and denied, you pollute yourself more. And then if you're polluted, then you really affect other people. So basically, if you can learn to sit still, you can let anything happen, it's okay. And the person receiving, even they do receive, says, oh, it's all mine, who cares? Okay, something else. He needs some help with the perception of the skandhas? No, with the perception. Yeah. Also, he needs help with the idea of the skandha of perception. Why? We're not perceiving. No, we have perception. Well, the simplest would be this is naming. Grasping that something is a concept.

[01:03]

Now, it's a little more than that, but naming definitely fits there. Now, some of you hadn't said anything I'd like to say. Now, please, some people come up to me like you did and say, you have lots of questions, but you tell me privately. So why don't you tell everyone? Oh, yeah, we talk many over and over. Okay. Yeah, but I'll share it with you. Oh, just say something that you feel. What's one of your questions? i shouldn't have to do all the work here well we have been talking about awareness and emptiness and consciousness and and i had brought something in with dream i had

[02:22]

or forms of dreams that I dream like a photo camera. I have no feeling, nothing, I just... It is a wonderful thing, you know, for me in the dream to not to grasp at anything or to feel. It is wonderful. When I wake up, then the feeling comes. But whilst I'm dreaming, I just see the things like a photo camera. And then I wanted to know to which of these gondolas it applies. OK. Images of images, visual images, generally are in this territory here. And so when you're dreaming, you're usually working in a big territory of feeling.

[03:23]

Now that's not an emotion. Emotion falls into perception. When you have an emotion, like anger, you've taken feeling and turned it into anger. That's a kind of perception. Perception has the sense of grasping in it. You shouldn't just say that perception is naming. You can be angry without knowing the reason for it. Naming is just one of the target words.

[04:23]

So this skanda is when you take hold of something. So when I have a general feeling, And maybe that feeling is sadness. But it's when it's real specific sadness, you're shifting into this territory. Yeah. Now, when you... See, I don't know what the words are in German. But one of the things you should... What? Mood? Where? Here. Feeling stimulated? Mood is more inherent. Yes. But again, for instance, in English you have certain words, like emotion and feeling, and thoughts.

[05:39]

And when I was given the practice to follow a thought to its source, what happens is you see that that thought is connected to several other thoughts, And it's connected to emotions and feelings and so forth. So I had to do a kind of inner dictionary in which I tried to say, well, we have these different words in English. Do I know the difference? It actually took me a long time to distinguish usefully between emotions and feelings. But let me give you another kind of example of how we've lost touch with these words. An example that I've used again a lot. In English, the phrase common sense means something everyone knows. And that's not what it originally meant.

[06:58]

What it originally meant was something that's common to all the senses. In other words, it was taking feelings, hearing, et cetera, and finding a central unity to those feelings and being able to act in a way that was common to all the senses. We don't notice, we've lost the ability to do that, or we don't notice that we do that. And when we lost the ability, the word shifted to meaning common to other people. Yeah. Now, in a culture like Japan, again, in the feeling skanda, There's something like 60 words for love. We just don't make the distinction.

[08:00]

It's like Eskimos have about 20 words for snow. You almost don't need the word for snow in lots of places. We don't know. Blue snow, you know, this kind of snow. So we just don't have a lot of words for this because we don't have the topography, the territory. So where were we? What is really the difference between feelings and emotions? Emotion, at least in English, means a... Like when you're angry...

[09:02]

you have an articulated anger, which excludes other things. And if I'm angry at you, everything you do makes me feel more angry. If I look at you, that anger carries over to you. But if I have a feeling it's inclusive, it allows lots of things to happen in that field, but anger allows only anger to happen. But again, these Thoughts, feelings, you can take something and track it, and sometimes it's a thought, and sometimes it's an emotion, sometimes it's a feeling, sometimes it's just a bare perception.

[10:05]

And as I said earlier, these are understood as clouds. And this cloud can contract and move into this one, and so forth. These are not real. There's no sharp division. OK. Yeah. Would you say the feeling is weak, and an emotion is a moved feeling? Feeling is weak. Weak. Weak. Oh, weak. What? Vague. Vague. And emotion is a moved feeling or a feeling that is pointing to something. Directed? Yeah. I wouldn't say vague is right, but yes, emotion is more directed, more articulate.

