This is our fourth class, and I've picked out some chapters to talk about tonight, but Ron suggested that if we would like to, to think about So if anybody would like to say something about that, or if you have a question. People have been questioning, and that's a good thing, because they realize that people are studying, and have questions, which is very nice. So if you have some questions, or would like to express how this is affecting your practice, you may.

[01:03]

You came up the other day with some people I was talking with around watering of seeds and if one can water the seeds of another person or is it reliant just on them? How does that influence, what's the interplay between two people and the alaya of one person? Well, there's no interchange between... So what would be an example? If I have a friend who is in duress, I would maybe make an effort to remind him of benevolent opportunities or things that are reassuring or some kind of uplift to make him

[02:06]

from his current state of affairs to a brighter place. Well, I would say, in that case, that you are influencing him and he responds in a way that the seeds of change of some sort are being watered by his acceptance. So that kind of speaks to, like, you can't really change anybody, you can only change yourself. Well, hopefully, you can change yourself. But you can help someone to change, but you can't change anybody. I don't think you can. When you look at it carefully, Because the seeds are our own experience.

[03:11]

The seeds are deposited through our own experience. So we have influence on people. Definitely have influence on people. And we're all influencing each other. And also, we also, there is a kind of sharing of alaya in a deep sense. We share the human races experience. But our individual seeds that we have created over time through our actions and thoughts is our own. In other words, each one of us creates our own karma. There are two kinds of karma. One is citizens of a country share that country's karma, the results of our shared actions.

[04:20]

That person can see the constructive impulse and move on with change, but that comes from their own consciousness. Yes? So I wonder if you're just trying to save yourself. You know, you can feel someone trying to, or feel someone expressing anger or what have you, and it's trying to water your own seeds of anger, and you've been trying for a long time not to let that happen. I mean, how do you, how do you irrigate continually so that you don't let that happen? Yeah, well, we get those reaction and response. we easily get caught. I'll give you an example. In Japan, there was a temple, I don't know if the practice still exists, but there was, I remember back in the 60s, we heard about this temple, I think it was a Rinzai temple, and the monks would be sitting, and the senior monks would go around hitting them,

[06:10]

and calling them names, you know, and telling their mother was a this and that. And this was all meant to help them to not react. So it's really hard not to react. But if you make an effort to not react and to respond, that's called practice. You're actually making an effort instead of... Because when somebody does something that we don't like, to us, we have a reaction. But we don't have to carry out that reaction and put it into play. So Buddhist meditation practice, off the cushion, is to notice, to be aware of every reaction that comes up, every reaction And this anger is now arising in me.

[07:17]

So that's the meditation. Anger is now arising. So you just notice that. And then you have a choice or not. You may think, I don't have a choice. And then you react with some action. Or you can say, be careful. This is just a trap. And then we say, how do I get out of this trap? That's your question. How do I, I fall out of this trap, how can I get out of this trap? So that's, pen poking says snares and what do you call them? Traps and snares will never reach you? Yes. Why is it sometimes more difficult than others? Because of our self. This is a total thing, but this is Manas. as a reactor.

[08:19]

Because manas is the self. That which suffers is the self. Manas. Manas is the sufferer. And manas is the actor which reacts. That's why it's called delusion of self. So, to rise above It's a reaction so that you have a response that works. So when we're really suffering, that's just the ego all out. Yes, so you have to realize someone is angry and you feel that anger and it's directed at you and you're suffering and so forth. You have to rise above it and say, I am the parent of these people. the person is acting like a child.

[09:24]

And I'm not a child. So I'm not going to act like a child the way this person is acting like a child. And so although it's hard to accept the slings and arrows, we can let them go through and then respond to the person But if you can do that, then you will find out how. You know, you want to teach this person something, right? Don't you? I guess. Well, yes. Yeah. Yes? So, act like a teacher, and not like a victim. Oh, I see. Yes. I can really impress. at how present Manas is in everyday consciousness.

[10:30]

It's almost as though every time I form an intention to act in accordance with what I understand to be practice, Manas pops up. It's right there, like a shadow. Yes. Well, it's not a shadow. It pops up like a shadow. We live in Manas. That's how we live. As long as we say, I'm doing this, I, that, me, myself, and I, that's all Manas. Isn't it also Manas or ego when we're sort of deciding that someone else needs help or that someone else is being this or someone else? How is that different than us deciding what we're doing? Well, it's hard to help somebody in a real sense.

