But the funny thing, you know, Katie didn't quite get that. There's two concepts that I'm very well aware of. One is the one that's generalized in which it's biblical independence, or independent. And the other is the dependence of a concept, a conceptual entity of consciousness that you know that. You said that it's the clock program and the hand is the consciousness of that consciousness. that thought or that entity. And bringing the independence into that, the thought is dependent on the consciousness. That's a separate sort of issue from... Would you say the thought is dependent on the consciousness? Are you differentiating between thought and consciousness here? Pot.

[01:01]

Do you want to have the thought of the pot? Or the self, the identity of the pot, the selfness of the pot. The selfness of the pot. Well, the self of the pot is, let's say the self of the pot is considered to be whole, you know. So you'd lose that one, right? And you'd lose permanent, you'd lose that. And independent, you'd lose that too. And that was the one you're having trouble with. The independence, I would suggest, you might be able to get at that you thought it was independent because when you look at the pot, you don't necessarily think when you look at the pot, that pot looks like it's out there on its own. You don't necessarily notice, though, that you think it's out there on its own. But you do. I mean, a lot of people do. They think that pot is independent of me. Like I can go away That won't have anything to do with the pot.

[02:02]

Or the pot can go away, and that won't have anything to do with me. We sort of feel that way, maybe. It looks like the pot is independent of the table that's sitting on it. Well, that too. That too. When you say that this really exists... Well, truly exists... They say truly exists, but not... All things truly exist. All things truly exist. In other words, a thing is something that performs a function. All things, like people and houses, they truly exist. They really do exist. They're established for this school. But they're not necessarily substantially existent. Substantially existent means that they ultimately exist. In other words, if you would break them, the consciousness which knew them would not be broken, would not be lost.

[03:07]

That's like... So they say something truly exists when it can be established as a thing. And for them, everything can be. even past and future can be. But truly existent does not mean ultimately existent. Truly existent does not mean we'll stand up to analysis. And stand up to analysis also means that the consciousness which knows this object will not break down when you analyze it. So a consciousness which knows a pot will be cancelled when the pot is broken. And a consciousness which knows water or a person will be cancelled when you mentally analyze the person. The more subtle version, in some sense, is simpler to talk about. The subtler version of the belief in self, of the pot, or the person, is that it substantially exists.

[04:12]

Substantially exists means ultimately exists. It means that if you analyze it, if you analyze it physically, the consciousness would hold up. And some things, they say, will hold up. For example, cessations will hold up. And space will hold up, but also the skandhas will hold up. But a person, a self, will not hold up because whatever way you see the person there, whatever way it's appearing, When you actually look at, when you actually analyze it into the five aggregates, you don't see the person anymore. The consciousness which is lost, the consciousness which sensed the person is lost. But you do see still maybe a feeling or a smell or an idea. Those will hold up to analysis in this school.

[05:19]

Even those will not hold up to analysis. But when you look at a person, or consider yourself, and try to see what you've got there, and you break yourself up into what makes yourself up, then you won't see yourself anymore. In other words, the consciousness which knows it will be cancelled. But, That doesn't mean there's no self, it just means the self is a conventional truth, like a pot. It's like a pot or it's like water that won't hold up to analysis. However, the things you analyze the pot into, they will hold up to analysis. And the things you finally analyze the water into, that will hold up to analysis. And the thing you analyze the person into, that will hold up to analysis in the system. So those are ultimate truths. And when you're looking at those ultimate truths, then you're free of ignorance.

[06:24]

Because ignorance is ignoring ultimate truth and looking at a conventional truth and putting too much reality into it. And therefore, by distorting the reality of a conventional truth into an ultimate truth, that's the root of our suffering. But we have to know both conventional truths like pots and people and persons and selves. Selves are conventional truths, too. We have to know these things and be aware that they don't hold up to analysis and therefore do not grasp them as substantial. And then we can open up to see ultimate truths. And when looking at ultimate truths, we have just stopped being ignorant. And so we need to be able to see conventional truths and how to be able to see ultimate truths. And then we need to contemplate that and then see that, and then bring that seeing, that vision, into a calm place where we can bring, so it's no longer like thinking about the ultimate truth, but realizing it, becoming it, being it.

[07:45]

Yeah, this is going a lot slower than I thought it would. Yes? So exaggerating reality, is that specifically restored in the beginning of the Metronome sleep? Well, it's exaggerating a conventional truth into an ultimate. I'm thinking that this all exists, that the Lord made us who we die for. Say it louder. I'm thinking that the Lord made us who we die for, that we both, he thinks that we die for it exists. Well, he sees his dad in a certain shape, and then he says, that's really what my dad's like, like that, that's what my dad looks like, that's my dad.

