The sound of those children's voice, that sound, depends on things other than the sound to exist for me. And the Buddha tells a story about, you know, but I'm not necessarily thinking about that story right now. So like yesterday, Jenny asked about what does this have to do with karma? And the Buddha told a story that he said, depending on ignorance, karmic formations. Depending on karmic formations, consciousness. That means dualistic consciousness. Depending on consciousness, Body-mind. Depending on body-mind, six sense doors. Depending on six sense doors, contact. Depending on contact, feeling.

[01:01]

Depending on feeling, craving. Depending on craving, clinging. Depending on clinging, becoming. Depending on becoming, birth. Depending on birth, old age, sickness, death, misery, lamentation, Mass of ill. That's a story the Buddha told about the origination of suffering. And then he said, depending on the cessation of ignorance, there is a cessation of... Depending on the cessation of karmic formations... there is a cessation of dualistic consciousness, and so on, leading up to the cessation of the entire mass of ill. That's a story that the Buddha told about the pinnacle arising of suffering.

[02:03]

But also it can be the dependent core arising of other things, because it also tells the dependent core arising of karmic formations. It tells the dependent core arising of dualistic consciousness. It tells the dependent core arising of craving. It tells the dependent core arising of clinging. So if you're experiencing dualistic consciousness, it's telling you that that depends on karmic formations and ignorance. If you're experiencing karmic formations, that tells you that's dependent on ignorance. If you're experiencing body-mind experiences, feelings, ideas, whatever, or physical sensations, they're telling you that that depends on dualistic consciousness, which depends on coming formation, which depends on ignorance. If you're experiencing contact, it tells you that depends on sense doors. If you're experiencing sense doors, it depends on body-mind. If you're experiencing thirst, that tells you that's based on a feeling.

[03:06]

If you experience a feeling, it's based on contact, which is based on sense terms, which is based on mind-butt. So, these are stories which give you some kind of like... some access to the process of dependent core arising. But you actually don't have to get into that at this point. Or maybe ever. Because whatever's happening falls on that... is one of those examples. And in all those examples, each, every one of those things in all those twelve stages, including the mass of ill, everything depends on something other than itself for its arising. So the basic meditation is you always apply the teaching that whatever's happening in your stream of consciousness exists in a middle way. And what is the middle way? The middle way is that whatever is happening arises in dependence on something else.

[04:09]

You may not know what it depends on, but you know, or I shouldn't say you know, you are mindful of and apply the teaching to this event. You learn to be mindful of the teaching of dependent core rising and apply it to what's happening in your stream of consciousness. You're not trying to control your stream of consciousness. You're not trying to control whether you're aware of the lawnmower or somebody's face or pleasure in your knees. That's not your project. Your project is to be mindful of whatever surfaces and then be mindful of the teaching and bring the teaching together with what's happening. And then things change, you know, and then you're aware of the next thing and you apply the same teaching to the next thing.

[05:17]

And then things change and you apply the same teaching to the next thing. And you keep applying this teaching basically always, always applying this teaching. This is the basic teaching of wisdom, is to pinacore rising. You're always applying that teaching. There's more to the practice than just applying to pinacore rising. And that's the part where you start to, you move on from that basis to look at how you project essences onto these phenomena. And then you learn how that actually doesn't actually... And you learn how that causes suffering, and then you learn how the way that this process actually works is beyond any kind of conception of how it works. But you're always doing this meditation on the pinnacle rising. It's the fundamental sort of like

[06:19]

or drumbeat or something. It's a basic thing that you're working with in the pulse of insight meditation. Does that make sense? When you're applying, can I just, one short follow-up? When you're applying dependent co-arising in a certain moment, like children's voices Is there some intuition of a few of the things that are dependently co-arising with the children's voices so that you're... Like some intuition of air and so forth without... Is there some intuition that spontaneously you're aware of some of the things that are dependently co-arising so that you verify... that teaching of dependent core rising in and through direct experience. Here's a question. He was saying, like, if you're aware of the sound of the children's voice, would you maybe, like, would you maybe, like, think, oh, those children, the children's voice depends on the children's body.

[07:34]

Children's body depends on their parents. Me hearing it depends on air to transmit. from them to my ear, would you be thinking those thoughts? That's your question? Would those spontaneously arise? They might spontaneously arise, but they might not. If they do arise, though, what I'm suggesting, if the thoughts, if you hear the sound of a child's voice, or if you hear a sound which you call children's voice, you might think, oh, that sound came to me depending on air. So the experience of the sound, one of the conditions for the experience of the sound was air. You might think that. Okay? I'm suggesting to you that the moment you think that thought, that thought is the next thing you're actually working with. Rather than you're going to use that next thought as the way of understanding this one, you're already understanding practicing mindfulness of dependent core rising with the sound of the .

