Buddhism and Psychotherapy Conference held at Matrepa Contemplative Centre, Healesville, Australia, of September 1997. This is the second talk given by Richard Baker Oshie on the Friday afternoon of September 27, titled The Power and Necessity of Views, Being Without Theology. This is a scroll... Now on a tape, this is a tape, now scrolling, which is certainly Hanshan and Jichoku. But I like it because it could also be Daowu and Yunyan. And Daowu and Yunyan are, to some of you I've mentioned the story before. Yeah.

[01:04]

You want to do it? Because you're mis-angled. Okay. How's that? I'm talking. Okay. It worked this morning. Well, let's see. Okay, that's good now. If that doesn't work, we won't record it. Um... Um... And Daowu and Yunyan were brother monks who were all Dharma brothers and they were also blood brothers. Daowu was a little smarter, a little older. My lineage goes through the dumber one, Yunyan. But Yunyan wasn't a complete dope. Anyway, so Daowu kind of helped, pushed his younger brother along. And Yunyan, let's assume, is the one with the broom.

[02:08]

And Yunyan was sweeping. I've told some of this story before. He's sweeping. Daowu comes by and looks at him and says, too busy. And Yunyan says, you should know there is one who is not busy. Daowu says, aha, then there's a double moon. And Yuen Yuen says, holding up his broom, is this a double moon? So that's the story. And it relates to our subject today. And so I thought, since I short-changed you on meditation before, we should start out with a little meditation now. And then we can continue. So I gave you the story first so you can meditate on it. This topic of this lecture this afternoon is

[03:22]

Like this morning, there's no real teachings about it I can give you. It's more something we have to explore for ourselves, or we can speak about it as recognitions. Is that okay for you to not sit here? It's recognitions, sort of, that you have to let come into you slowly. But the story, since I gave it to you, I'll start with that. Yunyan was Dungsan's teacher. And you can understand the sense that I think that Daowu says... Yunyan answers Dao's question, you're too busy, with saying, you should know there's one who is not busy.

[04:29]

This also happened to have been an important koan for Thich Nhat Hanh when he was, I think in his late teens, I think his teacher gave it to him, presented it to him. Can you hear me in the back okay? Yes. Okay. Okay. Now, because there keep being new people in these groups, I have to keep repeating myself. And I apologize to that for you. You probably mind less than I do, because I don't like to repeat myself. I try to always give a new lecture. And so, but the thing is that, one, there's only certain things I know how to teach. I mean, it takes a while to develop how you teach something, so that's one thing. But also, we want to develop a common vocabulary. So we could work on a common way of looking at these things if we were all together the same people for four days or five days.

[05:32]

Then we could each take it a little farther, but I have to keep stepping back incrementally a little bit because there's new people. So I'm apologizing for repeating some things here. Now the sense that while you're doing this there is one who is not busy is a fundamental idea in Buddhist practice. You could say it's an expression of the two truths of form and emptiness. And... But it's put in a context of not some philosophical thing like form and emptiness, but why you're in the middle of activity to recognize or feel the presence of one who is not busy. ...

[06:34]

Like as I said earlier, I practiced with the phrase, there's no place to go and there's nothing to do. And I repeated that myself in the midst of activity. It's a little like the waves knowing there's still water down deep. Although there's waves, there's also water. And the waves themselves are water. So our attention, we could say our consciousness is like the waves. And the problem with that is consciousness that is born from waves or generated through waves is only able to perceive waves. It only notices other waves. So this wave notices this wave, but this wave doesn't notice that both of them are water. It's that way of thinking. So it's harder to notice when you're in actual fact, to make this practical, not philosophical, to notice when you're busy that simultaneously there's one who's not busy. It's very hard to be involved in the wave nature of yourself than to notice the water nature of yourself.

[08:01]

These are all metaphors, but you have to get a feeling for it. So I, for whatever reason, I don't know why, I don't know quite why I picked this phrase, there's no place to go and nothing to do But I did it for a year and a quarter until it was present with me all the time. Forgot it for a while, for a few months. And it did begin to make a difference. It allowed me, for one thing, to be extremely busy. Because even when I was very busy, I felt there was one who was not busy. Even when I went places, like to Australia, I felt I hadn't gone anywhere. I don't know. The birds are different, aren't they? But basically, something's appearing before my eyes. Wherever I am, something's appearing before my eyes. And it's usually quite nice, so it doesn't matter too much where I am. So that sense that there's, we could almost say, two levels of reality.

[09:06]

There's the level of reality of busyness, activity, and then there's the level of water. And so Da Wu said, aha, then there's the double moon. Now, the moon is used a lot because, you know, it's so tied to us anyway. We feel it in... It's tied to our tides, to our reproductive cycles and so forth. But also the moon itself in the sky, you see a half moon, a full moon, a sliver, et cetera. And when you see a full moon, you're only seeing half. Half of it's dark. And then there's the moon in the pond, the moon reflected in lakes. I said to my mother once when I was very little, she wrote me a little note a while ago, I said, I have something you said when you were four or something. We were looking at the lake. We had a lake in front of our house. And I said, why is our moon swimming across the lake to us like that?

[10:11]

Why is our moon swimming across the lake? And you can see it's swimming across the lake. Anyway, So he says, ah, then there's a double moon. In other words, it's a lot like Plato's idea. This is a vase, but it's an insufficient reproduction of an ideal vase. An ideal vase is an idea that's perfect. There's no flaws, there's no problems with it in any sense, right? So Plato had this idea of a realm of ideas, and all this is imperfect replicas of ideal forms. So in that sense, is the moon that we see the imperfect replica of an ideal moon somewhere, something like that? Is there some reality separate from the thing itself?