[11:33]

This is all abstraction. Give me an example. Let's say someone just did something out in the courtyard. What? Okay, let's say someone came up and tossed their book down on the table and said, oh God, you know, I wish this, you know what, this is just, you know, I tried to clean this place up and look at this, right where you are. And they turn around and walk off. And it would be so easy to think, oh, that person is mad because of this, this, this, or this. And I'm not sure how different me making that decision about what's going on with them and why is, it just seems like there's the ego involved in that as well when I make that decision, and oh, I'm gonna go help them feel better.

[12:37]

So you want to help them to feel, to calm down, feel better, and so forth, right? And with this idea that I know, okay, they're mad at so-and-so, or this or that, or because of this or that. Yeah. Well, I would say, you don't need to know the reason. But if you feel sympathy for that person, or some, you know, compassion for that person, you're getting a piece of chocolate. You understand. You don't really understand anything, but you understand that they're unhappy. But you're not doing it for your own self-satisfaction. You're doing it for them. If you're only doing it for them, then you calm them down and they're happy. I've been thinking a lot since last class about, it seems like direct perception keeps being brought up.

[14:06]

Is that something we make an effort to tune into? Like, obviously we're always having them, but we're not conscious of them or something? Well, you know, we can be conscious or not conscious. Is it our effort during either Zazen or not Zazen to try to tune into direct perception? No. Actually, direct perception occurs when you're not trying to do anything. That's why in zazen it's all direct perception. You're not trying to do anything. As soon as you start analyzing, then it's no longer direct perception. It's really hard to maintain direct perception. We do it, you know, here and there. But as soon as you start thinking, and analyzing, then it's no longer direct perception because you're taking a step back and it's becoming referential.

[15:12]

As soon as you start naming, then it's no longer direct perception. Direct perception is no naming. It's like when you're sitting in Zazen and the airplane goes by Hearing just hears. As soon as you say that's an airplane, it's no longer direct perception. So direct perception is like a baby. The baby, there's the block, and there's the toy, but there's no discrimination. You put it in your mouth, and then you test it out. That's the baby's way. I'm not saying you should do that. That's why psychologists, a few years ago, wanted people to go in the sandbox, right? And just let go of all that stuff, all the stuff that we put on top. And is our effort also not off the cushion to be trying to tune into direct perception and not try?

[16:19]

I mean, what you describe doing in Zazen, that's our effort out of Zazen. The effort is not to have direct perception, maybe it is, you know, but it's to drop the... The non-direct perception. Yeah, the drop... I'm looking for my words here. The representational aspect. Representational means that instead of experiencing something directly, we experience it representationally. So the idea about it is a representation. And we live in our representations. We don't live directly. Mostly we live in our representations. As soon as we see, like there's the book, that's already a representation.

[17:20]

But without thinking about So, but as soon as, and then the book is about this, and about that, and then the words, and that's all representation. So, it's okay, we need representation. It's the levels of representation that are important, otherwise, you know, we can't operate. But direct perception is without representation. I find that I start, pardon the expression, I feel like I'm biting my butt or trying to, biting my own butt, trying to chase around my motives, and it can't do, it's like a dog trying to catch its tail doesn't usually succeed.

[18:26]

And you've said this, where's your breath? Now I can put my attention on that. And the other phrase, is take the backward step, and that seems to be where things settle. And what happens, what happens, but at least I can step back from trying to figure it out, which is not helpful. You know, this person at my house yesterday was sort of rude to someone, and I just had to And I don't have, there's nothing I can say that seems to be helpful. So I'm just stepping back. Well, you know, dementing is centering yourself. Yeah. Always. Always centering yourself. So when Tika, you know, is talking about getting angry, being provoked to be angry, instead of

[19:38]

I'm losing it. You step back into your breath, and take a step back, and settle in your breath. So that's how you come up with a response. And it emerges. It's not like a figuring out thing. You don't have to figure it out. It emerges. So that's called trust. You trust in your center. And when you sit Sashin, seven days, over and over You learn to trust it as part of your anatomy. Yeah. So having lived through a variety of theories about how infants think and what they are about, I have some dubiousness about how we idealize how free of conceptualization they are and what that means.

[20:44]

I mean, I think we actually don't know anything about how infants think except by inference. And so here I go making an inference. It seems to me that an infant is all about learning to conceptualize and organize the world. And actually that is the drive for mastery of that conceptualization is the maybe the most powerful drive of development, at least that's what I'm thinking. And that to be able to step beyond conceptualization into a non-conceptualization, having achieved conceptualization is a really different operation than the perception of an infant, which we actually don't know what that is, but we imagine that we know what that is and we use the imagery of what an infant might be perceiving as a way of trying to get to.

