example, is you die for a moment. Your continuity is lost. Now, these separation and connectedness are also practiced in a kind of more tantric sense, with separation being no longer this kind of separation, but rubbing and touching. And you begin to visualize that you're rubbing against the world all the time. As if the world were your beloved. And so you feel the air, you feel the trees around you, you feel everything rubbing against you. And this is a practice to deepen your sense of separation, another kind of separation. And then connectedness means actual conjugal connectedness where there's so much connectedness there's a third born. Not necessarily a baby, but a third born in the sense that the connectedness is so great, like between teacher and disciple, that a person is born from the relationship that surpasses both.

[01:09]

And continuity here now is a circle in which continuity is completely absorbed into disappearing. And so in this sense, the first is practiced as a kind of rubbing, and the second is practiced as a sexuality, and the third is orgasm. Now, we get down to earth in Buddhism sometimes, but this is just taking the ingredients of our actual human life and making them practice. like I'm taking the ingredients of your breath. Now, for our society, sexuality is kind of off limits, too. And it gets to be, well, this is different than just paying attention to your breath. But really, it's about the same as paying attention to your breath if you accept everything we do as part of our human life. Okay? Yes.

[02:14]

Let's think what we do is we mistake... The need for a deeper continuity with protecting ourself in an ordinary way. The challenge is to be able to, and I assure you, or I'm convinced it's a challenge, is to be able to give yourself completely, to disappear completely, and yet be so at home in that disappearing. that you function just fine. A friend of mine did some tests with airline pilots and artists, and they put them in sensory deprivation chambers. And when they took the airline pilot, I'm just, there were a whole range of people that I'm just thinking, when they took the airline pilots and they put them and deprived them of sensory information, they really freaked out. Where's my controls? But they took poets and painters and they said, hey, this is what I'm used to, you know? So some people are more at ease with sensory deprivation or disappearance or loss of continuity, and some people really need it.

[03:24]

But we're all quite plastic in the sense of pliant, and I think all of us can move into these areas with some confidence, particularly if you develop a deep confidence in meditation practice. where you feel, I can just sit here. No matter what happens, this is fine. And a phrase you can practice with, which I can end with, is just now is enough. Now, on one level, just now isn't enough because we're about to have lunch and we're hungry. Could you write that out? Just now is enough? Will my assistant write it? Yeah. Well, it's only four words, but you know. I realize so much has been dumped into the basket today.

[04:27]

Even four words is overflowing. Hey, we even got it boxed in. Thanks. Yeah. So, you can understand that at a timeless level or at the level of absolute reality, just now has to be enough because there isn't anything else. But at the same time, at a practical level, just now is not enough. So it's a shift of levels. And that shift of level is like there's one who is not busy. So it's very good if you can come into a phrase like this with, just now is enough, it's okay. That's a kind of real power that's more than strength. Just now is enough. If you know that and you deeply know that, you'll be ready to die at any time.

[05:29]

I hope, anyway. So let's sit for a couple minutes and then... Different backgrounds and you have different levels of experience. You're also, for me, touchingly open to practice that... I do, frankly, wish I could have more time with you, more contact with you. And even those of you who don't feel so open are more open than I think you think. And yeah, you're welcome. And before I present this essential teaching of the Vaisakandas, I would like to Say something a little bit more about friendship and connectedness and Friendship in the end Is more about connectedness than liking or disliking And this connectedness

[06:54]

we can work with, as I already said, by such phrases as already connected or as you take steps in the world saying arrived, already arrived. For if this world just now isn't the pure land or paradise or whatever, of course it's other things too. Then where would it be? And for moments, you know, we all know, again, what it's like to be loved by our parents, if that was a fortunate experience of yours, the security of that. Or perhaps even a day off on a day you expected to go to school. Or what it's like to be in love and how different that is from your usual experience. And how...

[07:57]

not just your beloved is changed and you, but everything you look at. This teaches us, shows us that this is a capacity of human beings, not a quality that is dependent on, only on a particular object of adoration. This is a capacity that we can be open to without interfering with, well, without interfering with functioning in the normal way we function, which includes likes and dislikes and so forth. So as connectedness, I would say, is essentially the view is deep connectedness is rooted in the view that each person, each person is an embodiment of the truth.