[08:55]

Then if you change the dad a little bit, since the other thing was really his dad, this thing's not his dad. So he's got troubles, you know. He lost his dad. But it's upsetting him because it looks a little like his dad, so it isn't just like a complete stranger coming in the room. But maybe it is like a complete stranger in the room, because sometimes... But if the kid could see the dad and say, well, this is the way my dad appears... But that's not ultimately the way. Then if you break up the dad, what does the kid see? The kid's consciousness isn't broken because the kid was

[09:59]

not at the wholeness of the dad, but something about the dad that doesn't deteriorate when you analyze the dad. What would that be? What would it be? The skandhas. It would be the skandhas. The kid would be looking at the skandhas. And when the skandhas of the dad changed, they wouldn't lose the dad, just the skandhas would change. So you still have, basically, the consciousness would go on. Not the consciousness would go on, but you could still see your dad. Because you didn't think of your dad as this whole thing. You saw your dad as this composed thing. so you don't get upset. But little kids can't do that, of course, and adults have to learn. Yes?

[11:04]

So is that instructing that bare noting is to focus on what is in the school, all the truths, just an idea, just thought? Did you say what now about bare noting? awesome meditation and just no thought, sensation. Would that be a practice for focusing on what is ultimate truth? That's a practice for working up to being able to see conventional ultimate truth, yes. So later in the Abhidharma Kosha, a few verses on, it says, you know, well, what is this, how do we develop this wisdom? And the answer is foundations of mindfulness, which means mindfulness of body, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of consciousnesses, and mindfulness of dharma.

[12:10]

And what is dharma? Dharma is skandhas, sense fields, elements, Four Noble Truths. And you train yourself at looking at phenomena to develop your ability to be mindful. And then when you get pretty good at it, then you start looking at the truths. And what truths do you look at? Four Noble Truths and, for example, the two truths. So you develop your ability to know what's happening And then finally what's happening to you is that you're hearing Dharma instructions. You're hearing some Dharma instructions when you hear about the mindfulness practice and how to do it, and then you're hearing Dharma instructions when you hear which topics to pay attention to, but then the final, the most subtle instructions in Dharma. So then you're taught how to look at the aggregates. You're not taught about how to look at people, At the beginning you look at people, when you say to people, be aware of the body, what they think of as the gross body.

[13:15]

But as you start watching the body more and more, you start to notice it's not really this gross body. It's like hearing and seeing, smelling and touching and tasting is actually what you're being aware of. You're not aware actually of the body. like, you know, a five-foot-eight female weighing 100 pounds, being a certain age, walking, you know. You actually start, as your mindfulness gets more and more clear, what you're actually working with, just like what the kid's actually working with, is like these images. that you compose that are coming through the senses, smell images, sound images, and so on. Then you move to feelings, which are a little bit more subtle. Then you move to states of consciousness. Then you get into the real details of the experience. And by training yourself, then you're ready to, like, hear the teaching of the two truths. Then you're able to, like, look at things and be told, okay, now, bring this mindfulness to the... bring this mindfulness...

[14:21]

to this phenomenon. Now analyze it. Does it hold up? If not, it's a conventional truth. Now look at this. Look at this person. Now I analyze this person, the five skandhas. Does the person hold up? No. Does the five skandhas hold up in this school? Yes. Now you're looking at... You're looking at five skandhas. You're not ignoring the five skandhas. You're not ignoring the five skandhas. You're not ignoring the five skandhas. You're noting the five skandhas. You're noting form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, consciousness. That's what you're looking at now. Okay? You're not any longer like looking at and holding on to the idea that these five skandhas are a little package called a unitary, independent, substantially existent person. Now, this is enough, according to this school, to achieve personal liberation. When you meet a person, see five skandhas, not see a whole person.

[15:26]

But when we see five skandhas, which we interpret as a person, or when we're sitting by ourselves, feeling five skandhas about ourself and interpreting that as a person, we have just, you know, We have made a kind of idea about these five skandhas into something more real than just an idea of these five skandhas. We've taken something of the five skandhas and said that that thing is a signal that all these five skandhas are a whole unit. So we've made, in a sense, the parts of the pot. Our mind can do that. Now, if you then take the pot apart, either mentally, mentally is the best way to do it, you don't want to actually like pull your feelings and your body apart physically, you don't want to pull the parts of your body, your ear apart, but mentally you see yourself broken into parts and you notice that that actually accounts for what's happening.

[16:29]

Just like a broken pot accounts for what's happening. So then you see that your idea of a whole person was just a conventional thing that wouldn't hold up to analysis. But that truly exists, this idea of a whole person truly exists just like a pot does. It truly exists, it truly appears. It really seems like there's a self there. And whatever kind of self you've got, that's fine. But it's just a conventionality. If you would analyze it, you wouldn't be able to find it anymore. The consciousness which knows it would be cancelled. So the four foundations of mindfulness help you build up to a place where you can have mindfulness of dharma. So you start looking at dharmas and there's no persons on the dharma list, and there's no self. If you have a self, the way it goes on the dharma list is, what would it be on the dharma list? It would be one of the skandhas. It would have to be a form,

[17:32]

It would have to be a sight, a sound, a smell, a touch, a taste, or a feeling, or a concept, or an image, or an idea, or a memory. These kinds of things we use to make a self. We put them together and we say, that's me. And then we hold that idea. But that's an idea, that's not a self. And if you would analyze that, you wouldn't be able to find the self you thought you had. But you don't have nothing. Now you're looking. you're looking at these skandhas, and they, at this level of analysis, they hold up. They don't disappear. When you break them into parts or analyze them, you still have them. You break a feeling into parts, you still have a feeling. So they hold up at this level of analysis. There's a deeper level, which we may get to, where they won't even hold up. That's the level of the Heart Citra where you analyze the five skandhas then and you see that they're conventionalities too.

