there's this movement, bringing it together and releasing it. So we have an intensified time and a releasing time. So now we really feel like we're actuating time. We're not at the mercy of time. And we can see this in the strange difference between, like, say, one person practices with a teacher for four years and another person practices with a teacher for ten years. Dogen goes to China only for a few years. But the ten years and the four years may be the same actual practice time.

[01:07]

The more you dwell in general time, twenty years isn't long enough. The more you're with your teacher or your sangha or your practice in fundamental time. Which is what sangha practice and monastic practice is to try to help you do. One month might be a hundred years. A hundred usual years. So then you can begin to understand how some people realize so much of a teaching in a short time. It's not really that they're smarter.

[02:09]

They're in a different kind of time with the teaching. And then when you have this experience of dissolving time, you feel that releasing and inward movement also opens you to a feeling of timelessness. Timelessness, which is hidden in the outlines of time. as emptiness is hidden in the outlines of form. So here we have what I've tried to present in the last few days, is six aspects of time, rooted in a sense of fundamental time of each thing,

[03:20]

And the six are this fundamental or rooted time. Simultaneous time. Situational time. General time. Dissolving time, which means the experience that happens when you dissolve time. And timelessness. And this elastic fabric, six ways of knowing time, And this elastic cloth of different ways to know time. Is the background of Dogen's understanding and teaching as expressed in the Genjokon.

[04:36]

Thank you. Oh, oh. The desire to save themselves, the [...] desire to save themselves, The path of the Buddha is the path of the Buddha.

[05:45]

Oh. My name is Yakuza Yakuza. My name is Yakuza. Schicksal, wie ohne Gestüt, der Kacke geht im Arzt nur an. Ein unübertroffener, durchdringender, vollkommener Daumler findet sich auch in hunderttausend Millionen Körper zu retten.

[07:59]

Nun, weil ich in Syrien und allen anderen Ländern und Anliegen kann, gelobt ich die Wahrheit des Tatortes zu erfahren. So I've spoken so far about, well, I started out with contemporary renunciation. And the need to have some experience of that, or the fact of that. In order to begin to, in a way, have possession of your own consciousness. To begin to see and define your consciousness within your own activity.

[09:02]

I'd like to add that we're not just defining our consciousness, we're also defining our body. When I sit down here and take this posture, the posture itself begins to shape my body. And shapes my mind, too. And the way in which my body is in relationship to you, each of you, your bodies. Also shapes my mind. It might look the same, more or less, in a mirror, but it probably feels something different. And when we bow to the Buddha, we bring our hands together and then you come up inside the Buddha body as you stand up.

[10:40]

We have that kind of feeling. And I think these statues are actually designed to allow you to feel that. This statue is based on a lot of circles. The statue in Crestone is based on a pyramid, a triangle. That's more like you bring the presence, the feeling of presence into your hands. What I also spoke about earlier, making a distinction between consciousness, awareness, and a kind of

[11:45]

in effect knowing through presence. And this sense of presence is particularly an emphasis of Dogen's. So if you, you know, as I said, discover the overall presence of your hands. You can in a similar way discover the overall presence of your legs. Overall presence is often established first of all through going with attention to each part of the feet, toes, and so forth.

[12:59]

And then you can pull that presence up into the middle of your body. Your gut. And then into your chest area. and then into your shoulders and neck and head. You can discover some kind of units like this. I think I spoke about that maybe at the end of the year, last year. One way of doing that, you feel like you've built up a pile of awareness. That's a way of finding your inner posture. But you can also, like this statue, feel the circles of the body.

[14:03]

So you are slipping your body experience out of the image of your body. As I pointed out, by turning your fingers around, you lose the image of your body and you can't figure out which finger it is. So you can begin to feel the circle of your arms and this circle extends beyond your body. So this sense of a developed presence is a way of engaging in the interconnected world. So these are all yogic skills.

[15:23]

Nothing special, but they're things you discover that you feel and then can develop through meditation practice. And in Kenyan, if your posture is pretty clear with your hands and so forth, you can bring your energy up through the back of your heel. And you shape your body in such practices.

[16:26]

And open, strangely, shape it yourself, and by shaping it yourself, open yourself to the influences of others. But not in a negative way, but in a way you feel strengthened because you feel sealed in your own posture. Hmm. Now, another thing I want to say is that, you know, last night somebody commented on my way of thinking. But, you know, part of the reason for... Yeah, this is my way of thinking, maybe. But it's actually a dialogical technique.