[09:04]

Like when you look at a baby. You don't look at a baby and say, just remind me of a story. I knew a Japanese family had twins. And one twin was quite ugly and one twin was quite beautiful. And they would always go upstairs and bring down the beautiful twin twice. There's always an exception to the rule. But in general, if you see a baby, you know you don't, it's just a baby, it's there. And we can open our heart to that baby in a way that's very hard to open our hearts to adults. What's the problem? You know, it's this sort of narrow sense of self, comparative self we have, because we can open our heart to each person as, with even loving kindness, to each person as if they were a baby or had that immeasurable presence of a

[10:23]

So, to practice with the sense, the wisdom, the right view, that each person, each thing, is first of all an embodiment of the truth, is a kind of discipline or something to remind yourself of, and these things begin to take hold after time. You know, if you present yourself with this view, because it's truer, it begins to erode your more comparative views. It takes time, but patience is... What we all need is a lot of patience in this practice. Why not? The other is to develop... this deep friendship through a sense of attunement, physical attunement first of all, and that this sense of attunement doesn't have to be with

[11:37]

the phenomenal world or with another person, it can be, as I suggested last night, simply with your hands. Your hands are profoundly related to each other. They do things together, so forth. And they're obviously connected, but they're separated here. And your left hand is different from your right hand. And I talked the first night about... Like when we practice with the orioke bowls, the way you eat in Zen tradition is, for instance, if you pick up something here, you bring it in here, in a sense empowering it, and then you pass it out. And even if you don't do things with two hands, you do things with the feeling of two hands. It's a little awkward for me, but if I pick this up, I feel this hand present in the activity. Sekiroshi used to say, if you want to watch a good calligrapher's work, he's holding the brush with his right hand.

[12:43]

Study his left hand. Because his left hand will tell you what the brush is doing in a more subtle way. Because the brush is really your body. There's a Western painter, I can't remember his name right now, who actually used his whole body as a brush. He got, maybe... Got a little bit overwhelmed by the Japanese idea, but... You roll around on the canvas and things. But in any case, the brush is... You have to let, like when I hit the bell, I have to let the... I don't hit the bell. The stick hits the bell. I have to just let the stick hit the bell. So I don't interfere with it. I just let the stick hit the bell. and you have to let the brush paint your painting, but still you in a sense are the brush, your mind is the brush, and both hands are involved even if one hand is touching the brush.

[13:46]

So you can begin to have some experience with your hands related even when they're not doing something together. So if you want to practice with this sense of like holding something while you sleep, I've tried almost everything, you know, sticks like this, you know, stones, Buddha figures, things I've put on my forehead to see if they're still there in the morning, things like that. Things I've put on my chest. I've gotten pretty good at it because I've had 30 years of experience. And... And sometimes I'm lonely. I have a teddy bear. Or, I mean, a teddy Buddha. And... Sorry. And... This is attunement.

[14:54]

So, do you think it's not? So... So you can sleep, instead of having an object, you can sleep with the feeling of a presence between your hands. That would be a more subtle version of the same practice, but again, it... move your hands into dream space too, in your dreams. And if you're lucky enough to have a partner, you're married or live with someone, you can begin to practice because this is, you know, you have this opportunity to practice attunement, as I said the other day, by finding a point on the other person's body, maybe the leg and the shoulder, where you begin to feel a current going through your own body. And you will discover that some points work better than others. And as you get better at it, you can... almost any points will establish a current, but when you're not so experienced at it, some points establish a current better than others.

[16:09]

And by discovering, by the opportunity to practice attunement, And you're then relating to your partner in a way that's independent of their personality. You're relating to them in some way that's very deep, physiological, electrical, kind of. And you discover in your own body, as your practice develops, you will find more consciousness in your back. And usually it moves up your body. And sometimes people have like areas of pimples or blackheads or something like that which proceed, move up the body as their practice or different kinds of feelings of blockage and things. So your body changes and you can discover the changes in your own body partly by attuning yourself to another body. And then this attunement doesn't have to be, you know, with a spouse.

[17:15]

It can be just with a friend. But at that point, you've learned attunement from a strong example, like somebody you sleep with or your teacher. And then you can carry that same developed sense of attunement, just like you can have the attunement of your hands together. You can carry that feeling of attunement physically into the world as you are with other people and with the world as it appears for us. So I think that's enough on this sense of, this deep sense of friendship that then opens up into a new kind of friendship through the personality of the individual, even a close friend who you just like. If you also know them first of all as an embodiment of the truth, then that very friendship, which would have happened anyway, is more deeply rooted. And I agree with Ivan Illich, who's a mentor of mine and a close friend of mine, who I love very much.

[18:27]

And he's very, very much a Catholic. He's half Jewish and half... I don't know if you know him. He's half Jewish and half Catholic. Christian Austrian. And he was once being considered to be the Pope. I mean, he's that level of a Christian. And he's the most profoundly present Christian, even though he's been tried by the Catholic Church for heresy. But he won the case because he's the church's expert on the canon law of the church. But he says Catholicism is ultimately is a search for ultimate friendship. And Buddhism is actually a search for ultimate friendship. It's a search for that person in everyone that we hope exists somewhere. I mean, if you look down into yourself, you'll discover that somewhere you wished sometime there was a certain kind of person on the planet.

