I want to talk a little more about how we think, you know, or more exactly what this practice is really all about, what it's useful to think about, this practice. You know, there's a famous Zen koan or story that I think all of you have heard about the

[01:14]

flag and the wind. You've all heard that, right? No? No? It's almost the most famous Zen story. The sixth patriarch goes to visit. He's a layman. It's very important, interesting that the sixth patriarch is a layman. As Mumon Roshi said, Zen is layman's Buddhism. And the sixth patriarch, at the time of this story, received ordination, but it has nothing to do with whether he understood Buddhism or practiced Buddhism well or anything. It was just he did it as some way to practice with other people.

[02:14]

Anyway, he went wandering about as a layman. He received his robe from the fifth patriarch. And he was visiting a man named Yin Tung. And when he arrived at his temple, two monks were arguing. Is it the flag, the temple banner? Is it the flag that's

[03:42]

moving or the wind that's moving? And they argued back and forth. And the sixth patriarch said, Oh, it's neither the flag nor the wind. It's the mind that's moving. It's a pretty simple story. Do you all understand it? I thought you might. I think you did. And you might, actually, because you always, whenever you read about Zen, for instance, if you read Nancy Wilson Ross's book, Losing San Francisco Right, that story is always there. And everybody who, I think most of the

[04:44]

people who write the story down in books think they know what it means. And it is quite simple story. But I want, because it's a simple story, I want to use it as an example of how we think about Buddhism. I don't want to explain the story completely, so it's not useful to you. Actually, I can't explain it completely, but I don't want to explain it so much that you think it's explained completely. But I do want to use it as an example. You can't use your mind to figure out such a story, but you can use your mind to get all the background, all the preparation.

[05:45]

And it would be useful to know at the time you're thinking about the story, Sixth Patriarch knew, and everything the two monks knew, and the historical situation. If you knew that, it would be useful. At least you should know something about it. So first of all, let me talk about the mind a little bit more. The Sutra we chant every day, Heart Sutra, says, mentions the five skandhas, which you all should understand pretty well, and form, and feelings, and perceptions, and together-makers, impulses, clusterers, and consciousness. And

[07:15]

mostly, the mind is treated in Buddhism as one of the senses, like seeing or hearing. It's the way we perceive things. And then, of course, our mind is more complicated than our eye, so our eye does very definitely organize your perceptions. And if you, as Abhi Nassau, Abhi Nassau, maybe Maslow, you just got an insight into working with my mind. Anyway, Abraham Maslow, that's about glossing and deglossing. The way you perceive things is a gloss. Castaneda thinks, he says he

[08:26]

thinks that Don Juan was deglossing him and reglossing him with a new gloss called being a sorcerer. So you perceive things in terms of the new gloss. But Don Juan thinks that he was unglossing him, so he perceived things directly. We don't really know what Castaneda thinks. And Zen thinks, he doesn't think it's re-glossing you, he thinks it's deglossing you, so you perceive things directly. I think that's true too, pretty much true. To talk about Castaneda a little bit in reference to this story, the Sixth Patriarch, you know, we don't... Ian Polsky's done a pretty good

[09:27]

job of showing that the Sixth Patriarch, we don't like Buddha, we know more about him than Buddha, but we don't know much about him at all. And the stories are made up afterwards. And this incident with the flags may have never happened. But whether it's apocryphal or not is irrelevant. As it's irrelevant, Time Magazine doesn't see, and they did their one foot in the door expose of Castaneda. But it doesn't make any difference whether Castaneda is... Don Juan is real or not. And the genius of the book is that it's useful to you in your life situation, whether you find Don Juan or not. It's like Milarepa is useful to you whether you sit in one thin cotton garment up there

[10:30]

in midwinter, next winter or not. The fact of the snow in the cave is rather irrelevant. The genius of such books is that it works for you in any situation. And the genius of this Sutra, the Sixth Patriarch, is the same. So actually your eyes are glossed. And the way your eyes organize perceptions is already influenced by your mind and the way you want to see things. It's much more true in your mind. And so we have this, what D.T. Suzuki translates, interestingly, as confection makers. Confection. With our food for it. Anyway, our mind puts things together a certain way.