[18:35]

And they can't find them either. This is a more profound ultimate. Or put it the other way, we still have a little bit of reification going on to the skandhas. There's still a little bit of naive realism hooking on to even the aggregates. But that level of naive realism will not prevent you from being personally liberated. You can still have a little bit of naive realism and go to nirvana. But you see, it's a lot less than usual because you're like, when you're standing on the planet, and there's a sense of self, you don't see it just sitting there as a sense of self. You immediately understand the Dharma's flowing through you, which says, this sense of self, this sense of self, is it the same?

[19:40]

You look, no. Is it different? No. You immediately don't find it. So you kind of like, the consciousness which is apprehending the self keeps getting canceled by your meditation. It appears, the phantom self appears, but it's a phantom self. Magical creation is a bubble, and you go… You, I mean, the wisdom just keeps popping the bubble of this image of the self, of this idea of the self, of the phantom self. And then you just see some phenomenal thing there, like a smell. or a touch or an idea. So, and this is liberation from the heavy-duty ignorance that you had before and the heavy-duty afflictions of greed, hate and delusion that arise from that ignorance. Do in reaction to that greed, hate and delusion, all this stuff is cancelled.

[20:44]

How many irreducible elements in the system? Irreducible? 75? Yeah, 75. Yes? What does this have to do with aversion, a pain, a painful way? Excuse me. I just want to say, he said irreducible elements, but irreducible elements does not mean ultimately exist. The breakdown. Stop right now. There is a debate about, you know, what elements is ultimately existent.

[22:03]

They don't actually go through each one and say which one's a conventional truth and which one's an ultimate truth in this bhavashika system. But what I say, I would say that I'm not sure what to say right now about whether they're all ultimate truths, whether all 75 dharmas and whether all five skandhas are ultimate truths. I thought that would distinguish the system and all of it. I thought that would distinguish the system and all of the truth because they were not reduced to those elements. Well, they do say that, for example, they do say that the atoms that you reduce the physical phenomena to, that those are ultimate truths. They say that, for example, I think Vasubandha does say that color

[23:06]

is an ultimate truth. Because if you cut up colors, analyze the colors, you still have colors. So he says, so the principle, by applying the principle of how you can tell an ultimate and a conventional truth, then you can, for your own self, verify what you think they would say were the ultimate truth and the conventional truth. Anyway, conventional truth must be understood in order to understand ultimate truth. You have to understand what it's like to look at something to be able to analyze it and watch the consciousness that knows it be cancelled in order to then know what it's like to look at something, analyze it, and see the consciousness not cancelled. Then you know you've got an ultimate. and then you focus on the ultimate, and then you realize that you're becoming free of this reifying, reality exaggeration process that we go through.

[24:08]

So you're saying, what has it got to do with what? What does it have to do with physical pain? What does it have to do with physical pain? stronger in that being or... Okay, so physical pain, all right? So as I've talked to many of you about it, physical pain still hurts, okay? You don't lose... You don't... You don't have the ability to feel pain if you twist your ankle or something. But the way you experience that is if you've understood and become free of What? Free of what? What do you get to be free of? You get to be free of naive realism, which gets applied to you, perhaps, the person who's got the sprained ankle. Okay, let's apply it to the person.

[25:09]

So this person is free of the naive realization, a naive realism about self that they've got. They feel the pain in the ankle, but that's it. You just have pain in your ankle. You don't worry about whether people will like you with your sprained ankle. You don't worry about whether you're going to like... You don't worry about it. You deal with the pain. And you deal with it with your level of skill of dealing with sprained ankles. In other words, you're free of misery. when you understand yourself accurately. So even when you have a sprained ankle or whatever, or pain in your knees, you do the best you can under those circumstances. Like on Sunday, we asked this girl, you know, what's wisdom? And she says, like making good decisions. Something like that, being smart.

[26:12]

So when you have wisdom, you're smart. When you have pain, you're smart. So you know you should like... and you leave. Right? Or you know when it's a good idea to go into rest posture because you can see what's going on is First of all, you spend some time noticing your own tendency to, you know, reify things, to make them more real than they are. For example, you even noticed your tendency to think that this pain is permanent. Some people get into that. That this pain is the same pain as it was the moment before. And it's probably going to go on. So, thinking that pain is permanent is like Really horrifying, right? And thinking that pleasure is permanent is horrifying too.

[27:18]

Why? Because it keeps getting assaulted. So you project permanence onto phenomena, you get in trouble. You project too much reality onto pain, you get in trouble. You put too much reality onto the self of a person who's got And then you don't just have pain, you have pain and you're miserable about it. Like I often say to people, when I broke my leg, that was painful. And the pain was helpful because if I hadn't got that pain, I would have got up And the way I would have gotten up and walked away is that I would have forced myself to stand up, and then I would have stood on my leg, and guess what would have happened then? Various bone sores would have come through my thigh out into the world. Hello. But, you know, I kind of wanted to get up because I kind of wanted this to not be a big deal.