[17:38]

A way of exploring something using thinking. And I had soared the practice through listening to Suzuki Roshi. And Fukushi from his teachers and so forth. And Dogen has the same dialogical technique. So Dogen is in something like the Genjokoan. is in a way not just presenting some topic or teachings, but is using the opportunity to present a topic or teaching to show you this dialogical technique. So it can become a way you yourself think about things.

[18:57]

So this is not particular to me as a practitioner. This is an inherited tradition of analysis. Okay, so now some of your questions have been about, hey, what about, oh, you're talking about all these odd things, you know. Why don't you talk about mind? We're studying consciousness, aren't we? So I suppose I'm trying to say something about how mind presents itself in the physical world. So what I'm trying to say is how the mind presents itself in the physical world.

[20:12]

That it presents itself as time. And how seeing that we can begin to transform mind to really observing the boat, not just the shore. seeing how mind presents itself on each object, as time, as sequence, and more subtly as the ripening of each thing. Okay, but if we go back to studying mind itself, Then we inevitably come to what I've spoken about many, many times.

[21:14]

And in this context, I should review again, at least to some extent. Which is, first of all, the five skandhas. Because it's the main Buddhist tool of observing consciousness. Very simple, brilliant tool. But it's hard. I'm just looking at something. How do I study? I'm looking right through it like clear water. Well, maybe after practice it's more like clear water. I can remember it didn't used to be like clear water. It had all kinds of things stuck in between me and the floor. Like and dislike bad moods. things like that.

[22:32]

Okay, so but if you hold the skandhas before you, in the midst of this muddy or clear water of mind, and we chant them every morning so you get a sense of them, In the Heart Sutra. Form. Feelings. Perceptions. Gatherers, additions. Associations. And consciousness. So if you hold those five categories in your mind as you go about the day, maybe they're like little magnets or something, but they begin to cluster around them, their aspects.

[23:42]

So you start to notice associations. You start to notice the layer of feeling. You start to notice when perceptions come in. And you begin to feel how these things are making consciousness. In this way, you start to participate in your consciousness. First of all, it starts to have a big psychological effect. Zuerst hat es einen großen psychologischen Wirkung. Dann fangt er an zu erkennen, was eine Stimmung verursacht. Dann sieht er, ja, meine Stimmung war ganz fein und dann geschah dies und dann wechselte es.

[24:46]

Das hilft. I mean, when this little thing occurs, it changes the mood. You can't get your fly swatter out and bop it, usually. Yeah, you're not going to change my mood. Pow! But usually you miss anyway. Then it flies around. But it's not the best approach. It's just to watch the fly and the mood change and so forth. And eventually something more subtle happens.

[25:49]

The flies don't come so much or they don't like the atmosphere or something. So in this way you begin to be able to see consciousness itself in these five layers. And you begin to feel the emphasis among the... You begin to be able to change the emphasis among the layers. And you can establish yourself in one layer or another. And you can actually decide, like, oh, I go to sleep best in this layer, so you establish yourself in that layer and you go to sleep. Yeah, we all do something like this, but for most people it's not a real skill.

[26:52]

I don't see it so clearly. And one of the factors that helps is you really begin to be able to experience the physical component of mind. All states of mind have a physical component. And through mindfulness of the body, this mindfulness begins to penetrate your body. You begin to feel the difference between states of mind in your body. In your physical body and in the activity of your body.

[28:09]

It can be very precise. The mind is sort of attached here, another mind is attached here, some kind of feeling like that. Mm-hmm. So anyway, through the skandhas, through the practice of the skandhas, you can really start studying the formation of consciousness. And see that within consciousness there's different kinds of consciousness. Okay, now, since I'm just doing a review this morning of looking at your mind, now, what we would call a mind and not just a fleeting moment has the quality, as I pointed out, of being homeostatic.

[29:24]

It tends to maintain itself. And it organizes its contents according to that kind of mind. So once you establish a certain mind, And even a certain body. Like the most obvious time to notice it is when you wake up in the morning. You can feel yourself at this big daily transition. establishing the mind of daily consciousness. Some transitions. Different kinds of associations, and then they sort of fade, and then another kind of associations, and pretty soon you're in ordinary mind, daily mind.

