I don't know how to find my way into this, because I've never spoken about what I'd like to speak about. But I'll start with things I have kind of figured out how to speak about. Okay, so I think you've understood that. And also let me say that what I'm going to try to speak about is considered one of the more complex and subtle aspects of Buddhism. But it's a little complex to think about. But it's not particularly complex to do.

[01:03]

So if you get the feel of it, then it's actually, I would hope, not only applicable, can be part of your life, it can be part of your psychotherapy. And I would guess that you'll find that it's already something you do. You just don't do it in the particular intellectual framework that Buddhism has developed for it. But the intellectual framework allows you to notice and extend it into additional realms. Okay. It's like somebody at the Winter Branches seminar we just had.

[02:17]

And I may have already repeated this, I forget, because I just was in... I don't remember what I say, where, when. But he said that he... didn't know anything about the Eightfold Path, but in practicing mindfulness, it led him into the Eightfold Path. But then, to then study the Eightfold Path, to let him develop further what he started with mindfulness practice. Okay, so you have the Eightfold Path, and I offered you the four Brahmaviharas. And now the six paramitas. which are generosity, discipline, and discipline really means the ability to learn or receive.

[03:46]

That's also in English what the etymology of discipline is, is to learn. The implication is, of course, that some discipline is required for learning. Okay, so generosity, discipline or receiving or learning. And then patience. That's the first three. And the last three are vigor. And this is one of those areas that I think you can see in, again assuming you read the Eightfold Path piece, that right effort is this area where you can't quite define it.

[04:51]

This is similar. In the middle of a list, they often put energy or effort. And in the simplest sense, it means to bring the body into the situation. How do you infuse this list with the body? The body taking the form of energy or intention or courage. Okay. So that's the fourth. And the fifth is meditation, or more specifically samadhi.

[05:59]

And I think samadhi you can most easily understand, if you need a little way to put it in your mind as a term, is mind concentrated on itself. And samadhi can be best understood as the mind that focuses on itself. In contrast to mind concentrated on contents. The content of mind is mind itself, is samadhi. And the sixth is wisdom. But in this case wisdom means suchness. Now, if you notice that the sixth one is prajna, wisdom. Paramita. Yeah, and paramita means to go beyond.

[07:01]

It also means perfection, but it means perfection through going beyond anything, going so beyond it's complete perfection. And one of the, of course, major developments in Buddhism is the Prajnaparamita literature. And so the sixth of the eightfold, sixth of the six paramitas, is Prajnaparamita. So you could almost say that the paramitas, six paramitas, are the introduction and entry in to the entire emptiness literature of the Prajnaparamita. The entirety of the literature of the Prajnaparamita.

[08:04]

And the Heart Sutra is the shortest, the next to the shortest, version of the Prajnaparamita. And it ends with the mantra, gone, gone, gone beyond, completely gone beyond. And you're supposed to actually enact that when you say it. Go on, go on. Disappear. We chant it in the morning because it's the basis of beginning to enact it.

[09:24]

Now, the shortest, if I said that's the next to the shortest, there's the Prajnaparamita literature, 8,000 lines. And then there's the Prajnaparamita literature in, I think, 35,000 lines. Let me give myself a little pat on the back. I actually got both those books translated and published. I got both those books published. One by a little press I was on the board of for Seasons Foundation did the 18,000 lines and University of California Press did the 35,000.

[10:43]

Despite I haven't read them, I studied them every word, but I did hope to get them published after Kunze asked me to. So, So the smallest one, the smallest version of the Prajnaparamita lecture, 35, 18, I don't know how many syllables or lines the Hartz lecture is. 18,000. 250 something. Oh, characters? I think yes.

[11:45]

Okay. So that many characters. Mm-hmm. And the shortest is simply the syllable ah. And A is supposed to start, yeah? And it's Aum, it starts in the back of the throat, Aum, and it carries all the way up, Aum. Do I write in this Eightfold Path piece, did I talk about the syllable body? The one way that... I thought of this earlier, but language is... you asked me to speak about language, is that the Lankavatara Sutra says the adept practitioner hears the syllable body, the name body, and the phrase or sentence body simultaneously.

[13:07]

The words fit into sentences horizontally, but names are both vertical and horizontal. Does that make sense? Do you understand it? A word is part of a sentence and is horizontal in the sentence. Its meaning is controlled by where it is in the sentence. But a name can have lots of words, lots of meanings, unless you compress it into the sentence. So it means a syllable resonates with the body and calls forth association. The syllable body articulates, in a sense, awareness. A kind of hum in a sentence.

