And it's funny how long it takes to establish the ability to talk with each other in this kind of way. Talk about how we exhaust talent and finally exist. If you ever, sometimes even new people can join the conversation. quickly if a lot of people have been having this interior and exterior conversation for a long time. I always find that so makes a big difference. Even a few people in a group who, you know, have a who find it incredible, this kind of conversation.

[01:10]

So I'm trying to participate in a conversation with having with yourself. Wonderful that you let me join in this conversation with yourself. And I'm trying to share conversation I had with myself. Myself, not quite right. Something serious about it. Now I talked yesterday again about these Things like serving, holding the tray and all. And of course, I realize this isn't something rigid if you do have serving somebody at the gimashio or eating at the gimashio.

[02:24]

You do take hoshio at holding the tray. But if you have a very tiny person, you can't reach the tray. Or the kabasha is very far away. We certainly could move the tray. I refuse to move. So this, just you do what's good enough. But then there's also an informal way. It's kind of like the formal way. You can make this somewhat more formal. Ceremonies, basically, a ceremony is just to do what we're doing in a slightly more formal way. There are levels of formality that really kind of articulate the form of something, so you can experience it when you're both married. It always strikes me as funny, you know, if you get married. You know, people can live with someone for several years.

[03:27]

They can spend 20 minutes or half an hour getting married to someone all their lives. I was married once, you know. short ceremony, staying with you in a way, five years of living with someone, five years of living with someone, a lifetime, hopefully, and a ceremony makes a difference. How to, one of the interesting parts of our practice, because we're not really a religion, You don't have the god or anything, you know? Well, how did the Salmonids, how can we make salmons of wood? Okay, so the formal and the informal would be like, you know, the British used to give you no informal, no analysis, no informal.

[04:28]

But then instead of, say, you're taking a ganache or a bit when you leave it, kind of move it into this area. It's a kind of a deflection cord. And then the third way is breaking the set. Breaking the set is like the way we serve a hot pot. You just come in, pop. If there's any rest, you put your bowl down. And then you drink your... It's been quite the most consistently good So, you know, when a master writes, sitting with my legs stretched out, I look into the breeze. Well, sitting with the leg stretched out was breaking the set.

[05:34]

I mean, a Western poet wouldn't say, hey, it's a big deal, and sitting with my leg stretched out. You wouldn't even mention it. And this is not just about formality and breaking the set. It's basically for your culture, Buddhist culture, there's no such thing as natural. Everything is a generated form. If you believe in natural, you have another implicit view of coming. Or you have a theological view. But there's some inherent theology with natural. Like you can just let your hair grow and look like this. Or you can mat it. You can look mud into it. None of it's natural. It's all a decision to let it grow into something you're doing, to cut it off to something you're doing, to clean it to something you're doing.

[06:41]

None of it's natural. It's all a generated part. The play of that is all part of it. Asian poetry, and so forth. I had no idea of an axel, this thing running through the palm. So I'm trying to, I wonder, how can you speak about it very simply, how a mechanical bit of feeling for Now we've been to have too much excitement in this city. You have to calm down now. The rest of the world have gone in the daylight saving time. I mean I'm saving time.

[07:44]

I just sat, I had these tomahawk, you know, baby o'clock. I just sat on the couch and, you know, I said, I know what time it is. I'm sorry, Sashen, it's such a painful ritual. You know, you have to sit here and do all this. I mean, it really was a pun of the picture. Go sit there and don't move. Oh, man. But, and if you think about moving, you get about 20 or 30 people sit beside you. Make sure you don't. Each one of you is policing everybody. But somehow, I'm afraid to move because he's not moving.

[09:01]

He's afraid to move because I'm not moving. But somehow, we made this agreement with each other and we're doing it. But somehow, The shortcut, I mean, I've talked about a lot of aspects of the difficulty of pain in society. And I know one of them, I think, is awful important. It's just to bring a little warrior mentality into our culture. We have no puberty rights. The problems with teenagers, they don't have puberty rights. They don't know what's going on. They don't know what. You know, I think if I'd never done sashimi, I'd be such a wimp. I'd still be complaining. I would have grown up to be a horrible wimp.

