you notice non-graspable feeling. I knew a businessman once. Died a long time ago, but very interesting man. And he developed the ability. He comes from a family of people who studied Zoroastrianism and all kinds of things. And he had the ability, and he asked me, and his daughter became a Buddhist and so forth. But he didn't think of himself as a Buddhist. But he developed the ability somehow through a family lineage of being interested in these things, plus being business people.

[22:37]

He could clear his mind and let things come in one thing at a time and observe it. He somehow got the feeling of this stop or this pause. He'd let stalks appear in bonds. You know. So then we have... Knowing this stop or this stillness or this silence within activity of neither like nor dislike, neither pleasant or unpleasant. And it's funny, it feels like a kind of silence, like in the middle of activity there's a spot of silence.

[23:40]

And even though there's noise or activity, you can feel the spot of silence. That then becomes the root basis for the energy and mind, observing mind, that allows you to observe mental formations. since you're not approaching from mental formations now, but approaching from this mind rooted in neither pleasant nor unpleasant, you can observe mental formations. Clinging, attachment, and so forth. And it's in this process, this third foundation, where you really notice mental formations, how they affect you, how they create certain states of mind, how they lead to other, etc.

[24:53]

And when you practice in zazen, for instance, finding the trigger for a mood, or following a thought to its source, following a mood to its source. Very, very important practice. When you get, and it's very hard to do other than zazen, so here zazen is very helpful, to see something, a mental formation, a mood or something, and you say, where did that arise from? This is also coming into the clarity of comprehension where you see causation, you see impermanence, you see things changing. This is moving out of delusion where you're caught in things as real, where you don't see that they're impermanent, changing and caused. So here you're practicing also the second noble truth. So the second noble truth is part of this third foundation of mindfulness when you're observing mental formations, which also means to observe that they're caused.

[26:02]

And you can get the ability to follow, to have a mood, whatever mood you want. You start out with something real obvious, like, why did so-and-so, why did I think of this thought? I mean, why am I thinking about so-and-so now? Well, something happened, and then something happened. Oh, yeah. And after a while, you can get really good. You can get so you're present in the present at the triggers. Does that make sense? You're not present when you think about this guy, where did it come from? You're present when you first start, when the associative mind first starts producing connections. So you're present just when the connection association starts, not much later, so how the hell did I get in this mood? And it's a craft, it's actually a skill you can learn, and it's a skill you can learn through mindfulness practice, through zazen practice, and the intention to learn it, the intention to discover it, the awareness that it's possible, and that's what a teaching like the Four Foundations of Mindfulness is to do, is to make you really aware of what's possible and give you some kind of experience.

[27:19]

I mean, you might wander around wondering, what is it useful to notice? couple thousand years of tradition say, these are the things it's most productive to notice. And it's most productive to notice in a particular sequence. So now we're in the sequence of the third foundation of mindfulness and we're noticing mental formations. Doubt, attachment, greed, joy, so on. And we're beginning to see that they're impermanent, that they're caused, and we begin to be present at their causing. And here, of course, it's also very helpful to have been able to isolate the fourth skanda, which is, as I pointed out, Freud, genius made use of, changed the world. This associative mind, free association, he called it.

[28:21]

Through practice you can begin to be present to associative mind, which is also a little bit like watching your, don't invite your thoughts to tea, but you can see that thoughts come in the door. You don't invite them to tea, but where did they come from? What door did they come in? After a while, you can get quite good at following any mood back to its source. And when you can follow a mood back to its source, you simply aren't affected the same way. You can follow a depression back to its source. You can follow anger back to its source. Fear and so forth. Why am I afraid right now? Well, because... Oh yeah, this came up. It changed what's happening in my mind. Now I suppose that there are genetic proclivities to all kinds of things and you can be genetically crazy.

[29:27]

But if you have the ability, even if you're genetically fairly crazy, if you have the intention and ability to practice, I think you can... function probably make use of this and i think some artists other people use art or poetry or something to work within a mind that tends to get off kilter easily i'm saying this because i the way i'm speaking about it sounds like it's the solution to all problems i don't think so but it can be if you can really be present and have the ability to be intentionally aware and present within how the mind functions. You can do a lot of things. You can really work with compulsive thinking, depression, elation, and so forth. Because if you're present just when you start getting depressed, if, say, you're a so-called polar person, and I don't want to make false claims here because I, you know, my own sister

[30:33]

was mentally ill and committed suicide, and I couldn't help her. So I'm not some... I think that this is the solution to all problems. But I certainly have seen and practiced with enough people to know that if you can get at the trigger of even a kind of some so-called bipolar disorders, you can really feel, because I've worked with people in this, you can feel just when the constellation of things happen which trigger depression, or the constellation of things happen which trigger some kind of elation, you can immediately let your body, you can influence the chemicals in your body, you can actually begin to change participate in your moods and also, knowing they're impermanent, have some hope that you can get free of this compulsive thinking or so forth.

[31:44]

But for most of us who don't have such serious problems, you really can participate in how your mind is formed, structured, etc. Now, you asked what is the chocolate horse at the end of the rainbow. Well, it's interesting. When you do begin to be able to have modes of mind, states of mind in which you take structure away and allow some energy to happen which isn't structured by consciousness or habitual thinking, you do find something. But I'll leave that up to you. Yeah. Yeah. It seems that what you're saying here in terms of using Zazen, using thoughts to go back to their source, I could see myself being confused the next time we sit even as to when.