[14:39]

And then the name calls forth associations, and then the sentence creates meaning. So it's assumed that if you hear all of these at once, you create the conditions for enlightenment. Now, this is interesting. I've never heard any Western linguist or anybody talk about to really hear these three levels in language, and they're all present in language. So that's the background of the entire Prajnaparamita literature being able to be in one sound. And you expand it into names and words and sentences.

[15:50]

Okay. Okay. Now, I mean, I think if you're going to work with something like the six paramitas... You have to have two simultaneous views. One view is, God, this is an ancient teaching, a couple thousand years old, and I've got to give it some... I've got to take it seriously. And then the other view is, what the hell is this all about? Six little words. Six little words?

[17:06]

Doris Day sings three little words, I love you, or something like that. Okay, six little words. How can this be the practice of the Bodhisattva? I mean, crazy generosity. What a pain in the ass, generosity. I mean, beep! So, it's again something, it's a little bit of theater direction. It's something you have to enact. Try it out. Okay, so generosity is, and this part I've spoken about before when I brought up the six parameters. Generosity is, let's say, mainly two aspects. One is when you're in front of a person.

[18:22]

Now, how this differs, how the six parameters differs from the Eightfold Path. The Eightfold Path, as I said earlier, is about your development as a good person. And the six parameters are an intersubjective, interactive practice. You practice them in front of each person you meet. Okay, so two aspects when you meet somebody. And you don't also punish yourself if you don't do it. All right, you're okay. Too many people think I'm not practicing right.

[19:24]

It's ridiculous. Just try it when you think of it. Generosity is you have the feeling when you meet somebody, I will do anything you want me to do. Anything I can do for you, I will. You have that feeling. And the other feeling is, the most generous thing I can do for you is my state of mind. The most basic thing I can do for you is whatever my state of mind is. If it's a terrible state of mind, I'm not doing you much good. Now you just practice that. And you see if you can feel that. Sometimes you decide, okay, I'll do that, and it's about a year later that you remember to try.

[20:28]

You just weren't ready to do it. But it also assumes that you've developed, I mean, to really practice it, it assumes you've developed the truth body. And it's assumed that, like in the four Brahma Viharas, that you've developed the mind of equanimity. Empathetic joy and so forth. So otherwise you can't be present in your mind stream with such an attitude. Until your practice is fairly developed, your mind stream is just caught up in its thinking and it's like, I like you, I don't like you, etc., right? What does he think of me?

[21:37]

What does she think of me? This is a defiled mind stream. I mean, it's normal, so you don't punish yourself for it, but it could be better. But you make use of it. As soon as you notice, you have the thought, like, I wonder what this person thinks of me. You're grateful for the thought because it allows you to release it. So as a practitioner, your thought isn't, oh, I shouldn't have that thought.

[22:43]

Your thought is, oh, good, now I have a chance to release myself from it. This is true, I'm saying. But I mean, you can sometimes get, do I need so many opportunities to release? Like a few less opportunities. Hmm. So you make an intention to have these two main attitudes, which is, if I can do something for you, I will, and knowing that your state of mind is the most generous thing you can do for someone else. Okay. And for each person equally, not somebody you love, not only people you dislike, just whoever you have this feeling.

[23:51]

Now, let me try to speak a moment about this equalness. Okay. In the sense of a spatially defined... In a spatially defined world, if it's really spatially defined, everything is equal. As soon as some things are not equal, I like this better than that. You're actually in a temporally defined world.

[25:08]

Likes and dislikes are over time. So part of the discipline in this practice is to notice when you're in a temporal framework and when you're in a spatial framework. So when Yuan Wu, the compiler of the Blue Cliff Records, says, establish a mind which has neither here nor there, or before or after. One of the few ways you can do that is to drop consciousness and bring forth awareness. Or to shift to a more body mind. So, because here and there and before and after are constructs. Mental constructs.

[26:25]

If there's a non-conceptual stream of mind, there's just the presence. Without any sense of future or past. More like animals probably have. This is also closer to the Sambhogakaya body. The body of bliss is the body realized through meditation, which feels timeless, free of temporal dimensions. That's why bliss arises. Okay. Now you're beginning to see how this is a bodhisattva practice. Because the bodhisattva is one who relates to everyone exactly the same. As in their initial mind and fundamental attitude.