[21:45]

But I wonder if that doesn't do a disservice to the process that we're really talking about, which is to having achieved conceptualization of reality and organization and cognitive ability to organize things. to be able to step beyond that is actually something different. You know, it's about organizing on the basis of reality instead of on the basis of pollution. That's the whole thing. So unless you touch reality, you can't organize yourself in a true way. That's why we have so much disorganization in this world. because we organize ourselves. One delusion, we're using a delusion as a basis to organize, and so we organize more and more delusion.

[22:48]

Unless we know how to touch reality, it's not that we stay in a stupid situation, state of mind, is when you retouch reality, then you organize yourself on the basis of that. Which means that, of course, you have to use your imagination, you have to use your representation, and all those factors which form the basis of the, not the basis, but the branches of our life. But unless you touch the base, then the branches are just floating in space. That's called The floating world. That's what the Japanese call it, the floating world. So the problem is not our conceptualization, the problem is our delusion. Yes. We conceptualize and get further and further away from directly touching. So that's why practice is, you spend time directly touching and then you keep coming back to that as the basis

[23:58]

of your conceptualizations. Mary's question brings us back to the topic of direct perception. I've been spending a lot of time right behind the ears of a very alert and smart dog, and there's a quality of paying attention that she has that's quite remarkable. I wonder if there's It's not quite Yogacara, but I wonder if there's something about how we pay attention, there's something, the quality of paying attention that relates to this direct perception beyond conceptual, before but beyond conceptualization, integrating our wisdom with just showing up to what's happening in front of us. Don't get me, you're talking about dogs? I knew it was dangerous. I was thinking of doing that as a matter of fact. Would you say something about direct perception as a quality of a certain kind of paying attention?

[25:04]

Well, whenever we pay attention, yes. We use the term mindfulness. It's not noise. It's just a noise. It's their direct perception of Nirvana. So what was your question again? We were talking about direct perception, and I wanted to understand that out of my experience. And I'm wondering if you could say something about the quality of paying attention that's part of direct, that points at the experience of direct perception. Yeah, direct perception. Just seeing would be conceptual without referential, but we're referring to something else about it.

[26:09]

So as we're living almost all the time in the world of representations and mirror images, that seems to me the place where we're practicing Buddhadharma. And so it seems to me that we're not really trying to get rid of those things. We're trying to practice Buddhadharma through, with, and through. So direct perception is the perception, direct perception without splitting, without splitting the perception into two parts, or into any parts. It's the oneness of perception without discrimination. Discrimination means to divide and compartmentalize. So that's why we talk about discriminating mind all the time.

[27:32]

So, you know, the practice is based on non-discriminating mind, which includes discriminating mind, of course, but it's the non-discrimination of discrimination, or the discrimination of non-discrimination. So discrimination is the field of our life. We're always, always discriminated all the time. unless we're experiencing direct perception. So direct perception is the non-discriminating mind, which we rarely experience. That's why we have something called Zazen, where you sit in non-discriminating mind, even though the mind is discriminating all the time. You know, your mind wanders, right? That's the discriminating... The consciousness, manas, or manojana, is always creating thoughts.

[28:52]

The only time... So, we have the five consciousnesses and the six. mind consciousness, which actually in sleep doesn't work. The mind consciousness is not continuous. It only arises through interactions, whereas manas and reliability are going on all the time, even in sleep. So, when we're sitting zazen, of course, there's what we call secretions of the mind. Secretions of the mind, like when you have an aquarium, you know, and you have the fish in there, and the water, and then you have the air, where all these bubbles are coming up, you know, from the air. somewhere, the oxygenation of mind consciousness.

[30:14]

So you can't turn it off. You can turn it off for a little while, you can make a big effort, but it comes up from underneath, right? You say, oh, now I'm not thinking. Well, that's thinking. Really hard to turn it off. You don't try to turn it off. you operate in the world. We do have to get involved in the world. But, it just gives us an opportunity to experience direct perception. When a thought comes, it's just this thought. It's not, that's all. This feeling is just this feeling. This thought is just, there's no discrimination. really good at sitting Zazen. The only way you can do it is to stop discriminating, otherwise you're always fighting yourself.

[31:17]

No fighting, that's discrimination. Zazen teaches us everything we need to know, fundamentally. It teaches us that if we fight, that what we're fighting will always win. So with these crows out here expressing themselves, We can either decide, oh, they must have found a really great stash of food and they're having a party, or we could name it by saying, oh, they're angry. And because we're human, we tend to to give something a container for our humanness. So what Ron said by saying, oh, it's just a noise, he still was naming it, but he was able to have a more neutral rather than placing something on it. But it was still, so there's ways to name it that we have to learn, right?