[11:16]

Is there some reality separate from this vase itself? Now, that's an interesting thing to notice, although it's a gross oversimplification of Plato's ideas, that this is an insufficient replica of an ideal form. Buddhism actually changes that... Buddhism's way of looking at it is significantly different, because Buddhism says... This is perfect. Our senses are the insufficient replica of it. Our perception of it is insufficient. But the thing itself is perfect. So in the Buddhist world, all these things are perfect. each of you, but our way of perceiving it is often obstructed or full of doubt or ambivalence or delusion. So our perception is the insufficient replica. So practice is in developing the perception. And you can see this in Asian crafts and things.

[12:23]

For example, it's very interesting to see Chinese, British versions of Chinese dishes, pottery. And we call it China because it came from China. And so they imitated all these designs. And you see these wonderful designs of Chinese dishes. And there's a flowering branch and it comes across and goes right off the dish. But the British version, it goes, fits right around the rim. It always fits into and creates a dish which in itself is complete. And the... Chinese dishes are much more like you're looking through a window and seeing a tree or something like that. And the crafts of, you know, Japan, the tea bowls and all are always kind of a little odd and off and symmetry is up to you to establish the symmetry. The symmetry isn't just in the bowl. So,

[13:27]

This koan is the sense that if we look too busy, it's because we're insufficiently understanding that this busyness is a reflection, a one surface of a fundamental completeness. Does that make sense? Daowu tries to check, test his brother and say, ah, then there's two realities. There's one who's not busy and there's one who... So he holds up the broom and says, is this a double moon? Because everything is right here. Now, I think that Buddhism, strictly speaking, says there's no outside world. There's nothing outside this. And sometimes it's a little hard, you know, I was brought up, I was brought up an atheist, but kind of in a Christian culture, a Christian, you know, Judaic Buddhist, you know, Judaic Christian culture.

[14:38]

And sometimes I'm in a kind of bad situation and I say, oh God, somebody please help me. I think, there's no one out there to help me. So I have to say, oh Buddha, please, no. Shucks, I got to help myself. Well, actually, it's quite a discipline to even in your... I mean, there's quite a lot of people who have been Buddhists in the West until they're ready to die. And then, you know, the last hours they get a priest and, you know, etc. to come in and so forth. So to really be strict for yourself, and the Buddha supposedly said, the last thing he said, was to put no heads above your own. No teaching, no person. But this is quite a discipline. It's not our habit. So one... So what and how views function is views, and the Eightfold Path starts with right views, is that views function outside and prior to

[15:54]

anterior to thinking. Now, you all understand that? No. Okay. No, sorry. Okay. So, let's just use my basic example again that I've been using this time. What is your name? Paul. Paul. Oh, that's right. Hi, Paul. It's nice you're back. I was missing you. Um... So Paul's over there. Poor Paul was subject to this before or something close to this. And I... And Paul is over there separated from me by space. And we tend to think of him as separated from us by space. I have to walk over there. But I maintain that it's not a fact, that's a cultural idea. That we can also assume that Paul is connected to all of us by space.

[16:57]

And again, using the moon, the moon is not a string, not a yo-yo. And again, it is tied to us in our rhythms. But what's the connection? It's not perceivable by our three-dimensional consciousness. And the job, again, of our consciousness is to establish a three-dimensional reality. Now, if I take on the idea and hold in view, like we talked about this morning, you could hold in view the idea that space connects. You can hold in view there's no place to go, nothing to do. We could hold in view there's one who is not busy. But in fact, we are already holding in view the idea that we're already separated. Before I look at Paul, I think, normally, I assume we're already separated.

[18:04]

So, before I think about Paul, I assume he's over there, we're separated by space, and all of the perceptual information I have will confirm that, because the perceptual information comes after the view. Does that make sense? So, the perceptual information will reinforce the view that we're separated. So, the view is actually before I think and perceive. So that's why Right Views comes at the beginning of the Eightfold Path, because it's prior to thinking. So the effort of practice, serious practice, transformative practice, is to develop an accurately assuming consciousness. a consciousness that makes accurate assumptions about the world, about how we exist, before thinking begins. So, in a way, you're using your thinking to put some things in before thinking.

[19:08]

It's a clever idea, these Buddhists. You're trying to use thinking and use practice to get behind thinking and transform thinking with right views. Am I putting you all to sleep? So, if I take a phrase like, if I change the phrase from already, that I'm assuming, I already have this assumption already separated, I simply use language to change that to already connected. Now, that's just two words, already connected. But if you say, already connected, if you hold it in view and you keep repeating it over and over again, already connected, and this is basically a mantra practice, but a mantra practice using the basic teachings of Buddhism, you can use it on anything, and you say to yourself, already connected, already connected, and I look at you and I feel already connected.

[20:14]

And I guarantee you if you do this, it's gonna change your relationships with people. Because if I assume I'm already connected to you, I'm gonna relate to you differently. I don't have to be friendly particularly. I don't have to make a certain effort because we're already connected. Now the three functions of self are separateness, connectedness, and continuity. In any culture, Those, we have to function. Now we're not talking about self as a thing. We're talking about self as a function. And when you see self as a function, you can deal with it and work with it much better when you think it's a thing. Because when you think it's a thing, it's real slippery. You can't get at it. Where is it? It's the thing doing it. But when you see your functions, you can affect your functions. So if you practice with already connected, what happens? Now, what I'm emphasizing here is, for those of you who have been to most of the things I've been teaching and last weekend, you're probably brimful with practices and ideas and stuff like that.

[21:31]

And I like to create a kind of permission, because I know that as you practice, you come up against things. And what I'm trying to do is lay down a seed, lay down some layers of seeds... that you will, through dharanic memory, situational memory, at some point in practice you may come up to an obstacle, and the obstacle will make you remember something that we talked about. So the teaching will come up when you need it, though you may not remember it right away. But although I am giving you, you know, Too many. Part of my idea is to boggle the mind, to wear you out. My knee's not functioning very well right now. To wear you out because Buddhism begins where the mind boggles. Buddhism sort of begins when you can't figure out what's next, right? What to do.