[11:09]

And Again, we go back to that song. I hear the song. I have a kind of, my mood, I have a feeling. It's almost impossible not to have feelings. Now, we tend to use in English feelings to mean emotion. But I can walk in this room and have a feeling. It's not an emotion. I might start to feel angry. Or I might have feelings about you. Then I actually mean emotions. But if I come in this room and just there's an atmosphere to the room, feeling is the most ephemeral.

[12:12]

Ephemeral. It's hard to grasp. Intangible. Intangible. It's the most intangible from the point of view of definition. But it's the most tangible in a certain way from the point of view of no definition. From the point of view of non-definition. For example, when you're practicing, as I talked last night, you're beginning to recognize a subtle body. And a subtle breath. That's at the level of feeling. And as soon as you're in motion, you're out of the subtle body. Now, I didn't say it last night because I thought it was too much.

[13:31]

But if you develop inner seeing, you can actually see your chakras. And you can sort of move your feeling of seeing to the back of your eyes, which affects your cheekbone and your ears, sort of. It affects the way your head feels here. And you tend to look not at things, you begin to develop a sense of field seeing. The way a juggler does. A juggler can't look at any one ball, but has to look at them all at once. And it's actually a physiologically slightly different state. And if you develop that kind of way of seeing a field, like I can see this room all at once, and I apprehend it in a whole way,

[14:34]

If I can turn that feeling inside, you can begin to, if you develop the skill, while you're sitting, you begin to see kind of thing moving. At first it's unfamiliar territory, you can't. But then if you sort of locate yourself here or here, You can actually start to see a movement like that. And then you can actually, with a kind of intention at the level of imagination, You can feel that reverse. But it actually goes, it goes, it's a glow, it goes in all directions. It goes this way as well as this way. And you can begin to feel how it affects your health or sense by the moon.

[15:42]

So all those, these... Chakras are not exactly medical and scientific. You can't locate. You'll find if you try to develop the sense of an inner location, you can't hold an inner location here. It's very difficult to. But if you move it to here or here, these are where it suddenly will settle. You can feel it. And when you settle it there, there's a kind of way you can organize your whole experience from that. And this is very close to the undivided world. So when they talk about the Buddha has 32 marks, circles in the palm of his hand or on his feet, that means the ability to see the subtle body which is close to the undefined world.

[16:56]

Or the undivided world. Undivided world. So what I'm trying to suggest is, this is actually within the realm of our experience. But it's not, if the quality is, it's non-graspable. So graspable experience is here. And non-graspable experience is back this way. And when you begin to be able to have non-graspable experience, you begin to awaken the subtle body. Which technically in Buddhism is called the Sambhogakaya body. Was that too much or was that interesting? So what else? We should go to bed soon and have a good dinner or something.

[17:59]

Here I'll just talk now of the concept of perception is reality and if you change perception you can change the reality. Does that fit in here anyway? Of course. But if you change the feeling you change reality too. Okay, now the last thing I should say probably today is that The more you live down here, the more you create an unconsciousness. I was talking to Luigi about this earlier. Now, contemporary psychology often assumes that the unconscious is a given. Like your nose or something. And all cultures and all peoples have an unconscious.

[19:19]

I'm sure that's not true. And you can all, I think, already see that if you, the way you define yourself is a different combination of skandhas than ours. You need a different psychology. So the same kind of psychological practices that work in one culture may not work in another culture. Everyone's going to have problems with their mother and father. In every culture. But the way that manifests and the way to work with it and the way it helps you or harms you will be different. Okay, so the... The more you move in this direction, the more you're creating unconscious material.

[20:23]

If you're strongly located down here, you're going to have bigger unconscious than if you're located up here. Now, my own opinion is that the necessity to have a highly defined functioning consciousness, is a productive consciousness, is a post-industrial phenomenon. is that since the Industrial Revolution, we've begun to have more unconsciousness than before. And also democracy is one of the culprits. And I think when you create a democracy, you've got to have a high degree of social control within each individual.

[21:27]

When you have a monarchy, for instance, I'm the king. I can let you do whatever you want. Because at some point you get to be a you get to be a problem off with your head. So I can give, you can all have orgies, you can do whatever you want, but you know, as long as you don't mess with the princess. Mess with the princess off with your head. Okay, but if I'm the president, I can't say off of your head. There's laws against that. So I have to get each of you to control yourself. And Michel Foucault is very good at this. how our social forms create power, punishment, etc.