[30:52]

And your body also establishes itself. I don't know why this time being here I'm still in the morning still rather back on Colorado time. Yeah, I'm still somewhat jet lagged. So in the morning I don't know what body I'm establishing. But I have to establish some sort of old Buddha body that can give you a lecture. Oh, faulty Buddha body. So if you begin to see the layers of the five skandhas, and begin to feel the physical component of mind, and you really recognize the way a mind, once it's established, tends to continue.

[32:21]

It's hard to get back out of it. You can actually begin to work with your own mind. Of course, if you're in bad moods and depressed and so forth all the time, it's hard to do that. But if you can practice mindfulness, after all you can say, oh, I'm depressed today. Oh, what innocence. Now I put depression on a shelf. I haven't forgotten you, but stay on the shelf for a while. And then you can practice your mindfulness. I'm ready to die, so I don't need you now. Of course, if you're really depressed, you can't do that.

[33:22]

But you can have some kind of experience. It helps to have really deep vows. Like one vow that helps is as long as space exists. And as long as there are sentient beings. I will continue my practice with no expectation of success. Such a deep feeling. You might as well be dead. So I'm going to live forever, so I might as well be dead. So there's no point in worrying about things. Put it on the shelf. This is these kind of working with vows and so forth is also a way to get entry into our consciousness.

[34:50]

Because if you see through the five skandhas, if you see into your consciousness, you can see into the associations that appear. You begin to feel there's big editing functions going on. Editing? I'm not happy with the German word. Sorting out. You begin to see that there are views behind your consciousness that are controlling your consciousness. I like the view of time as external to us and sequential.

[35:53]

So if we can begin to look into our consciousness through the five skandhas, We can begin to see the views that affect us. And the views which are often also a knotted web of vows. Yeah, I mean, they're very simple psychological attitudes, vows. I'm a good person, I'm a bad person, I'm worthless. Ich bin eine gute Person, ich bin eine schlechte Person, ich bin eine wertlose Person.

[37:13]

I'll never succeed. Ich bin ein Versager, werde nie Erfolg haben. Or a kind of false confidence. Oder auch eine falsche Zuversicht. Yeah, that overrides difficulties. Die über Schwierigkeiten hinweg geht. These are all vows. Das sind alles Gelübnisse. Kind of vows that you made as a kid or your parents got you to make or something. When we start looking into our consciousness through the lenses of the five skandhas, We see all these attitudes about ourselves. Really, you need almost no attitudes about yourself. And it's pretty hard to have some freedom from self if your self is clogged up with attitudes. So as long as you have fear, anxiety, etc., that means yourself is clogged up with attitudes.

[38:26]

So, you know, we have experiences sometimes of feeling very clear. Our body itself feels clear and relaxed. And those moments may occur. Little short moments of real clarity. Everything feels clear, etc. Yeah, you get a kind of taste of that just arriving in Colorado. That Crestone, it's so high and the air is so clear and sunny always and bright. Every pine needle stands out with a preciseness, and the mountains stand out with tremendous preciseness.

[39:47]

That's much like the clarity of mind that's possible through practice. And when you don't have that clarity, you know there's obstructions to practice. So that immediately shows you, the taste of clarity shows you have obstructions to practice. And then you have to design for yourself antidotes to these obstructions to practice. Obstructions to clarity. Obstructions to just being relaxed and at ease. So, I mean, the tradition, I, Dogen, the tradition, the practices are all trying to give you the medicines.

[41:02]

And you, but you pretty much have to mix the medicines yourself. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and mindfulness and zazen are trying to give you the kind of place, laboratory, in which you can mix the medicines. Try out this phrase or try out this way of viewing oneself. Try out this or that vow. And we have such a web of vows that we've inherited through our culture and our personal experience that we need big vows as antidotes.

[42:13]

Like as long as space exists and sentient beings exist, I'll continue practicing. That's a big vow. Yeah, but even that may not be big enough for the network of personal vows we have. But it's such a deep, clear intention that eventually it will win out. Mm-hmm. Okay, now we can notice that also there's faculties of mind. Simple facts. Again, simple things. One is that mind has direction.

[43:33]

It has responsiveness. I can aim it at Akash. Or I can aim it at any one of you. I can aim my attention. And that's a kind of mind. And I can draw this attention back into myself. And one of the things that happens through practice is your mind ceases to be so scattered. But the sense of having direction remains. And it consolidates into two main directions.

[44:58]

Inward and outward. A turning inward and a turning outward. An openness, a gathering in. The development and refinement of those two directions are the main... What could I call it? The main... the main expression of reality in the koans. Particularly in the Blue Cliff Records.