[10:05]

Somehow, The ability to sip a few pennies is the shortest cut to a gerbil in the mouth. Which happens to be so simple. Now, let me see if I can. I start to say, make it simple. I've used this penalty before. If I hold this stick up. Let's see. Let's say I ask you to concentrate. So you concentrate until really, you're really focused on the state. Everything about effort, there's nothing, there's just you and the state. Then I take it away.

[11:09]

And you can keep your concentration. Now what do you concentrate on? Because there's always an object of concentration. What you're concentrated now on is the mind itself, the field of mind. And we can bring this back up into the field, and you can observe it now from the concentrated mind. That's the discovery, the discovery of people in meditation. Don't meditate on the government. And what are the factors on it, if we look at it simply? Factors are, if I just look at this, yeah, nothing. I take it away, I look at something else. That's all. But if I look at it and concentrate on it, and I take it away, I'm not just looking at something else anymore.

[12:20]

I'm able to feel a new mind that's up. So if it's in a simple way, this is shamatha. And you bring it back up and you'll feel the purpanasana, looking at it from contemplating. Now we've got two categories. Through meditation, and all that we do, and comparing, and all that. It's all the view that arises through meditation. Not of neurotic philosophy, rooted in the experience of meditation. Most of us do it in the experience. It's actually really, hopefully, really the experience. It's really the experience of meditation. Okay, so you do this enough, you meditate enough, and you begin to have more and more this experience of seeing an object, and through concentrating, developing another mind there that you don't notice.

[13:43]

But what happens if you begin to be able to separate, let's say, foreground from background? That's a very good thing. You can separate foreground and background. Now, what happens if you continue to meditate? Well, you have a teaching that helps you make this distinction. In Zen, we just try to emphasize meditation more than teaching. In other words, your teaching comes in when teaching comes in according to how you develop your meditation. So you keep meditating. You just do it or not. Pretty soon, you begin to be able to really experience a difference between, let's call it now, foreground mind and background

[14:52]

Then, with continual practice, you get subtle enough that you can shift your identification. You don't just experience the background mind. You have the experience of the foreground mind and the experience of the background mind, but we still identify with the foreground mind. But who we are, that's meaningless. Mind is a timeless history. But we feel the background. That's a kind of fresh air, green green. There are other things. Give us the feeling. You can do various kinds of things. You can feel that or taste that. But they'd go back to the identification you got before. Now, the next step is you realize if teaching helps you or it becomes possible, you can not so much cease your identification, your process of identifying with the foreground mind.

[16:12]

Then you don't have to end that so much, but you have to end the abstraction. you shift that identification process to the background. And that process of shifting to the background line, you have to have some technique to do it. Very difficult to exactly just mentally . And all of these things can be insights But if you just kind of take this, put it in your store of knowledge, you're way back on a dusty shelf. You've got to keep bringing it to your attention, keep familiarizing yourself with it, ascertaining it. It depends on your first years of habits. So you begin to be able to shift your sense of identification with the background light.

[17:21]

Now, that's what I mean when you have a stabilized background light. You've been able to shift your identification with the background light. And one of the main techniques here is to be able to concentrate on your breath. would protect me. That's sufficient. Because when you bring your attention to your breath, you bring your attention away from your heart. It's really that simple. And as long as you can't keep your attention on your breath, it means you want your attention on your thoughts, or you need your attention on your thoughts, or you believe your thoughts are where you reside. That's a very, very big step. And you can shift so that your breath is familiar to you, present with you, and be part of your stance.

[18:29]

So I say some people really get confused. Do I have to constantly keep bringing attention to you? No. You don't keep attention to your posture. Your posture is attention. You know that you're standing or sitting or lying or whatever. And most of the time, that can even continue to be smooth, and we still even know whether, to some extent, we're sleeping well. And I suggest practices like holding something in your hand, in your forehead, to try to bring attention to this kind of awareness of your posture, even in sleep. OK. So at some point, just as your... My attention is my posture. And my attention is... I'm not bringing attention to my posture. My posture feels attention. And at some point, my breath becomes attention.

[19:32]

That's a bad word in English because we saw it in too many German movies. I told you. You don't know what it means. Stop or we're going to shoot you or something. At some point, when your breath simply becomes as much your attention or awareness as your posture, you've made one of the main ways to accomplish and manifest the real life of freedom from the demarcation that you've got. It is to you. In fact, how long does it take to do this? I don't know, five years, a lifetime, seven years, eight years. Maybe if it's clear enough, maybe if I can make it clear enough, you can do it in a month.