[27:26]

Doesn't mean they don't have a different attitude to their mother and father and husband or wife or children if they have them. But the base attitude, the fundamental attitude is the same for your own child and someone else's child. Aber die grundlegende Einstellung ist dieselbe für die eigenen Kinder wie eben für die Kinder eines anderen. You know, I know some practitioners who clearly strongly, so strongly identify with their own children. Their own identity is tied up with their own child, but they really feel differently about other children. And it's a problem they don't recognize in their practice. And it would be very helpful, yeah. And then... It would be very helpful to them to use it as an opportunity to see, oh, can I start working on this

[29:05]

And it's probably not so good for the children to have your own identity projected onto the child. You know, I don't want them to go through what I went through as children and so forth. Nein, dieses Ganze, ich möchte nicht, dass Sie durch das durchgehen müssen, was ich durchgemacht habe. So, I mean, but we do feel this. I mean, the simple example is just this. We are very open to babies. Aber wir spüren das schon. Also ein ganz einfaches Beispiel ist eben, dass wir sehr offen Babys gegenüber sind. So we can take this as a simple example of practice. Und das können wir als ein einfaches Beispiel für die Praxis benutzen. we can notice how we're open to each baby we see. And then notice how we're not open to each adult we see.

[30:08]

There's a territory of practice right there. To get the feeling, to know the mind that's open to the baby or an animal, but is not open to adults the same way. So I would say the bodhisattva is one who develops the same attitude toward every baby and every adult. Okay. This is not... We already feel this way, actually. The example I give is you're lost in the forest. In the freezing rain, in two or three hours, you can't find your way out of this damn forest.

[31:12]

Then down, you suddenly see someone. And you don't think, now that's not the kind of guy I want to find. I'm not going to be found by him. No, a human being. Wonderful. Baby, adult. Hello. How the hell do I get out of here? Yeah, and many people speak about how after 9-11, you know, the horrible blowing up of the two buildings in New York, the spirit in New York for weeks was extremely good. So it's already in us. The Bodhisattva nourishes this part of him or herself.

[32:13]

And the six parameters are how you nourish that. Okay, so that's generosity. Now, the second one, discipline or receiving or learning. At the same time as you feel this generosity or openness toward this person, openness to do whatever they need, the second aspect is to be open to whatever they offer you. We're not thinking, oh, that's not good enough. I wish you'd said something else. You know, you don't love me enough or something. The first reaction is, well, I really didn't mean that, or he didn't really understand me, etc. That's not bodhisattva practice.

[33:46]

It doesn't mean that you shouldn't want to be understood or you don't have some complaints about your spouse. But it means your initial mental posture is to, well, that's what's offered. And if you really develop that as a habit, this is what I'm receiving. When you do say something about, I wish it were somewhere else, it comes from a different place. So the third, patience, is to be willing to wait for it to happen. It's a kind of patience if I pick up this bell. It's a kind of patience to just let the bell speak to me.

[35:00]

The coldness of the bell settled into my hand. To let things come from their own side. Did I speak yesterday about to complete that which appears? No, I'm sorry. Another day. Yeah. But part of Dogen says, a phrase of Dogen says, on each appearance, complete that which appears. That's also patience. To let things come to you from their side, not always from your side. And also your own side, associations. and letting it enter into non-graspable feeling.

[36:17]

Okay, so that's... So I think you can see that generosity and discipline are receiving and patience are actually a single moment. Yeah. See, we're in a spatial world now. So things are single moments. And it's a little like I might have a view, might think of something you want to say, or I might say, have an idea of what I can speak about, It's a single moment, but it might take me a week to unpack it. And this single moment is more the way awareness thinks. It's more what we call intuition.

[37:41]

Again, Andy over there. Andy, Fred. Andrew, I should call you. Eric, Fred. Is that right, Fred? Yeah. You're going to have to translate all that stuff. If he throws me something, It's a single moment. All of that happens and I put my hand up. I don't sort of think, no, well, this is going to go to you. Okay, so there's a classic Buddhist technical term for this. Let's see if I can try to pronounce it. Um... Eka kashana abhisambhoda. You don't have to translate. No, I just realized that.

[38:46]

Eka kashana abhisambhoda means single moment comprehension. Das bedeutet das Verständnis des im einzelnen Augenblickes. And the point of the six paramitas is to generate, to develop single-moment comprehension. Now, we have single-moment comprehension all the time. You meet someone in almost an immeasurable instant. You know whether you like them or don't like them or how you feel. And if your single moment comprehension is I don't like the person, Then you start practicing the six parameters.

[39:54]

You unpack that single moment. Because single moment comprehension is fine, but Buddhism says develop it and then fold it back together. We can think of the six parameters as single moment comprehension unfolded into six aspects until you understand them and then fold it back together. That's why I'm endlessly fascinated by Buddhism. Oh, you're telling me things I don't know anything about. Or showing me things that I haven't noticed and then when I notice them, they blossom.