[22:44]

Punishment, power, and so on. It's the shadow side of democracy. And I think democracies and industrial societies have a much bigger unconscious identity that runs parallel to the conscious identity. democracies and industrialized societies create a self which creates unconscious a unconscious we're almost done I've said it's a lot easier for me to talk than for her to translate It takes more energy to translate. Okay, it's a simple idea. Your existence is bigger than yourself. And the more defined yourself is, Imagine there's a little ship, as I said.

[23:48]

The more defined this ship is, and the less water it lets inside, the more stuff is going to fall overboard. And if enough falls overboard, so if we have a little boat here, If a lot falls overboard, Breeson begins to pile up and interfere with the boat. Then we have to have somebody help us work this out. And I think that one of the I mean, I think one of the great contributions to the world is democracy. And it's based on Greek and Christian ideas. And part of that is the individual's relationship to God. But that individual is, you're an individual because you have, through having a relationship to God.

[25:01]

And that relationship is often mediated by a priest and confession. And out of that context, the idea of the therapist arises who mediates your individuality, helps you with your individuality. In other cultures, there's no idea of therapists. There's uncles and aunts. There's good friends. There's mentors. Now, I'm a trained mentor in the Buddhist tradition. I'm not a trained therapist. I know a lot about therapy, but I cannot do certain things with a person a therapist can do. A therapist can precipitate certain kinds of resolutions in a person that I can't do.

[26:07]

That's not my training. Precipitate. To let something come out of the person. So I think actually therapy and Buddhism have territory together. And this just has not been developed in Buddhism because there's no idea of a therapist in Buddhism. And the kind of culture that existed before Probably a therapist wasn't needed. But I think nowadays we need therapy. And I think, again, cultures which have a high degree of individuality need therapists. very difficult to make it work all by yourself. And I think Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the people who most created the Western idea of the individual.

[27:17]

And he talked about going on alone in his own thought process. And he got so far out there by the end of his life, he didn't think it worked. So in any case, we have a, this is in response to your question about the unconscious, is that when you move more back this direction, and you're in this area, the less defined you are, You don't pile up so much unconscious material. But still I feel that we are this kind of person. And our culture does emphasize this area.

[28:21]

So we have to figure out how to make it work. And there's values to the way we are. Helen asked me earlier about this scandal. In a way as if it were a progress over this. And I gave her an example. I saw a little sociological film once. And it was a little blonde South African girl and a little black South African girl. It was a kind of tree trunk, I think it was, or table, but I think it was a tree trunk. And they had about 25 or 45 things all piled up on top.

[29:22]

And they brought both little girls up and just walked them by. They kind of looked at it, and then they cleaned everything up. And then they turned the two little girls around and said, put them back on. The little white girl had no idea what to do. She kind of picked up a couple things and put them on. The little black girl with no effort reassembled everything, what was on top of it. She was completely here. She saw the pattern and could reproduce the pattern. She saw all the associations. Now, we only see associations as they go back and forth. We don't emphasize this as a territory. So we'll have to, again, tomorrow we're going to have to talk about the storehouse and unconsciousness in another way.

[30:31]

And how to be present in your unconsciousness. And the difference between the sense of a storehouse and the sense of an unconscious. That's quite a lot for the day. You always say yes. At 2 o'clock, I said it was quite a lot. What I wrote here, just for your curiosity, this is only waves. Only waves. And here's waves plus water. And here's water. And that's the standard image in the Lakhavatar Sutra. of water, waves, and whether you see just the waves, you see the waves and the water, or you really live in the water, which sometimes is waves.

[31:49]

Now, I'd like us to sit for just a little while, and then we'll stop, OK? Please sit. in any way that's comfortable for you. Take a stretch if you'd like. I would have liked to have sat a little more, but I feel that it's uncomfortable for some of you. And I don't want to keep you in Zazen prison. If you come to a sasin, then you have to be in sasin prison.

[33:14]

And you have to break out of your cell from inside. Oh. Perhaps some of you have some thoughts about all of this from sleeping on it. If you do, please. Thank you for helping me again today. You may get a relief around noon. You said this day that in industrialized societies consciousness is higher and therefore the unconsciousness is also higher.