[08:39]

Then when you think, although that sound came to me in dependence on air, you would apply the teaching of dependent core rising to your explanation or to your theory. But sometimes these theories or these stories about how something occurs, they don't necessarily follow right afterwards. And sometimes they do. Like sometimes you might, again, sometimes you might experience that your toe has just hit something. Then you might think, oh, the reason that my toe hit that thing was because I wasn't paying attention. Or you might say, the reason why my toe hit that thing was because something just popped up there unexpectedly. So sometimes stories of the causation of things are stories of what an experience depends on.

[09:45]

Sometimes that does arise right after the thing happens. Sometimes right after a thing happens, a story arises about what led to the thing. And this is part of the way we learn maybe how to expose under certain circumstances. That's part of our life, right? But this teaching would be applying dependent core arising to what was happening before you heard the sound of the children, when you heard the sound of the children, and after you hear the sound of the children and start making up stories, you'd apply the teaching to that thought, to that thinking. See the difference? So it's okay to be making up stories about how things happen because it's also making up stories. I shouldn't say making up. It's okay that stories about how things are happening are arising.

[10:45]

It's okay if stories about how things are happening are not arising. Like, again, I don't know. When you hear the sound of the lawnmower, are you making up stories about how that happened? Some of you might not be. Some of you might be saying, well, that probably, well, maybe you should look out the window to see if a person is operating that, you know, and say, okay, now that there's a person there and I see that. So now I have a story about how that person got hired to, you know, or maybe he's volunteering. Various stories you can make about how this person gets involved with starting the machine and driving it around outside of our meditation hall. You could say, well, I think the Catholics are actually trying to undermine our tranquility. And they said, go down there, take your lawnmower down there so they can't concentrate. Or actually, let's take it down there and drive it around there and see if they get impatient with us.

[11:47]

Let's see if they're really compassionate. Various stories you can make up. But if you are making up stories like that, I'm suggesting the wisdom practice is not in those stories, but to apply the teaching that every little moment of the story is a dependent core arising. And actually I don't particularly recommend that you get into what stories you would tell as a version of the dependent core arising of it. Now, if you do tell a story about the dependent core arising, I would probably say, yeah, if you told a story which says, well, depending on these things, this arose, I would say, well, the idea that this thing arose in dependence on things, but I don't know if that really accounts for the way it happened. But that type of dependency

[12:50]

is correct, but whether that is really the story, I don't know. I really don't. That's all I know. Probably it's not, but it might be. Because, again, our ideas about how things happen don't actually comprehend the way they actually happen. Because if our ideas did, then dependent core rising wouldn't So, there's another reason why I wouldn't recommend that you get into telling any more stories than the stories that naturally do arise. Independence on things other than themselves. Okay. Did you have a question, Debra? I was going to ask you if you could indicate the reference of the stephenical arising. The reference? Yeah. What do you mean by reference? The sutra or the... The first sutra that the Buddha gave, talked about dependent co-arising, and then hundreds of others.

[13:59]

In the first sutra, he taught it. How did he teach it? He said, I found the middle way. And he spoke of this middle way between addiction to indulgence and sense pleasure and addiction to self-mortification. He found the middle way, avoiding those extremes. And he said, what is the middle way? And then he said, And then he said, and what is the eightfold path? Right view, and so on. And then he said, what's right view? The truth of suffering, the truth of origin. So when he taught the truth of suffering and the truth of origin of suffering, he was teaching suffering. He was saying, suffering, the truth of suffering is that suffering has an origination. Because suffering has an origination, suffering and its origination is not originate from suffering.

[15:02]

In that sutra, he gives a short version of its origination. He says suffering has an origination. What is the origin of suffering? Craving. But that's short for ignorance, karmic formations, consciousness, blah, blah, blah, craving. So he says... He teaches you the dependent core rising of suffering, and he tells you that suffering depends not on suffering, but on craving, which depends on ignorance, and so on. So in the first sutra he teaches it, and he's over and over again, he teaches the middle way, and he teaches the dependent core rising. And then in later teachings they teach the teaching of emptiness, which is the elucidation of the process of dependent co-arising. And that elucidation is that the process of dependent co-arising is empty of any actual concept of how dependent co-arising works.