[32:46]

It seems to be a bit opposite of thoughts coming up and letting them. past and which ones that I you could find yourself thinking the whole time because each thought that comes up you decide to okay all that back and okay yeah this is but this is a negotiation again there's strong rules and weak rules a strong rule is to sit, you know, Shikantaza and our lineage particularly, and what I call, most simply for us, uncorrected mind. It doesn't mean unnoticed mind, but you just accept what's there. And that is the most fruitful way to sit. And if you're patient enough, I know I sat, I would say something like, I don't know, I have to stop.

[33:49]

Maybe ten years without making any effort to do anything in practice. Until really I didn't have any... It was just a there-ness. I didn't... That's enough. I won't try to explain. But... Still, even during that period, there is, of time, there were things that came up, things that would come up regularly, or I'd notice certain things, and be so vivid that I'd say, where did this come from? And then I would practice it for a while. But still, it was in the bigger, the practices were very specific, kind of surgical. But the bigger posture was, just let whatever happens, happens. So I think that if your basic posture is uncorrected mind, acceptance, or just let whatever happens happen, or something like that, however you say it to yourself, still, within that, if you sit regularly, there are still times when you can follow things to the source.

[34:58]

And you can develop the skill to do so. I mean, it might take one or two periods occasionally, and then after a while it might take ten minutes every now and then, you know, practically speaking. and after a while it begins just to be part of your mind. You don't have to do it. While you're sitting there, you can see the triggers are appearing, not the consequences of the triggers. So how much you do it, when you do it, and if you get yourself like I'm... No, you have to kind of trust. You have to be gentle, and you have to kind of trust. When you find yourself doing it, whether you want to or not, is better. I used to have a When I first came back from Japan, there's certain things I'm rather fond of that go back to, you know, comfort food, baby, you know, as a child and things. One of them is milkshakes. I like milkshakes a lot. Chocolate milkshakes, you know. I still like them. Bad mood, I can have a chocolate milkshake.

[36:00]

It's great. So when I came back from Japan, Sukershi was sick and so forth. in 71 or 70, I was met at the airport by my friend Michael Murphy with a milkshake. So I used to have four. I didn't even know he liked milkshakes, but it showed up. And every now and then, if I get kind of fussy about something, I complain to my friend Michael sometimes. He says, I'll get you a milkshake. He says, I had four, I don't remember if it was four, I used to talk about four ways. You know it's probably better not to have a milkshake when you don't have time, so you walk right past the place where there's milkshakes. But sometimes, without knowing it, you find yourself, you've got a milkshake in your hand, you don't even know how you went in and bought it.

[37:02]

Then you drink your milkshake. Something like that. They begin to observe, be able to observe, and this ability to... The development of a background mind or an observing mind or a background mind which can suddenly be the mind that surrounds everything, this observing mind, I think it's first easier to understand conceptually and experientially as a background mind. Like an example I usually use is of a... A woman who's pregnant who knows, always knows, is always aware that she's pregnant, but yet does things and talks to people, etc., as if it was a normal world. So in a way you get pregnant with a background mind or pregnant with practice. And that stabilization of an observing mind that isn't dualistic...

[38:12]

That's the root of an... which is in a sense non-dual. The observing mind itself is the mind which has the... which is essentially non-dual. Sounds strange, but that's the way it works. And this moment of neither like nor dislike... And it's a moment, because... And you don't try to... I mean, it's best to notice it's a moment first, because I like this, I don't. I don't like this, I like this. And that in that particularity, you can experience neither like nor dislike. Or you can feel liking start to arise, pleasant or unpleasant start to arise, and you come back to neither pleasant or unpleasant. That... moment is a kind of seed of non-duality. Neither like, neither pleasant or unpleasant, that's non-duality.

[39:19]

So here we're working with everything that's basic in Buddhist practice. Yeah, so you begin to see that you can be present, you can feel that things are caused, you present, you can feel the energy of their causation. You can feel there's an energy of things appearing from within and without, but there's not much feeling of within and without anymore. And you can observe or feel or notice what appears. You know it's impermanent and so forth. But now what you primarily notice now is the obstacles to that, which are moods, emotions, and so forth. So this third foundation of mindfulness is when you notice the structures of mind itself, the ability of the mind to observe itself, and how mental formations affect us.

[40:32]

and the ability to begin to identify with the observing mind and not the mental formations. So you have a kind of field, experience of a field of mind in which things appear. Now we're ready to move into the fourth foundation of mindfulness, which is the mindfulness of phenomena. And here is one of those not fairly rare occasions when the English word coincides with the Buddhist meaning. And when the philosophical use of the term phenomena, even in physics, phenomena is what can be known or appears. In Kant, I think, phenomena is what appears in the mind that's separate from the object itself, and so forth. So phenomena means what's known to the senses, and that's what... So we can say... The fourth foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness of the world, but it's mindfulness of phenomena.

[41:40]

And mindfulness of phenomena means mindfulness of dharmas. Because dharmas is the way we know phenomena. Okay. So we could say that the fourth foundation of mindfulness is really now the mindfulness of change. The first foundation of mindfulness is the mindfulness of the body, the mindfulness of the stability of the duration, the durability of the body and the there-ness, here-ness of the body and so forth. So we've noticed likes and dislikes, pleasant, unpleasant, and neither. We've noticed mental formations, and now we're noticing change itself, because phenomena is change itself. When you notice something, again, you can, this stop or this pause or this...