[22:34]

But really what I'm emphasizing is that taking, that Buddhism is about thoroughness. As the teaching of, I gave you the other day, of evolving attention is about thoroughness. It's a natural practice to be curious, but that curiosity developing sustained attention evolves attention itself. So what we're talking about is being very thorough going. Like in the phrase, when you have the eye that settles heaven and earth, and you are most thorough going so that not even a thread slips through, then you attain somewhat. Then you may attain somewhat. When you have the eye that settles heaven and earth, when the way you see the world is a feeling of completeness and nourishment.

[23:44]

This is, we could say, the eye of settling heaven and earth. And you are most thoroughgoing. Your mindfulness is so developed that not a thread slips through. Then that kind of mind starts to realize, to see the world as scripture. The world itself begins teaching you. then you begin hearing the teaching. So I'm emphasizing here in this practice of views, of right views, of no theology, that if you're going to work with something like this, you have to be most thoroughgoing. I'm sorry it takes so much. You said earlier it takes all of one's attention and energy and etc., Not listen everything. I listen to everything you say. I'm most thoroughgoing. But on the other hand, isn't it wonderful to have something that no matter how much energy you put into it, you will never reach the end of it?

[25:03]

Since you're never going to reach the end, relax. Take it easy. Whether you get this far along or this far along, it's part of that. So, yeah, take it easy and enjoy your practice. Now, if you're thoroughgoing and you practice with something as simple as already connected, let's say we work with that. already connected. You get in the habit of saying it as a kind of mantra already connected. It begins to then, the perceptions you have, now begin to reinforce that we're connected instead of that we're separated. The percepts begin telling us we're connected because we begin to see the evidence of connectedness.

[26:13]

So it's no longer just a phrase, already connected. Already connected begins to generate an attentiveness open to the information. Now, you're using language to get behind language. but you're using this language to open yourself to an attentiveness, develop an attentiveness to sense perceptions which now confirm connectedness. Okay? And if you continue, not just continue this teaching of evolved attention, so if we continue with this sense that we And our percepts and concepts begin to tell us that we're already connected. And you begin to feel connected. And often it's a very tangible feeling. You suddenly feel like a fish in an aquarium. In a sense, you've ever looked at an aquarium, a fish goes by and the seaweed goes like this, and they move.

[27:18]

You begin to feel like we're all moving like seaweed in a medium, a liquid medium. So when you begin to feel this and it begins to function in an operative sense, you begin to feel how it operates, you then are at the stage where you can envision the world as this. You can begin, and here's where, although we don't like Tibetan using, visualize the same way. You use visualization in this sense quite regularly in Buddhism. You then envision the understanding as being the world you're living in. So you're now walking around in a world that you feel is connected. Now you may not be absolutely certain yet, but you're walking around as if it were connected.

[28:19]

You're trying it on. And this trying it on, envisioning it as connected, walking around it in connection, begins to develop a denser kind of... dense, I don't know, palpable kind of awareness. But again, the example I used is like a flying insect around a pond. You can't see its path in the air, but as soon as it touches the water, you can see the path. So... fleeting moments of realisation begin to... you feel the ripples of them. They only last a moment, but you feel the ripples of them now in this attentiveness, in this sustained attention. And these moments of realisation are generally, we could say, are tri-part moments, in that this is an increase in knowledge, There's a realization, a turning your life in a new direction, and there's a lessening of doubt or a freeing of obstruction.

[29:21]

So they have three parts all at once. They increase your knowledge about the world, they turn you in a new direction, and they lessen your doubt. And this then starts the whole teaching unfolding into your life. and unfolding into the rest of the Buddhist teaching you know, and you begin to see Buddhist teaching as a fabric. Now this can develop, which is pretty advanced practice, simply from taking one thing, like the one who is not busy or already connected, and bringing it to your attention in a sustained way until it begins to inform you through your percepts and concepts that this might be the case. Now, if it doesn't work, this teaching doesn't work for you. You try another teaching. And maybe this teaching won't work for you, maybe it's not true.

[30:22]

I mean, in the end, your experience is the teacher. Dogen, for instance, when he was practicing, there's a number of points where he said, the sutra as translated from Chinese into Japanese says this, or into Chinese, and this must be wrong, and it should be this way. He wrote it this way. Recent scholarship has shown that he was right. The earliest versions are as he said. So from the Zen point of view, we're writing the scriptures. through your own experience. So, as Dogen said, don't let the sutras turn you, you turn the sutras. So it doesn't mean you dismiss every practice you don't understand, you don't dismiss, but you often have to wait and come back to it later. But the more you know about Buddhism, you'll find some teachings, you're just sure they're not, they're probably off. Mm-hmm. And we have the power in Zen practice to make this decision.

[31:24]

And I think in all of Buddhism it should be that way. Because this is a human-made creation. This isn't a revealed religion. It doesn't come from outside the system. It's something we're doing. Now, when you move, when you begin to experience already connected and you, in contrast to already separated, you are not only generating a condition where the view, you're placing a view, you're replacing the view of already separated with the view of already connected and it begins to change your situation in the sense that the now percepts and concepts inform this new view.

[32:33]

Now it's assumed in Buddhism that a lot of psychological problems come from the dissonance involved in having delusive views. If the delusive views before thought arises aren't the way things are, you spend a lot of energy trying to make things work with something that in a deep level you recognize are wrong. Could you open the window a little more? Unless it freezes you sitting there. Yeah. Okay. Okay. In addition to that, why do you suppose that now separateness, as I've said, is like our immune system? It tells you what belongs to you and what belongs to you and so forth. And it's a form of self. The immune system is a form of self. It determines what belongs to this thing and what belongs to that, also this thus thing.