[34:17]

Not higher, more defined. The consciousness is more defined. More defined. Yeah. Does it mean that normally he does realize people have more awareness, that they're more aware? Maybe. I think so, actually. I think you may find an ordinary farmer or fisherman less conscious but more aware. I don't know. How do you know? It's just an aesthetic guess. Maybe you should say in German what you said. My question is, because yesterday it was said that in peoples or in societies where consciousness is more defined, where it is clearer, that more consciousness is activated. And my question was then, are there peoples who are less

[35:20]

Well, I think a distinction has to be made here, though. In Buddhism, this is not passive. You're not passively aware, passively conscious. There may be people who are, because of their culture or life, may be more aware But it may be a kind of passive awareness. In Buddhism the practice is to begin to identify awareness as something different than consciousness.

[36:29]

Then get the ability to reside in that awareness Then get the ability to generate that awareness. To get the Bodhi. To abide in, to live in. Abide in that awareness. Sorry, but the noun is Bodhi or Bodhi? Bodhi. Did I say Bodhi? I didn't say Bodhi. Okay. I thought you said Bodhi the first time I was in teaching. Yeah. Well, Bodhi is good, you know. Yeah, why not? To get your body to reside in this awareness?

[37:31]

First is to become aware of the distinction between awareness and consciousness. Yes. And then is to reside, be able to reside in that awareness, not just passively be aware. Yes. And the third is to be able to generate that awareness. This is one of the differences between the awareness of a baby and the awareness of a bodhisattva. My feeling is that babies, children are more aware than conscious up to two or three. And I think that language doesn't interfere with awareness in babies. But when language begins to create a sense of a past and future, and a continuity of self, they lose awareness.

[38:40]

But even so, a baby's awareness is not a bodhisattva's awareness. Because a baby is passively living in that awareness and not generating it. No, you have to understand I'm making this up. How do I know what babies do? I don't know. I've actually studied babies quite a bit, but still. I'm trying to use these examples to create a picture in a language, not to say it's absolutely true. Yes, Luigi? Maybe the example of animals is More clear in that sense.

[39:52]

Animals are very aware, but never get to the perception of their awareness. Yeah. Yeah, I know. For instance, I like the story of Mike Murphy and Delcy's dog. I like the story of Mike Murphy and Delcy's dog. That's his wife, Tulsi. And she had a dog, which when she was coming across the Golden Gate Bridge, the dog would get up and stand by the door. Of the car? No, of her house, which was 20 minutes away. Ah, I see. And I'd be sitting with Mike and the dog would go over by the door and Mike would say, oh, Dulcy's at the Golden Gate Bridge. And then about... After about 20 minutes, the dog would stand up and start pointing at the door, you know, with his tail, you know.

[41:13]

And they had long stairs that went down to the street. You had to walk up about 80 stairs to get up. And Mike, when the dog stood up, Mike would say, oh, she's parking the car. She'll be here in five minutes. Five minutes later, tells you to walk in. Now that's awareness, not consciousness. And there's actually a koan, this koan where the phrase, where knowledge doesn't reach, that I mentioned to you. It starts out with cows and dogs know it. That doesn't mean it's better to be a cow. It means there's a big kind of intelligence that we participate in, that we can enter in more deeply, even with our consciousness. As you all know, it's our very talents which often are our biggest problem.

[42:31]

A beautiful person's biggest problem is their beauty. An extremely intelligent person's biggest problem is their intelligence. So our consciousness is our biggest problem. Now, I thought, you know, yesterday we talked about some of the differences between psychology and Buddhism. And one of the big differences is there's no therapist in Buddhism. And for those of you who weren't here, I'll just mention that I think that in our kind of society, the psychologist as the mediator of individuality And individuation is necessary. And even if a person doesn't see a therapist, to be in a culture which has the concept of a therapist is different than being in a culture which doesn't have the concept of a therapist.

[43:36]

it means you work with yourself differently and have a different sense of what self is but I think you know trying to work at this Buddhism is really I mean it's not a psychology really Trying to work at how this relates. I'm going to meet, it looks like next year, for three or four days with a group of 20 professional psychotherapists in Vienna. It's going to be partly a presentation by me, but mostly it's going to be discussion among us to try to see how we can make clear.