[42:51]

being present in your breath, you begin to have a... It's strange that this sense of stability is also the sense of moment by moment present. It's not that... The stability is just this now. It's not now as a continuity. It's just this now. This breath. So we have this-ness or thus-ness. This-ness. This-ness. And all through the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, in effect, you've been practicing this this-ness, this particularity, as I keep emphasizing. So now you're noticing what we do notice, in fact, is particularity, and phenomena is what we notice. So now we're noticing not mind so much, but we're noticing itself and how things appear and how things change.

[44:00]

So the first noticing, we could say, is phenomena as kshana, or extremely brief moments. And I've defined kshana to you before, something like 1 64th of a finger snap. The definition I like the best is the length of time that it takes a healthy, able-bodied person scanning a starry sky to notice only one star. the fact is you do notice one star you notice whether there's a million stars or only 50 you can feel the difference but in consciousness you can't but you feel the difference it's like you're rubbing all those stars and Akashana is that brief moment of one star it's still what it means is it's extremely brief too brief to consciously grasp but it's still within our experiences

[45:11]

The moment which is the briefest moment that we're able to experience is part of the fourth foundation of mindfulness. So you bring that sense of momentariness to each thing. I mean, I have often again told you, I kind of discovered this as a kid. I said to my father, there's no 12 o'clock. My father was a kind of scientist. So I liked to ask him questions like that. And I said, there's no 12 o'clock. He said, what do you mean? I said, well, it's a minute to 12 and half a minute to 12 and a millionth of a second to 12. And then it's a millionth of a second after 12. There's no 12, I said. There's a millionth of a second before and a millionth of a second after, but no 12. He said... We say that something that's approached and passed exists. It was quite a good answer from my father. So if you have that feeling that there's a moment that's so brief that there's no 12 o'clock, because it's always either before or after, but yet there's time.

[46:23]

These are kind of funny conundrums, but you can bring those conundrums into your practice with a sense that things are approached and they're let go of. Yeah? So it's also the length of time that it would take to fall off the cliff by trying to hang on to it or… Something, yeah, whatever. I'm feeling that… I'm wondering if the continuity then is what comes from not holding on and pushing away, from allowing… A deeper continuity comes from not holding on and pushing away. But, you know, when you practice this, when you really get familiar with this kind of momentariness of everything, actually, one of the things it does is remove much of the fear of death. Well, how long does it take to die?

[47:27]

It's pretty quick. You're there one minute, and you're there... So there's no death. Like there's no 12 o'clock. Yeah. So, I mean, you can be sick and you can be miserable sick or you can say, I'm going to die and I don't want to miss my friends, but that's all being alive. And the sickness that precedes death is no different than, much different usually, than the sickness that precedes staying alive. The death itself is extremely brief. One minute you're there and one minute you're not alive. though I think you can feel your bodily functions starting to cool off. Usually from the feet up, though I'm not trying to make us have a morbid afternoon here. Okay. So one target focus of attention that's part of the practice of the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness is momentary change.

[48:34]

The awareness that everything is extremely brief. Each hair of the dog. What a wonderful creature, huh? And then the next, another target of noticing change is phase change. aggregate change, like when water turns to steam, or spring turns to summer, or Sophia... It's interesting, you know, those of you who have children probably know this, but babies learn a lot of things all at once. You know, they don't know and they don't know, and then suddenly two or three things all at once come together.

[49:38]

My little grandson, who's just turned six, he, on the same day, he took the learner wheels off his bicycle and just suddenly drove down the street with the same day he swam, jumped in the swimming pool and swam without any support and so forth. and the same day tried reading in a new way. My daughter reported to me. So for some reason there's these phase changes. And also this sense of phase changes is part again of what I spoke about earlier, the sense of time as ripening. And just in the seminar, there's been phase changes. There was a point this morning in the seminar that I realized we accomplished something together that we could go on more fully into the four foundations of mindfulness.

[50:47]

So that means when you're, the practice of the Fourth Foundation mindfulness is when you're with people to have the patience but also the awareness to notice in every little moment there are phase changes. It's not just seasonal. Changes of the day. Okay. Okay. And then there's the change of interdependence and interpenetration that you also, as a Buddhist teaching, make yourself aware of. And that we could call infolding and outfolding change. The tree is changing. What the tree changes, it's bringing water up through its roots and it's gathering moisture from our slightly damp air and sunlight and so forth. And there's a constant interaction, interdependence of the trees and the insects and so forth.

[52:02]

So that's the change of interdependence in which you feel and can feel here how each of our moods affects each other. You know, one of you gets up to go to the toilet or something or work in the kitchen. There's a shift that moves through the whole room. That's noticing the change that folds out, the change of interdependence. But there's also the change of inner penetration where things are absorbed in. And there's this movement, too, then we can feel this movement of change moving out and change moving in. It means fold in or absorb and fold out. So I think you can think of this change of the key to bringing it into your awareness and into your practice is you can use words like interdependence and interpenetration

[53:11]

But it's, I think, to notice the folding in and folding out. You just go out the door of a kitchen and you can, or these doors, you can, for a moment, let yourself unfold into the day, the evening, the crepuscular evening, the granular evening, where you can let it fold into you. And that's that little pause again. But now the pause is part of this folding in and folding out. And the fourth kind of change we notice is the change of signlessness. We tend to give names to things. We tend to even right now try to create a sign for or a name for folding out and folding in.

[54:14]

Which helps us notice things. It helps us notice things in greater and greater subtlety. But there's a... there's... there's... change which is beyond any noticing or beyond any sign or beyond any folding in or folding out. Where this tree, no matter what we say about it, First of all, it's not a tree. It's a very specific tree. It's not a generalization tree. It's a very specific kind of tree, and it's a very specific in a very specific place, and it's a very specific... You know, I like the poem of David Wagoner based on... a American Indian teaching story where it says this... The tree ahead of you and the bush beside you are not lost.