[11:42]

And the sixth is consciousness. And then we can talk about pure awareness. But the purpose of mind in Buddhism is the same purpose as your eyes or ears, is to bring us information. And we're warned by Buddhism that the way the information is brought to us by our eyes and ears is very deceptive. But we make the fundamental confusion that we think what we see is reality, and we think what we hear is reality. But more important, we think what we think is reality. We don't just use it as a sense. You're more cautious about your eyes and ears. You hear that, you don't know quite what it is. But it doesn't stop there. You think about it. So your eyes, what information your eyes and ears

[12:48]

touch bring you is further processed. If it wasn't processed, then you can trust your eyes and ears, actually. But we further process it. But because of the way we work, if we stop the process, and because we don't further process the thinking perception, we take that as reality. So you get a ego and corruptibility. You can substitute, actually, ego for priorities. We do have certain priorities. Some people worry about, if I have no ego, what if somebody pushes me around,

[14:02]

you know, taps on my blue suede shoes. But there's other ways, you know, you can also deal with that in terms of priority. And your highest priority should be your state of mind. We're always sacrificing our state of mind for some extra pastry, or some arguing with someone. You want to just discuss it a little bit further, you can tell your state of mind is disintegrating, but you want to continue, you know. You have no sense of priority. So if you have a sense of

[15:09]

priority, you don't need ego in the usual sense, because you'll take care of yourself without having to have that defensive kind of ego. So our mind brings us information, but the processing is done at a deeper level. And so we don't get fooled by the information as our mind presents it, thinking that's reality, you know, and that's what we have to take care of. Anyway, that's more the Buddhist way of looking at it. So there's a big distinction between, as you know, by using the word awareness, between awareness and thinking. Awareness, you're ready, you're aware,

[16:15]

but not thinking exactly. Awareness, if you think about awareness for a while, you'll see that awareness implies some different kind of mind, and awareness is the entrance to a big mind. So if you want to think, what I'm trying to get at is how we use our mind. One way, as I've said, is you can bring your thinking back to what you're doing. You can also bring your thinking to the point where you can ask yourself questions. And this is something I hope you all learn how to do, which is say you notice you have some tension. You wake up in

[17:24]

the morning and you're gritting your teeth. You don't know why you woke up in the morning with your jaw clamped together. You can't figure it out. But you can guess there's some tension. So we can't figure it out by usual processes, because the only sign we have is the tip of the iceberg, these ground together teeth. So during the day, being conscious, you can relax your mouth and you won't grit your teeth, but next morning, if they're stuck together again, you can wonder again. So you can ask yourself a question. If you realize that the processing is done further, if the processing isn't done in that conscious thinking arena, you know, it takes this kind of confidence to do it. You don't have this confidence. You can't do it because

[18:29]

you want to think it out. And more, if you know what the mind is we're speaking about, what we imply when we use the word awareness, you can ask that mind a question. What is all this tension about? You can use English. It's better not to use English, maybe, but you can use English. It works. The big mind understands English. So you can say, what is all this tension? What is all this tension? But the big mind isn't sitting around waiting to listen to the question. You have to keep asking it, knocking at its door over and over again. It's sort of like Vajrasattva or Vairagyana is, deep in meditation and unwilling to be disturbed. So you say, what is all this tension about? What is all this tension about? What is all this tension about? And if you bug it enough with repetition, oh, all right. You're irritated about so-and-so who stepped on you.

[19:32]

And the answer will appear, actually. Or you'll find you have some conflict about something. So that's one way we use our mind, as a processor, as a shovel, carrier of information. All these ways are important to Buddhism. So when we work on a koan or a Zen story or our life in a fundamental sense, we work on it this way, beyond thinking. And we say, don't think about it, don't figure it out. But you can do certain parts of it for preparation, through thinking. So the more background you can know about a story like this, the better. One is you can, you know the Sixth

[20:40]

Patriarch knew the Diamond Sutra. And the Diamond Sutra implies the Heart Sutra, because he heard, at least you know, that he heard, he was enlightened by hearing the Diamond Sutra recited. So anyway, but you also know, certainly whoever wrote the story knew a heck of a lot about the Heart Sutra and Diamond Sutra. So the Five Skandhas, what that implies about the vision of ourselves is there. But that's much, you know. You also know he's talking to two anonymous monks. So first let's deal with the story, you can deal with the story as an episode, a discussion or conversation between two anonymous monks and the Sixth Patriarch. Let me say again, that this kind of thinking, I think,