[16:07]

So emptiness explains how profound dependent core rising is. And it's so profound that it is complete freedom. The way we actually happen always entails freedom. That's what life is. It's a causal process which is actually alive and free. So life really is inconceivable and free and true always. And this teaching is to awaken us to that by applying the teaching to all the little moments of life that we have before us. Yes? What do you think people could experience this without the intellectual understanding? They wouldn't be familiar with it in particular. For example, those 12 stages you referenced. You know, all these connections, interconnections.

[17:16]

Isn't it possible you could understand that without the... Or would you also be part of it? You know, for example, you have an experience that's based on karma, which is based on ignorance, which... It's based on sensation. It goes back to some consciousness. It can be related to craving. I mean, wouldn't that understanding occur without it? I'm now going to think about that with you. I'm going to think a lot about that. Now, the usual way that our biological equipment construes phenomena is that we quite naturally, being human beings, naturally, innately, we project onto dependent co-arising, we project

[18:26]

a kind of essence into a process which doesn't have an essence. We do that, and we need to do that in order to have a conventional world. So once we have a world where we can talk and so on, and even before children can talk, they're already projecting essences onto things to set the groundwork to use words to create a conventional world together with their friends and relatives. So, since we have this strong tendency, basically, to dependent co-arising, most people need a teaching to counteract this basic ignorance, a teaching to draw their attention back to dependent co-arising, which they're ignoring. Is it possible to, without formal teaching, go through that? And I would say yes. I say, for example, impermanence is actually, in a sense, a consequence of the way things are.

[19:35]

I mean, things are impermanent, compounded, composed, originated phenomena and that's the only type there are, phenomena, are all originated depending on things other than themselves. These kinds of things are impermanent, okay? But the impermanence is really kind of like a part and parcel or a consequence If they happen another way, if things happen the way we think that they happen, namely by themselves, then things wouldn't be impermanent. But because they happen in dependence on things other than themselves, they are impermanent. So what people can see sometimes strongly is they sometimes can get a strong shock of impermanence, and that sometimes cracks open this projection of essence on things, because the essence goes with permanence. So when the impermanence stands out really strongly, sometimes the dependent core rising comes at the same time.

[20:39]

So it's possible that a person of, you know, young person or a middle-aged person or an old person, by getting a strong taste of impermanence, can also get a flash of dependent co-arising. That could happen. Normal teaching, it doesn't seem that intellectual. And so if you look at the stories of a lot of the great practitioners in various religious traditions, but in particular Buddhism, many of the greatest ones were people that had a big shock early in life. they somehow, something broke through our projection of permanence onto things in such a way that they thought, wait a minute, something's wrong here, you know. And they didn't blame the world. They sort of said, something's wrong with the way I see things, you know. And then they want to understand.

[21:41]

And then they often go and try to get more help of various teachings. But the original insight could happen not in the form of hearing the Buddha's speech or intellectual message, but just something that cracks. But to go further, you probably would then need somebody to keep giving you some kind of encouragement to look at that again and again. And if somebody says, yeah, keep looking at that impermanence, keep looking at that impermanence, keep looking at how you saw things were dependent on things other than themselves, then it's the intellectual trauma. So our intellect is operating in this kind of ignorant way, and it usually needs some kind of message from somebody who has learned the other way it can work, to turn it around. But this type of presentation can vary from person to person.

[22:43]

For some people, this presentation is too intellectual, and for some other people it's not intellectual enough. So we need to find, just like I'm doing with you right here, you know, in this room there's kind of like probably... What's the way that sort of like is appropriate for this occasion? That's what's happening now, I suppose, which includes you asking that question. Yes, did you have a question? What does ignorance depend on? Well, again, I can tell a story of what ignorance depends on, but really what we can say is that ignorance is also a dependent core rising. So ignorance also doesn't have a self. Ignorance has other things other than itself. So in the chain of events that the Buddha described, it goes, you know, ignorance, karmic formations, blah, blah, blah, old age, sickness and death, and then it goes ignorance again.

[23:56]

So in a sense, ignorance, you know, depends in some sense on all the stuff that we do based on ignorance. So because of ignorance, we misconstrue things. Because we misconstrue things, we suffer. Because we suffer, we try to do something about it. Because we try to do something about it, we perpetuate ignorance. So the karma that we've done in the past makes us inclined towards being ignorant. Now you can say, you can make this story. Animals are concerned with perpetuating themselves, basically of making more of themselves, of reproducing. And the things they do have to do with that. And that's part of what makes us more interested in reproduction than reproduction.