[33:38]

Sorry to call you a thing. We don't have much problem with separateness. This is understandable, as I said this morning, self itself is a word which implies, which means to be cut off from God and the cosmos. And we can translate it otherwise to ourselves, but basically if you look at it, where it comes from as a word, how it fits into our culture, that's its predominant identity. So we don't have much problem with connectedness, with separateness, I mean. And connectedness, we, you know, most of our connectedness, I'm afraid, is politeness. Behavior. We try to be nice and we think and we do good works and we try to help people. But it's a kind of, to compensate for feeling separate. Now, why do we feel separate? Why do we have a problem with connectedness?

[34:39]

Because we're trying to practice connectedness from the mind of separateness. Separateness, already separated, already separated, already separated, generates a particular kind of mind that's as different as dreaming mind is from waking mind. So within waking mind you have a mind of separateness and no matter what you do it's going to see things as separate and when you try not to be separate it's going to be a kind of behavioral thing, right? When you shift to a mind of connectedness, then you have to make an effort with separateness. To feel separate, you have to shift to this mind of separateness. And as I have said now a number of times, one of the times we enter into the mind of connectedness is when we have the misfortune to be deeply in love, which almost always leads to immense suffering. Because we trade our, we barter our sense of continuity for love.

[35:51]

And we give our sense of continuity to another person who once they've got it, they seem to leave with it. Come back here. That's my sense of continuity you've got. And you feel like, ugh. So you turn over your sense of... We so desire connectedness that we turn it over to another person, either a guru or a lover or something like that. Now, connectedness, if you look at Taoist teaching, Chinese Taoist teaching, it is primarily a teaching about attunement and connectedness. The entire emphasis is basically establishing a mind of attunement so that I'm already connected, and that connectedness is manifested as a bioelectrical attunement, a kind of immediate connectedness that's not in the realm of concepts, but that's experienced.

[37:01]

And in fact, that's going on. It's just that we don't notice it because we notice the world. We're not only conscious, our consciousness is a consciousness of separateness. You can also have a consciousness of connectedness, but it's a different kind of consciousness. So now we're seeing we've got quite a lot of different minds going here. We've got dreaming mind, we've got conscious connectedness mind, conscious separateness mind, and we've got awareness and, you know, Gosh knows where we are, we're in all these different minds, but that's just the way it is, you know. And the mind of separateness, as I said this morning, has an incredible homeostatic persistence. And the mind of separateness is very own-organizing so that, again, all your percepts tell you everything is separate. But once you taste the mind of connectedness, which is what meditation is trying to get you to do, and mindfulness is trying to get you to do, our practice is to enter you in through the mystery gate.

[38:11]

We call it then sometimes the gate of sweet doom. You enter into the mind of attunement, enter into the mind of connectedness, and then it becomes unorganizing consciousness. and persistent, or homeostatic. Okay. So I've said something about views, and I think you have an idea of what this sense of an accurately assuming consciousness is, and that And we could look at what are the basic accurate views. Well, some are particular to us, and some are general, like everything's changing, everything's impermanent, there's no inherency. And in this case, there's nothing outside the system, and we're already connected, so forth.

[39:20]

And this, so this con, this con, which I've used this scroll to illustrate, he's pointing at the moon, let's presume. Aha, a double moon. Is this a double moon? Wait till I go back to the States. All the lunatic birds are in Australia. Geez. You can get some crazy birds out there. I think that's the one that imitates the chainsaw. No, that's not a lyrebird. No, that's a... Yeah, wacko, yeah. I bet. He's just commenting on the other birds. Could you open the door a little bit? Yes, sir.

[40:26]

So I think you have an understanding of why the Eightfold Spast starts with right views. and how they are prior to behavior, conduct, speech, livelihood, and even meditation and concentration. Meditation and concentration come at the end, so you have to get your view straight before you can actually really deeply practice. Get your life straight, get your livelihood straight, your behavior straight, your meditation straight, which frees your energy or effort the sixth time. of the Eightfold Path and that free energy and effort then allows real mindfulness, palpable mindfulness, cohesive mindfulness and concentration. Then with that concentration you can go back and start to develop your views. So you can go through the Eightfold Path several times and Okay, so that's, I think, clear enough.

[41:48]

Can I ask a question? Yeah, let me just say one thing. There's nothing outside the system. How do you work with this? I'll say something about that. Yes, what's your question? What you talk about... One of the practices was repeating mantra. So by repeating it, you start to... your perception and conception turns around. Can you differentiate between that and the... the propaganda of Hitler's information minister. No difference. You answered.

[42:48]

No difference. It's just a powerful tool used for another purpose. And I watched a concert of Michael Jackson in Budapest or someplace. I don't know where it was. I saw it on TV. It was actually fantastic. There he is, and there's all this stuff, and shooting lights, and he's standing there, and this crowd is live silent. Dead silent. An immense crowd. I don't know, 500,000 people or some immense number of people. And he's standing there like this, or like that, and he moves one finger. And there he goes. This is straight-out shamanism. He absolutely knew where the ma point was. He just moved one finger. So these things are in popular culture, in advertising, etc.