[46:03]

So the fact that mind has direction is a faculty of mind. Now, mind can also be, another faculty of mind, is it can be based on a sense field. You can have a mind primarily located in the hearing sense, as you might in music or listening to these two early spring birds. As in, as I said, not just listening to sound, also listening to silence. Listening to the wall as well as to Maya. Mm-hmm. And you can practice with each sense in that way.

[47:40]

And now you're beginning to have another layer of mind, another way of looking at the layers of mind as well as the skandhas. And then mind also has a field quality. In addition to a direction, it also has a field quality. Now, the field quality is a little harder for non-practitioners to get a feel for. To establish a field of consciousness, of knowing, is again a yogic skill. Related to developing a non-interfering observing consciousness.

[48:54]

And related to having your mind able to rest wherever you put it. So these are skills of mind. Yeah, but we all have. But it takes some time to develop them. They're not just there naturally. And then, as I've said, defining samadhi, you can have mind concentrated on itself. So these are all faculties of mind and capacities of mind. So I think that's enough of a review, given the time we have, of ways of looking at how mind is formed and how it functions, and what are its capacities in functioning.

[50:23]

And just two more of these faculties. Another is mind has the ability to be structured. And structure is as simple as René is over there and I'm here. This is a here and there structure. That you can separate things into parts and even a sentence is a structure of mind. When we take a baby and teach it the alphabet and counting and eventually language. We're teaching it to structure the mind.

[51:48]

When David's father laughs and David does a little crawler, poddler, crawler, notices his father, he's creating an outside point of view. That creates a structure of mind. Because we can have a structure of mind, we can have an observer of mind itself. Continuing to use David as an example, Because the mind can be structured, he can take the point of view of his father and observe himself. Okay, now you can start to experience this ability of the mind to have structure.

[52:49]

And because it can have structure, it can observe itself. And you can then start to feel yourself creating an observer. You can begin to notice among the different possible observers which one collects your karma. And you can dissolve a observer of mind into the field of mind. And once you begin to have the experience of that, then you can shake loose the obstacles to practice and to clarity and the karma that's accumulated around certain ways of observing ourselves.

[54:13]

And you can more easily start entering modalities of knowing that aren't known through an observer. and also can come with confidence back to an observer, if you get nervous about not having one. So this is a quick review of the basic teachings within Zen Buddhism. about how to study consciousness, and how to participate in consciousness, how to be free of consciousness, and how to transform consciousness.

[55:17]

That's enough, isn't it? Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I do not believe in the teachings of the Psalms.

[56:22]

I do not believe in them. I do not believe in the teachings of the Psalms. I do not believe in the teachings of the Psalms. Satsang with Mooji

[57:48]

Wari man ken mon shin, juji suru koto etari. Nei wa wa kuwa no rai o shen, jitsu hi o geshi fate wa suran. I am sure that the 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 What am I going to talk about today after you shot me down last night?

[59:15]

Here I thought yesterday morning I was speaking about the most boringly simple kind of stuff. And it turned out to be the most boringly complicated stuff. Yeah, I've taught this so often, I thought, oh guys, you got it down. I'm a failure as a teacher. Yeah, but I'm persistent, so I'll keep trying. Let me start out with, you know, yesterday afternoon I said

[60:36]

this Buddhist world that these people over many centuries created. It doesn't just come from Buddha. It developed over the centuries. And Dogen has a phrase in there, something like... Literally it means... out of the dust and out of the frame. Which means... Yeah, okay. It has a much softer... invisible translation in Kaz, Tanahashi.

[61:42]

Sort of something like, I don't know what he says. Anyway, it's much softer, much... Anyway, so out of the dust means out of the world, the worldly life. And out of the frame means out of the frame of your culture and thinking. Which is a way of saying home leaver. So you're leaving home in order to find your true self. But although this phrase literally in Japanese is something like out of the frame, all these folks thought

[62:46]

assumed a large frame, which is the world itself, understood in a subtle way, but understood as coming toward us and coming from us. So the world was something that was, we can't say it was made for us, but we're inseparable from it. And there's no outside to this world. Dogen would say there's no place to hide. So in this context they tried to understand what is this world.

[64:12]

Yeah, so I'm not just teaching you meditation. Although I... I can't imagine the world and nature as I experience it, independent of meditation. But I want a world in which, not just that I experience in meditation, but that I can live in with each of you. And I inherited a responsibility to teach Buddhism, not just meditation. Yes, so I've spent a lot of years now trying to... What does it mean to teach meditation?