[21:44]

we emphasize I'm going on a lot of sidetracks, all right. We, because I think we have various conceptions, you know, that interfere with our ability to do things. One is we think that thinking and smartness are related, and they really aren't. Like we think that beauty and an artist are connected. And when you go to Japan, you can see that Japan is extraordinarily beautiful in the way, not only the land, but the way everything is. And when you're there, what strikes you is

[22:56]

that 99% of it is care, not somebody's decision. Oh, this will be beautiful there. But just taking care of things, doing things in order to take care of them. And, you know, the beauty of the Sixth Patriarch is just the care that is taken in that. Charles Olson says in, let me say first, you know, we have this whole trip of IQ tests and

[23:58]

all that stuff that you've all been subjected to, and it really is just a way of measuring how quickly you can be ordinary. I mean, really, that's what it is. It's based on average ability to do things and how well you do the average. And Charles Olson says about Harvard that he, that Conant, the president of Harvard, destroyed Harvard by inviting Oregon's finest. You understand? But that, you see, Harvard is a pretty good college. And it got caught by wanting to be the college which had the smartest people in it. And so it denied its origins of being a New

[25:01]

England college for people from New England who had enough leisure to go there, for one reason or another. And it produced good people. When you only take people who supposedly are talented, you undercut something fundamental that everyone has. So when you actually look not at the people who are successful in school, but the people who are successful in life, whoever they are, you know, particularly the realm of intelligence, you know, like invention by Chester Carlson, or land. I told you a story about land, or lucky Buckminster Fuller. They have an enormous care and ability to work

[26:10]

over and over and over and over again. As Mumon Yamadoroshi says in his lectures in that same book, Lotus, The Secrets of the Lotus, he took much, much more time than any other monk at his monastery, he implies, to solve, to work through the koans, because he says he wasn't so clever. So he had to expend an enormous amount of energy at each one. But it's that energy which counts. So what I'm saying is, you can have confidence, that Zen doesn't require, even though it looks kind of complicated sometimes, when we talk about koans, you know, some high IQ or intelligence. It requires

[27:15]

enormous care and willingness and persistence and ability to bring your feelings and thinking together in one activity. Am I making my point? Well, I haven't even started. Let's go on a little bit more. So to work on a story like this, you present it to yourself in various ways over and over and over again. Letting your life come into it, and letting the story into your life. Bringing your own

[28:23]

situations. Somehow, if you keep at it pretty soon, just what you're doing will appear in terms of the flag and the wind. Then you can begin to see its usefulness. Before that, as a problem, like as I said the other day, you do your Zazen, and you come to a problem, and you get to the edge of it, and you put it on a plate. This is a problem, you know, without going into it. So if you treat a koan that way, as something that's, well, there it is, a problem, it has no life, and it has no meaning. If you do this, you actually, if you ask yourself questions in this way, why am I feeling tension, or whatever it is, what is my practice? What question can I have? What's the fundamental question for me in Buddhism? Some question will arise if you ask yourself that. Enough. Where is my practice lacking? Where is my

[29:28]

practice lacking? Is my practice lacking? Anything can happen. You don't know what will happen, what will arise. The more you do that, you learn how to do that, and you can, this process goes much more quickly. So, first of all, you have to, you have to be able also, what generally we do when we think about things, all of us, because we're, partly because we're lazy, and partly because we're, we not, don't have a trained way of thinking, you know. Again, our school system emphasizes brilliance or something, and not training, and it's training that counts. By training, I mean, just as we train doing the bowls, taking care of each bowl. When you read a koan, or a Zen story, you have to look at every aspect, with the same care, you don't overlook, well, that's just the introduction, and you skip that. Okay, what's

[30:35]

important? Overhearing the discussion, and his ordination. So, we can know from that, that the story, as it's first told, is rather simple, because it's told for these two anonymous monks, who, and he just, and he's a layman, and he's not particularly interested in being discovered as the Sixth Patriarch, so he just says some casual remark, that's your mind, that's moving. Kind of deceptively simple statement. Then we know, he went in to see the Dharma Master, and he gave a more detailed explanation, because the Dharma Master said, you are no ordinary person, and he arose and bowed to him, and said, explain what you mean. So he explained. Also, we know that the story has