[55:17]

Let them find you. And later on in the poem it says, no branch is the same to raven. No branch is the same to wind. When is ripening time. No branch is the same to when. So this tree, on this tree, no branch is the same to raven, to a mosquito. No branch is the same to when. The when of each branch of each pine needle, etc., And yet the tree is beyond that too. We can't even say that much about it. And so that sense of the signlessness that things are escaping from any kind of knowing is also change.

[56:28]

And that's also the change we notice that's part of the practice of the fourth foundation of mindfulness, the mindfulness of phenomena. Yeah, and here we have the very distilled way Dogen puts it in the Genjo Koan, where we can understand just the title of Genjo Koan. I come back to this as a teaching very, very often. Completing that which appears, knowing each particular is simul, knowing each thing as particular and all at once-ness. Each thing is particular and usually it's translated universal, but there's no real idea of universal in Buddhism. So it's better to say something like it's an interpenetrating all-at-onceness in its particularity. So to know that everything, to complete that which appears.

[57:34]

What appears? So, okay, so that's a, you know, for today, the end of this version of the teaching of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. So now, what I'd like us to do is to sit for a couple of minutes and then have a break. And then, I'm sorry, I'm not giving you much time to have some smaller groups again. Ask yourself, are you a bodhisattva?

[60:17]

Is there any aspect of yourself that you sense as some kind of inkling of what it means, what Buddhism means in a practical sense of being a bodhisattva? And is it possible also that two people are a bodhisattva? In other words, like two people who are conjoined in some way, affecting each other, even while you're taking care of someone who's sick, or something obvious like that, but just subtly, some kind of quality that comes up in friendship. Is there kind of a mutual presence we could call bodhisattva, for the two of you and for others? Could a family somehow be, in the way it brings up children and affects other people, could the family somehow give bodhisattva presence?

[61:26]

Some kind of consideration. So today, why don't we count to six? No, six, four. Let's count to four. Yeah. One. Two. Oh, you're going to be making dinner? No. Oh, two. Three. Four. One. Two. One. Three. Three. Oh, you can't hear. He can't hear. I like that. I'm seven. I'm still seven.

[62:33]

Randy's four. Yeah. Yeah. Three. He said, no, he didn't. All of us are getting old. Two. Three. Three. Are you cooking? No. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Two. Three. Yeah. Four. One. Yeah. Two. Yeah. I like doing this, it's fun. We're supposed to have learned to count very early on, you know. Okay, let's take only a 25-minute break.

[63:36]

So we come back at 5.30 and we have from 5.30 to 6.15 or 6.30. Thank you very much. You all count. To me. Hi. I'm so glad you're still here. Well, we've created a field in which we can practice and a field in which I can talk about practice. It's all right.

[64:38]

And we can say, since we're mostly Mahayana practitioners, and the Mahayana is the teaching of the bodhisattvas, the truth of the law of the bodhisattvas, then we're all bodhisattvas, or we're all part of this bodhisattva field or field of practice. Now, where does this field exist? Well, I don't know what right here is, but some kind of here. But it exists outside the net of language. And outside the net of... our cultural habits. That's what a bodhisattva is supposed to do and that's what practice is supposed to do.

[65:51]

I'm going to try to fill out what I mean, trying to say. So when we, and it's interesting, What happens when you create a field of practice, a field that's outside our usual cultural formulations and language net, many things come up. One of the first things to come up, or often will come up, is our wounded, our wounded self, our deluded self, Desiring self. It almost is sort of like, you know, freed from the net. Many things come up. One of the things that comes up is the potentiality of being a bodhisattva.

[66:58]

Now, David and whoever you were talking to and other people have asked me, yeah, you didn't say, we've had all this talk in the seminar and what the heck is a bodhisattva anyway, but there's some kind of feeling like that I've gotten from people, like, all right, get to the point, what's a bodhisattva? Well, if there was such a thing as a bodhisattva, you couldn't be a bodhisattva. It's because there's no entity of a Buddha that we can be Buddhists. I mean, it came up in a funny way when I was in Basel. There was a conference called Couch or Kirche? Couch or Church? It's interesting. As soon as you say the word couch in relationship to church, almost everybody knows it means Freud. That's an interesting sign language.

[68:01]

And so I had no choice. I had to talk about cushion or church. But it was okay. It was 1,400 people or something like that. Quite a big conference. Interesting enough. And it was our neighbors, so I accepted Basel's 45 minutes away or so. But at the end of one of the presentations I did, a person came up to me and said, what is that thing you've got hanging around your neck? And I said, oh, it's a Buddhist robe, a small version of a Buddhist robe. And he, I didn't pick up that he was so perplexed. He went off somewhere and he came back and he talked to Marie Louise a little bit. And Marie Louise said to me afterwards, is he in a countries like Europe, where things are much more Christian than here. I mean, it's embedded in life much more than for Americans.

[69:06]

It was a little bit like you'd gone up to a Catholic priest and he said, what's that you're wearing? He said, oh, it's Jesus' robe. You just wouldn't say that in Christianity. You don't wear Jesus' robe. Or God's robe. It's God's robe. You know, you get it. It's funny. You don't say things like that. Because in our Western culture, God is more like some kind of entity. But Buddha is a... In Buddhism, everything is a function. Buddha is a Buddha function. If you function like a Buddha, you're a Buddha. And we can learn those functions and we can realize those functions. So Buddha is attributes, qualities, functions. A bodhisattva is functions. So what I've been talking about is what are the functions or attributes or qualities of a bodhisattva.