[19:29]

You really wished someone was like that. Isn't that true? I mean, you grow up as a kid and you think, geez, all these people are defective examples of the kind of person I really want. But we shouldn't become realistic and give up that ideal because we're in a dialogue with that ideal, just like we're in a dialogue with our ideal posture. And it takes courage to open yourself, to open yourself, to make yourself vulnerable again, to make yourself... You know, like you're looking at the tree and you feel, there's a word in Japanese, aware, A-W-A-R-E, it's spelled just like aware. And it means when you become so aware, you're also inseparable from the shared suffering of everything. So as you can open yourself also not just to the suffering but to that kind of person which would be the answer to that suffering.

[20:55]

And you might wish that somewhere on the planet such a person existed. It's a sense of divinity we hold within us. And if you wish that such a person existed on the planet you'd like to meet such a person. Someone should be such a person. Ultimately, you come to the conclusion, why shouldn't that person be you? If you want such a person to be, then why not be this person as much as you can? This is taking the bodhisattva vow. Yes, someone should be such a person. Why not me? Do you understand? Yeah. As Sukhya used to say, we're all failed Buddhas, but no matter what we do, we're showing our Buddha nature. So I, for me, Buddhism is also a search for ultimate friendship.

[22:10]

Okay, so try to be a little less serious here and give you the five stunds. I'll show you how mindful I am. Okay. Now, the five skandhas are... It says in the Theravada texts, the body... What should be thoroughly understood? Oh, Bhikshu, the Buddha says the body should be thoroughly understood. What should be thoroughly understood? Perception should be thoroughly understood. What should be thoroughly understood?

[23:14]

Feeling should be thoroughly understood. What should be thoroughly understood? The activity of the mind should be thoroughly understood. And what should also be thoroughly understood? Consciousness should be thoroughly understood. It's obvious, isn't it? If we're human beings, these things should be thoroughly understood. How are they thoroughly understood? They're thoroughly understood when you free them from aversion, greed, and delusion. Aversion means to think you can push things away. Greed means think you can possess things. And delusion means to view things inaccurately, to view things with false, but to think they're permanent when they're not. So the five skandhas are this teaching and the... I'm going to put them in this order.

[24:21]

They're form, feeling, perceptions, impulses or mental activity, associative thinking, consciousness. Now, these are called the five heaps because, in this sense, everything in the world phenomena and human activity falls into one of these heaps. There's nothing you can point out from a human point of view that isn't either feeling, perceptions, consciousness or form. And it's meant to be an inclusive list. In other words, you're meant to find a way to understand this so everything falls into one of these categories. Now, feeling, I should make an emotion.

[26:14]

In some of the textbooks, they put emotions and feelings both here, and I think that's inaccurate. It's not the way it's practiced. What do I mean by feeling? I said feeling arises from knowing, emotions arise from caring. They have a different root. There's a feeling in this room right now that's particular to this moment, particular to today, Sunday afternoon, that's different than Friday evening. And when we all disperse in an hour or two, there'll be a different feeling in this room. This feeling that we have right now is unique to this particular situation, moment, and so forth. And yet, if you try to say what the feeling is, You can't grasp it. And if you try to think about it, it's not there. Do you understand? What's it got to do with knowing?

[27:16]

With knowing? You said that the writers would know it. It's a kind of knowing. I mean, somebody walks in this room and they say, oh, there's a feeling in this room. I know that feeling. But again, you can't name it. And if you try to grasp it, it goes away. So we can call this non-graspable feeling. Okay? Now, what you're trying to do when you practice these things is you're trying to basically slow down a process that occurs very rapidly. In other words, What is your name? John. John. If I look at John... that fast, I've had a perception, I've had associative thinkings with a green sweater, you know, etc., and my consciousness is present, and so forth.

[28:28]

It happens like that. But in fact, they're separate... It's just that we perceive them, our consciousness in general is so coarse that it doesn't separate them out. But in fact they are separate out. Now let's imagine that we're here and somebody is taking a walk and they're actually carrying a radio perhaps. In America we call them ghetto blasters. Maybe it's a small radio. And you don't exactly hear the sound, but something is happening. So let's say that what you're receiving is, let's say the word to use would be a signal.

[29:41]

There's a kind of signal from the phenomenal world. You're hearing at a subliminal level the sound of this music, okay? That signal we can call form. And that signal can be the form of the world through smell or taste or sound or whatever. but it's the way the world first touches us, that's form. And then after a moment you have a more distinct feeling. It's still this non-graspable kind of feeling, but you have some kind of feeling of Maybe you like the sound or you don't like the sound, you feel neutral about it, you know. There's a certain quality of preference there. And that's feeling, okay?