[32:22]

But it's a more, I don't know. creating representation. But squawking is a way of naming something, right? I remember Suzuki Ryoshi talking about with the blue jade, he was in Tassajara with the blue jade, so like really worse than the crows, in the summertime. And so he said, Blue jay is squawking. Just let the blue jay come into your heart and become the blue jay. So that's like non-separation. When we are discriminating, we're separating. So that's what discrimination means, is separate. So there's the subject and the object. So the subject is me.

[33:25]

And the object is the Bujji. So, the more I'm annoyed at the Bujji, the more discriminating and annoying my consciousness becomes. So, when I can just let go of the discrimination, which is not so easy to do because it's annoying, we become one with the Bujji. But it means you have to give up yourself. unless we want to commit suicide. But it's the hardest thing to do, but that's what we have to do, because in the end, we all have to give up, right? We all have to give up, so we have to learn how to do that. One of the things I'm noticing is that in that one with,

[34:31]

that that that giving up has the quality of offering up and that there's some there's a very natural live energy of reverence and devotion that actually my experience of it is that it's not a subject object oriented it's just it's a vibrancy and it's so lovely and actually nourishing that it feels like one of those um this is this is natural so that when um you know the difficult emotions come up or you know which are inevitable somehow i don't know if i call it a seed being watered maybe but i've had enough moments of that experience to be able to go um there's something more intriguing here within this emotion It's actually got a vibrancy to it and like anger you know despair it actually has a lot of energy to it So I'm noticing that when I just come back to in my body the energy of it Just kind of being with the energy of it That something does shift But sometimes it can feel like it takes energy to stay with that energy and I wonder how how you would

[36:02]

Well, that's right. When we, rather than giving up, we say letting go. I think that's what you said. Offering. Offering, yes, offering. There are various terms you can use. But when we let go of manas, our ego, our need to be right, or to be, you know, on top, or whatever it is, then we expand into our true self. The only way that we can expand into our true self is to allow the small self to be absorbed into the big self. That's the offering. We offer ourself to the big self. And then we have more satisfaction. But, you know, this is... Self-protection means protecting Manas, basically.

[37:26]

And Manas has this real grip on us. And that's what we feel that we need to protect. So when we can offer that, then our consciousness harmonizes with the body and with objects. So, that's ancient practice. How do we harmonize? Which means offering. Dropping is a negative, but offering is positive. But both negative and positive are depending on the situation. I don't know. Yes? Is all self-protection a function of manas? Yes.

[38:27]

Well, whether it's all self-protection... I'm going to read the part where you... Were you talking about your question? I'll see if I can find it. I think I can. Well, the second half of my question was, or is some self-protection a function of direct perception? Yeah, let's see. Put it that way. This is what? Is all self- Is self-protection a function of manas, or is some self-protection a function of direct perception? Well, it could be both. It's not that self-protection is bad. There's wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral.

[39:35]

When we talk about self-protection, there's protecting something that is necessary to protect, then there's something that's not necessary to protect. And how do you decide that? Well, that's up to you. The self-protection that Manas is involved with is protecting the ego. Protecting the ego, right? Whereas self-protection for, like there's a fire in the house, you know, and then you respond to that. That's self-protection for others. Because others are yourself. What if it's just you? It's still... Just you. Yeah, that's right.

[40:41]

So we put the flames out, right? So anyway, the thing is, when we talk this way, you have to realize that even though we're talking in absolute terms, it's not absolute. There's always the exception. It's just a way of speaking. And so we have to be careful not to get caught by the words. Because it's not an exact science. It's an intuitional understanding. Things lean this way or they lean that way, but they're not necessarily always like this. Life doesn't go that way, even though there are rules. Everything is determined by rules and regulations. even though we don't know what the rules and regulations are, necessarily.

[41:43]

But everything has a reason for being, and a cause. But we don't necessarily know what the causes and reasons are. Some things we do, but other things we don't. That's why we go headlong into creating karma that has a result. We say, God, how did this happen to me? Right? Because we didn't understand the law And the law of how things operate is called the law of karma. It's strict laws. I remember, I've talked about this one from time to time. I used to go up to Sonoma from time to time and stop at this little hamburger joint. This was many years ago. And they had a picture of an airplane in a tree in the back of this counter. is very strict, has very strict laws, and then you think, who will end up like this?

[42:47]

And that's what our life is about. Life has very strict laws. And so the study of how karma works is the study of the Dharma. And we haven't gone through the list of the dharmas, which are the constituents of our... If you like, I'll read the list of dharmas, but I've done that before, and I think most of you know what that is, what those are. The hundred dharmas of the school, which include the eight levels of consciousness, and all the good, and all the wholesome and unwholesome dharmas creating bad karma, and how to make good karma, and how to avoid karma, period.