[28:27]

So I wanted to move. And I tried to move. I tried to move a tiny bit. And just somehow my body would not let me move at all. My body just said, no, you can't even move a tiny bit. But that was like, okay, like, how about accept that you can't move? So I said, okay, I can't move. I don't know what I've got here, but I know I can't move. And it kind of hurts. Now, there was a little bit of stuff going on there like, hmm, I wonder if I'll be able to give that talk tonight that's scheduled. I want to talk tonight because it looks like I'm going to the hospital, but maybe tomorrow night's talk I could give. This is more like... It makes it more miserable.

[29:31]

But still, it wasn't so bad. And then they tried to pick me up. They didn't try to. They actually said, we're going to... So I couldn't move, but they could move me. They said, we're going to move you now, and this is going to hurt, and there's nothing that can be done about it. So they moved me, and it hurt. But still, you know, it's kind of like I wasn't really that miserable. The place where I was on the verge of getting miserable was at a certain point when the pain wasn't so bad anymore, actually, when I was in the hospital and, you know, they had me in a little bit of traction When my mind started to think about the handlebars of the bicycle and the wheel and which way it was tilted, and my mind just kind of thought, what if I just hadn't turned it that way?

[30:37]

What if I just kept it straight? If that one little moment, if I just hadn't turned it there, and when my mind went there, It goes there. Why does it go there? I'd say it goes there because of this exact of me. That's what drives my mind. There's something about me in there, maybe, that makes me uncomfortable more than just the discomfort of the accident. There's another kind of discomfort there. There's a discomfort about me. I did something. And if I could have done things differently, that there was an agent there, you know, who like, and there was an agent there, so we don't say there wasn't, there was some agent there, but what was that agent? If I make it too big, but still, that doesn't mean the concern wasn't still like knocking at the door.

[31:42]

The concern for some kind of self in this causal situation, in these five skandhas, some kind of thing there. So I go there and find that thing which leads me to feel uncomfortable about things that happen in this extra way, and then leads to greed trying to make things go different or avoid things and leads then to karma based on that. So when you're sitting and you have pain and meditation or whatever, how can you meet that in such a way not to deny your sense of self, but to notice what it is that makes it turn into misery that misery and anxiety and fear all around this that's added to it, how that's connected to this exaggerated sense of self, and then start to hear teachings about how to look at the self in such a way that you can see it's just a conventionality, that it's a conventionality.

[33:02]

It's not ultimately there. And when you're convinced that it's not ultimately there, you have the second level of, you have the first level of wisdom. And then when you can analyze that more and more deeply and become more and more crafty, more and more inventive, more and more creative, more and more scientific, more and more artistic about ways of convincing yourself more and more deeply, inwardly, that this is a conventionality, this sense of self, which is causing you all this extra misery in life, then you take that into your samadhi. Pain in the knees is not really the problem. It's okay to go into rest posture if you think it's a good idea, if it seems helpful. Okay? But when you're in rest posture, you're still miserable. If you, on some level, you're still anxious, on some level, if you still haven't, like, looked at that.

[34:09]

So, in some sense, The main thing is that this source of affliction is being flushed out, that you can feel having pain in your ankle isn't really an affliction. When you sprain it, it's helpful to sit down. It's not an affliction, but greed and hate about having a sprained ankle, that's an affliction. What's the source of the greed and hate? So when you feel the greed and hate around your affliction, around your pain, around your pleasure, that gives you a clue that this source is activated. Now, can you like gently listen, what teachings do I have about what this might be? Well, it's probably an exaggerated sense of self, among other things, or an exaggerated sense of reality of the sprained ankle. which is a continuation of the same process of reification, but it's now fleshed out.

[35:14]

Now you've got it out there. Now look at it. What it's saying is really there. Analyze it. If you question it, does it cancel that consciousness and this this teaching says, yes, it will be canceled if it's a conventionality. And if it's an ultimate, it's the way things actually are, so then you're not ignorant anymore. You're looking at the way things actually are. So you're not making things more real than they are. You're making them just as real as they are. So then you may have pain in your legs through this whole process, or you may be in rest posture this whole process. You may be completely comfortable today. or rather uncomfortable through this whole process, but no matter how comfortable or uncomfortable you are, you are able to pay attention. You are able to be mindful through this whole process. You are able to stay awake and practice mindfulness of this phenomenon and notice pain in the ankle, pain in the knee, and anxiety.

[36:25]

That's not coming from my knee. Where's that coming from? Misery, where's that coming from? Let's confirm this green. Hey, where's that coming from? Oh, I see. There it is. There's this, like, pristine, potential self. It's just sitting there. Now, look at it. Does it actually hold up to analysis? Well, the answer is no, it doesn't. Nobody's ever held that phone when it holds up to analysis. That doesn't mean there's nothing. There's some things which do hold up to analysis. What? Space supposedly holds up to analysis in this school. Atoms hold up. And maybe the skandhas hold up. They're there. Well, they're there. Are they there substantially again? No, the substantiality won't help.