[30:42]

Now if this is happening and the person's walking slowly, you actually go through the process slowly. So as the person gets closer, you begin to recognize oh, that's the song that my mother started to cry when my father left her or something, when she heard it on the radio. And it brings up a feeling of sadness for you. But first what you feel is a kind of sadness. You say, why am I sad? Then you have this emotion that you can grasp. Emotion you can grasp. Scept means to grasp. So you've grasped a particular emotion. Now you're feeling sad and you don't know why. Then you're here in this perception. And then you say, ah, that's that song that's still here in the perception. And then you think, oh, that's the song that my mother was listening to after my, et cetera, something like that.

[31:47]

That's associative thinking. And that immediately colors consciousness. Okay? Now, I remember I read this back in the 60s in Edward Kunze's book on the Heart and Diamond Sutra. And it really was one of the starting points in my practice to really begin to see this and practice with it and learn to slow down my own knowing, apprehension. I like the word apprehension because it means both to understand and to fear. So we have a certain apprehension but we apprehend. So there was a certain apprehension here which changed my way of thinking and led me to being here with you.

[32:49]

Now the consciousness you have when you first wake up in the morning, let's take consciousness as ordinary waking consciousness, the consciousness you have when you first wake up in the morning develops through a series of these signals. You wake up in the morning and you've had a good night's sleep or you've had a good dream or a bad dream or sun's coming in the window. And these immediately begin to create the quality of your consciousness. And then you get up and there's a fax in the machine which says, call me immediately. I've got some difficult things to go over with you. And the sun goes down, you know, and you feel kind of, oh, shit, what could this be about now? So you are building consciousness from the moment you wake up. We have phrases like, she got up on the wrong side of the bed or something like that. And usually when you get up, I can tell you one thing that's very important to do so you don't get up on the wrong side of the bed, is when you first get up, wait a little while till your body regathers consciousness.

[34:19]

Because when you're asleep, your body is kind of dispersed in dream, in different levels of consciousness. And if you get up too quickly, if the alarm is too jarring, you get up before you're reassembled, before your waking body is completely assembled. So it helps to just lie there. In fact, there are certain mudras you can do to help this. But you can take a few moments and wait until you feel this regathering occur and then it forms into the intention and you get up. You're not likely to feel you get up from the wrong side of the bed when you do that. It's one way to get up in a way that starts the day with a good signal. And then if you have your cup of coffee at the right moment or a bowl of She's been making me wonderful cereals in the morning. The right bowl of cereal served by Lynn.

[35:24]

One's consciousness starts to bloom. She's blushing. Because there's going to be a list of people signing up to have you bring them cereal in the morning. Now, it doesn't just go this direction, it also can go this direction. And so, I think that, as I've already mentioned a few times, that each of this, or something equivalent to this, each of this represents a kind of identity. So that your consciousness is influenced by all kinds of things and exactly, in fact, with more subtlety, the structure of your mind and the development of your mind from meditation practice or study and so forth, creates a certain kind of consciousness, which is somewhat independent of associative thinking, but associative thinking then happens through the quality of this consciousness and so forth.

[36:53]

But all I'm saying here is that associative thinking and how you do associative thinking has its own past, present and future. You know, there's a saying, fire, ashes are not the future of firewood. Firewood's not the past of ashes. In some words, firewood is the past of ashes, right? But are... Is a forest the past of clear-cut lumber? No. The forest, the animals, the domain of the birds, all is quite independent of the cut lumber. Cut lumber is only one small part of it. Or sometimes I say... A pig is not the past of pork. I mean, you need a pig to have pork, but actually pork is part of a human history of how we eat.

[38:06]

Pork has its own past, present, and future, independent of pigs. And it's a human history inflicted on probably somewhat unwilling pigs. So our history, each of these has its own past, present, and future. But consciousness isn't just the future of associative thinking. Perceptions. Now, we've mentioned Proust, you know, the taste of a madeleine and the smell of Hawthorne led him into Reminiscences, which produced the book The Remembrance of Things Past in English. Now, I think that we people get drunk or have several drinks sometimes to cut out consciousness a little bit and to open themselves up to associative thinking. because it feels there's a kind of blissfulness when there's a controlling factor to consciousness, I am not that kind of person.

[39:17]

But you have a few drinks and you can start having associations and feelings and move into even emotional areas that consciousness wouldn't allow. So consciousness is different than this. Do you understand what I mean? And perceptions are different. And perceptions have also their own past, present and future. The smell and certain sounds, like we talked about earlier with the wise eye consciousness, coercive or homogenizer, that each of these tends to be coercive in relationship to the other. So you can begin to, as you begin to like slip out of usual consciousness into just associative thinking, and we can say zazen is a kind of associative thinking. You're not conscious in the usual sense, like you might even not notice that your breath has stopped, but many things are coming up and so forth. So you're immersed in a kind of associative thinking without the usual sense of consciousness.