[43:50]

So, let me study a little bit. Oh yeah, okay, so one minute of Stitch. Okay.

[45:26]

by taking a poem called The Sun, My Heart, in which he talks about this. He has parts of it where he talks about what we're studying, but you know, the sun, this is my personal heart, but my bigger heart is the universe. But here he says something from the Vijnanavada school are given to us to help our meditation practice, not as descriptions of reality. We should not forget that the phenomena which we call the sixth and seventh consciousness reality in itself, representations of reality, do not exist independently of one another or of space-time. A representation of an object which appears in a dream is also a living reality, in which the whole universe is present.

[47:11]

We often think that an image of a fairy in a dream has no reality since it is without material basis. But what about the images on our TV screens? Are they real? Can we grasp their substance and find their material basis? Still, they are real. The entire universe is present in them. The presence of an illusion includes everything in the universe. The illusion can existence has the same marvelous nature as a particle. In modern science, a particle is no longer seen as solid or concurrently defined. He talks a lot about science and the Dharma. He's very well schooled in modern science, and he has a lot of analogies between Buddha Dharma and science. concrete.

[48:25]

It's a model of consciousness. It's a way to help us think about consciousness and a way to help us think about I don't know, I skip around a lot and then I get inspired by certain things that don't necessarily correspond to the material I'm reading. So this is page 104, it's called Section 19, The Ground of Wholesome and Unwholesome. Sirach started on page, I think, 143, this last one, so it was in a previous one.

[49:39]

verse says, as the ground of unwholesome and unwholesome of the other six manifesting consciousnesses, manas continues discriminating and its nature is both indeterminate and obscured. So I mentioned that, that manas continues discriminating. Manas is the basis for determining whether the other six manifesting consciousnesses, the sense consciousnesses of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind, are wholesome or unwholesome. That would mean, well, let's see. The sense consciousnesses are heavily influenced by manas. In other words, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, are heavily influenced by Manas, the seventh consciousness.

[51:08]

Self-consciousness. If Manas is obscured and confused, they are obscured and confused. If Manas is partially liberated, they will be partially liberated. If Manas loves in a blind and confused way, the other six consciousnesses will suffer. The greater the blindness of Manas, the greater the blindness the sense consciousnesses. So when manas opens itself and becomes more accepting, these six consciousnesses also enjoy openness and acceptance. That is why manas is called the ground of wholesome and unwholesome. In order to transform manas, we have to transform or restore consciousness, which holds all Manas is the basis for mind consciousness and the six consciousnesses.

[52:15]

Five others. So the six consciousnesses stop operating from time to time. In other words, when you're asleep, or when you faint, or when you're unconscious. But manas, like the store consciousness, is continuous. Manas goes on working day and night, unlike store The nature of manas is both continuous and discriminating. So manas is a great discriminator. To say that manas is always discriminating means that it holds onto the object that it regards as itself. It's beloved. We love ourself. Do you not show me your hand if you don't love yourself? Everything in the world is connected with us, yet we think, those things are not myself, only this is myself.

[53:23]

Did you ever have that idea? This is myself, and everything outside is not myself. That's the way we think. So we generally think that our actions are rational, that only when we understand something do we act. But this is not how we solve it. we have some understanding, but often our emotions are stronger than our reasoning. That's true. That's why it's important to be able to see things, as Zipf-Hiroshi used to say, to see things as it is, means direct perception. Because then we're not, We're not creating our world on a fantasy. So the nature of manas is indeterminate. Indeterminate means that it's essentially neither good or bad.

[54:28]

We tend to put it, you know, we give manas a bad rap. But it's not good or bad. It's indeterminate. Again, like store consciousness. but it is obscured by ignorance. Obscured means to be covered up. Covering is one of the unwholesome dharmas. You cannot see the light if there's something covering it up. Ignorance in Sanskrit is avidya. Vidya means knowledge. And avidya means the absence of knowledge. The veil of ignorance that covers self, and non-self. Indeterminate means neither wholesome nor unwholesome. This means that there is a possibility of transformation from clinging and discriminating to letting go and non-discrimination.