[37:28]

How are they there? They're there interdependently. They're there depending on conditions. So when you start to see that, then they get unfolded too. They get unpacked. And then finally all there is, is emptiness. But is that the way things ultimately are? Yes. Does that hold up to analysis? No. But in this school anyway, these things hold up to analysis. Pandemic analysis frees the person from misery. And when you're free from misery, then you're free from greed, hate, and delusion. And when you're free from greed, hate, and delusion, you're free from trying to fix things. You're free from the karma which arises from ignorance, affliction, and . So then you stop cranking this machine of the world and putting yourself back into bondage by what you just did, creating more greed, hate, and delusion, which then you're going to try to fix again.

[38:33]

You're going back to the source and you're starting to cut the roots of birth and death. ...vision, by your wisdom vision. And what we're talking about now is working still at the level of me talking to you, you talking to me, and understanding this level, then the next level you do on your own. And you bring the results of that back to the teacher, back to the scripture. And you keep reasoning, thinking, this kind of reflection. You do this work. This is part of wisdom work. To actually go around thinking like this until you kind of like, this is going on in you. You're actually like doing this stuff throughout the day. And this becomes part of what's, you know, instead of just songs going through your head and going through your head, you now have this dharma song going through your head, this dharma message to actually keep looking at what's going on. It actually gets to be like that. You start like, just like having doksan all day long.

[39:39]

including having a doksan conversation of, you know, don't be thinking about the next doksan. Let's do this doksan. So while you're thinking of the next doksan, before you have your next doksan, in that thinking about the next doksan, in that doksan, the teacher should be telling you in your doksan before doksan to stop thinking of the next doksan. And look at this doksan. What doksan are you having right now? What conversation is going on right now? Don't think of the next one. Look at the one you've got right now. And if you're not looking at the one right now, then the teacher should come in the room in your own personal doksan and tell you to stop thinking of the future and look at what you've got on your plate right now. And say, I don't know much on my plate. Well, do you remember any dharma messages you'd like to reconsider here? I might like to see, is there any afflictions going on?

[40:45]

What's the source of the affliction? Yeah, okay. Are you back at work now? Yeah. What work are you doing? Oh, I'm doing this and so on. You are talking to yourself when you're doing wisdom work. You're giving yourself by talking to somebody else or talking to a sutra or reading a sutra, or you're talking to yourself without these other things, and you're actually continuing to educate yourself. That's part of the practice. Another part of the practice is even after you've done this nice education, you let go of it. Now if you're not yet in this education course, if you're not yet having these wisdom conversations with yourself, it's really okay to let those go too. In other words, all that discursive thought which is just unwholesome, unskillful chatter, it's okay to let that go too. and calm down. But that's not enough. You have to learn how to have wise conversations with yourself, where you're talking to yourself about Dharma.

[41:50]

But you're not going to be able to talk to yourself about Dharma unless you have some examples of how the ancients talked to themselves about Dharma and talked to each other about Dharma. Stories of how the teacher and the disciple talked to themselves, and you learn that story, and then you have that conversation with yourself, and then you have new versions of it, and you check those out, whether those are authentic, And if they are, then you feel confident to continue to make new conversations with your Dharma conversations in your life, walking around the world, practicing mindfulness. So the conversation you're having is, hello? Yes. Are you practicing mindfulness? Mm-hmm. What are you seeing? Well, I'm seeing my feet, my foot's raising up off the ground. I feel pain in my knee. Are you practicing mindfulness? Yes, I am. Are we having a conversation about Dharma? Yes, I am. Does this have anything to do with what it says in the Mindfulness Scripture? Yes, it does. What does it say in the Mindfulness Scripture? It says, when the monk lifts his foot up, he knows he's lifting his foot up.

[42:53]

That's good. Did you check this out with your teacher to see if you're dreaming about this? No, I haven't. Are you going to? Yes, I am. Have you ever heard a conversation like this before? Yes, I have. In what sutra did you hear it? I heard it in this sutra and that sutra. You're actually talking to yourself about Dharma when you're walking around. But part of the way you're talking about it, you've never heard before. Because you're being creative. You're giving yourself new lessons. You're teaching. And then when you see a teacher and you say, here's the conversations I've been having with you, and here's the questions I asked, and here's the answers you gave. And then the teacher, and you have that conversation, and that evolves it, and you go back and do it yourself. You do all this, okay? And you get more and more wise. And when you're really quite wise and you feel like, I finally understand, I finally can see conventional truths and ultimate truths all day long. That's all I see, is conventional truths and ultimate truths. Then you give all that up.

[43:58]

Let go of what you used to be able to see wisely. Then you go back to giving it up, enter into samadhi. Then, because your mind stream has just been immersed in, or all these teachings have been immersed in your mind stream, after your without any discursive thought, this stuff just like comes surging up and we have great revelations in this new context. But there needs to be some education. We need to hear the Dharma and bring it into the just wholeheartedly sit and thus drop away body and mind. So a new is like in that samadhi, And you maybe ask questions about what that book's about, what that text's about, so you understand what it's about. And this is what some people do, they come and say, well, it says, you know, that what meets with recognition is not realization itself. What does that mean, you know? What does it mean in object-merging realization?