[25:00]

what's useful. So we've evolved to be very powerful living creatures, but our power, to some extent, is dependent on our ignorance. So that's a story I could tell you about how ignorance somehow has conditions related to biological reproduction. Wise, selfish people are ignorant people. Ignorant selfish people sometimes, in some sense, survive at the expense of unselfish wise people. But then sometimes the wise people leave some teachings behind for future generations of ignorant people, because the wise people don't reproduce sometimes, because they let the ignorant people go ahead. I don't really know a lot about physics, but it sounds a lot like physics, dependent co-arising.

[26:23]

Physics is about the dependent co-arising of the material world. And Buddhism is both the dependent co-arising of the physical world and the dependent co-arising of the moral world. So Buddhism is both physical, moral, dependent co-arising. Now some people would say, If you look at the history of Buddhism, the emphasis on moral causation is really in the foreground. But nowadays, today, physical causation, partly because of physics, is also a vehicle by which you can talk to people about the Buddha's teaching, because Buddha's teaching applies to all types of causation. all types of causation. Freedom, moral freedom, spiritual freedom and physical freedom are all based on the same principle of dependent co-arising which is beyond any fixed idea of how it happens.

[27:32]

So now even in physics they also would say, well of course things happen in dependence on things other than themselves, but they also would say there's no fixed laws about how causation happens even on the physical level. People 2,500 years ago, or even 800 years ago, were not sophisticated enough in terms of the physical studies to bring it to bear. So if you look at the history of Buddhism, you'll find moral causation. But today, because of the world we live in, you and I can now talk about physical causation too. But it's the same principle, it's just that we now understand how it applies to physical and chemical things too. But it always did in Buddhism, it's just that people weren't ready to hear it. And it needed to because, in fact, even in the old days, you had to bring this teaching down to your body. But they didn't necessarily discuss about how it would get down to the body, but it did, and it had to, because otherwise it wouldn't totally transform the person.

[28:38]

But your body would still be selfish. So actually, the physical transformation used to happen too. And if you look at Buddhist teachings, you can find signs of it. But the foreground, the primary thing that's easy to see is the emphasis on moral causation, moral dependent causation, because that's the grossest. it's at the level of karma, which is where people really live, of, I do this and I do that. But modern science is saying, well, there is no really I in their neurons to do all this stuff. So traditionally, the physical causation has been in the background and the moral causation has been in the foreground. But now in the modern times, in our contemporary times, I think it's coming forward closer to the foreground.

[29:46]

And sometimes even it can be in the foreground, and the moral causation can be parallel to it or even behind it. because in some sense the physical causation is more basic than moral. Because it's because of physical causation, molecules and electrons and things like that, they've given rise to chemical compounds that have given rise to life, that have given rise to beings having consciousness, you know, and so on and so forth. So in some ways, it may be that it would be helpful to us. So this afternoon, with the aid of the Blackboard, maybe I can lay some of this stuff out in a different way. Is that enough for this morning? May our intention equally penetrate every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way.

[30:57]

Beings are powerless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddhas are unsurpassable. I vow to become it. Okay, this is called the Katayana Gota Sutra, which means the sutra delivered to the Yama. Thus I have heard, one was once living at Sabati in the modern Sarai of Anantapindika in Jata's grove. At that time, there were both kachas at home, and the kachas sat down and sat down at one side, soliciting the fortune of one.

[32:08]

People speak of a right view, right view. To what extent is that a right view? This is sort of a question. I'm very inclined towards two views, existence and non-existence. To think we'll proceed to the right with the view that arises in the world as it has come to be, and that we should not have existence in the world as it has come to be. who receives what is right is not perceiving the world as it has come to be, that it shall not exist in the world as it is on earth, This is myself. This is myself. Everything does not exist.

[33:22]

This passion is the same as this feeling. A passion of without perishing on the extreme, but not by that which is the result of my will. The end of the five big prayers arises this morning. Dependent on dispositions arises consciousness. Dependent on consciousness arises but not visible personality. Dependent on life's psycho-physical personality arises successors. Dependent on successors arises successors. Dependent on the coming, I rise to speaking.