[43:51]

And it's... It's very difficult, I mean, to say something about that. Mass circulation magazines are fairly new. They're late 19th century, early 20th century. In the late 19th century, there were virtually none. Within about 20 years, they began to have circulations of several hundred thousand. And what is a mass circulation magazine about? It has nothing to do with the readership, really. It's about advertising. And basically, they can be given away. And So they're about getting your attention so that they can sell your attention. So basically, could you now close the door for us? Thanks. We'll have a pulse of you opening and shutting your door here. So basically, mass circulation magazines, which we're all in the midst of, fashion, etc., [...] is all about that our attention has been purchased. and sold to, and so everywhere you go now in the world, I mean, I was quite sad actually being in Melbourne because, I mean, the birds are refreshing, as lunatic as they are, but in... Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[45:12]

I should start acting like Castaneda. The Power and Necessity of Views, Being Without Theology, a series of talks by Richard Baker Roshi at the Maitreya Center during the Wisdom and Compassion Conference held in September 1997. This is a continuation of the lecture. Stores I see every airport, every city in the world now, and it's all these name brands. When you go to a restaurant, it's a chain. I saw there's a new Wolfgang Puck restaurant. who has a restaurant brand new. I went in opening night by chance or something, just walking through town. It's over there across from the station in that new building, those new buildings. And he has a restaurant in Los Angeles for movie stars called Spago. And he's a famous cook. And now he's got a chain of restaurants called Wolfgang Puck. He should go back to L.A. I mean, he should stay where he is. But anyway, and the food was, you know, quite good food, but it was, you know, kind of assembly line good food.

[46:18]

Made me sad. So if you practice mindfulness, you have to buy back your attention, because your attention has been purchased. And it's very hard to do because we now have our purchased attention is all about our relationship with other people and compassion and connectedness, etc. And we don't feel connected unless we have the right fashions on and so forth like that. This is a sad situation. And it's very hard to reverse it. To actually have your own attention that belongs to you and is not purchasable This is one reason I'm such a... I won't go on the Internet. I won't... We don't send out any brochures. We don't advertise ourselves. I only want people to find us through word of mouth. If we have to advertise ourselves, I'd rather fail. And if there's only six students, I'm happy with six students.

[47:23]

I don't know. If there's only me, I'm happy with me, you know. I'm stuck with me, so I'd better be happy with it. painful as it is. Sorry. Okay. How do we practice with that there's nothing outside this? that there's no thing going to come from outside. There's no future. The future is here. The past is here. And what is this here? It's timeless and momentary. And you have to develop an attention that brings yourself into this timeless, totally fleeting, and yet entirely decisive moment.

[48:28]

I think the best phrase to practice with is, just now is enough. Just now is enough. I know it's unbelievable. As I say, particularly if you need lunch or have to go to the toilet or something like that. But at another level, just now has to be enough. And when you really feel, when you open yourself to the mind of just now is enough... We don't need anything. This is the mind of enlightenment. Enlightenment is the mind which needs nothing. So when you practice with just now is enough, as a mantra, as a phrase, as a background mind, you become pregnant with just now is enough. Everything becomes bright and complete and in place. Everything is in place. Where else could it be? You feel like you're in a circle of light all the time when you really discover the mind of just now is enough.

[49:44]

Everything is center. I'm sounding awfully serious. Sorry. He's telling me it's okay. Okay. So that's enough on that. We started at 2.30 and it's now 3.40. Is that right? So we've been an hour and ten minutes. So it's time for a break or to do something else? Yes. Okay. Okay, so here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to have a break until maybe 10 after 4. Then we're going to go to 5.30 instead of 5. But we will continue with any discussion, but not as long as we did last time where we ended up with no meditation.

[50:54]

If you have some discussion, I'd also like to say, in answer to what somebody asked here, you asked, how is Buddhism a religion? So I can say something about that fairly briefly, and then we can sit for a little bit. Okay? Okay. The basic pattern of breathing is it goes from non-conscious to conscious and interfered with to conscious and not interfered with. The basic ways you can bring your attention to your breath are to count your exhales.

[51:57]

Usually to ten and back Because you're not trying to count to a thousand or a million. It would be too much effort, but you can get in the habit of just counting to ten and starting over. And another is to name your breath. To name each breath. This is an exhale. This is an inhale. This is a long exhale. This is a short inhale. And you can... I have to raise my breath. And you can... Actually, in more developed breathing, base breathing and things like that, you can have short exhales and long inhales and things like that. But that's a different kind of breathing. And then there's following your breath, just getting in the habit of following your breath without counting it or naming it. Naming your breath develops the habit of naming impermanence rather than naming permanent things.

[53:05]

Counting your breath establishes a kind of continuity in your life. And following your breath establishes a kind of continuity, connectedness. And so you just learn to be present with your breath. And as your mind and body become more woven together, you're present with your mind-body, or body-mind, or breath-mind, or breath-body, through following your breath. The first actual breath practice I would say is inventory. You just take an inventory of the various ways you breathe, when you're thinking, when you're not thinking, when you're certain emotions, etc. And you take an inventory including whether you're breathing through the left nostril or the right nostril, which pulses and goes back and forth.

[54:12]

And it's a different kind of thinking connected with right nostril breathing than connected with left nostril breathing. Whether we're inhaling one, exhaling the other, and so forth. Then there's visualizing the breath And initially visualizing the breath is a way to stabilize the breath because you don't want to breathe with your chest. If you breathe with your chest, there's a tendency to stop your breathing when you become concentrated. Like a watchmaker, when he's concentrating, something kind of stops your breath so you're steady. So you don't want to stop your breath or you create a kind of mapo, lack of oxygen in your brain, and so forth. And the way to visualize your breath that stabilizes breath is to visualize the exhale as exterior, and the inhale as interior, but coming from your hara, or coming from below, and coming up. And the way your diaphragm works, it feels like that.

[55:16]

So you visualize an oval, a football in footy, that shape. with a 4 and 20 in sauce. And a stubby. See? I've been here too long already, yeah, I can tell. I'm getting proud of myself. I don't understand the rules at all. This looks like a bunch of men running around after a muddy ball. I can't figure what they're doing. Anyway. Yeah, I've heard. And you guys are so noble to be here and sit watching. Right after we break out the stubbies. Okay. So, you inhale, exhale. The inhale feels like it's coming up this way. And you exhale. And that, if you visualize it as a circle, it tends to stabilize your breathing and move it into diaphragm.