[20:45]

Well, it's pretty hard. See, I've cut mine again, so. I had my book. That's really, that's, we're studying. I said, I'm not good. But you can see how simple it is. The biggest, one of the greatest medicines in the world. You take it, and you feel it. Well, things are very nice, mild, makes things a bit better. But still, yeah, you can feel it in your heart, but you don't identify with it. So now, we've seen this foreground model.

[21:51]

We've seen the background model. We've begun to shift. We've been able to shift not only are we aware of the background model, the present. We now shift our identification. And now, we can study the foreground model. quite clearly. Because if you identify, it's like how does the eye see the eye? Well, you have to have the wisdom eye. The wisdom eye can see the eye, but the eye itself can't see itself. So when you identify with the foreground mind, you can't study the foreground mind. It's like a one. And now you've developed a wisdom eye, which means a non, Interfering, observing consciousness. Non-interfering, observant consciousness. An observer. OK, what do you see right off?

[22:56]

One of the contents of the foreground mind is self. Background mind. If it ends, but you're knowing and noticing that that isn't the exact self. If it is self, then you've been very clever and you've snuck your round mind into the guy found in the... And we are clever and don't think there won't be problems because this self, you know, The self is going to go to you. That's a beautiful thing. And it's helped you through hard times.

[23:59]

You don't want to give it up. Plus, even if you see that it's some kind of endless, it itself has a lot of psychic power, and it will threaten you. And if necessary, it will threaten you with insanity, suicide, all that. But it doesn't get the bully, and it doesn't want to give up. And at some point, it's kind of bully nature. I'm glad. Bully, you know the word? That's the word you're in. The little kid who, the little kid who was a little bigger than the other kid who picked your hat. Give me my hat back. So now you see that This foreground mind is actually a kind of stream of agitation, distraction, associations, and all kinds of things that happen.

[25:24]

You have the stillness of your background mind. In the background, your background becomes some physical manifestation, kind of tube of Back one week, back one week. In the movie, it's almost like if you, you know, a movie is a whole bunch of stills. If the actors could feel the stills while the observers saw the movement. You could feel the moment of the stillness. Mental. Now, when you... Are you still with me? Am I going long ago? When you start seeing the contents of the foreground mind, one of the contents of the foreground mind is self, how much you like it, the idea of mind.

[26:37]

Then, let's bring wisdom into this. You can, by examination, And Dogen, in this , says, at the moment of entering meditation, study. Is it vertical or horizontal? Is it an acrobat? They've embraced the leaks. It means study this mind like meditation. So the more you see through observation, actually the cell is not inherently established. It's not permanently established.

[27:40]

that we can begin to see what self is and come to be established. The sense of mind, your, is not coming to establish. You are provisionally established, but not permanently established. And that's a big difference. When you begin to see that, the strength of the foreground mind becomes not just the strength of the self, but the strength of the foreground mind, which supports the cell, which is the articulation of the cell, etc., begins to loosen, begins to overlap with this background. Then you can begin to see that the foreground mind is a kind of stream, a stream of constant impressions. Now, I read the Lankhapatara Sutra when I was sixty-something.

[28:53]

Fifty-two, something like that. And I read it, and I told you, boy, this could be the first sutra I read fully. And I read it very slowly. I read it slowly because I had many jobs, and I knew I was going to have a baby, and so forth like that. But I also read it slowly because I decided I wouldn't go to the next sentence until I could practice the first step. So I'd read a sentence in the morning, put it up, go into the bathroom. Just one sentence. It sounded like a little parade. I'd get out. And then I'd go to work, and at lunch, I would go take my lunch in the middle of the packet. I had lunch in here.

[29:54]

Take it away and sit. I would stream on the campus. I would read often. I was a graduate student, too. And I'd find food. I'd eat my lunch and read. And I'd read. And at this point, I was eating for two or three seconds. And I'd tell her to practice it. I wouldn't go through the next sentence, and then in the evening, I would try to bring it to her. And I wouldn't... If I couldn't practice a sentence, if two or three days passed, I couldn't annotate the sentence, then I'd go on to the next. But it would take quite a bit before I'd go on to the next sentence. I'd clearly say, I just can't get this, so I'll go on to the next. Then I'd come back. So it took me a long time to leave. A year and a half.