[70:10]

So I've actually been pointing out all along what a bodhisattva is. But also, you know, Aryadeva says something like... If you say a date, a fig, is small, this is untrue. If you say a fig is smaller than a cucumber, this is true. Because there's no truth of smallness and bigness, etc. It's always in relationship. A cucumber is only big in relationship to a fig. So if I'm going to speak about a bodhisattva, I have to speak about a bodhisattva in contrast to something else, because there's no entity of bodhisattva. So, before I try to be somewhat technical, or one way of looking at it, a sravaka, or a disciple, in the so-called early Buddhism of

[71:22]

so-called pejoratively by Mahayana's Hinayana, and somewhat erroneously identified with Theravadan. I'm trying to be accurate and reasonable about these historical distinctions, a lot of them just created by Western scholars. But a disciple, or sravaka, is one who attains enlightenment. through the teaching. Pratyekabuddha is one who attains enlightenment by himself or herself, or by chance, or through an accident. And that's sort of a recognition that enlightenment is not the province solely of Buddhism. How do you make How you make use of enlightenment is Buddhist. How Protestants make use of conversion experiences, which are essentially often enlightenment experiences, is Protestant and Christian, not Buddhist.

[72:30]

So, from this point of view, and a bodhisattva is one who also attains enlightenment. Attains enlightenment in a... Okay. The liberation body, as we could say, you don't just attain enlightenment mentally, you attain a liberation body, and the liberation body attained by a Srivaka and a Pratyekabuddha and a Bodhisattva is considered to be the same. So the goal of enlightenment is the same. There's a difference in the way you realize enlightenment and how you can help others. The Pratyekabuddha, for instance, is not considered to be much help to others because he didn't know really how he attained enlightenment. I would say most artists, a very large percentage of art is about recapturing enlightenment. That the artist had some enlightened experience, and you can see it often, I've said this often, but you can see it in certain poems, crucial poems, and then all the other poems are kind of versions of this.

[73:37]

And the problem with this, you can see it right there in the Pratyekā artist. they don't know how to develop their enlightenment. They develop it in their art, but often not in their life and their person. Now, the difference between a bodhisattva is a bodhisattva attains enlightenment, but is committed to attaining enlightenment with you. That's the difference. It's the basic difference. Bodhisattva wants to attain enlightenment only if you do too. So in a sense it's a holding back from nirvana. It's understood that way. But it's a kind of technical difference. They all achieve, realize more or less the same liberation body.

[74:40]

But the bodhisattva is committed to establishing a path, creating a path, and a path that not... There's a subtle difference here. The... Srivaka realizes enlightenment through the path of the Buddha. The bodhisattva realizes the path through which we create. It's a path not yet known because we're in the process of creating it. That's how I understand it. I think they're interesting subtle differences. So by such comparison you can see the emphasis of the bodhisattva practice and then you can see the emphasis within the pedagogy, within the teaching, within the practices of Mahayana, which is to realize through others and with others.

[75:50]

And that's what we're doing here. I was making a little joke with myself. I was going to say, I could have attained enlightenment a long time ago, but I'm waiting for you. But it's more, it's what the case is actually. Whatever enlightenment is in my life comes through you, comes through practicing it. You're not my impediments, you're my path. Our path. Okay. So if you function as a bodhisattva,

[77:05]

You're a bodhisattva. And the more you're functioning as a bodhisattva, penetrates all the ways you're functioning, other people will begin to notice it. This person's a kind of bodhisattva. I may not call it that, but something like that. Now there's a word in Buddhism, tanha, which means thirst or hunger. And I suppose in Mahayana Buddhism it would be considered that this thirst or hunger is at the basis of everything. It comes prior to everything else, prior to perception, conception, prior to everything else. And I think we can see it in... a baby, and so let me paternalistically go back to, not paternalistically, fatherly, go back to Sophia.

[78:17]

And I said she has a basic desire to be alive, intention to be alive. Interest. Inter is. But if we take it that she has a thirst, if we take this and say, yes, what she's exhibiting is this basic Mahayana Buddhist idea that the root of everything is a spontaneous thirst for the whole of it, all of it. Okay? then language is really created out of this basic thirst.

[79:21]

So if I try to look at language, because I'm talking about the function of the bodhisattana, if I look at language, And think of it that way. So little Sophia is trying to learn language now. And what she's going to learn is a present to her, a foreign installation. She's not going to learn Chinese. She's going to learn German and English. And this is already created. It's already a weaving of kleshas, a weaving of dualities, of afflictions, and so forth. I think it's useful to look at the kleshas, or the three, greed, hate, and delusions. and to look at pleasure, displeasure, and need.

[80:32]

Because there's, I think, a rather powerful parallel between these three. Because greed is the desire for things, the belief that you can possess things. Hate is aversion, the belief that you can get rid of things. And the third, delusion, means you think what you desire or what you can get rid of are real. They're substantial. So it's the delusion which makes greed and hate powerful, which turns desire and aversion into greed and hate. because you think they're real. So it's the delusion which gives the power to greed and hate. The other three, pleasant and unpleasant, if you know neither pleasant nor unpleasant, it doesn't give that power of substantiality to what's pleasant and unpleasant.