[56:23]

Deep breathing with your chest is quite stable. That kind of breathing can become extremely slow, one or two breaths a minute even, and yet your breath doesn't stop. You don't cut off. It can become slow naturally. In other words, if you're not thinking much, you don't need much oxygen for thinking. You don't need much oxygen for maintaining your posture. your breathing can become very slow. And sometimes this is called shikantaza. It's one form of shikantaza, of just sitting. But it's just sitting in which the breath is very slow. And that, again, is a different kind of mind than when the breath is more active. But you shouldn't try to slow your breath down. This will allow your breath to slow down if you're in a place where it's okay that it slows down. Now the visualization is also a practice in which you have a field of mind in which this is occurring. So each different way you pay attention to the breath creates a different kind of mind.

[57:28]

Continuity, connectedness, etc. Not just these three. So there's inventory, counting, following, naming, and visualizing. And visualizing your breath, there's also more than that, but those are enough, I think. Those are basic enough. And visualizing the breath also develops the practice of feeling a visual pathway a yogic imagination, an imagined pathway. And as you begin to imagine that pathway, as your breath becomes more subtle and you are physicalizing your breath, physicalizing your mind through your breath. That is a process of purifying and refining your mind through your breath.

[58:29]

It's like you're rubbing mind against breath and refining the mind. And then you develop what's called a subtle breath or subtle mind that can enter and penetrate your body in a new way. And that begins to be the channels for the chakras. So this same oval here begins to open up and feel like it's going up your backbone and down your front. So the different kinds of breathing together with the visualization are what opens up the subtle body. Okay, is that explanation enough? Now, what we've been talking about today, this morning and this afternoon, I think are among the most important things, significant things we could talk about.

[59:35]

Because, you know, really, as I keep saying, the great adventure and whether our planet's going to be saved or not, I think, is how well these two civilizations of Asia and the West come together. because obviously neither Western civilization nor Asian civilization is going to save the planet. I mean, I think in the larger sense, both civilizations are failures, and so far the mix of them is even worse. I mean, the industrialization of Asia is, you know, if everybody in China wants a washing machine and an airplane ride, there's no hope. There's no question that they want to. So, when they think they have a right to, and they do have a right to in a certain sense, when humanism means humanity is the center of things and the planet is a garbage pail.

[60:39]

Excuse me for sounding like a preacher. But on the other hand, while Japan tried to build the biggest battleships in the world, to compete against America and have even bigger battleships than America. It didn't work. America and the West still defeated Japan militarily. Japan said, we'll send our sages over. And Tibet said, they may think they've got us, but we're going to send all these Buddhist saints over. So we're part of that movement that's counterpuntal to the industrialization. that's going along with West moving too much East. And we're East moving into the West. At least I see it that way. And one of the main interfaces is psychology and Buddhism. So I think that there's nothing more important.

[61:43]

I mean, we're just here, we're having a good time, and it's kind of casual, and we're seeing people, and they come to our office if you're a client, if you're a therapist, and, you know, it's kind of normal stuff. But there's a meta picture to what we're doing. And that metta picture is that a few people committed 100% together changed the world. Have the possibility at least of changing the world. Now why is Buddhism a religion? It's not clear that it is a religion actually. A friend of mine, Mayumi Oda, who does these paintings of the goddess that are in somebody's book that they loan me. She's not here today. She said to me the other day, is Buddhism as big as Dharmism? Is Buddhism as big as the Dharma? It's a good question.

[62:44]

From the point of, if we call Buddhism Dharmism, with an emphasis on the teaching that the Buddha gave, then you're really talking about what we could call an inner science. Now the Buddha, I do not think he thought as a person that he was starting a religion. He was, I think he would, if he had to be defined, he would be called a yogic philosopher. He was presenting a teaching based on yoga, based on an understanding that there's no outside, that this is all inside. And you can work with that as an image. It's all inside, it's all inside. But his teaching was so powerful, it slowly turned into a religion, because we human beings need a religion.

[63:50]

But it's not certainly a religion in the sense it's revealed from outside the system by some god or some, you know, just this human being did it. And then a lot of us participated in creating a religion. And scholars think various things, like an Indian scholar named Dutt, D-U-T-T, Sukumar Dutt, thinks that, would say that there was a monkish Buddhism around stupas and illiterate, a kind of illiterate monkish Buddhism that became superstitious and the stupas were at the center of it. And Lamotte thinks that the illiterate lay population changed Buddhism, changed Dharmism as an inner science of mysticism into a religion of magic and superstition.

[64:56]

And again the stupas were seen to be the center of it. Now that's the negative way of looking at stupas. But stupas are this keeping alive the Buddha's relics and a lot of stuff went around that. Now there was a movement within Mahayana. It doesn't mean temples don't still have stupas and stupas are shortens or Pagodas are not still important in Buddhism in general. Zen temples sometimes have stupas, not very often, but sometimes. But there was a shift from the stupa, the relics of the Buddha, or the imagined relics of the Buddha, the molecules of the molecules, the astral body of molecules, or something like that, because there couldn't have been even enough molecules to go around all the stupas there are. to a sense of the seamless tomb.

[66:01]

There's a whole koan about the seamless tomb, not the tomb based on water, earth, water, etc., and the relics. But the seamless tomb means the Dharmakaya. So there's a shift from the relics of the Buddha to emptiness itself, or the Yogacara experience of emptiness called the Dharmakaya. And Mahayana Buddhism is built out of that. No. But at the same time, the idea of a historical Buddha, a human person, part of the more Pali Theravadan tradition, with a human being as the Buddha, went to the idea of a cosmic Buddha. Because then the Dharmakaya got merged with a cosmic Buddha by Ratchana. So, you know, it's a complicated thing. It's like the large populations needing a religion turned Buddhism into religion. And a lot of it was done by a largely illiterate population and illiterate monks.

