Now yesterday I encouraged you to do whatever you could, whatever is possible to realize, enter into non-consciousness. Yeah, do whatever you can, short of having someone hit you over the head. So I wanted you to notice the nameless. Notice what you can't name. And when you're sitting, what is here?

[01:05]

Yeah, there's of course your body and the pillow and so forth like that, the cushion. But there's the experience of the body, what's that? And experience of the mind. And are they different? And how are they related if they have some difference? No, they're identical. They're inseparable, but we experience them differently sometimes, often. Yeah, so I was emphasizing the yogic skill of noticing the nameless. Because what I decided that I have to speak about during this session is what does Buddhism mean by self, non-self, and the absence of self?

[02:28]

And why am I speaking about it now? Well because I think that it's about time. I mean, I'm always speaking about it in some way, by implication at least, and sometimes directly. But I haven't spoken about it the way I want to now. And I've had several questions, not even a phone call from Crestone, plus questions in the recent seminars about it. But if you're practicing, it has to hover like a doubt, a kind of dark angel in your practice.

[03:33]

What can it mean? I mean, you know, it sounds good, maybe it sounds good, but it sounds terrible at the same time. I mean, it sounds like it might be nice. Sorry? It sounds like it might be nice. But actually we rather like ourself. Or we don't like ourselves, nearly the same thing. And I think we can't imagine functioning without a self. And it's very clear when people studied brain damaged people from accidents, you know, usually. If you can't relate what you're doing meaningfully to your personal history, you can't function. And if we can't function without some kind of self-referencing personal history, what is Buddhism talking about?

[05:09]

Mm-hmm. So the question is always unanswerably present in our practice. Hinted but not really answered. But the problem in talking about it is without some yogic skills, developed yogic skills in you individually and in the Sangha, yeah, there's not much point in talking about

[06:12]

So I'm going to assume now that we have the skills. Or at least we have the intimations of the skills. Intimations means you... feel it's possible, but you're not sure yet. Or perhaps you have the skills, but you don't know it. Or perhaps the skills are just ready to find the right topic to... yeah, to... to articulate themselves. So actually to be able to notice the unnameable and the unnamed is a yogic skill.

[07:18]

Yeah, consciousness notices difference, so notices boundaries. But what about a mind that can notice what doesn't have boundaries? What you can't name. It doesn't fit. It's different than any word you can find. No words really touch it. And I think that's the case just sitting Zazen. If you just ask yourself, what's here? I mean, you could be 100 years, you know, wondering about that. What's here is the most complex thing we know about in the galaxy, in our galaxy, maybe in several galaxies.

[08:33]

And its complexity and subtlety is not caught in the words. But it is our experience. Yeah, so, I mean, the most obvious way that Buddhism emphasizes some kind of freedom from self, is to notice that it's not permanent. It's not a referent. It's not an entity.

[09:45]

And it's quite easy to understand that intellectually. It's pretty hard not to implicitly act as if the self was permanent and continuous. But then there's various levels of a subtle presence of self in the mind. And then there's a difference between self-relevant thinking and self-referential thinking. So in a way we have to understand the territory of self-experience in order to understand what Buddhism is talking about. But you can't understand or notice, I mean, notice is what's important, the territory of self, unless you have a developed practice of mindfulness.

[11:01]

Okay, so, you know, maybe tomorrow or the next day we'll get to these things. But first I should talk about the yogic skills that are necessary. Which, as you know, I'm assuming you all actually have realized or partially realized these skills. Let's start with Suzuki Roshi's most common statement of zazen advice, zazen instruction. Don't invite your thoughts to tea. So let's unpack this.

[12:13]

We all can do it. We all know immediately what it means. You can notice that when you start to sit, you can kind of let thoughts go. You don't have to identify with them. Not identifying with your thoughts as you is a big step toward realizing what non-self means. Yeah, so there's two aspects of any practice like this. noticing that your thoughts aren't the entirety of you okay If you have any problems, it's great, because then we can discuss it more clearly, because the problems give us something to talk about.

[13:34]

I'm always looking for problems, otherwise I have nothing to say. Okay. Okay, so now we have We recognize, we have the experience of, so there's this experience of it makes sense and we have some experience of not identifying with our thoughts. But that's really, that's a big step. That's a big step. And that changes things a lot. It's a catalyst. It changes the chemistry of how you exist. But, you know, the self is a very big bear.

[14:42]

Not a brown bear, not a black bear, it's a grizzly. And when you start noticing you don't identify with your thoughts, you know, this bear says, okay, I'll be a rabbit. Yeah, and he hops around and looks okay, and you begin to think you understand. And the bear is fully there. Whoa. And really, that's much of the literature of later Buddhism is about, hey, you think it's a rabbit, but it's a bear still. It's just gone underground, but it's still running things. Mm-hmm. So we practice not inviting our thoughts to tea.

[16:05]

And sometimes it helps us go into zazen. And sometimes we begin to have the yogic skill of a non-discursive knowing mind. No, we don't have any words for it. And whatever words I, in a Heideggerian way, string together They have a little different meaning. So I can say a non-thinking, knowing mind. I can say a non-conscious knowing. No, that's different.

[17:07]

A non-discursive knowing mind. I don't know. Those distinctions work okay in German? Yeah. Well, good. Well, as I always say, English is half German. And half French, that's the problem. And French and German have never gotten along too well, have they? They can't make an Airbus these days. Okay. So let's say we have some, let's call it a non-discursive knowing mind. Now, after a while you'll notice, I mean, people don't notice it at first, but you'll notice that this advice, as I've pointed out now and then, to not invite your thoughts to tea...