[31:45]

lasted for nearly 1,300 years, and though it looks like kind of a silly story, stories that last 1,300 years are usually not silly. So, you know, for some reason, it's lasted for 1,300 years. So, let's just take it very simply. First, these two guys are talking, and they're talking about the flag in the wind, and the flag in the wind, and the flag in the wind, like before. Without even going through any process, you can ask, why bother to talk about the flag in the wind? Why bother to talk about the flag in the wind? Why bother to talk about the flag in the wind? So the Sixth Patriarch says, don't bother to talk about the

[32:49]

flag in the wind, talk about your mind. It's the mind that's moving. And that's very true in what I meant yesterday when I talked about Dotson. When you present yourself in Dotson, or when you present yourself to yourself, or when you think about anything, you don't think about the object of mind, flag or wind. You think about the mind itself out of which flag and wind arise. Do you understand what I mean? So in Buddhism, we're always talking about big mind. We also know, you know, this is not a scientific discussion, so we're not concerned about actually the flag as a cloth object. We're talking about, it's a spiritual discussion, and a spiritual discussion at the, you know, at the base, one of the

[33:52]

things that Buddhism feels is that you can't talk about reality just objectively. At base, reality is spiritual. And so, and all Zen stories are about you. So, first off, we know, I mean, I think the most important thing I want to convey today is that we don't talk about the objects of mind, we talk about mind itself. So, at the beginning again, at this Sashin, I asked you, notice how the objects of your mind are produced by your breathing for your activity, and how your breathing is in turn influenced by. Further, we have to give the monks

[34:56]

some credit, you know. They're not drunken sailors looking at a flag. Gee, is that the flag moving? That's the wind. I mean, the monks, we have to give them, they may be anonymous, they're not as smart as the Dharma master, but at least they're not drunken sailors. Because it is rather silly to say, is it the flag? Well, we know it's the wind moving the flag. We do know it's the, the flag isn't, the tail isn't wagging the dog. The flag isn't waving the wind. So, it's sort of pointless to say, is the flag moving or the wind moving? Unless they're talking about something else. The fact that it doesn't make sense at that level, unless you're a drunken sailor, means that the monks are talking about something else. So, that allows you to bring the question to another level. What else could they be talking about? Well, they can be talking about, does one thing affect another, or which came first, the chicken or the egg?

[36:12]

Does one thing, does rubbing the tile produce a jewel? Does your practicing enlightenment change society? Or is it your situation, the wind, which changes you? And then it's also useful to know something about the six patriarchs' own teaching. And he says, as I said yesterday, all the ten thousand things are produced by one mind. So, that means he's saying, the flag is mine, wind is mine. Dogen says, everything you see is mine. We don't just mean some theory that, like the tree that falls down in the forest, no one hears.

[37:35]

What do we mean by big mind then? The whole thing raises the question, what is big mind? And is the flag, does the flag have any, in a world of a non-repeatable universe, the flag waving, coming, flashing, does it have any existence? Aside from your giving it existence. Flag is flag, wind is wind. So what, that base is moving everything. Anyway, that much you can, by thinking thoroughly about it, present to yourself. Willing to spend the time, I think some of you, occasionally I give you, some of you, some story to work on.

[38:53]

And in the best sense you do work on it. One year later, it's still coming up, consciously and unconsciously in your conversation. But many people, when I do this, find they don't have time to think about it the next few weeks. Other things are more important. Or it's too much trouble. You don't see the point of it. Anyway, first you can present this much to yourself about it, and then you just have to bring it into your consciousness. Flag and wind and two monks and a Dharma Master and a Sixth Patriarch, and what the heck are they doing? Why bother with all this? So until everything you see is flag and wind, you can't begin to enter into how this story can break through our concepts,

[40:05]

in which we think one thing affects another, in which we think Zen exists as some isolated practice of ourselves. Zen is a social institution and a cultural fact, as well as your individual practice. Zen isn't something created for your convenience, and it isn't just what you want it to be. Its power is that it exists at one with and interdependent with society. Over the door of most monasteries in Japan and China, it says something like,

[41:15]

everything we do is with other people. It doesn't mean in the monastery only. It means in the cave or wherever you are. Actually, everything you do is with other people. Everything we do must be with other people. But that's the fact of our existence, the fact that the animal or this tree here in this Tassajara, that tree is completely independent. Its own health and strength are its trunk and leaves, but it's also a Tassajara Valley tree. So we can't separate out one thing from another. I think I've said enough about this story.