[40:21]

And dreaming is an associative thinking without consciousness, because you're asleep. So what I'm pointing out here is that when you work with the five skandhas, you find out you have a different personality, a different history, a different personal history, different memories that come up with each one. Now, if you're practicing immediate consciousness, in effect, you're going back to maybe here. where there's perceptions coming in, but you're not thinking about them or acting or associating on them. So we could say borrowed consciousness is up here somewhere. That's one aspect of it. It's certainly here. But immediate consciousness is down in here. Any questions at this point?

[41:24]

Did you say coercive? Yeah. Yeah. Now, coercive isn't all bad. I mean, coercive just means that one thing limits another. But limits are often, you know, if you write a poem, there's certain limits. Those limits are part of the poem. But there's a coercion to it, too, in that sense. Yeah. Can I ask you to go a little further than that, Richard? With which? Do you mean coercion in the active sex of one element here, compounding another one into being? Yeah. For example... Ezra Pound, who was a mentor of mine, and in ways I'm realizing more recently, the degree to which he influenced me, he translated, he tried to

[42:33]

I'm just rapping here, so it's not... T.S. Eliot tried to use poetry rather than prose to get at subtle feelings, psychological and emotional feelings, that could not be expressed in usual language. The women come and go, talking of Michelangelo, gives you an immediate feeling, but you couldn't say what that feeling is exactly. Ezra Pound, the other great poet of the early part of this century, experimental poet, he attempted to free language from cultural associations as much as possible and to discover a language that right now, in the immediate present, captured exactly our feeling. So he practiced translating, and his early translating was mostly done in sort of 19th century styles.

[43:47]

And that's not what he felt, but the language forced him into 19th century style. So he was coerced. But if in the 19th century those same forms allowed you to express things, then in the 20th century coerced you into not expressing things. Do you understand what I mean? So both are there. On one hand, it's coercion. On the other hand, it's the limitations of form that make you do something. For example, I mean, I'm practicing with you now and teaching, and it's different than when I write. or it's different when I practice by myself. I know that sometimes if I want to find a way to say something, I simply do not have the resources to find a way to say something, but if I come in and talk to you, I'll discover it through you. So the limitations of speaking to you actually make me discover something that when I don't have the limitations, I'm just sitting in my room, I can't think up, I can't feel up. Do you understand what I mean?

[44:51]

So what he tried to do, eventually Pound, is he started translating Japanese and Chinese because he went to a culture completely separate from his own to see if that opened him up to find a fresh language in his own century. And... Ivan Ilyich wanted to do the same thing. I mean, he knows about, I don't know, 12 languages. But he wanted to learn Japanese because he thought it was the most foreign to Europe. And if he learned Japanese, it might free him up to really see what's going on in his own culture. He didn't learn Japanese. He said it was too old, it was too difficult. So you can go this direction. in working with this kind, and you can go this direction in working with this kind.

[46:02]

And you can begin to practice settling yourself in just pure perception. And we call this direct perception sometimes. You just look at a flower, you just look at it. You try not to think about it, but you let yourself feel the color, feel the shape of each petal. And when you do that, it's interesting. Breakfast flowers are often moving on the table. You don't notice it. You think you just got a bunch of flowers on the table. But if you stop thinking about it and just apprehend it, you suddenly see that very slowly this flower is turning in its face. You know, it's actually moving slightly. Very exciting. I get excited about things like that. And so you can practice direct perception for a moment or two or a minute or so every day by, say, with your breakfast flowers or something, just looking without thinking. And then you're practicing with skandha.

[47:05]

Or we can do it by opening ourselves to the non-graspable feeling of this moment, which is a good way to discover the uniqueness of each mind. Because although it's hard to know that there's a particular mind here that's unique, it's possible to know there's a particular feeling here. And it's different than the feeling this morning. And the feeling allows us, the particular feeling allows us to absorb the teaching or not. Now, one of the reasons I wanted to do this, and I'm presenting a fairly simplified version of this, though I'm giving you the essentials so that I'm not losing out on anything, is this is consciousness. What's this? Yeah, a body, but also awareness. So what you have here is... actually a progression between awareness and consciousness.

[48:14]

So, in that sense, we can say that awareness is the loaded consciousness. You've taken pure awareness that's there when you first hear the first note of the song. Without any thoughts, that's pure awareness. And you add feelings, you add perceptions, you add a session, and then you've got this loaded consciousness. So, again, practice is to base yourself here, but use the other four skandhas. I know, I'm just telling you funny stories. A friend of mine, you know in the books, there's a fly on one of the pages. Have you seen that fly?