[81:51]

Now, I don't know if these distinctions... I have to say something to you, so I'm trying to say something. And I don't know if these distinctions are useful to you or make sense, but I think if you spend a little time with them, you'll find that actually very much turns on very small distinctions, like the distinction between who and what. Who am I and what am I? What is this and who is this? Okay, so if language is already a cultural weaving that Sophia is going to inherit, that's first. Second is, it's a way she gets what she wants. She's now not only able to take hold of things, she wants to take hold of things, and she likes her toys. And she gets quite annoyed when she drops them and can't find them again. And she'd love to be able to say, get me that yellow tiger.

[83:01]

Or whatever she's got. And they have all these theories about what children can see. And when they follow the theories, they like those toys better. Real clear black and white stripes and other things. Kids, they think that the theories sometimes are true. Or function. Anyway. So now she would like language to allow her to get her toy back or get it in the first place and so forth. So language is going to function as a way to fulfill her thirst for all of it. Because she doesn't know what she wants. She wants all of it. So somehow we have to teach her that, you know, yeah, it's okay, but... You know, you're going to have trouble. We understand.

[84:05]

It makes me think of my daughter, Sally, who's, I told you, 38, 39. See, we were at the airport once, San Francisco. It always amuses me. She was about three. She took her clothes off at the San Francisco airport. And I said, put your clothes back on. She said, I wanted to take them off. And I said, well, okay, but put them back on. She said, you're not supposed to here in the airport. She says, doesn't everyone want to take their clothes off? I said, well, maybe, but they don't anyway. Yeah, so you have to learn certain distinctions like that. Sophia hasn't got the inside distinction yet. She thinks she can drool, slop from all orifices. She doesn't think of any problem about it at all. I'm trying to teach her the inside-outside distinction, just so we don't have to do so much work.

[85:09]

Constantly have rags with you all the time to wipe her. But she also is trying to speak because she wants to join, do what we're doing. So it's not just that she is trying to get what she wants. She also wants to join the world. And the joining is a relationship. Now, here is a kind of crux we can look at. If language becomes getting what she wants or joining her parents or joining school, it's going to be rather delusive, and the whole apparatus she inherits from the culture is going to reinforce all that. So somehow the joining, what she has to start seeing, is that joining is a relationship. There's no joining unless there's a relationship.

[86:15]

the joining, the fact that she wants to, is this interest, is that she is really seeking the relationship. So if we can kind of get her to notice that everything is a relationship or everything is a function, she's then beginning to use language in a bodhisattva way. So in a certain sense, if you can make that little emphasis, you can begin to give your baby a sense of moving in the world as a bodhisattva. Because a bodhisattva, all of us, have to use language. But we can make little distinctions. We don't say something small. We say, oh, it's smaller than a banana. There's little things you can do. I've often said, instead of saying tree, you say, in your mind, treeing. because there's no entity tree, there's the activity of a tree. So if you see that the whole effort of speaking about fundamental truth, the absolute, in Buddhism requires that you take language out of context, then you can understand why koans look like, to scholars, riddles.

[87:33]

And they're not riddles at all, or rarely anything close to a riddle. They're using language outside of usual expectations. So it looks like a riddle. So that's what I mean when I'm talking about the net. We're trying to speak here. Now, I'm using a lot of words, you've noticed. But I'm trying to use words slightly out of context, out of the usual expectation. And I'm trying to speak to you where you are out of words. Run out of words, perhaps. Not wholly within the wonderful fabric of words. So the job of language is to bind the world together.

[88:36]

The job of language is not really to name. The job of language is to name in such a way that you can relate those names to something else. An object of perception, an object of mind, unless it has certain characteristics, I can't speak about it. And it has to have characteristics which relate to language or I can't speak about it. So this is the problem. If I speak about an experience in language, it takes it out of where it exists, actually. That's the real problem with dream analysis, is dream analysis and images belong in dreams. Hillman's the only psychotherapist I know who points this out. Once you take them out of dreams, they're in the service of self, they're in the service of your daytime activity, they become a symbol, and they stop functioning. Or mostly, most of their power is taken out. Dreams belong within dreams.

[89:41]

Meditation experiences belong within meditation experiences. So we have to find a way to speak. The bodhisattva's function, one of the functions of the bodhisattva is to use language differently. That means you can practice that in simple ways. Someone says, I mean, it comes out in little things. Someone says to you, are you Sarah? Is that right, Sarah? You say, sometimes. Just doing silly things like that, you know, or you feel that. When you answer, you feel, well, yeah. Because there's no such entity as Sarah. You function as Sarah. That's not the only way you function. Maybe you function as a Sarasatva. of bodhisattva. So part of the practice of the bodhisattva is simply to notice the way language captures and binds a particular world together and to notice also the way you can use language

[91:10]

So it somehow slips free of naming, of assuming permanence, and so forth. So language itself is a delusionary, is a kind of... Language, the way it binds a particular world together, is in a delusion, because the world is more than that which is in the language and implied in the language. It doesn't mean we have to have it, we have to share, it works very well. So the bodhisattva makes use of it, but makes use of it in a way that points or you have a feeling of a world that's wider than the length. So that's one of the functions of a bodhisattva. Now, I didn't this morning give you any chance to bring up anything you might want to speak about.

[92:22]

Is there something you'd like to speak about? Yes. David Wagoner. the trees I had and the bushes beside you are not lost. And that made me remember one of my favorite lines from the story. Something like, some teacher, I'm sorry, I've forgotten who it says. It's okay, you can forget. good snow, flake after flake, doesn't fall anywhere else. So I was, you know, like, rollicking in the thought of the particularity of it. Rollicking in the thought of particularity. Now there's a bodhisattva.