[34:24]

Dependent on the coming, I rise to speaking. [...] I like to think about her fading away and ceasing evidences. There is a ceasing of his decisions. Or, when ceasing of his decisions, there is a ceasing of consciousness. Or, when ceasing of analysis, there is a ceasing of the type of visible personality. Or, when ceasing of the type of visible personality, there is a ceasing of the successes. Or, when ceasing of the successes, there is a ceasing of the content. There is a ceasing of feeling. There is a ceasing of craving.

[35:27]

From the ceasing of craving, there is a ceasing of grasping. From the ceasing of grasping, there is a ceasing of becoming. From the ceasing of becoming, there is a ceasing of earth. So that scripture is one of the places where the Buddha teaches. In this particular case, he teaches it with these twelve related conditions. When he first taught the Four Noble Truths, he taught the truth of suffering and the truth of origin. And then he said, what is suffering? After he taught the truth of suffering and so on, he said, well, what is suffering?

[36:29]

And he said, suffering basically You know, he just basically said, everything is suffering. You know, you name it, it's suffering. His definition of suffering was basically everything. He said pleasure is suffering. Cain is suffering. Birth is suffering. Death is suffering. You know, everything that you can think of, all your different experiences, he listed, basically, are suffering. In short, he said, the five aggregates of clinging are suffering. The five aggregates means the five basic categories of physical experience. The five aggregates of clinging are suffering. That's a hint. that when we cling to any category of experience, that's suffering.

[37:38]

And then he says, the origin of suffering, and then he said craving. In other words, in the first sutra, in the first teaching, he just mentioned one of those links out of those twelve as the origin of suffering. But as you can see, craving feeling, feeling depends on contact and so on, and they all go back to ignorance. So you also could have said ignorance is the origin of suffering. So when there's life and there's ignorance, then there's suffering. When there's life and there's ignorance, then there's suffering, and so on. So there's different stories. So here the Buddha tells you a story about how suffering happens, about the origins of suffering. But he doesn't always tell this story. He tells other stories, too. This isn't the only way.

[38:40]

Matter of fact, you can find a wide variety of different stories, you know, like sometimes he just does one condition for suffering, sometimes he does two, sometimes he does three, sometimes four, sometimes five, and here he does twelve, and maybe sometimes he even did more than twelve. I don't know of any examples like that, but I've seen stories of these links, of dependent core rising. Can I just ask which translation, which book was this one? It's in a book called History of Buddhist Philosophy by David Kalubahana. But he published this sutra in a number of his books because he really likes this sutra. He feels that this sutra is very closely related to the teachings of Nagarjuna, who was an important figure in Mahayana Buddhism. So this is an early scripture which he sees the spirit of the emptiness teachings in. This morning, you know, about first, sometimes they talk, they sometimes present the path as first of all, starting with the ethical discipline,

[40:13]

or moral, and then going into concentration or tranquility discipline. and then wisdom or insight. And under tranquility sometimes they suggest as a meditation object a following of being aware of the breath, but

[41:19]

I'm telling you that I feel that the key factor in meditating on breath is you're being mindful of the breath, and mindful... One of the basic meanings of mindful is to remember. You're being mindful in the sense that you're remembering the breath, you're focusing on breath. Really, what... creates a tranquility, is that while paying attention to the breath, you relax with it. You relax with the breathing process. While meditating on the breath, you let go of your thinking about the breath, and you let go of your thinking about other things too. It's the letting go of the thinking, it's the letting go of the discursive thought, of the running around in your mind, the wandering in your mind, that actually comes to fruit as tranquility.

[42:26]

And then sometimes they go on from teaching tranquility, they go on to teach wisdom, and when they teach wisdom, they sometimes teach the four foundations of mindfulness. So that's mindfulness of body, mindfulness of feelings, Mindfulness of – you can also say mind is going to take up much room – mindfulness of dharma. Sanskrit is called kaya smriti upasthana, kaya is body, smriti is mindfulness, upasthana means foundation, vedana smriti upasthana, citta smriti upasthana, and dharma smriti upasthana. And again, Dharma is, when they introduced the Dharma, the foundation of mindfulness and Dharma, the first thing they teach you is analysis of experience in terms of five aggregates.

[43:43]

So they teach you about the physical phenomenon, for example, of your body. But when they teach it to you here, under Dharma, they teach you the body not as arms and legs, but the body as the eye organ, ear organ, the skin organ, tongue organ and the nose organ. They teach you the body in terms of receptive capacities. That's actually the way that they teach you as a Dharma meditation. And then they teach you the objects being sights, sounds, smells, touch, tangibles.