[44:57]

I would say that Buddhism is a mindology, not a psychology. It's a study of mind, not of psyche. Now, when psychology shifts more toward being a mindology, the study of mind and consciousness, then they overlap a lot. And when it shifts more toward psychology, then the professionally trained therapist is more important. Okay, something else? I just have a question.

[46:02]

If you just, as you say, the difference from mindology and psychology, when I see the skandhas, the main part in skandhas working, as I call it, is the coast, up or down, And in psychology, if I say, by the way, as Mindell works, for instance, that's a process, too. There's something similar. Well, I've read Arnie Mindell's books some and read in them. And I even saw a videotape that Ulricha had. I saw a bit of it while she was watching it of him working with the group, and I liked it. I thought, oh, great. But... I haven't really studied it, so I don't know. Definitely Buddhism is a process. I mean, that's where it's at. If I knew him, it might be interesting to do something with him. I recently did an hour and a half with Pir Vlaik Khan, followed by an hour and a half with Sogyal Rinpoche, followed by an hour and a half with Brother David.

[47:32]

We had a great time, actually. Oh, Pir Vlaik Khan was first, and then Sogyal Rinpoche. He's head of the Sufi Order of the West. And Sogyal Rinpoche. And Brother David Steindl-Rust. A Zenedictine. I mean a Benedictine. But But I will say something, still the context of this is not your personal mind. But how the mind works. And then, Buddhism says that's the base, now you can do the rest. But I can show you some more about the dynamic of this in a minute.

[48:49]

Pardon? No. I mean, I've done... I mean, I've seen tens of thousands of people, actually, because I used to do doksan all the time, and I had... San Francisco, I had... 400 doksan students. So I do 20, 30, 40 doksans a day, day after day. And much of it was a kind of psychotherapeutic thing. But when people needed more than psychological advice when they needed actually a psychotherapeutic interaction including transference and so forth?

[50:01]

I recommended or sent the people to trained therapists. And I didn't do that enough, actually. Because I mostly, I was just willing to be there, but I ended up being the object of so much transference and stuff. It was like molasses all over the place. So, but anyway, it's different. I'm a trained mentor, not a trained therapist. And you weren't here yesterday. We talked about this at some point. But there's no cultures in the world except Western which, and only recently, have the idea of a therapist. Other cultures have uncles and aunts and so forth, and people, and mentors, but not therapists. Okay, something else? Yeah. You said that yesterday there was a small group, a very small town line, who would go as far as to try and figure out where some process or thing would change.

[51:32]

We actually came up with more of a Chinese puzzle where the method of the process would sort of go up and down. If you were looking at this, it's going horizontal. She's doing that with some amazing knots. So figuring out where the process-oriented channel and signal system fit with the five skandhas. So if you're validating your answer, like a bigger kind of consciousness thing as opposed to the methods of psychology and human through each of these five. Yeah, my... You want to say that in German? No. Maybe you can sum it up. I'm not quite sure I got your whole meaning. I don't... I'm sorry, I didn't quite grasp all what you were saying.

[52:50]

But you got the gist of it, right? Well, I prefer to emphasize differences rather than samenesses. I mean, the sense that all is one is one of the biggest distorting ideas going. We have a phrase in Buddhism, one has many kinds. Two is not a duality. Although I prefer, and I think it's more fruitful to see the differences, and I think, as I say, different is different, when you take a slightly different approach, something else happens, even if you're in the same territory.

[53:59]

At the same time, we're all, you know, Pretty much human beings. And we're all probably descended from one kind of genetic stock. And all the human beings in the world can interbreed. What do you say? Make babies together. And thus... What did you say? Well, it sounds similar to a costume. Yeah. Yeah. There may have been human-like creatures that got wiped out by our types, who we couldn't interbreed with.

[55:04]

But in any case, we're all similar enough... that I think when we, that when in our culture we talk about a soul, spirit, and so forth, and Hinduism talks about Atman, and Buddhism talks about Anatman, non-self, but Buddhism also talks about Buddha nature. we're actually probably experientially in pretty much the same territory. That conceptually is different.

[56:05]

And the conceptual difference is really important. Experientially, it may be quite similar. Okay, so what I'd like to talk about today, if I can, I decided last night or this morning to do it, if I can present this stuff, I'd like to give you a sense, since some of you are psychologists and all of you are Our people have working with self. The sense of what Buddhism would mean by the provisional self and the essence self. or Buddha nature and refined Buddha nature. And I would say the essence self or refined Buddha nature is very, it covers the territory that we try to cover with soul, spirit and self.