[41:15]

Okay. So the next one is, again, vigor or courage. And the next one is samadhi. Now it's clear that this single moment comprehension flows from samadhi more than from any other state of mind. Now your initial mind. Now I think that's an important thing to have in mind. We're not talking about some kind of state of mind you're already in because the Buddhist police are watching you. It's that it's single moment comprehension. In other words, if you can introduce a single moment of wisdom into the mind stream,

[42:34]

It transforms the mind stream. It makes other single moments possible. And the mind stream is a bunch of single moments. You can't enter a bunch of single moments all at once because when you try to grab them, they start running away. But with a correct kind of acupuncture, acupuncture, you can get the single moment. Yeah. So she just says in German there's a good word for it which is called Geistesgegenwärtigkeit, mind presence.

[43:43]

Mind stream instead of mind presence, instead of mind stream? Yeah. Moment after moment mind. Is mind presence in German? Yes, that's a good word for it. The geist of course is mind and then gegenwärtigkeit is being present. Being present. That's good. Okay. Mind presence in English would not imply what I'm doing, but it sounds like in German it does. Okay. Are we okay? Should we continue here? Because I can finish in, I think, in a while. If you're patient and generous. Okay. Yeah, I don't want to go on too long because it doesn't make any sense, but let's see, I'll try to continue.

[44:58]

There's three aspects of change that are useful to notice. Entitylessness. Uniqueness. And identitylessness. Okay. Now, uniqueness is, we've talked about a lot, is actually, if everything's changing, each moment is absolutely unique. Mindfulness practice is to know this, to feel it. We tend to get tired, etc. When we start, it's the same old thing. There goes his voice again, blah, blah, blah. But can you stay present, feeling the uniqueness of each moment?

[46:13]

And sometimes Gurdjieff teachers talk for hours until you're so exhausted you can't do anything but be alert. You can't stand it if you don't get alert. It's a way to get consciousness to go to sleep, and so you're talking to awareness. Okay. So again, this practice assumes that you have some mindful sense of the uniqueness of each moment. What kind of practice assumes that?

[47:26]

This practice of this experiment. And entitylessness. Or also that everything is an activity. There are entities. And the third being identitylessness. Now, identitylessness can only be noticed in single-moment comprehension, single-moment knowing. So identity requires continuity. Identity needs continuity.

[48:34]

If your client comes in the room and you wouldn't be surprised if it happened to be a Martian, This would be identitylessness. You don't know, oh, you look a little familiar. Yeah, you know, green thing, you know. So, enemies like that. Okay. And wisdom in this teaching is emphasized as suchness or thusness. Okay. Now, the teaching of thusness is in English hidden in the word the. It's the same that, the, this, they're all the same word etymologically.

[49:38]

So we have the bell and the cup. And it's a cup and a bell. Cup and a bell. But they're both the's. They're both thus. They're both at this moment unique. And their identity-less, now this is Buddha's teaching and can be experienced, they have not identities when you emphasize their thusness. Doesn't mean you don't see their difference. But you see their sameness first. In a temporal world, they're different. In a spatial world, they both are similar in that they just appeared.

[50:58]

They're sharing the same space. Or they're equal in that they share the same space. This one didn't cause this one. They're both just there, just here. And this is an experience people have when they practice at some point. Ulrike Dillow spoke about it the other day. It's everything feels like it's in a play. When you sometimes may have the feeling of everything is just as it is. Now, you may at that moment think, moralistically, oh, well, people are suffering and some people, you know, well, then you lose it.

[52:02]

Doesn't mean those thoughts aren't important, but that's a comparative state of mind. That's a temporally time-dimensioned state of mind. That's a comparative mind. You don't always have to be in a comparative mind because you're morally irresponsible if you're not. Du wirst dich zurückfinden in einem vergleichenden Geisteszustand, wenn das notwendig ist, schon recht bald genug. And the world can get along without your comparisons for a few minutes.

[53:08]

So at that moment where you feel everything is in its place, if you really look at it, you'll find you're in a deep state of relaxation. You could actually die at that moment. And in that sense, death is present in each unique moment. The moment, this deep relaxation when we could die. doesn't mean we're not also going to live. But it's this willingness to die, not in the future, but a willingness to die in this moment, because there's this deep relaxation.

[54:11]

It doesn't mean to be willing to die in the future, but it means to be willing to die in this moment because of this deep relaxation. I'm sure when you die, there's something sitting on the table, there's something on the windowsill, there's a light in the ceiling perhaps. Everything is equal. This is also the bodhisattva state of mind. That everything is equal. Thus, just thus, and equal in its thusness. Now its philosophy is a little slippery. But its experience is not slippery at all. So this experience of thusness is really The whole of the Six Paramitas.