[93:24]

The next time I was listening, you said, if you're penetrating all-at-oneness in its particularity, I cannot get from the pleasure of specificity to all-at-oneness. How did you get there when I wasn't listening? All-at-oneness. It was quick. It was all at once. Well, there's many ways one has to come to the root of all-at-onceness. If you don't have some way of... something like that, the sense of the Hawaiian teaching of... of simultaneous interpenetration without interference. Simultaneous interpenetration without any interference, without hindrance, means all-at-onceness.

[94:28]

So you have the idea of interdependent in earlier Buddhism. I would add interindependent, and you have interpenetration in later Buddhism. And so the concept of the Dharmakaya as the Buddha as space, the Buddha without hindrances, also doesn't have any meaning as practice unless you have an idea of all-at-onceness. So all-at-onceness is also a way to understand that in fact we are always acting in the midst of an all-at-onceness with everything. We're acting all at once with everything, stars, etc. You can't act in that way through ordinary consciousness. So particularity, genjo koan, particularity and universality has no real practice meaning. Universality is a generalization that doesn't mean anything.

[95:34]

A uni-verse. But if you say all-at-onceness, there's a possibility of acting in all-at-onceness, and we in fact are acting in all-at-onceness. And I would say bodhisattva practice is to act in all-at-onceness. Okay, now what does Yuan Wu mention, recommend, for active meditation? The bodhisattva, he didn't use the word term bodhisattva, but he says the Zen adept. But I'll say the bodhisattva. The bodhisattva sets up neither here nor there, nor before or after. If you set up neither here nor there, does not set up the categories of here or there, or before or after, then you're opening yourself to all at once-ness.

[96:40]

although you can't experience directly in any conscious sense all at onceness, though you can have a knowing that it's functioning this way, that everything's functioning through you this way, through each particularity, if you do have the experience of not setting up here and there, and not setting up before and after, as the Diamond Sutra says, the Buddha is without a life span, no life span. So if you don't set up here and there, and you don't set up before and after, and you're able to have the feeling of not setting up before and after, and not setting up here and there, then you're likely to be functioning through all at onceness. Is that okay? Can I sort of relate to your question? Certainly the best I can do right now. I didn't think that was too bad, actually.

[97:44]

That is a nice thought. What? Could you make an example of it in your on-the-ground life? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yes? Somebody over here wanted to say something. I didn't quite get what you mean by setting up. Establishing, making. If I... If I think you're there and I'm here, that's setting up an idea of here and there. What is the most common phrase that I have almost taken a vow not to say in seminars? Well, that's why I took a vow to not say that a long time ago. I let Ram Dass say that. Yeah. What? Space connects. Or space separates.

[98:47]

Space separates. Now I've broken my, you know, weekly held vow. Space separates. I haven't forgotten what you said. Space separates. And this is your example. This is, I hope, partly your example. Space separates is a cultural idea. Do you understand that? It's a cultural idea. We inherit that. I'm here and you're over there. That's a cultural idea. But we also know, as I say, the moon affects our reproductive cycle. So the moon is here. The moon is penetrating every moment. But we can't see the moon. I look at Dan, I don't see the moon, though we say with a woman she's in her moon or something like that. And men too, sometimes.

[99:51]

I feel a difference. But we don't really see the moon, so we don't think the moon. But much of the world is like that. You don't see the moon, but the moon is interpenetrating, penetrating us right now without hindrance. So that's the teaching of the Wayan Sutra, that everything is like the moon. Everything is penetrating everything else, but it can't be seen in language or consciousness. And the way at which we're connected is not able to be seen, but the way we're separated is able to be seen. That's the way our perceptions work, because our perceptions, the job of our perceptions is to note difference. They can't distinguish sameness. What's enlightenment mean? You perceive sameness, not oneness. Sameness. And then we're so amazed when something doesn't... You know, my daughter had an upset stomach. I was throwing up in Philadelphia, and I didn't know that. But in Denver, I got an upset stomach and had to sit down for 45 minutes.

[100:56]

Yeah. And then I was amazed, you know. I know. It could be true. Yeah. And we have a hard time often accepting such things are true. And we accept it with another part of our... The American Indians call it, some American Indians, call it the long body. So the long body is functioning when your stomach gets upset when your daughter... And there's actually sense stories like that. Farmer so-and-so's cows in Philadelphia are doing such-and-such, and Farmer Brown's cows in San Francisco are doing something else, or... So space separates in one mind. Space connects in another mind. And when we begin to have a field of practice, we have a field where space connects.

[101:58]

And this is a fact. I mean, again, I'm sorry to bore you with facts, but if you actually, they've done studies where they've tied people up, wired people together, who are meditating. It's the only studies I've seen go up to 12 people or maybe 13, a baker's dozen. And we should limit sushis to a baker's dozen. And all of the metabolisms, within a very short time, come into sync. You know, people's basic rhythms are synchronized real quickly. And the more that's true, the more the people have this feeling of a sashin, etc. So, space is connecting. In language, I can say space connecting, but it's not space that's connecting. Connecting is connecting. Or something like that. when the mice stop when I pay attention to them.

[103:02]

So what was your question? Okay. So when you set up, when you do practice like you don't set up only that if I say Dan is there and I'm here. That's setting up a distinction. Now, the word setting up means it implicitly recognizes that everything is a construction and there's no entities. That everything is set up. Everything is artifice, is made. And it goes against basic ideas in our culture of the natural. There's something natural. But everything is a composite. Everything is a construct. Not only a composite, it's always in the midst of composition. So if I, when I say, let's just look at the basics around, the basic teachings around space separates.