[18:19]

this advice to not invite your thoughts to tea. Yeah, and as I pointed out a few times, as a conundrum in it. Because the advice to not invite your thoughts to tea is also a thought. So you use a thought to not invite your thoughts to tea to not invite your thoughts to tea. Sounded good. And... So some people start thinking, this is strange. Are they two different kinds of thoughts? Yeah, it's an intention. They're both mental formations. But is an intentional thought, is an intention different than a thought?

[19:35]

It's different than a discursive thought. What does this vocabulary tell us? This problem with vocabulary. This simply is not territory in our culture. Otherwise, it'd be words for it. I mean, there's some kind of philosophies that touch it. There's, you know, there's Husserl and Merleau-Ponty recently, and others are trying to talk about it. And it's, you know, something artists know about and athletes and people know about, but it's not really part of our, at the center of our culture. So we're actually kind of pushing our way into the underbrush of the mind. Underbrush? It's like in a jungle.

[20:39]

There's the brush and there's the underbrush. You have to push through the brush that's under the trees. You must have a word for it. There's underbrush right out there. Dickicht. Unterholz. Unterholz, yeah. I should have known that. Holz, yeah. Unter, yeah, yeah. Also müssen wir uns unseren Weg durch das Unterholz des Geistes bahnen. Yeah, and we don't really know what's over there, but is it non-discursive? Is it non-thinking? Wir wissen nicht wirklich, was das dann ist. Ist das nicht diskursiv? Ist das nicht denkend? Oder ist das denkend? So you kind of push between words in our usual way of thinking, and where am I? Where is... I mean, is there anyone here? So we need some word for... I mean, it's like a tomato. Is a tomato a vegetable or a fruit?

[21:40]

You put it in a vegetable store and you think it's a vegetable. You put it in a fruit store and you think it's a fruit. Well, an intention can function as a thought. An intention can also function in non-discursive consciousness. It's the kind of thread and needle of the mind. I mean, you can use an intention to direct your thinking And you can use an intention to get out of your thinking. And you can use an intention to generate a field of mind free of discursive thinking.

[22:57]

Sometimes it's a fruit, sometimes it's a vegetable. So it's sometimes a fruit and sometimes a vegetable. Like a thread and needle, carry meaning between the two levels I've presented. So, If you practice thoroughly, don't invite your thoughts to tea. And you really get so that you don't invite your thoughts to tea. And, of course, sometimes you don't invite them, but they don't leave. But eventually, after a while, you don't invite them, and they also, sometimes they don't even arrive.

[24:16]

I expected guests, but there were none. So through the simple practice of such a statement, we realize a non-discursive, knowing mode of mind. This is a yogic skill. Most, all of us, all of us have this skill. But then if you start examining the advice, I mean, you know, it's a finger pointing at the moon. I mean, and you've got the moon, I mean, you've sort of got the field of the moon, non-discursive moon mind. But what was that finger?

[25:17]

What can we learn from the finger? It was pointing at this practice. Well, we can learn that an intention is a mental formation but not a discursive thought. So, oh, it's not a discursive thought. Well, what's the difference? Now, here you see the difference between a practice and a teaching. Or you practice something, but then you really look at it as a teaching. And it opens up many things. So you begin to... You sort of say, okay, what's the difference between these two mental formations?

[26:36]

And you experiment with having discursive thinking and you experiment with holding an intention. And then you discover, actually, there's two different kinds of mind. And you do that, you can most easily do that if you're sitting zazen. And then you notice that actually the non-discursive mind of intent is one of the territories of zazen mind. The non-discursive mind of intent is one of the aspects of zazen mind. So you begin to notice the territory of zazen mind You notice it in contrast to discursive mind.

[28:02]

And you realize that intention then is a tool to enter into zazen mind. At least one of the rooms of zazen mind So it's a kind of key as well as a needle and thread. And now that you've discovered this from the simple advice of Sukhirashi, you're at the center of what koans are about. This is the ability to use an intent as a key. As well as a needle. A sewing needle and maybe an acupuncture needle too. Really, all this is in a teaching when you practice it thoroughly.

[29:25]

I didn't add anything, did I? I'm just unpacking this one phrase. Okay. Now another yogic skill we need is the sense of a mind stream. The sense of a stream of mind independent of the contents of mind. Now this is related to what we've just been talking about both into noticing the nameless and developing a non-discursive knowing mind.

[30:40]

This is the topography. This is the territory we live in. But without mindfulness and meditation skills, you just don't see it. You just live it, but you don't really mature it, develop it. Generally, we develop our thinking. That's what our educational system intends us to do. But we don't develop our consciousness itself and non-consciousness. So now this is a different kind of education. And Sashin is part of the education. Okay, so a contentless free mind stream. Or a mind stream in which we have a sense of the content and the mind stream.

[32:18]

Okay. And a field of mind, let's go from a stream to a field, a field of mind in which you can feel the field itself and not just the contents. You see, if you can't notice the field of mind separate from the contents, you can never notice the functioning of self. Because you've got to be able to see self as one of the contents of mind. If you can't see self as one of the contents of mind, then you think mind belongs to the self. So the experience that the self belongs to the mind is one of the beginnings of adept practice.

[33:32]

A precise participatory practice. Well, I didn't get very far, but it's about time to stop. No, that was fun. I thought it was fun. Did you enjoy it? How do we get in there and talk about this? I have to try to find out. Okay.

[34:18]

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