[45:02]

You talk about that, you understand it, and then you forget about all that. and you just wholeheartedly sit, drop away body and mind, and then that understanding comes up in your samadhi, and then you understand directly. And we're heading towards a place where we directly see all day long truth, [...] but not just ultimate truth, ultimate truth, but conventional truth, ultimate truth, conventional truth, ultimate truth, and finally, at the same time, We see all the conventional truths, hi, and all the ultimate truths, hi, and they're right there together. We're seeing conventional truths and we're seeing the truths which liberate us from ignorance at the same time. But when we see a conventional truth just as a conventional truth, we don't have much of a problem because we're not misconstruing it, we're not making it into too much. So actually I thought, you know, that I had this idea that we're going to get through this Vibhashika thing in two sessions, but I don't know if we're going to be able to.

[46:18]

I thought to, you know, so if I do another one tomorrow, this is the fourth day, right? Tomorrow is the fifth. So that leaves only two days to do three more schools. So I'm sorry we might not learn all four schools in this session, but maybe we can at least get more in the first school and maybe into the second school, and then the third and fourth, the fourth of this school, right? No, third and fourth. So I accept that. Do you? If you don't accept... That's good. I'm glad somebody doesn't. It may not be necessary. Okay, anyway, I'm sorry to have this go on so long. And I felt it seemed like on the second day a lot of people were having a lot of pain.

[47:29]

Somehow we were able to have a lot of pain on the second day. And it seemed like we settled down a little bit. We settled down a little bit. The pain didn't necessarily go away, but it seemed like people were more subtle last night. It just seemed like that. And this is the fourth day. Someone asked, why do we have to sit cross-legged? And the answer is, you do not have to sit cross-legged. You do not have to sit cross-legged. In Japan, in certain Zen monasteries, if you don't sit cross-legged, they kick you out. But in America, you can raise your ... Go ahead, if you want to. You can rest. You can raise your knees up and be in rest posture. He can rest from this effort of sitting cross-legged.

[48:36]

You can rest. Rest is sometimes when you've done something long enough, it's time to stop and rest. So you can rest, and also you don't have to sit cross-legged in the first place. So what reason is there to sit cross-legged everywhere? Well, part of the reason is that there's a certain element in Buddhism called copy the teacher. And you see those teachers up there? See Buddha up there? Shakyamuni Buddha and Manjushri, they had their legs across very nicely, their cute little feet there. Their feet up on their thighs. Yeah, really nice. So you copy the teacher. Now you don't have to copy the teacher, but there's a tradition. Buddhist said cross-legged, I'll say cross-legged. But you don't have to. You can meditate standing up, you can meditate walking, climbing, you can meditate reclining, you can meditate in lots of other postures.

[49:46]

You can meditate in a chair, too. It's okay. All postures are possible. So what's good about cross-legged? I don't know. What I don't know is that up until I was about 21, I sat in a lot of chairs, and I stood on the earth, and I walked on the earth, and I reclined on the earth, and I was swimming in the earth, and I did flips on the earth. But when I sat down on the ground and crossed my legs, suddenly, for me anyway, it was kind of like, whoa. This is really something here. I never was in a place like this. And this is the place that these Buddhist people sit. They sit in this cross-legged posture. This is intense. Wow. Wow. I would like to be able to be in this place for a while, sometime.

[50:50]

I would like to learn how to be in this intensity. That's the way I felt. I felt like it was the most alive, real way for me to be. But you don't have to feel that way. But for me it was like tuning, really tuning in to having a body and really being challenged by having a body. And to hear that people would learn how to like being in this challenging situation for hour after hour, day after day, I thought, whoa, how have I learned to do that? I would like to learn that. My take on it. And then the fact that a lot of the yogis did that, I was kind of like, well, maybe there's other things besides it being intense and very vital that's good too. So I kept trying it, and basically I found it to be a very good deal for me. But you don't have to sit cross-legged Practice the Buddha way. You don't have to. If you have legs and they will cross, you might find that there's some virtues in that practice for you.

[51:53]

But if you don't find that it's helpful, you don't have to do it. You can still practice. You can still practice generosity. You can still practice patience. You can still practice the precepts. You can still practice enthusiasm. And you can still practice wisdom when your legs are not crossed. But crossing your legs might be helpful. Actually, if we stood, we could get more people in the zendo. But I'll tell you, if standing was the practice, I couldn't do it. I cannot stand. all day long. I can't. Some people can. It's not possible for me. I can sit almost all day long with some breaks. And even before I broke my leg, I could sit long periods for day after day with short breaks, but I can't stand all day. So if that was the practice, then I would say to you, why do we have to stand?