[55:31]

And the whole of the teaching of the Paramitas, of the Paramita literature, sutras. Yeah, and... The Buddha called Tathagatagarbha comes out of the word Tathagata. So the biggest word for the Buddha is Tathagata. And the biggest word for the world is Tathagatagarbha. And as you know, garba means, most of you know, womb and embryo. Which means there's a tremendous fertility when everything is joined in thusness. So thusness is also an experienceable word for emptiness. So then also the six parameters are to be with each person

[56:35]

in which your initial mind is no views. I've often said, and I didn't hear, I think, practice in front of a tree. Get a feeling of just being in front of a tree. And you don't think, I like this tree, I don't like this tree. It's just a tree. Its activity is continuously reestablishing its position right there. And it's treeing. And so then you just get... You get to know the mind that feels just the presence of the tree.

[57:57]

Its activity. Its presence. Its uniqueness. Its thusness. Learn that state of mind. And then be in front of a prisoner. In some shamanic way, in the middle of the trunk, the face started to... Then let the tree turn into a person. But for this state of mind, the tree, the person, your own self is all other and all the same. And this is what the teaching of non-self means. Now, again, this is not the way you always are.

[58:59]

This is just a way of being that you should know. So we begin to have two mind streams. A conceptual mind stream and a non-conceptual mind stream. And the bringing them together is the nirmanakaya buddha. Now, the conceptual mind stream is a mind stream within consciousness. And the non-conceptual mind stream is a mind stream also within consciousness. But it's parallel to awareness. So what you're doing in this Buddhist practice is you're educating consciousness, you're educating conceptual consciousness to have a non-conceptual mind stream within it.

[60:24]

It's not so hard to do. Once you've got the idea. You start trusting your stomach. You start feeling it in your body. You start letting your body make decisions. What will I eat? You just see what your body does. What thing you pick up? Little ways you just try to not think and let non-thinking do your life. When you need to think, think. But when you don't need to think, just act. And eventually, thinking gets to be a very useful tool, but it's not how you identify yourself all the time. So when you establish a non-conceptual mind stream within consciousness, that allows awareness into consciousness.

[61:30]

And it also starts to refine awareness, which is usually an image mind stream. So it's the teaching of Buddhism that if you create a non-conceptual mind stream, which is the practice of the Bodhisattva, It will transform both consciousness and awareness. And this is considered to be the mind of a Buddha. But it doesn't mean it's not accessible to us. It's within the categories of our own experience. And in small ways, if you have this intention, in small ways you'll get a feeling for it. Okay.

[62:50]

That's good enough for today. I don't know, what time is it? Well, we're 45 minutes early, so we could sit for 45 minutes. Okay. Or we could have a short sit and then a break and a chance just to be with each other. Because I think enough has been said. And anyway, we're in a spatial and not temporal world. And, you know, let me just say one thing. I think it's useful to notice that awareness... We tend to think of awareness in the temporal categories of consciousness.

[63:57]

And you know contemporary mathematical physics says there's 10 or 12 dimensions. That can be described mathematically, but they are beyond our experience. And awareness is something like that. It's dimensioned in its folded upness. So it may be that if you go to bed at 11 o'clock and get up at 6.02, consciousness is between 11 and 6.02. But awareness may be 11 and 6.02 are right beside each other. Not exactly conscious. thinkable, but I think that's the way it is.

[65:12]

So it is this single moment comprehension where everything is rolled up together. And we unpack it as consciousness and roll it up as awareness. And this rolled-up awareness is also very similar to what's meant by the Avijjana, which is quite different than Freudian unconscious. And I said I would say something about the Alaya Vijnana, but that's as much as I will say. And maybe next year we could say to be continued. Or to be unrolled.

[66:15]

Something like that. These ideas are very powerful.

[67:37]

And they're very powerful because they're close to how we actually exist. But they will be very powerful if you feel they're close to how we actually exist. So, of course you can practice with them in your own life. But if I was a psychotherapist, I would see if I could remind myself at the beginning of each session when I find myself sitting in front of an absolutely unique person, did I bring into my awareness Whatever of these ideas happen to stick or come up.

[69:00]

Like single moment comprehension. Yeah. A spatial world. Or I will do whatever I can for you. And I will receive from you whatever you offer. And I'll bring my courage and patience to this, to our Mutual body. And then do whatever usually you do.

[70:30]

Just the ideas themselves reminded have a very surprising power. big space we're in. Thank you very much. You've allowed me to say things I've never said before. more than certain.

[71:31]

This is a tremendous gift. Tremendous gift I received from you. Thank you. This is the most wonderful kind of friendship.

[72:18]

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