[42:39]

I hope what I mean by how we think about such a story or about our practice is I made myself clear, maybe. Does it tie up with my understanding of what it is to live? Similarly. One thing at a time. Can I go? No. I know. That's why you had trouble listening. Now you can go.

[43:51]

I'm sitting here. I have difficulty. Giving priority to my state of mind, paying some attention to some body consciousness. Yet, it is important to me. Yeah, I know. That's because you're easily distracted. But we're all easily distracted. I think that sometimes we want to figure out what is he saying. But you'll notice, of course, as you've said, as soon as you think that, you only half hear the next sentence. So it's better just to be there directly without thinking about it, and if you don't remember it, it's all right.

[44:56]

If you have confidence in that level of absorption or perception or intelligence which isn't our thinking mind, you don't have to put it together with your thinking mind, then it goes in you, and it's all right. Whether you know half an hour later if someone says, what did he say, and you don't have a single idea, maybe that's good. When you can do that, it's all right if you sleep in a lecture for a month. The Sixth Patriarch also talks about two practices. He doesn't just... Our way is to realize this mind, this thinking mind. And the Sixth Patriarch tries to give us some... Since I'm talking quite long, if you want to change your position,

[45:57]

please, it's okay, sit comfortably. He gave us two practices, too, which is one is the samadhi of oneness, the other is the samadhi of form. And what he means by that is samadhi of form is to abide in the world of perception, of form, without being caught by any form. And samadhi of oneness means always to have pure, direct, undiscriminating mind. When you have that, you can concentrate on what I'm saying, or on your zazen. And everything is just a part of that. Every phenomenon...

[47:03]

Different from what I just said about the samadhi of... One form? When you focus on physical, what you hear is the mind, what you hear in this situation. You're caught immediately if you stray from samadhi of one form. Yeah. That's so well. I find that... If I happen to be in the world of knowledge,

[48:09]

I can't remember what I'm supposed to do when I get there. I can't remember what I'm supposed to do when I get there, and it's a lot. And I get very confused, because I think it's kind of my class to be very critical. I don't think it's my community to be very critical. Well, I'm not so sure. Why we create this safe place at Tassara is so we can be adults together. So you can give up, you know. That kind of usual behavior, which you might get hit by a car in the city, right? So you can wonder, I often, I'm doing service, and suddenly I don't know where I am or what I'm supposed to do next, or anything. And I have to quick look around and say, oh, it must be... But... That has something to do with your ability to...

[49:18]

to... know what you're doing by your deeper than thinking consciousness. And that comes about, believe it or not. And here's the... the catch. The hooker. That comes about. The most effective way is to learn to follow the rules of monastery absolutely. So we set up a situation where you can learn to just follow the rules without your ego, to get rid of your small self. A lot of rules which interfere with the way you want to live make your small self very visible. It doesn't want... This is ridiculous. Well, it's pretty impossible to do that if you don't...

[50:18]

if you're in a non-Buddhist monastery situation because you're afraid that you're going to contribute to the war effort or to some destructive thing, you know. You want to be concerned with the goals of the situation. But here we have not much point for being here or existing. So the rules are rather harmless to give up to. You know, it's not like giving up to the rules of a... of a fascist government or something like that. It's just giving up to the rules of a fascist monastery. Some of you think that, right? But anyway, even so, it's quite harmless. So you just do it, right? And just do it. And eventually your small self, if you're persistent gives up, you know. It sort of goes into the bleachers and waits until you return to the city. It doesn't give up.

[51:25]

And it waits. But what's supposed to be going on during this time is you're learning to pick up clues about what to do. In other words, if you get out of that complex mode into a more subtle mode your situation constantly clues you. But we normally, because we think about things and we're proceeding from our ego and our desires our small self we don't notice the actual clues. So when you notice the actual clues you know that the flag is mine. So to follow the clues part of studying a story like this is to follow the clues. Not like a private detective, you know what I mean? But to, as we say to hold up one corner and know three. I don't know if this point is

[52:36]

if you see the relationship between giving up to just following the rules of a harmless situation, you know, like this until you just do things without thinking about them. Well, let me give you a rather amusing example. Suzuki Roshi yesterday I listened to one of Suzuki Roshi's tapes I have these various tapes of Suzuki Roshi's lectures he gave while I was in Japan. When I have some time I put it on. Often I do other things, but I Suzuki Roshi's talking away in my ear. Yesterday he cracked me up. He was talking about the fact that you have you have to develop habits of just doing things without thinking. If you're going to be able to operate in that realm without thinking. Depending on if you carry a notepad around with you