[52:56]

And I hope the teacher would say, you don't have to stand. because we're trying to get more people into the zendo. Or if everybody has their own little seat, you know, it takes up too much space. But if you want to sit outside cross-legged, it's okay. You do not have to be in some particular posture. Just that it is a good opportunity. But standing is a good opportunity too. All the postures are good opportunities. They all are. And for me, cross-legged is good, so I'm in this cross-legged department here. But some other people cross-legged still practice the Buddha way. And, you know, in their next life, they might have a body that likes to sit cross-legged, so then they do it that way. But you don't have to sit cross-legged to hear the Dharma. You can hear the Dharma when you're swimming in cold water.

[53:58]

Dharma when you're lying in a bathtub. You can hear the Dharma wherever you are. And when you hear the Dharma, you can understand. And if you understand, then you can analyze it. And if you analyze it, you can give up discursive thought and bring that understanding into you. And you can understand and become the Dharma. So if you somehow got into the Sesshin, and a lot of people are on here sitting cross-legged, and you're sitting cross-legged and it's hard, it's okay to rest. It's okay to rest. Until you feel like you want to sit cross-legged again. And when you raise your knees up, it's polite to do it quietly because some of the people around you are trying to sleep. So then when you've rested long, then quietly put them back and don't disturb your neighbors.

[55:22]

Put them back in the cross-legged posture when you want to. when you think, I want to sit cross-legged again. And then sit cross-legged as long as you want to. And sometimes it's uncomfortable, but you say, it's uncomfortable, but I kind of like sitting still, actually. It's kind of nice. It's uncomfortable, but it's also kind of good just to sort of sit here and feel that stillness. But sometimes you say, I had enough. So I'm going to carefully gently, quiet, and cross my legs, because I think it's a good idea to do that. And now I uncrossed them, and it was good. I was glad I did it. I like this Zen practice. This is kind of nice. It's a little bit stressful sometimes, a little challenging, but you get to rest sometimes. Now, I've heard of some temples where they won't let you rest.

[56:26]

Well, this is not one of those temples. You can rest here. But still, I would encourage you to try to develop a sense that no matter what you do, all day long, there's continuity in the mindfulness. You're always paying attention. You're always aware. You're always awake, you're always gentle, you're always honest, you're always relaxed. And now what happens is continuity in this steady, awake, gentle presence. And you're always like listening to the Dharma. Listening to the Dharma. You're always asking Buddha, please Buddha, Teach me Dharma. I'm listening. I want to hear more Dharma so I can understand the truth. You're always in that mode all day long.

[57:27]

And if the pain is so intense that you can't remember what you're doing, then rest and say, what am I doing? Well, now I'm resting. And where am I resting? I'm resting in a meditation hall. How did I get here? I came here to learn about meditation. What kind of meditation? Meditation to realize the freedom of all beings, and meditation to realize, become aware and mindful of my ignorance, and then to look at the truth and give it up, and to look at the truth rather than ignorance. That's what I'm here for. And I'm happy to be here. And I'm happy to be with other people. And I wonder if they remember why they're here. Although I can't ask them right now, I still wonder. And I would say we do sometimes forget what we're doing here. So when we forget, then we hopefully notice, hmm, I forgot.

[58:34]

Now what was it again? And relax and it'll come back to you. If it doesn't come back to you, maybe you go again to practice instruction or duksan. You say, no, what did I come here for again? And the teacher may say, I don't know what you came here for. You tell me. And you say, I can't remember. He says, well, maybe we should just quiet down now and see if we can remember what we're doing here. What's our mood? And you get back to it and start over. Back on track. Okay, one, two, three. Oh, yeah. Buddha. Buddha. Okay, Buddha. Yeah, Buddha. Okay. And then how do you practice that? And so on. You do not have to sit cross-legged though. I like that very popular poem by Mary Oliver, you do not have to walk across — you do not have to be good, or something like that. You do not have to walk across the desert on your knees to be good.

[59:41]

You do not have to walk — but still, being good is sometimes very helpful. And walking across the desert on your knees sometimes is really helpful. So you may want to. We don't do the walking across the knees thing here. We bow on our knees, we sit on our knees, but we don't walk on the floor on our knees. So that's our style. But you don't have to do it this way. And if you don't want to do it this way, don't feel like you're missing out. You get to choose how you want to practice. And you can choose who you practice with, pretty much. But you need to take care of yourself. And if you enjoy this sesshin, then you're going to want to do another one. And if you push yourself too hard, then you're going to say, I don't want to practice anymore. But it's not because you push yourself too hard.

[60:43]

If you don't push yourself hard enough, That won't work either. So sometimes you don't push yourself hard enough and you'll feel, that's not right. And if you push yourself too hard, that's not right. In this middle way, avoiding indulgence in sense pleasure and avoiding self-mortification. So in this context, what's indulging in sense pleasure and what's taking care of your body? And what's self-mortification and hurt? and what's being diligent and trying to learn what it means to practice patience and joyfully learn how to relax with difficulty. What's that? And how is that different from self-mortification? We have to learn this. Our church struggled with this and finally found what he thought was a balance.