[44:46]

sight, sounds, touch, tangibles, and taste. Those are the physical. They teach you to meditate on, to be mindful of. And then in the early scriptures, they also teach you the formal truths and other practices. And then what you do is when you're meditating, either your body in the form of like a body that's got arms and legs and a head and so on, that's standing, for example, or walking, then you meditate on it that way under the mindfulness of body. But you can also bring to that mindfulness of body the Dharma teaching about the body, by applying the teaching to it, you start to interpret it. or think about your body in terms of the teaching that your body is actually something more basic than your ideas about your body.

[45:52]

Your body is actually basically a sense organ. It's five organs that are really what the body is. The usual body we think about is actually a concept we have about it. You actually don't sense, really. arms and legs, and fingernails, and hair, and stuff like that. Yes? Could you give us an example of the Dharma on the physical? Could you elaborate to one organ? Let's say the eye. You want the Dharma teaching about the eye organ? Or how you would, maybe I'm not understanding this, but is this a way of meditating?

[46:54]

Can you use that to meditate? In other words, you would meditate on the body. Okay. So let's say we're having a popular Buddhist cult. So now we have an experience of seeing the color blue. And so when you see the color blue, you would note that you're seeing the color blue.

[47:57]

I might complicate it right at the beginning. I'll just tell you that usually when we see the color blue, what we're seeing, what we're usually aware of, is it's blue. Quote, it's blue. Unquote. So, and that actually is a conceptual cognition. It's not a direct sense perception. However, the direct sense perception of its blue, or its blue, its blue, those conceptual cognitions which I just had about those blues over there, is based on actually seeing blue. So, actually, of seeing blue, I notice I'm seeing blue, and I also notice, and I'm also giving a teaching that usually when you see it's blue, actually what you're seeing, cognizing, is your concept of blue.

[49:24]

And your concept of blue is based on a sensory experience of blue. And, you know, if I think of blue without seeing a blue, and then when I look over there and see all those blues over there, that's different than when I think of blue. However, still, when I look at those blues over there, I'm actually having a conceptual cognition of them, which I'm superimposing on the sensory cognition. So you can do this if you want to. You can just look at the ceiling and think of blue, or remember blue. Or close your eyes and you can see blue too, can't you? That's different from looking over there and seeing those blues. But when you see those blues, actually I'm suggesting to you that you're also superimposing a concept of blue on those blues, and you can say they're blue.

[50:31]

This type of discussion is part of mindfulness practice. And using mindfulness of blue, or mindfulness of color, mindfulness of the Dharma of color and also bringing the teaching which I'm just giving you about that when you see blue usually you mix with the concept of blue and then you can talk about blue. However, you can also look, sometimes it is possible to look over there and see the blue and not cognize, on a conceptual level, the blue, and therefore not be able... That is also possible. So you can actually... I think you could do an experiment like this, of having people... training people to, when they see blue, a blue color...

[51:38]

Or you could even press a button and they'd get fed something. And then they see blue again, press a button and they get fed. And after a while, they probably would salivate, start salivating if it was good. And they weren't... They would maybe salivate, start salivating when they would see the blue, like dogs might do. Okay? Okay? However, you could also ask them, did they see the blue? And they could say, yes, they did. But it might be also possible to flash the color blue so fast that they weren't able to actually say, it's blue. But you might be able to identify that they salivated. In other words, that they registered on a sensory level the blue, but it was too fast for them to actually conceptualize it. So consciously, in the realm of conceptual consciousness, they didn't know the blue happened, but actually their body did register it, and you could really test it by a galvanic skin response or salivation or something.

[52:56]

Just like you can sometimes and stop without noticing that you saw that the light was red. And so we actually do register all day long lots of sensory input and we do respond to them. We're consciously aware and we do things in response to that conscious awareness that we don't actually impute a concept to the event such that we can actually say, red light, blue cloth, and so on. And you can practice mindfulness on these colors in order to study this kind of thing. Yes? Would the concept be a precursor to that, for me to stop at a red light without having seen the red light? Would the concept be a precursor to?

[53:57]

To that unconscious reaction, if you like. Well, in terms of learning to stop a car, most people would probably learn that in conjunction with conceptual cognitions. Right. Because in a certain way, I was thinking to what you've said up to now, We name everything in terms of, as a concept, even things that are perhaps even ineffable. Like, for example, I can talk about the aroma of coffee. If you've never experienced that, there's no way it could ever, even though there's a concept out there, you can relate to that. It has to be like a shed. You mean like if somebody had never smelled coffee before and you said to them, you said coffee has a wonderful aroma? If I say something like, oh, I would express, oh, it's just, there's nothing like the...