[55:31]

The transformation of manas can happen because it is indeterminate. The earth can give rise to thorns and brambles, but it can also give rise to fragrant fruits I read in the paper the other day about some place that I can't remember. What I remember is the incident. Usually when prisoners are released from prison, they're given like 85 bucks and a ticket to some place, maybe. And so what are they going to do with that? It's nothing. It's just leaving a person out in tragedy land. But this guy is taking, well, the criminals in this town, the criminals in the city, and he's making, instead of thinking of them as bad, he sees that the energy

[56:40]

that is making them do the things they do is the same energy that would make them do something good. It's actually the same energy. So he's creating venues for them to actually go to work rather than tap steel. And it's been working, which is, of course, the model that everybody should follow in every city in the world. And then they're now becoming tour guides. Yes. Setting up their own businesses. Yes, so they've got their own business. Whether they actually steal or embezzle or not, I don't know. But still, they have that opportunity and they take it. We have all these unemployed people. Anyway, I don't want to get into that. Anyway, but that's like... You know, people are neither good nor bad.

[57:41]

They're indeterminate. But they can go either one way or the other. And we believe in people instead of thinking of them as good or bad. Some people are so bad that we can't help but think of them as bad all the way through. But on average, people are neither good nor bad. It's just circumstances that create that, and karma. karma and circumstances that form various problems in people. So the art, what's most interesting, the art of turning people around so that that energy that goes this way can go this way. is obstructed, which means that it can become unobstructed, I'm sorry, which means it can become true mind, buddha nature.

[58:48]

There is no obstacle standing in its way. There is the possibility of reaching the realm of things in themselves, which is Suzuki Roshi would call things as it is. Transformation occurs in the store consciousness. When the seeds from which manas has evolved are transformed, Manas will be transformed, then the discrimination between self and non-self, mine and not mine, will vanish. So this is Parvati, which means transformation. When Manas is transformed, or turns around, or rotates, then alaya rotates, and all the other consciousnesses rotate all at once, And the ego, which is Manas, takes its rightful place in the hierarchy of consciousness.

[60:02]

So the goal of meditation is to make a change at the root of Manas and the store consciousness. This is called transformation at the base. Ashraya Parivrtti, which is what I'm talking about. Parivrtti means revolution. Revolution means turning and going in a different direction. Ashraya is base. Only with the light of mindfulness can this radical transformation take place. Through mindfulness, we can learn, turn, and go in the direction of awakening. Our practice is to transform the nature of manas a little bit each day and release our store consciousness more and more from its grip. So manas has a lie in its grip and that distorts manas.

[61:11]

Manas has store consciousness grip and distorts the seeds. The root of manas is delusion. The seeds of ignorance that lie deep in our stored consciousness. The highest task of the mind consciousness, this is, now he's talking about mind consciousness. The reason I want to talk about this is because it talks about, he talks about the three together, how they work together. The highest task of mind consciousness, which is manujyana, not manas, is to shine the light of mindfulness among us and the seeds in our store consciousness, allowing us to see them. When our mind consciousness, the sixth consciousness, projects light onto these seeds, touching them deeply with mindfulness, it penetrates the blocks of delusion and helps them to be transformed.

[62:15]

When illuminated by the light of mindfulness, delusions are less able to manifest in unwholesome acts of the body, speech, and mind. So, mind consciousness actually is independent as well as dependent. So, when I think about mind consciousness and manas, manas and manujana, I think that mind consciousness is the two sides of one consciousness, basically. One is the clear consciousness, and the other is the muddled consciousness. The muddled side. The clear side and the muddled side. And I think of Maharajana as the clear side, because it's not the ego. But it interacts with the ego, and it's influenced by the ego. That's why the ego is so troublesome, because not only does it cover alaya, it also manipulates mind consciousness, which is basically our thinking consciousness, our consciousness that thinks straight.

[63:36]

So, when illuminated by the light of mindfulness, delusions are less able to manifest in unwholesome acts of body, speech, and mind. So delusion operates in darkness, but not in light. When these blocks of ignorance are transformed, modesty is transformed. I used to, people were telling me about the demons, and a long time ago I learned that if you want to get rid of your demons, you have to shine a light on them, because they don't exist in the light, they only exist in the dark. Did you ever wake up in the morning, and you're lying there in bed, and all these, you know, you're not quite asleep, and you're not quite awake, and when you start thinking It's kind of overwhelming in some way.

[64:41]

Dark. But then when you get up, they're all gone. And you're just, you know, at home. Don't stay up. But they prey on your mind and they just appear there for various reasons. So it's kind of like Manas. So our mind consciousness does not have to work directly with Manas. directly with Manas. It can work with the seeds in the store consciousness. So what he's saying is that mind consciousness can skip over Manas to the store consciousness to work with it. So to use the example that you just shared in the morning or actually even being waking up out of the sleep in the middle of the night, and they're like, whoa, where did this turning come from?