[49:19]

Well, that was my, Trudy Dixon was a close friend of mine and Trudy was dying of cancer at 29 and we edited the book together. But I only put her name on the book because I thought it was kind of a gift to her. But her husband, Michael Dixon, Willie Dixon, also a close friend of mine, so I asked him to contribute something. He didn't know what to do. He was going to do something for my book, too, but he doesn't know what to do yet. He doesn't want to do another fly. So... So he sent me this little tiny drawing of a fly, which there's quite a long history to it, because it has to do with security and other things. I don't want to tell you everything today. I'll say something if I ever come back. And so he did this little fly. When he sent it to me, I was in Japan, he said, you can put it anywhere in the book you want except on the fly leaf. So I just picked day 65 or something, and we left a blank page.

[50:24]

There it sits for no reason at all. Anyway, he also did a painting like Marilyn Monroe on the calendar, but he painted her on the sky. And there's this big nude Marilyn Monroe in the sky, you know, with her legs like this. Have you ever seen that picture? It hung in our kitchen. And I remember my daughter's, my daughter at that time, trying to say, Dad, you've got to get rid of that picture. It's so embarrassing. Blah, blah, blah. And everybody in my, the women in my family agreed. And I said, but it's just pink and blue. No, Dad, it's not just pink and blue. But that became a joke. Because whenever I would say, I would sort of be relating to things without associative thinking, they'd say, yeah, we know it's just pink and blue. But it's true, it was just pink and blue. So by beginning to see that this... dynamic of consciousness is in process all the time, you also begin to find out how to base yourself in awareness.

[51:49]

It just takes a little while, now that you've seen this scheme, to do it yourself. But also, what are the qualities here? Each one of these things is impermanent. And not graspable. Consciousness is not graspable. Associative mental activity is not graspable. Perceptions, yes, they come and go, but they're fleeting. Feeling is not graspable. Form is there, but it's not something you can grab hold of in the sense that you apprehend it. It just causes a mental reaction or physical reaction. And each is subject to suffering. And each, none of them, is self. There's no self here. There may be sensations of self, but self includes all these, but there's no self here, and there's no self here.

[52:56]

There's perception that there's no self. You may control how you perceive things, but still... So these are all characterized by the three marks of impermanence, suffering, subject to suffering, and... non-self or no-self. So the skandhas are a teaching of the absence of a permanent or inherent self. Because everything falls in this, everything that you do falls into one of these categories, but none of the categories include any sense of a permanent or inherent self. So this is the fundamental teaching of non-self. But it also is a kind of life raft or inner tube in which to work on yourself. In other words, the more you get familiar with this, and you can rest in associative thinking or rest in just perceiving, direct perception, or rest in non-graspable feeling, or rest in accepting your consciousness as it is,

[54:10]

You don't have to be so involved with self. And like if you're in psychotherapy, a therapist will find it's much easier for you to notice, talk about, and do something about your self habits than it is if you don't understand this. So this is, in a way, The self, we can say the self is a... I don't believe the self, as we understand it, has always existed. I think the self that we know, which is very efficient, is a creation of, probably comes with industrialized society, and we know that our existence is bigger than ourselves. So what happens to what gets thrown overboard? It doesn't fit in the boat of the self, and then it gets stuck in the mud, and then our boat is stuck in the mud of the unconscious, etc. And it's very hard to work on all that if you identify with the self. So the skandhas are kind of like an inner tube that you can get out in the water and work on the boat.

[55:14]

Am I making any sense of this metaphor? You can work on how you function, how you function consciously and unconsciously. And this, you're half in the water here, so you're real close to emptiness. So this is a substitute for self, which is also so obviously empty that it's also a stage into finding yourself comfortable without any form. So this is form. And while this is formed, this awareness is the fruit of the structure of consciousness. So anyway, that's enough on all that. I think it's too... Yes? Thank you. Insofar as body is intimately connected by form, how is body not self? Well, it's... Self is defined in Buddhism as permanent and inherent. The body is neither permanent nor inherent.

[56:17]

It has no inherency, no inner identity that stays with it and directs it, nor is it predictable into the future. So yes, this table exists and your body exists, and they can function as self, but they're not self in the... Buddhism only says you have no permanent and no inherent self. It doesn't say you have no self that functions as self. Okay? Yeah. Can you explain how suffering fits into that? Well, you can have associative mental activity like you just, like I said, you just get this fax which says blah, blah, blah, and so your associative mental activity is subject to suffering. Right. So that's all I said. It's subject to suffering. All of them? All of them. Form decays, your body decays. Feelings can be unpleasant or pleasant. Perceptions can be good or bad or deluded and so forth.