[54:59]

coffee in the morning. Yeah, and somebody who's never smelled it, they say, I don't know what you mean. Right. And then some morning, you ask them, do you smell something? And they say, I don't know what you mean. And then you bring the coffee, the canister over, and you say, you smell that? Right. That's the smell of coffee. The concept, the way it is substituting for the experience of the actual, or vice versa. Well, it's not exactly substituting for it, it's more based on it. Now, they heard the concept before they actually smelled the coffee. So in that case, it wasn't substituting for it or based on it. It's just some words to them. And for you, actually, you could also say, although I'm talking to you about the concept of coffee, I don't smell any coffee right now. I'm talking about the concept of the aroma of coffee. I do not smell the aroma. And I don't think you do either.

[56:02]

And then... And then you could bring them the coffee and put it under their nose and say, do you smell something? And they say, yes. And then you could take it away and say, did it go away? And they say, yes. Well, the aroma, this thing I'm bringing to you now, this right there, that's the aroma. Take it away. Right. So now, but you could also just say to them, I'm saying about coffee, and you could just take the can of coffee And you could bring it by their nose and you say, tell me if you smell ... And they say, maybe they don't smell it much, maybe their room doesn't have much aromas. You bring the coffee by and you say, did you smell something? They say, yeah. And you say, no, you know what it was? And they might say, in other words, no, they don't know. They know they smelled something, but they don't know what it was. They don't know any ... They have just pure experience. Yeah. Actually, they don't just have a pure experience.

[57:07]

What they have is they smell something, and the concept they have for it is what? What's the concept they have for it? Unknown smell? Yeah, this is an unknown smell. A category of, I don't know what the smell is. They smelled it, so they had the concept of smell. It was an order. So you can say to them, tell me when you smell something new. Like, right now, do you smell anything? And they say, well, not much. Well, I actually smell you. But that's about all I smell right now. And then you say, tell me when you experience a new smell. And you bring the coffee by, and they say, there's something there, yeah. So they have the concept that it was a smell. They don't know it was coffee, though. Let's call this the aroma of coffee. And then you can say to them, tell me the next time you smell it.

[58:09]

And you can bring by various aromas and then bring by the coffee and they say, I think that was the aroma of coffee again. And then you could bring by, I'm bringing by another aroma now, tell me, you know. And you bring by various other ones and then they don't say the aroma of coffee until you bring the coffee one by. So there is some basis for it in the sensory level for them to do that. I would say we could test it that way. And I have a feeling that we would be successful in that experiment. Then we could also do some kind of thing where it doesn't work so well with orders. Orders are harder to do this with. It's easier to do with sights or sounds, actually. But in order, but on such a minute level, that they can respond to it, that you can actually register that it responded, that there was a registering response, and that you could have some way to show that their body did respond to, for example, the odor.

[59:21]

...find some way, but that they wouldn't actually be able to identify it conceptually, that that's possible. So, in fact, a lot of the day, We do have experiences on a sensory level. Many of the sensory experiences which we can identify under some circumstances, we don't. Here's another example which you're probably familiar with. You might be sitting in meditation, actually, and hear the sounds outside of kids playing or something. And then you might be starting to be more aware of your breathing or your posture or the pain in your legs. and you stopped even though they're still playing out there and still making noise. You could tape record it and find out that the noise was pretty constant throughout the whole meditation period, but you only heard it for five minutes. And the rest of the time you were aware of other things. Or also what sometimes happens for me, sometimes if I'm talking to people, when they first come in and sit quietly, I hear that we're here, the birds, and as we start to talk,

[60:27]

we don't hear the birds anymore. We start hearing each other, and we don't hear the birds, even though the birds probably didn't stop talking when we started talking. But the birds came in, and our body was still probably responding to it, and there would be ways to test to see that your bodily response was continuing, that your tympanic membrane was still vibrating with the sound of the birds, even though it was also vibrating with the sound of the voice of the humans. It's also possible to hear the birds and the humans, right? But your brain can tune out the birds and tune in the voice, or sometimes tune out the voice and tune in the birds. So if you're paying attention to somebody's voice and then the birds start singing, you might register the birds and lose track of the person. So these are things at the sensory level, and then the conceptual level can tune in and tune out. to understand the koan you would have had the experience so the words are otherwise nonsensical at the conceptual level they're designed to be in effect but it's if somebody has had that experience then they can understand the koan so

[61:58]

You can have words which denote concepts, and they are totally nonsensical in your everyday usage. And then you are presented with it in a way where it tries to uncover a deeper experience. And unless you have that, those concepts are arranged in a way in which they make absolutely no sense in your everyday life. Am I making myself clear? Actually, you probably are, but I don't understand. If you take, you know, the chords have become clichés. Well, take a simple koan like ... koans is called mu, right?