[65:24]

What does it mean to teach Buddhism? Okay, well, I only teach Buddhism as it is, as practice. As realizable practice. So I'm always trying to understand Buddhism as practice. And I guess the theme of this week, which I usually discover around the fifth day, though it seems to have been present from the beginning, is consciousness as our world, not just as our mind.

[66:29]

So studying our world as consciousness No, you say you have a gift for meditation. Or a need for meditation. And you have a good enough teacher or introduction to meditation. So you don't force it to be something through your thinking or ideas or ambition.

[67:36]

But you do use the power of the posture. And by the way, while sitting, Cesar, with your legs back is okay as a posture. It's very, very difficult to completely let go into an interior space unless you learn to sit cross-legged. If you believe in the independence of mind and body, maybe you don't agree with me. Wenn ihr in die Unabhängigkeit von Mind und Körper glaubt, dann seid ihr vielleicht damit nicht einverstanden.

[68:38]

Posture and mind is intimately related. Aber Haltung und Mind ist ganz intim miteinander bezogen. We see it grossly when we see that we sleep horizontally. Wir können das sehen, wie wir horizontal schlafen. It's hard to sleep standing up. You can do it. Particularly if you've learned to sleep in meditation. I remember I've told this story before. I was in a barbershop in days when I was sleeping only two or three hours a night. And I took every opportunity to nap. So I was having my hair cut. And I decided, okay, I've got 20 minutes sound asleep. Perfectly upright. He cut my hair. And then he finished, and he put a mirror in front of me.

[69:53]

And he said, how does it look? And these completely open, dead eyes were looking in the mirror. He went, oh! I said, oh, it looks fine. No! But in general we sleep horizontally. And being awake is standing up. But the kinds of particularly subtle minds that are possible are very, very connected to posture. The posture of your mudra and just exactly how your back and shoulders are and so forth. Okay.

[70:54]

The one thing that's assumed in this yogic culture is that we have a, I don't know what words to use, but a kind of interior space. But it's not identical to outer space. but they're an asymmetric, dissymmetric complementarity. So it's a little bit like music. I mean, music creates a space, an inner space through sound, You'd have to call it a kind of space you enter into, I'm sure, as a musician. And as a focused listener. What you couldn't say that inner space of music is three-dimensional.

[72:28]

It has the dimensions music gives it. Or it has the dimensions that music can seek out. Again, as we want to take our experience of time as real, not the clock time, our experience of time, let's take our experience of space as real, like the space of music. We tend to have this... I mean, science is wonderful, but it's done so much damage to our thinking. I apologize to the scientists who are here. But we don't want to trust our senses unless... What we see or hear is repeatable.

[73:42]

If we see or hear something and then next moment it's not there, we think, oh, I was just hearing it. That attitude wouldn't get you very far in meditation. Very subtle things happen that you can't repeat. Sometimes they repeat if you don't try to repeat them. But we have to trust this as something real or actual. Okay, so just as you, again, may have some talent for meditation, and you make use of this posture, And you make use of repetitious concentration.

[75:07]

On your breath, for example. Like a shaman's drum. And the posture and the repeated concentration moves you into a formless state. the repetitious concentration, that moves you into a formless space. Yeah, that's okay, good. I hope you have that experience. If you have that kind of experience, it makes our sesshins better. You help me give lectures and so forth. But that's in a way very personal. Although if you're sitting next to somebody in Sashin who's concentrated in that way, the people around that person can feel it as the whole Sashin can feel it.

[76:26]

But still, but strictly speaking, it's a kind of personal experience. Nothing wrong with that, but Many, many yogic practitioners asked, what kind of world do we live in with others? So they tried to understand this experience. What is really happening? Is it just limited to shamanic concentration? Or does it have something to do with the world and other people? Flow. They began to, just as we structure, we make this room and we make a garden and so forth, and we trim the trees.

[77:41]

We make the space around us. All life has directionality. Like little tadpoles. You know tadpoles? Before a frog. Pollywogs. They have a little eye and they have a little tail and they're going somewhere. And they are... Somebody would say swimming upstream in a nutrient. They're swimming upstream in a nutrient stream or something like that. Finding food. But they're making space. They're making their space. So we make this space. But we also make interior space.