[57:23]

So suffering doesn't have to be there, it just can be there. Yes, things are subject to suffering. What hangs on the word inherent there? I get the term, right? Well, there isn't much... Permanent means it's... If I say this is permanent... I mean that it's going to be the same... Like, and you want to work with permanency, you can sometimes use a gerund. Instead of saying a tree, say treeing. Because nouns give us the sense that things are existing. So if you say treeing, the tree is obviously changing. So if you think this is not... fruiting, or whatever it is, this, if you think it continues predictably into the future, that's what we mean by permanent. Inherent means there's some nature in this from its beginning that's guiding it. Okay. Like as if there was no nurture involved and only nature.

[58:27]

If a baby was born and genes controlled everything, that would be inherency. But everything is subject to nurture, to change, and so forth. Okay, I think we're going to end soon. And anyone has some... That's just enough as a sketch of the five scans. I hope it's enough. And if you have some questions or something you'd like to talk about before we end. Yes. Well, I think generally we're healthier if we eat vegetarian food or not large amounts of animals. And

[59:28]

My own practice is to have vegetarian food at home and my practice places. But on the other hand, I got tired at some point of having everybody cook special meals for me and so forth. And when I started, restaurants didn't have vegetarian, you know, they had a quiche occasionally, you know, which always tasted the same. It was the quiche of death. No. No. Sorry. So I just at some point just started eating what other people do. And that's actually the Zen style is you eat what people serve you. The Buddha himself died of spoiled pork, supposedly. But you... When you can, and you're not interfering or offending somebody, you eat as simply and nutritionally as possible. And that partly you have to decide for yourself.

[60:33]

But in addition to that, there's the feeling of not killing animals. But, you know, you're always killing something. When you eat, when you do anything, you're grinding microbes in your mouth right now. So where to draw the line? Somebody asked Alan Watts why he preferred, I don't think he was a vegetarian, but someone asked him about the difference between eating animals and carrots. He said, carrots don't scream as loud, but they're all sentient. So you have to make your own decision about where you draw the line in terms of animal products. and where you draw the line in terms of how strict you are in following nutritional. I think one thing that's common in Asia, I think in Japan they have something like 250 cultivars, things that are either cultivated or chosen for foods and very seasonal.

[61:36]

I think in the West we have What do you find in the grocery store? Eight or nine things? Broccoli, cabbage. We don't have a very big choice. And it's also assumed that all kinds of things... Nakamura Sensei, this Japanese woman who lived with us, is now... I just saw her... She's 97. She every day brewed herself a little different brew of some herb and so forth. So your diet, maybe, you know, now we can have vitamin pills or something, but they weren't considered additives. They were just considered extending your diet. So she made little brews, and every day on Tuesday and Thursday was one and somebody else. And so in that sense, health is considered a function of intelligence that... that more intelligent people are healthier and our medical model is medicine applies to everyone equally but the Asian medical model is you really have to take care of yourself and if you're more intelligent you take care of yourself better and you it's incumbent upon you just as it's incumbent upon you to know your body it's incumbent upon you to know your diet that's the general feeling okay something else yeah

[62:49]

Richard, you passed on this very quickly there when you talked about this kind of thing. Well, I organized the first LSD conference in the United States, in the world probably, Berkeley, back in 65. I never took LSD, but I decided that this was such an important event The university really gave me hell for it. Said I must be a communist and other things. But with Dick Alpert and Tim Leary and others, I organized this conference. So it's been an important study for me. And it's clear that if you go back in India, the two roots are yoga and psychedelics in the early days of opening yourself to the world in a fuller way. Buddhism chose the path of yoga. And for the most part, I think it's very important to work with this phrase, just now is enough.

[63:51]

As soon as you try to alter your state of mind from outside, you're in some ways, you may teach yourself certain things, but you're also creating a certain dependency on the outside and not discovering a way to do it. And the basic, the fundamental idea in Buddhism is if this is possible, it's possible to find it out through yourself. So in general, in practice, as I understand it, adept practice, you never try to alter yourself from outside. So in general, you don't use psychedelics and mind-altering things. And there's a precept even that you not only don't use them, but you don't sell them. But for instance, I did a restaurant at some point, a vegetarian restaurant, and we did serve wine, but we only served it with the meals.

[64:53]

I even checked it out with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and he thought, it's okay if you just serve it with meals, but we wouldn't serve wine or beer before the meal or after the meal, but we served wine with the meal. So I don't know, it's again, you have to find out where to draw the line, what's mind-altering and what's not. I find all of you mind-altering. So what else? Anything else? John is sure there's nothing else, right? It is so far to go. We've gone quite a ways, though. Get started here. Yes? Why would I not like that? Is this your intention? You're not as clever as you think.