[65:42]

Again, coming back to that energy piece, it's very, you know, it weighs me down in the bed, and yet it's incredibly vibrant, right? So you can't quite sleep. And so that piece of like, how do you just go to the seeds. Sometimes it feels like, you know, like a stand-up comedy routine where you just throw a cork ball in the audience or someone, you know, it's like the heckler in the audience. And everybody's like, huh, what happened in that moment? It's so out of left field. Something shifts. And what I noticed is that just comes naturally. It's very hard to make that happen. Well, that just something that just shifts it. And sometimes it's actually something amusing. It's like I can feel these thoughts, or this churning, or this like, ah, into despair, or rage, or whatever it is. And all of a sudden, I don't know, I might hear someone crack a joke in my mind.

[66:48]

or just make a face, or there'll be a twitch in the body, and all of a sudden I'm aware of twitching in my toe, and just like that. Well, things happen. But what's interesting to me is that doesn't come from a willfulness. It also naturally arises. So there's a sense of kind of being on a surfboard, or riding the wave of that wild energy, for that to arise. Natural. I'm not sure what that means, but there's always a cause for something. Nothing exists without a cause, or more than one cause. But in the dream, you can't trace the causes. It's impossible to trace the causes in the dream, because they're all fantasies. So, I don't know where that's going, but I'd like to keep pointing.

[68:00]

So, store consciousness is like a garden. The laya is like a garden, the field, where the seeds are stored. A plot of earth that contains all the seeds. A garden cannot cultivate itself. That's you. When the gardener has plowed, tilled, sown seeds and watered the earth, the earth offers flowers and fruits to support the life of the gardener. So our mind is like a garden, actually. And the gardener knows that it is not he that brings forth the fruits, but the earth itself. His job is simply to take care of the earth. I like Suzuki Roshi's thought about that. Through mindfulness, mind consciousness touches the fetters of delusion and craving, the blocks of suffering that are in the store consciousness. This is done day and night, like a gardener working non-stop.

[69:02]

In this way, mind consciousness helps the store consciousness bring forth the fruit of the practice, joy, peace, and transformation. So mind, you like to talk a lot about mindfulness, but that's right. of delusion and craving, the blocks of suffering that are in the store consciousness. So day and night, except when it's not working, this is done like a gardener. So the mind consciousness is like, has this kind of friendship, friendly relationship to a lot of the dharma, and is like the cultivator. So when we use our mind consciousness to generate the energy of mindfulness, so mindfulness seems to come from Mahābhūta-jñāna. Mindfulness is, of course, the seeds in the ālaya-jñāna hold the seeds of mindfulness.

[70:09]

But the seeds of mindfulness are provoked by mind consciousness. And then mind consciousness keeps provoking the seeds of mindfulness and mindfulness becomes stronger and stronger and more conscious. So when we use mind consciousness to generate the energy of mindfulness by practicing mindful breathing or walking, we water the seeds of mindfulness that is already present in our store consciousness. This generates even more energy of mindfulness that can shine even further into the store consciousness. So when we use the energy of mindfulness to touch other seeds, we help those seeds transform. When mindfulness touches beautiful positive seeds, it helps these seeds develop and reveal themselves more clearly. When it touches negative seeds, it will help those seeds to transform.

[71:12]

So we don't want to destroy Manas. We simply want to help it to transform so that it works for us instead of against us. So sometimes we say we're our own worst enemy, right? When we come to a practice center, we bring our store consciousness and madness with us. And we receive seeds of dharma. Our mind consciousness sows these seeds in our store consciousness. We cannot hold the seeds of dharma in our intellect, our mind consciousness. We have to bring the teachings into our whole person and plant them in the soil of our store consciousness. then day and night, while walking, sitting, eating, drinking, all our activities, we water these seeds with our mindfulness.

[72:19]

So we keep returning to the subject. Mindfulness has many explanations, but I think of mindfulness as when we're sitting in Zazen, the mind wanders, and we bring it back. The mind wanders, and we bring it back. watering the seeds of mindfulness. Because the mind wanders maybe two or three hundred times, and we keep without complaining. And it's also called sometimes the practice of recollection. You're always remembering what you're doing. You're always remembering what... I think of it as just coming back to practicing.

[73:24]

And so if we think about that all day, then we're practicing all day. So we can have confidence in our store consciousness. Store consciousness never ceases as activity. During the night, our mind consciousness may rest and stop functioning. That's number six. But our store consciousness continues to work. After the gardener stops working, the soil continues to work in order to help the seeds sprout and grow. Sooner or later, quite naturally, we will have a breakthrough. That's true. even though we don't necessarily recognize it as a breakthrough. It's just like later, we say, ah, I remember at some point back there, I think I had a breakthrough. I felt my clothes, and they were wet.