[79:02]

So the idea of our Buddhist ancestors was not only what space is there already there, And what is the potential of that interior space, the best words I have for it? But how should we articulate this space? within its potentialities. How should we articulate this interior space within its potentialities? And let's articulate its potentialities in ways that doesn't limit its potentialities. Yeah, I'm trying to give you, I don't know, I hope you can follow me here, just trying to give you a feeling of how this Buddhist world we are learning through an habit developed.

[80:13]

So, One of the first ways they began to give a kind of interior architecture to space was the five skandhas. And there comes to be a kind of power in noticing certain rooms So maybe if you're used to coming to meditation, you hear the horn. And with the horn and the bell, the fifth skanda of consciousness begins to fade.

[81:18]

And by the time you sit down, you're already in the fourth skanda. And if you're a beginner, you're in the fourth skanda for a few years. Hopefully not ordinary thinking. And a lot of associative thinking. But you develop an ability to be present in the field of that associative thinking without identifying with it. But if you're more experienced, the associative thinking is only for a moment as you sit down.

[82:21]

And you move into the room of the third skandha. And sometimes, if you're a beginner, in Sashin, you're pushed strongly into the third skanda, the room of the third skanda. And in the way we spoke yesterday afternoon, you begin to feel this blissful world of perception only. In the room of perception only, for some reason, you begin to hear your own mind. And in this room, even if thinking comes up, you see your mind thinking.

[83:27]

So you can establish yourself in the room of the third skandha and then think. And then some of you are doing that. You just don't know it's the third skandha. There was no name on the door, you know. But you do discover you can be in a situation where you can see yourself think and you can follow thinking to its source. It becomes possible to see the trigger of perception that led to a stream of thought. An initial thought or whatever that started a stream of thought. And that ability to see... Originary thought is really only possible in the room of the third skandha.

[85:00]

Then you can move into the room of the second skandha. That's the room of non-graspable feeling. And there's a kind of feeling that it's deeply satisfying. There's no impingement of negative or positive karma. So a deep satisfaction begins to come in. And this is probably the room closest to non-dreaming deep sleep.

[86:01]

And non-dreaming deep sleep, blissful non-dreaming deep sleep surfaces in this room. So she can really see the sequence of these rooms. Because there is a kind of sequence. You find yourself in associative thinking. And it's possible to let go of the associations and have just pure perception. Once you're in that room and it has, as I said, homeostatic, unorganizing properties, the liquid or something of that room doesn't support associations. If you can establish yourself in that room,

[87:31]

Establish the mind of that room. You don't have to cut through your thinking. It just seems to fade away. And you can feel that room with your body. Like I said in the first lecture, when you have the sensation of sitting back in your consciousness, And letting your consciousness function without you quite identifying with it. And that's a physical feeling, sitting back, or like being at the back of your eyes, as I said. Yeah. So you can begin to feel the physical feeling of these different rooms.

[88:44]

And the whole point of Yogacara practice, which is the school Zen takes its practice from, the so-called consciousness or mind-only school, you can enter meditation very quickly because you know the feel of these rooms and you can walk right through them. So I suppose the experienced meditator goes straight into the second skandha pretty quickly. Unless you want a few moments of bliss in the third skandha.

[89:51]

Or you want to think through something with a lot of free association, creative free association, then you stay in the fourth skandha. But once you've got a hit on some new ways of thinking about your daily problem, take five or ten minutes of bliss. Sukhiroshi said to me once, it takes about ten to twenty minutes to go through the stages of meditation until you can drop form. He would tell me these little things very casually. Like I was the doan. I can't remember. He was the doan. Or I was the doan. I went up and he was sitting and he just said that to me. Yes, so then you go into the, pretty immediately actually, into the room of the second skandha.

[91:08]

Which is not so sharply blissful, but deeply satisfying. Almost nothing is there. And then you can go into the skandha, form itself, the first skandha. And at that point you have form and emptiness. At that point, you've removed these constituents of consciousness. Or walked out of the room of associative thinking and perception and so forth.

[92:13]

In their empty room. I hope the bell never rings. Goodbye legs. Excuse me for a while. Then you begin to understand the four formless Jhanas or concentrations. The word Zen comes from Jhana. Jhana, Chan, Zen, you all know that. And there's four form jhanas and four formless jhanas.

[93:28]

So when you're in the first skanda, form itself, where you remove the constituents of consciousness, you could breathe deeply. But you hardly need to breathe when you're sitting there. Then you can feel the formlessness of space. The formlessness of consciousness. And nothing at all. and beyond awareness or no awareness. So the very form of the five skandhas

[94:28]

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