[53:38]

for instance all the time you'll never learn how to recall things without the notepad. Well, here's an example of dialing a phone. The only way to actually learn how to do something is to really put yourself out on a limb. So you think you recall a number, right? But you aren't quite sure. But it happens to be a $15 long distance call. You just pick up the phone and you start dialing. Sorry, wrong number. If you do that that kind of way taking a chance on your mind producing the right number it will begin to produce after a while. It may cost you a little money at first but it's worth it. That's just a kind of silly example. If you're going to give up thinking

[54:38]

and operate out of some deeper way you've got to be willing to get to the end of the aisle sometimes and not know who you're supposed to serve next or where you're supposed to turn. But you should be able to instantly get the clues from the situation. Now the story I was going to tell is that Tsukuyoshi was saying this he says it's very important that when the bell rings in the morning just get up. Immediately get up. Don't wait around one minute thinking two minutes. Just get up. He says he has this habit. This lecture was at a time when they just put tummies in his old cabin and he had three whole tummies and he's been living in America all these years without tummies. He had three tummies he said. He felt wonderful. So spacious. Three big tummies. And he slept right across all three of them like a giant. Not just sleeping on one tummy he used all three. And then someone told him

[55:39]

that he wasn't supposed to sleep that way because you have to have your head to the north and feet to the south. That's what some Buddhist texts say but Sukhyoshi never pays any mind to that kind of thing. But someone told him and insisted he should change so he changed. And he slept on one tummy head to the north mouth, feet to the south. The bell rang bong he jumped up went right into his lamp and wall. He usually got up and went straight for what he calls the restroom door. The bell rang he got up and he just knocked his lamp over and hit the wall. So in the beginning of the lecture he was saying you have to develop habits of just doing things automatically without thinking. If you're going to learn to have this deeper way of operating he said

[56:40]

it doesn't mean you should bump into walls etc. And it didn't make any sense why he said that. And at the end of the lecture he told this story. When the bell rang he jumped up and went straight to the restroom and ran to the wall. So you have to take tsukyoshi and you did it. You had to take that chance. Normally such habits help us. You can't Is that what I sound like? No. I'm sorry. Okay, go ahead. Because you can't think of [...] you know thinking in the way that you would think. You can gather some information about them, right? Then you can just repeat the story to yourself. Okay?

[57:43]

Because there's two monks talking about it. Why would they bother talking about the flag and the wind? In a way that then when I'm when I'm thinking like that I can't think of other things. That's what I find I'm doing all the time but then I don't know how to do it. Well, part of the koan work, you know is since our mind continues in a sort of rough spurts of energy and you can't control it give it something to do like a koan or a mantra and learn to develop continuous energy and your ability to bring your attention and awareness back to it and [...] back to it. I took one phrase once and decided I would not stop saying this phrase

[58:43]

until I could hold it continuously 24 hours. What does that mean holding it continuously? I took a bow and it took me about 16 months for the first month or so I was pretty good. I, of course, didn't do it when I was sleeping in the first month or two and et cetera. And then it then it would go away for two or three months at a time in the middle part and I'd start and then it would go away and then it would come back and go away and completely forget about it. Then I found it was going and then I realized one day that actually I was doing it all the time. I was able to hold it present in my consciousness all the time continuously. It was a big change in a whole different way of energy being present

[59:48]

but it was hard work like digging a ditch which every time you take out a shovel before you look back and somebody's filled it in and so you shoveled out somebody's shovel and it's like that. Can you define what you mean by the word remember to take and remember to remember to take? Something like if you're I mean this is like first things first if your mind doesn't function that way it doesn't mean you give up the problem or you force your mind into functioning that way before you even start working the problem you work with your mind until it functions that way. If you can actually do first things first and see what comes first then you achieve everything in one moment. Anyway

[60:53]

the most important thing I want to convey to you today is that never talking about the objects of mind like the wind always talking about the mind itself and your way of understanding yourself should be this is an example of my mind not a thing a real thing I'm talking about. In this way you can make some progress in your practice and you can understand how to ask real questions and really practice with others so that others can enter into your practice too. But this is the real space in which we always do everything

[61:53]

with everyone else with other people with our being even. There wouldn't be mistakes if they were without consequence. Anyway Anyway

[62:21]

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