[74:25]

So sooner or later, we'll have a breakthrough. The flowers and fruits of awakening will arise from our story consciousness. Mind consciousness has to trust store consciousness, just as a gardener has to trust the land. Both roles are important. Remember, though, that enlightenment insight will be brought to you not by mind consciousness, in other words, not by thinking, right? Not through your intellectual understanding, but through the deeper wisdom of your store consciousness. After transformation, store consciousness becomes the great mirror wisdom shining forth and illuminating everything. So the store consciousness, when it's turned on a basis, becomes the wisdom of a great mirror, which sees everything just as it is, without distortion. That's directly touching.

[75:26]

For awakening to flower, we have to sow the seed of awakening in our store consciousness. If we only use our mind consciousness for mental gymnastics, we won't go very far. In other words, if you just play with your intellect, it doesn't work. Many people keep the teachings that they learn up in their mind consciousness, using their intellect to poke and prod at them. But even though they think about them and talk about them all the time, they never learn how to bring the seeds of the Dharma into their store consciousness and then trust them to the fertile soil. If you practice meditation with your mind consciousness alone, you can never succeed. Don't think or reason too much about the things you learn from a meditation teacher. It's true. Suzuki Roshi used to say, don't rely on me too much. I might not be something you should rely on. Don't think or reason too much about the things you learn from a meditation teacher.

[76:30]

Instead, sow the Dharma seeds in your store consciousness. Then in your everyday life, whether you are walking, standing, lying down, sitting, cooking, or working at a computer, water those seeds with mindfulness. Everything you do is practice, if you do it. Through store consciousness, your plot of land will allow these Dharma seeds to germinate, and the flower of awakening will grow. In Chapter 11, we learned about the three Dharma seals, non-self, impermanence, and nirvana. Another way to describe nirvana is interbeing. Contemplating the non-self, impermanent, and interdependent nature of phenomena can help us reduce the amount of delusion among us and bring us closer to the wisdom of non-discrimination or equanimity. This is the kind of wisdom that can help us see into the true nature of human beings, that this is made up of that, and that there is no separation between this and that.

[77:43]

With good practice, the delusion of manas can be transformed into the wisdom of equanimity or equality. I think one of the things that's hardest for us is The oneness of this and that. The oneness of subject and object. I think it's the hardest thing for us to actually take hold of. I remember Thich Nhat Hanh, you know, he walked very slowly always. And I remember him saying, I can do this because of all of you doing everything else. Yeah, well, yes. So he always emphasizes that whatever Dharma there is, Dharma being a thing,

[78:51]

This book is made up of all the things in the universe that are not this book. So without all the things in the universe, there would not be this book. So this book is made up of non-book things. So he will say, well, when I'm walking, Suzuki Roshi was not real slow, but at a very reasonable pace, he was always in his step without being self-conscious. Without being self-conscious! The thing is, he'd just sit down and stand up, and it was all very natural, what we call natural, without any self-consciousness, but totally conscious, totally mindful, conscious without being self-conscious.

[80:28]

And you can just feel it. He was integrated with his surroundings, integrating with his surroundings all the time. So there was not much ego, not much ego there. So he wasn't really, he never did anything really for himself, except take care of himself. Maybe not in the best way, Taking care of himself was taking care of others, and taking care of others was taking care of himself. So it was all one piece. So Soto Zen, you know, is based on taking care of everything very carefully.

[81:32]

That's what it's about. I mean, that's one of the bases of Soto Zen, We have a lot of formality in Zen Do, and there's a lot of ritual-like activity, but it's all to help us be aware and conscious of everything that we're doing at this time, and to not see the space that we're in as an object, over against our self as a subject. So people get tired of this and they say, well, because our ego wants to do something. We're restless people. There's something about us that we need to keep moving forward, of course.

[82:34]

That's the nature of everything. We just, everything needs to keep moving forward. And when you organize yourself in certain ways, it feels like restriction. But when you learn how to expand yourself into the situation, that's called freedom. That's why we learn freedom through restriction. We learn how to be free within restriction. And that's what Zazen is. One of the aspects of Zazen is to find the greatest freedom When you can find that great freedom within the restriction of the seated posture, you really feel free. But it's not easy because we're always fighting it.

[83:41]

We're not always fighting it, but fighting it. Until we learn how to not fight anymore. Give up. No. Offer ourselves. We don't know how to offer ourselves. So, I think of Zazen as offering, a great offering of ourselves completely. If you leave anything out, I planned to go a little further, but we don't have time. But next time... If anybody is interested, if people are interested enough, enough people are interested enough to want to continue this after practice period,

[84:46]

Section 25. It's called the nature of reality.

[86:00]

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