[65:58]

But anyway, I'm complimented that you'd like me to stay longer. I already said it as well as I can for now. that just see if you can slow down and notice each stage. And one way to notice it is like sit down at the breakfast table, say. It's nice to do these things in the morning. Look at the flowers or the dishes or the sunlight on the table and just try to look at it as form. Then try to see what feeling it induces. and then notice the perception about it, that you like it or don't like it, or it's the color of it or something, and then notice the associations with other tables or flowers, and then sense how it moves into and establishes a particular state of mind, a particular state of mode of consciousness. And then, the more you notice that, you can begin to discover

[67:06]

how you allow and accept into your consciousness all day long. Because you're constantly regenerating your consciousness. For example, what is your name again? David. If I'm standing in front of David, and this is true of any one of you, there's things that are going on in David which are degenerative. And there's things that are going on in David which are generative. In other words, there's things that David may be thinking or feeling that are some ways creating a sinking mind. And there's some ways that think David's feeling that create a rising mind. And we're all a balance of those things. And we're finding that balance between what we call rising mind and sinking mind. Now, I can relate to David or someone else. I can find, if I find and feel those qualities of rising mind in myself, I'll tend to relate to rising mind in David.

[68:16]

And David then being enhanced in his rising mind will help me generate a consciousness of rising mind. So, but there are times when a teacher, for instance, might relate to those disintegrative aspects of a person to push the student into his mess. But in general, we're relating to the integrative parts of a person. And sometimes we can feel it. Some people are cheery and make us feel good. That's what they do. So there's always that kind of choice in relationship to others and in relationship to generating your own consciousness. Because you're a participant in your own consciousness, and consciousness is an emergent factor. It's not a fixed thing. It's emerging all the time. And you're part of that emergence. You can't control what it's like. You may be in a really bad mood and some horrible things have happened or a loved one has died and you're just gonna be in grief, that's it, period.

[69:28]

But still you can find underneath that some stability or continuity. So I'm not saying you can turn all grief into joy, but you're a participant in how you grieve and how you. I think if I finish that quote it says, In the eyes, it's called seeing. In the ears, it's called hearing. What is it called in the eyebrows? Then it says, there was a pause. And then he says, in misery, we grieve together. In happiness, we rejoice together. Something like that. Anything else?

[70:30]

Shall we sit a few minutes? Is this the time I could just say what... Oh, yes, sure. And by the way, there's some people who didn't speak at all. The whole time. And I would have liked to have heard your voice. Yes, go ahead. I just very quickly wanted to say... Why don't you stand up? Phone. Phone. when you called him up, it said, power to the people. And a friend of mine, Gared Stern, said to Huey once, how come when I hear that, Huey, I always feel left out? But Huey and I would greet each other, because I would bow and he would do this, so we'd go... Yeah, now see, I have three possibilities.

[71:35]

Not enough people want me to come back, so I feel nobody loves me. Or a lot of you want me to come back and I feel real happy that you like me. And the third possibility is you invite me back and then I can't come and then I feel I'm letting you down. So you've put me in a terrible situation, but I can probably handle it. Okay. Another day, another dharma. And there's non-graspable feeling which we know. that subtle quality of knowing that accompanies all mental activity, all physical activity, a subtle knowing in our body, in our hearing, in each of our senses.

[72:50]

And then there's the strong emotions and thoughts the grasping of something with clarity, with specificity, which is perception, the third skandha. And then we can think about that and all the associations it brings up. And then we can feel that like as if we dropped something into a pond, how that ripples through our consciousness and generates our consciousness, which we give. What our main gift to the world, our main generosity, is our consciousness, consciousness that's present through us with others.

[74:02]

So if you want to be kind to your friends, be honest throughout, open, trusting throughout how you appear, how you exist, and inclusive and not divisive as much as possible with others. And discover that and have the courage to consequentially notice, note that inner being in us which wants to be as human beings could most perfectly be. It's a very tender, tender spot in our heart.

[75:11]

and yet still be honest with accepting of how we actually are, just now, just this, just this. When we say just this, we emphasize things as they are, just accepting things as they are, just this. When we say thus, we emphasize the presence of mind on everything, presence of the skandhas. So just this, as it is thus. Thank you for making me feel so welcome, or thank you for welcoming me here in your country.

[77:41]

And thank you for being so open to the teaching. And thank you for Kibi and company. Belinda and Lynn and others were taking such good care of me and taking... They worked hard before you got here. This is the... Yeah, but this is the biggest event you've had here, right? And there were people everywhere cutting the lawn and cleaning and...

[78:12]

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