[63:02]

So, you practice this koan mu, and then ... and you go see the teacher, and the teacher says, you know, show me mu. And then you show the teacher mu, And the teacher's job, I guess, is to see if they feel like you really understand what you've just shown. Right. And for that communication to occur, you know, whatever nonsensical statement it might appear to be, becomes realizing between the two individuals, right, that there is a general experience. So, in a sense, the labeling that we do of blue, of concepts, gets turned over its head. So the conceptual framework that we use to live our daily lives become really an obfuscation, become part of the ignorance, the delusion that becomes evident in something like a con.

[64:19]

At least that's my understanding. Well, in this case, the teacher says, show me moo, and the student might say, moo. Or the student might say, how's your health? How are you feeling today? And the teacher might say, yeah, right. And so perhaps what's happening there is that both the student and the teacher at the moment are not holding to their conceptual version of what's happening as being what's happening. And then together they're sharing this way of being in a situation where the student's looking at the teacher and the teacher's looking at the student, and the student is not confusing their idea of the teacher with the teacher, and the teacher is not confusing her idea with the student, and senses that the student is sharing in this non-confusion.

[65:45]

There's something about the way the student's talking that seems to prove that student's not caught by her ideas about what's going on. So they seem to share that way of being with what's happening together. And then they have ways of like, sort of, in a sense, proving it or testing it and proving it again, just to see if they're kind of like in rapport. In a sense, in this realm of the way things are happening, actually, independence on things themselves, in the way that things are happening in this selfless fashion. And yet they're still maybe using words which are related to imputations of self, but they're using the words in such a way that they're not getting caught by the imputation of self to what's going on.

[67:05]

So they're sharing, in a sense, they're sharing away a mode of experience. Even though their two experiences aren't the same, they're in the same mode of experience. Namely, they're in the mode of experience of the pinnacle arising. They're in the mode of experience of creativity or creation. They're both in that mode, but the testing of comes from to see if they can use language. And language depends on actually interjecting some kind of a concept of self onto a process that doesn't have a self. Language without slipping, without exiling themselves from the process of creation. Because some people feel like that they've entered into the process of creation But if they go to talk to somebody about it, as they switch back to starting to use words again, they dislodge themselves in the process of creation.

[68:22]

They dislodge themselves from it. So that's what we ordinarily people do, is we're all actually We all have at least our toe in the water of creation. Actually, we have our whole body in the water of creation. We're constantly being created, like it says here. We're constantly in dependence on things and ceasing because we're in dependence on things. It's happening all the time. But our conceptual consciousness, if we believe it, if we agree to it, it kind of exiles us from the place we already are. It exiles us from our actual home. So what some people do is, in meditation, they actually like stop exiling themselves for a little while. They feel that they're opening to this creative mode of where they're actually arising and ceasing in dependence on the various conditions. see the teacher, but when they start talking about it, they flip back into the process of conception and lose contact with it.

[69:27]

So then in koan work, the teacher says, go back and sit some more. Go back and enter into that realm some more to see if you can stay in it as you leave the meditation hall. Come to see me. You're talking to me. We can even talk and still be in this... Actually, this realm of creativity is a place where we're actually working together. It's kind of the space between us. Between us means it's also the space between my sense of what's going on and your sense of what's going on and our shared sense of what's going on. It's a space in between there. But usually when we start talking, we either go over to our side or over to the other person's side. We go to the terminal when we start talking. So then we lose contact with the in-between. And to be able to not lose contact there and speak from that place is sort of what the training is about.

[70:32]

And that's the... That's the experience of the origins of phenomena. And when we lose touch with the origins of phenomena, then we grasp them, then we crave them. The origins of phenomena, we cease craving. Ignorance is to ignore the origins of phenomena. And then by ignoring their origins, we have craving. Yes. So again, in terms of foundations of mindfulness, this discussion we're having now would be an example of a certain type of discussion that you might try and apply this Dharma discussion to

[71:39]

two bodily states, two mental states. If you apply these teachings to what's happening,

[71:50]

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