[104:10]

The assumption behind space separates is already separated. So if I set up the feeling that Dan and I are already separated, my perceptions will actually reinforce that, and the way I act will reinforce that. So I set up something that functions prior to perception and conception, which then influences how I know Dan. It's a fact. Dan is there and I'm here. Undeniable fact. but it's not a delusion, but it's not the whole truth. So when I speak, when I have the feeling, if I'm practicing in a way, I'm trying to give you a practical down-to-floor example. If when I have the feeling that Dan's

[105:21]

there and I'm here, I don't let that... I recognize I've set that up for some reason. I recognize a particular kind of mind produces that distinction. But I don't let that... I don't let that be the whole of the way I think about Dan. And so when I'm looking at Dan, I also feel that the mind which doesn't feel there's a separation, which is again what's usually a non-dual mind, non-dualistic mind. So duality and non-duality function simultaneously, then they're not... I mean, if you think form and emptiness are two different places, or realization and delusion are two different places, or the absolute and relative are two different... No, they have the same relationship as great and small. Small is only small in relation to great, and great is only in relation... So emptiness and form are a unity, are a unison.

[106:30]

So, Dan being separate from me and Dan being connected, not separate, are two aspects of the same truth. Our culture is built on Dan is separate from me. The Buddhist culture is built on Dan is not separate from me. But really Buddhist culture is built on recognizing the two are in unison. Am I making sense? But because our senses and our culture so completely shape our knowing, it's very hard to get outside that knowing. And the job of the Bodhisattva is to bring people outside that knowing. That knowing which looks like truth, hence it's a delusion because it makes you think that there's real things in the world.

[107:42]

And it's the word I creates I. The pronoun I, me, mine, used by a baby, create a self. The language precedes you having a self. If there was a different kind of language, you'd develop a different kind of self-function. So, language isn't descriptive, it's conscriptive. Or, Yeah, maybe that's a good enough way to put it. Yes? In Buddhist cultures, they have a word for I also. No, I suppose. In Japanese, it's a quite thoroughly Buddhist culture, influenced Buddhist culture. And I think there's something like 80 ways to say I. So they do set up a... Yeah, but 80 ways is not the same as one way.

[108:55]

You use a different kind of I word in different contexts. You're a different person, but we do it to some extent. I'm a daughter, I'm a son. I have no sons, but I am a son. I guess doing it in so many different ways softens. Softens it, yes. And also in Japan you don't say, for instance, my stomach hurts. You say stomach hurts. because you don't talk about it. And I think the releasing in zazen, it's important to release your body from the pronoun I. So you don't say, I'm doing zazen. You say, shoulder doing zazen, you know, lung doing zazen, hip doing zazen. You have that feeling. It's quite, because language is such a powerful, useful, binding force. The bodhisattva practice is to unbind it and you have to actually make mechanical things. Like you sit down and say, okay, do your own zazen shoulder, go to it.

[110:03]

Knees, hey, you're free, etc. Something like that. You have to play around, have fun. Yeah. Yes? In the Western world, psychologists would love to say that a person should show responsibility and show up and say, I did it. Don't just sort of be around the bush. But it happened. Yes, but that's taking responsibility for causation, not for being an I. I mean, I think that's a legitimate thing to say. But causation is not simple. But if you look at it as I was participating in this cause and take responsibility for it, that's okay. Because you do have a function of self. It's only that you don't have a permanent entity called self.

[111:05]

Okay. And self-functioning has to be strong and clear. And if it doesn't operate clearly in a realm of consequences, you're in trouble. So in the realm of consequences I exist? Yes. Well, a function exists. A function that I can call... You function, yeah. But you... I mean, if you do zazen, you will see that you make different decisions in zazen than you would out of zazen. A different kind of... The way things locus themselves is different. So you see the relationships differently and you feel differently. That's a kind of different person, actually. And people behave differently when they're drunk. People behave differently when they're in love. These are different eyes. But there has to be responsibility in all of them if you're going to function with other people. No, sometimes it's difficult.

[112:08]

Well, sometimes do you ever get the feeling you're bouncing around? Let's see, which eye am I going to be right here? No, I don't. You don't find yourself choosing between the eternal eye and the causation eye? Well, there's no eternal eye as far as I'm concerned. But, no, I don't. Or the timeless eye. Yeah, okay, I don't. But, you know, if I was a multiple personality, I probably would. I remember Keith Richards, you know his name, was asked, what do you think of Mick Jagger? He said, he's a lovely bunch of guys. You know, you're a lovely bunch of guys, or gals, or guy-gals. So, in other words, to say don't sit up here or there, or before and after, is as practical as you can put it.

[113:17]

And it's practical because it's practical when you notice you're functioning within conceptions. We have to, or we'd walk right into the wall. We want to walk through the door. The door is a conception. We know what a door is. We know it probably opens. We know if we push it. Those are all conceptions. We're functioning in them all the time. So... And we have a function of here and there, and before and after. But if you can have the feeling, and there's no way you can do it easily, but Here and there, okay, maybe I'm over explaining. But, as I said, a mental object can't be spoken about unless it has attributes.

[114:23]

It has to have some qualities that are languageable. But in fact, nothing exists entirely in the realm of language, but we have to give it language. If I call this a bell, I won't use it as a teacup. But when you give an object of perception a name or attributes so you can bring it into language, You have trouble, archaeologists have problems where they find an object which there's no use for it in any culture they know.

[115:09]

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