[61:45]

He went from eating practically nothing to having a little milk and rice. And now more and more we don't even have the milk. So we're getting more ascetic here. But you know, in India, they used to be nice to the cows. But we're really mean to the cows here in America. Do you know about that? I've heard about that. Yeah. Like, for example, you know, they feed cows grain here, right? Right. Which, you know, it's nice to give them grain, but cows are not built to eat grains. They're not grainivores. They're supposed to eat herbs, right? They're grass eaters, not grain eaters. They don't just eat the grain off the top of the grass. They eat the whole grass. And they have a big grass digestive system. And I think it's a 45 gallon grass processor.

[62:53]

And when you put grass in there, in the process they produce lots of gas. And they have a way of passing it out into the world. But if you feed them grains, What I heard is that this kind of sludge builds up in this processing unit, and it blocks the gas release process, and also then you have to, so they get very uncomfortable, and also then you have to give them medication because the sludge is likely to get infected, so you have to give them lots of antibiotics so that this processing unit, you know, doesn't do them in. So anyway, it's very painful, and then they have to poison them in order to stop the infections which are built up from feeding them grains. And then in order to feed them grains, we have to cut down the forest to grow all their corn.

[63:59]

So we cut down the forest to poison the cows so we can eat these cows. So we can take that beef and slam it down on the table and said, this is the greatest country in the world and we're beef eaters. They get these guys there with their SUVs and their chainsaws. Literally, they're driving their SUVs and their chainsaws. And then they take a big slab of beef and they throw it down and they say, and we're beef eaters. And this is the greatest country in the world. But they say, and this beef is range-fed beef. So if you're going to eat beef, make it range-fed. Because range-fed beef eat grass. And they don't have this terrible idea their stomach from eating grains.

[65:02]

And don't throw the beef down on the ground, you know, and raise your hand up and say, this is the greatest country in the world. Say, I eat beef, but at least, you know, I'm trying not to be cruel to the cows. And I know this kind of... And we might not be able to conquer the world with people like me in charge. But, you know, this is... Maybe I should stop eating beef entirely. What about cheese? Part of the deal, right? If we have dairy products, then we have a different problem. Because the dairy cows are not grazed for the beef, right? But they also make this one uncomfortable. But the problem with the dairy cows is they have to keep the milk. And half their babies are males. Now, if we could just have just females born, that would make things simpler.

[66:07]

So maybe we could program it so that there's only one out of a hundred babies will be males. But you have all these males, so then they have to be killed. And then they get tortured. in order to be of a certain type of meat. So that's the problem with dairy-free. Even if the dairy cows were treated nicely, you have all the little baby boys, the baby bulls, and they don't want to just have them live a happy life and feed them their whole life. They make them into veal, right? So veal is an offshoot of cheese, I guess, isn't it? So that's the problem with the cheese. So anyway, you know, this kind of stuff. What did you say?

[67:22]

What about lunch? What about lunch? It's lunch time. I want to say something about pigs. I think pigs are getting, you know, got a lot going for them because, you know, a lot of us are becoming more and more piggish. They, you know, we're using more and more pigs to put into the humans. So although the pigs are being killed, they're inhabiting us, you know. So I think that there's a possibility that we'll start to realize that eating pigs is getting close to a homicide. Pigs are really smart.

[68:28]

Pigs are really smart. And killing a pig is almost like killing a gorilla or a chimpanzee. And killing a gorilla and chimpanzee is human. So as we start to realize how intelligent pigs are and how much they hate to get killed, and they know we're going to do it, they're smart enough, you can't trick them. If you start to meditate on how smart pigs are and how close they are to us, how similar their organs are and how much it becomes really, really, really, it's almost so close to murder. Eat pork. Now, cows, you see, you can make a case, well, cows, they don't really, you know, they're not so, they don't even know you're going to kill them sometimes. You can kind of trick them and just bop them, you know. You know, especially if they've been eating grass the whole time. But certainly with pigs, you know, it's a tremendously violent thing to kill pigs.

[69:29]

They really fight. So it's just horrible. So if you think about that, I think we're pretty easy to get off pigs. They don't produce milk, right? We don't need... So it seems like almost everybody can give up pork. Right? If you think about the pigs... They're really smart. They're really nice creatures in a lot of ways. They're not that bad. With the beef, at least we could not be so proud about the whole thing. I don't know. We're so arrogant. Do we have to be so arrogant? And if we're not eating beef and we're not eating dairy and we're not eating pigs, do we have to be arrogant about that? And do we have to think we're better than the people who are arrogant and proud that they're beef eaters?

[70:33]

Do we have to think we're better than them? Isn't there some way we can not get into that either? It's possible if we understand who we are, I think. That's enough, I guess, on the pigs. I'm sorry. I guess we need some time to have lunch, right? Time to get ready for lunch. So I guess we could have service and then have lunch. So why don't we just stand up? and go have service, and then the lunch serving crew can go. Okay? So we just go right into service now. Is that reasonable? We should put up the dividers. Do we need the dividers for lunch? Yeah.

[71:37]

Some of us need the dividers. Oh, yeah, yeah. So we have... We have, some people go to the restroom and some people go to the serving area and the other people can do service. How's that? Is that reasonable or do you want to put the dividers up? Put the dividers up for lunch.

[72:02]

@Transcribed_v005
@Text_v005
@Score_85.06