[67:07]

At the same time, there's another side, for instance, where the stupas become the beginning of the lineage. where the stupa has become the beginning of the sense of saints, a kind of Buddhist saint, or a kind of great teacher. So, as in a way Buddhism got pushed, if it ever was primarily an inner science and a yogic philosophy, it got pushed into being a religion, that religion also became a very refined, not just something superstitious and illiterate, And you begin to have the idea of maximal greatness. Do you follow me? Maximal greatness. Maximal greatness is a great deal like the sense of the dialogue between your sitting, accepting your posture, but being informed by an ideal posture.

[68:10]

Now, the ideal of maximal greatness is something like this. M-A-X-I-M-A-L, if you look into yourself in a most open and intimate way and look back into yourself, I think we find what Sukershi would call an innermost request, an inner request that human beings, that some kind... you'd really love to see an ideal human being. Maybe at some point your mother or father was an ideal human being, but as you grew up, they became maybe marvelous human beings, but more ordinary. But still, I think for a while, as a young person or a child, you retain the idea that maybe there's a great teacher out there, there's a great...

[69:16]

human being out there. And I think that comes into play with our projections on teachers, gurus and so forth, that we meet a teacher, and there's a lot of Buddhist teaching that, well, you don't criticize the guru, you allow him, but you don't find fault with him and so forth, or her, etc. That it's not so much in Zen, but it does exist, Buddhism, a lot. And that allows you to project onto the teacher this idea of maximal greatness or of an ideal human being. You're following me? The kind of person you really wished existed. And I think it's actually important to open yourself up to this because what you're opening up yourself to is a sense of divinity, a sense of the divine in you. You can call it something else if you want, but it's basically a sense of the divine. And if you open yourself up to this, as I've spoken about before, this feeling of divinity, sometimes we say, boy, is he divine, or is she divine?

[70:35]

If you open yourself up to this sense of divinity, And you can really touch that again, so that maybe tears wash your cheeks, how deeply at some point, unconsciously or half-consciously, you really wanted such a person to exist. Now, if you really open yourself up to that, crack open your heart to that. It's not just a matter of looking around. and saying, I wish there was such a person. If you really want such a person to exist, then what's the obvious conclusion? That person should be you. Sorry. Now, how do we understand that person should be you? It means that you open yourself to the potential of maximal greatness.

[71:39]

but you also open yourself to helping someone appear like that. It's not just a matter of being a Buddha yourself or whatever we call maximal greatness, but that you also help every person you meet to be that. A Sangha is actually a group of people who could recognize a Buddha if a Buddha appeared. Now, if you practice with the idea of maximal greatness, you begin to imagine, envision, envision the world as a place Buddhas could exist. If you think, oh, this is the modern age, no Buddhas existing, all the teachers are flawed and blah, blah, blah, but you know what I'm saying? Buddhas existed in the past, but they don't exist now. If you think that way, you are not helping a Buddha appear. You have to come to the point where you can imagine that right in this room a Buddha could appear. Or right here in Australia, or right here in this eucalyptus rainforest.

[72:47]

When you start imagining that you live in a world in which the Buddha could appear, you are truly taking refuge in the Buddha. This is the deeper meaning of taking refuge in the Buddha. Take refuge in a world where the Buddha could appear. And in yourself, you work with maximal greatness in the same way I'm saying that your posture you accept is informed by an ideal posture. You notice that, you know, I feel more settled. I have more sense of what the I that settles heaven and earth is. But I could be more settled. But you don't criticize for that. You just notice you could be more settled or you could be more clear. And there's an energy in that. And that draws you toward that.

[73:52]

And that way of thinking, instead of saying, well, I did pretty well, now I'm good enough, or or I'll never be very good, this doesn't work. Just, oh, I have this kind of clarity, this kind of clarity, it could be more clear. A Buddha is more clear. And this working with maximal greatness, which is also the sense of lineage and stupas and so forth, and not a form of superstition, is one of the things that makes Buddhism a religion. This is no longer philosophy. When you're working with the ideal of an internal divinity or that sense of a Buddhahood or Buddha nature, we're talking about something that I think we have to call a religion. When you begin to take refuge in the world as where a Buddha could appear, this is no longer simple philosophy. When you're doing a practice which requires not only examination, testing, analysis, but also requires faith, then you're talking about something that's very close to being a religion.

[75:04]

Even if there's no God, or creator God, or something. And the product is similar. I mean, the Jesuits who sent reports back from China and Japan to the Spanish king back in I don't know, the 1700s, whenever it was, said, you know, there's no Christians here, but there's some folks that live like Christians. And they seem to be Buddhists. So actually, I believe, by some kind of projective fiat, the Pope established a special ghetto for Buddhists in heaven. Because, you know, non-Christians couldn't get to heaven. But they said Buddhists who, this didn't apply to Jews, unfortunately, but it applied to Buddhists who lived like Christians could go to heaven. And this was because of the powerful reports coming back from Asia to Portuguese, Chinese, I mean Portuguese, Spanish, the Vatican, that there were people who lived like Christians.

[76:16]

So what am I saying here? I'm saying the same thing as Thomas Merton said. You know Thomas Merton who wrote Seven-Story Mountain? He said he felt more connected to Buddhists who meditated than non-monastic Catholics. That there's something about meditation and monasticism which produces a similar kind of person. So we could say Buddhism is a religion because the product is similar. in other words, a person who practices, seriously practices Catholicism, ends up to be quite similar often, not just belief but practice, ends up to be quite similar to a person who practices Buddhism. And if somebody asked me what's my job description, My goal, the only thing I really have, the only aim in life I have, is to have one successor.

[77:30]

If I have two or three, that's great, but my job in life is to have at least one successor. If I fail, I fail, but we'll see. Anybody looking for a job with not low pay, no pay? Anyway. But my job description on a daily basis, if it really came down to it, is to keep a candle lit at Crestone and Johanneshof 365 days a year. That's so important to me that if I heard something's happened at Crestone or Johanneshof where everyone has to leave, two people's mother is sick and somebody else had some other crisis. And for some reason, I would get right now to an airport and fly there so that the candle is lit and meditation is done every morning. It's that important to me. Or I'd call up somebody and say, please go to Yanisov for a few days till I can get there and make sure.