[30:57]

So one advantage of doing it this way was it helped my practice, and it allowed me to really try to practice it simply, but also probably So he pulled forth one fourth number. He's the familiarized mind, mind and skin moving right here. Again, didn't put it, oh, that's an insight. Kept coming back, coming back. Yoga child, two words. Supposedly, you see, the Bodhidharma, like China, both. Yeah, kind of mixed up two words and put together various times. Good enough. Not. by the kind of solution I was, could not win it. And so I kept winning it. One of the things Mike Patarczyk did, then himself spoke about it, was advising, abiding, cessation.

[32:06]

Advising, abiding, cessation. Abiding, abiding, cessation. Over and over again, fire. It's kind of perfect. This view got into my mind. Now, that's a version of a poor mind. Each dharma, what's a dharma, right? Dharma is defined by four minds. Red horizon, deletion, dissolution, cessation, discipline. Now, the least remaining, about the four marks that I've pointed out to several of you, if it was just three marks, it could be somewhat passive. Because in fact, that's the way things are. Scientists could do it. That's the way things happen. They appear, have some kind of duration, and they resolve.

[33:13]

I don't know if you've heard something. The disappearance makes the point that you're participating. Not just passive, not just, oh, yeah, look, here, there, there, front, oh, good. No, you are making it a feeling. You're participating in its duration. You're participating in its dissolution, and then you wipe the slate clean. Wipe the slate clean. disappear. And the disappearance really makes clear that it's you doing this. It's you doing it anyway, because this is your mental continuum. But you could view it rather passively, because everything's changing. My mental continuum notices everything's changing. But actually, you are your mental continuum. You, I don't know what you, but some kind of you.

[34:15]

It's you. The self that covers every secret you have. It's small self. And now we're becoming aware of it. Small self, big self, go down in the background now. And you're just not get familiar with it. And once you really be familiar with it, and then stabilize yourself, you're teaching practice. In the background. then you can study the foregiven mind, you can see the self and the reality of mind not inherently or permanently established. Then you can see that all of the contents of the foregiven mind have the quality of revising, abiding, and ceasing. I thought that shouldn't be different inside, as I said. It can be better than you think.

[35:17]

It becomes just as healthy. You don't have to follow the schedule. And then you can change the schedule tomorrow. When I put this up, OK. And so you begin to see that everything arises, abides, and ceases.

[36:20]

And you begin to see that your just foreground mind has various ingredients, agitation, habit energy, Habit energy is important. I mean, it's a big thing. Habit, agitation, instability. Objects with association, as you've practiced without, objects without association. Objects with memory imprint, repository, objects without. associations, or relatively free of associations. It's in various contexts. You can even see this object without knowing it's a backstretch or a New Year's whistle. Object without association, an object with association, and you begin to know the difference.

[37:33]

mind that arises, how the mental continuum, the mind continuum changes, and primarily objects appear, how the circulation, mind, thought arising. So here we have very little thing. We've started out with new concentration, we recognize that the foreground mind, background mind, now we're beginning to recognize quite a lot of Objects without association with objects with association have furniture. Now, the more you begin to be able to participate in this arising, abiding, and cessation, in other words, as water. Let's take water. Water loves itself. It's always trying to return things. You look at a wave, it's just water making up.

[38:37]

That's all. It gets up there and says, hey, this is scary up here. I'm going back down. And the whole form of the wave is trying to return to the water. The water's view is to return to what? Or to seek the lowest level of that. You want your mental continuum to always seek these things. just as the view of water is to return to itself, you want your mental continuum to absolutely be inseparable from infinity. When that happens, all you see, out of haste to infinity, is a rising of life. If you have your Bible, I mean, really, and it's like this, it's blessed. driving, fighting, and if you have a blitz, the safety of the military. The foreground mind moves and feels continuity.

[39:48]

You have a kind of one way of describing life, the kind of foreground mind. This is the teaching we've got. Intentionally waiting and waiting every day.

[40:42]

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