[78:33]

Because my job, once I start a meditation center, is that every day, from now in perpetuity, there is a candle lit, sutras are chanted, and somebody's meditating if possible. This is not an ordinary job description. This is a kind of religious job description, you know. So, in many senses, Buddhism is a religion. But it's a religion without a theology. It has a dharmology. Okay, is that enough for our... time together you want to do something else do you have some questions something discussion and we can sit a little more too so is there a minimum time of that like you would specify one hour a day just oh we're in my centers well if necessary that you know if it's really um like in japan the priest will come in sometimes i'm not saying i would do this

[79:41]

Like the canon. Okay. Absolutely as fast as possible. But still, that's something. And after the war, Daitoku-ji, where I sat, there were like two or three monks, and there's jobs for about 20 to keep the thing going. And one would hit the drum, and then they'd run in and sit, and then somebody else would hit the bell, and then they'd run in, and somebody else would go cook. But they did that, and slowly people came. So from my point of view, if they light the candle and chant the Heart Sutra, that would be enough. If they can sit, that's better. Generally, we have sitting every day. You know. The Heart Sutra is at the corner of the office. Well, it's the main thing we would chant. Yeah, it's the most chanted Buddhist sutra in the world. So, think something else?

[80:49]

Sorry, it's just I was confirming before. I think there was another question about self and no self. Oh, yes. We can't leave that out. But it does make me think, if I told that little story, that this friend of mine, Ron Ayer, did a series called The Long Search. It followed, I used to call it the level ascent, appeasing him. And he wanted to do us in our center, and I wouldn't let him. I said, to study us, you have to study as if you were a bird watcher, and if you get too close, we'll fly away. I didn't want to be in a television program, etc. But I did set it up, so he did a program with Yamada Mumunoshi in Japan, and he also... nothing to do with me, did an hour program on a Hasidic rabbi.

[81:53]

And they filmed him, and finally at the end he talked a great deal, very clear, intellectual. In the end, Ron said to him, well, as a Hasidic rabbi, do you ever practice Zionists? He said, oh, yes, but we don't talk about it. Okay. So a little bit I feel like non-self is a little bit like that. I should non-self it. There's an experience of no self. There's no such thing as functioning without a self. But there's an experience of the absence of self, which... can be from some extended period of time, but as soon as you're in the world there's some functioning self. And I would say non-self is different from no-self, and non-self is a kind of self without the usual boundaries of self through which or by which you can function.

[83:03]

So non-self is a kind of self. No-self is the experience of an absence of self. But this is a lot like no mind. Maybe I could... If you'd like... I probably won't carry a microphone, but no one needs... This is the esoteric teaching, so it doesn't need to be on the tape. Let's call it the esoteric teaching, so I don't have to carry a microphone. We could say that... My goodness! You don't know what that means.

[84:05]

We could say that separation is something like this. Connectedness is something like this. Continuity is something like this. Now, that's a sort of negative way to look at it, but this is continuity connected in separation based on... And you... That a... I may not even be able to talk about it. If you shift to a... It really takes me, when I come to something new, it takes me a while to find the way to language it. When you practice, like from the mind of connectedness, you begin to generate a mind of continuity

[85:21]

but it's a continuity that's inclusive. It's not continuity of this to this to this. It's this kind of continuity. And so the mind of continuity turns into the Dharmakaya. And the mind of connectedness turns into the Sambhogakaya. into the bliss body. Because the more you move into attunement, you move into what we call a sambhogakaya body. And then the body of separation would be the nirmanakaya body. So normally we practice from separation to connectedness to continuity, and continuity is primarily our story. But as you start to practice, you begin to go from a continuity which is so much connectedness we can call it allness.

[86:24]

And that allness you begin to experience in a kind of vibratory sense of as if you were so connected your skin was peeled off. They have pictures of the Buddha... of our hearts, opening their chest and there's a Buddha inside. So you begin to experience yourself as this reward body or bliss body and that becomes the nirmanakaya body when you can function in the ordinary world through that. So this practice of connectedness, of separation, connectedness and continuity When you realize the mind of continuity, it opens you to the three bodies of Buddha. So the three practical functions of self open you to the three bodies of Buddha.

[87:27]

Then you have the experience of no-self. of non-self. Are you following what I mean? So, three functions of self turn into non-self through the mind of connectedness rather than the mind of separation. Is that a permanent state? A permanent state? We have the 10 oxymoron pictures here. Sorry. No, no. Is it a state that you can stay in? I wouldn't want to, if I could.

[88:33]

In other words, there are a few teachers on the planet. who whose practice is based on buddha a buddha model and not a bodhisattva model and i think a bodhisattva model is better because a buddha model you you get so removed from a connectedness with other people that you really has to leave lead a very special kind of life And I think that the practice of entering into life in the weeds, we say in the weeds, in the koans, is a term for the bodhisattva practice. It means to go in the, it's just me, when you see the phrase in the weeds, it could mean delusion, but it usually means the bodhisattva who's willing to be in the weeds. So that you... Now, if I talk about this, this is really what the practice... This is really what the practice... part of the practice of the three natures.

[89:48]

And that's what I'm going to talk about tomorrow. So, I don't want to get into it now because it takes a while to develop it. Sorry, I... Is it illusory that the Buddha as an ideal is kind of a dichotomy as like the way it seems but for me that from what I can sense that if your ideal is Buddhahood you are practicing in relation to others Whether you free others to become Buddha first, that's another goal. It's okay. But I do not know whether this is a perceptual shift or intellectual stuckness.

[90:54]

I don't know. Well, it's...

[90:56]

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