[57:06]

Particularly soul and spirit. So at the physical and experiential level it's probably very similar, but at the conceptual level it's different. But again, the conceptual level makes a big difference. For instance, the experience of enlightenment and Protestant conversion experience is experientially virtually identical. It can be. Protestant conversion experience. Conversions, we use that, though, in the hysteric definition normally.

[58:23]

I don't know what the English... Oh, when a Protestant has an experience of God and the world turns into jewels and brightness, they call it conversion. Okay, okay. It's like you had a small conversion experience there. But the conceptual text in which it exists makes the experience very different. Okay, something else? Yeah. The difference between a mentor and a psychotherapist?

[59:24]

I mean, I know it's different. I've never tried to articulate the difference. And let me say, I really, let me insist and beg and plead that some of you who haven't said anything, say something. The same people are speaking mostly. You know, it's very important that we All hear each other's voice. And the sense of it is, in Buddhism, is that we're always maturing our mind continuum. If I hold this up and look at it, If I look at it without distraction, I'm not just looking at it, I'm also maturing the eye channel.

[60:47]

And every person here is a participant in a continuum that exists here. And each of you helps mature the continuum if you just say anything. And this business about I shouldn't, I'm not good enough, not smart, this isn't important, I should talk to... It's all vanity. I started practicing Zazen when I was reading a book walking back from lunch one day. I was working in a warehouse. You should go back to the dot malls and I know. And I was walking along, coming back from this little diner I used to eat at. Warehouse is a... A book warehouse. A book warehouse, right.

[61:55]

Sounds like where you get beer. Pills. All right. So I was walking back to the lager house from lunch. And I was reading, walking along, reading this book, you know. That was my style. And it suddenly said, to think you're not good enough to practice dazen is a form of vanity. And I'd just been thinking before that, oh, I'm not good enough to practice that. So I saw that in the book, I said, oh, shit. And I know what I'm getting direction. So I went to Zazen the next day and I haven't stopped.

[63:09]

It was 1961. Quite a while ago. 62, 61. Okay. Mentor and a My job is to teach Buddhism. And my job, I suppose, is to, more than that, know how to let people understand Buddhism without my teaching. and my job is to know how to intervene and interact within their mental continuum.

[64:14]

but not to work with their personal story and so forth. For instance, my teacher told me, in effect, get your life together. Which he meant, have a way of supporting yourself, work out your relationship with your spouse. Come to some practical way of existing in the world. And so he said this to me in various ways and so I worked on that. And after about a year he called me into his office. And he said in effect, not this directly, but he said in effect, I like the way you're taking care of your life, now I'll start teaching you. Now that's different than a psychotherapist.

[65:27]

How I took care of my life and got it together was not his job. Now I used to, because in the 60s, I mean, so many hundreds and hundreds of people were coming to places like my center because no one knew what to do. And plus so many people were, I mean, the majority of the young population was taking LSD. And everybody was open, vulnerable, with the flimsiest idea of self. So I was operating a rescue service for a long time. But now I try not to do that. My ex-wife and Renee, a Dutch woman who lives in my family, came to my center in Crestone just before I came here in April, with my daughter and my sort of daughter.

[66:39]

And so we were all there having a good time. And at the end they said they really liked the center and all. And there was one youngish man there, very talented on a spiritual quest. But at 19 or 20 years old, he already had about 100 acid trips. And we'd kind of taken him in because he called me up and wrote, and finally I said, oh, just come to visit. And he's got a real capacity, but he's still pretty... You know, you ask him to do something, he stands in the hall for a while and stares at things. Virginia said to me, everything looks great, but I see the old Zen center standing in that guy.

[67:58]

She in effect said, watch out, don't take care of too many people again. Anyway, does that partly answer your question? A little bit, anyway. But there is an overlap. Okay. Can you all... Now, I get the sense from most of you that my working on this board has been helpful.

[69:08]

Okay, and it's very interesting. I was saying to Luigi last night, when you take something like this and you divide it into parts, When you see the parts you begin to see different ways they can be put together. And Buddhism tends to have certain rules about dividing things up. Things are always divided up in ways in which they can be rejoined. So distinctions like body, speech, and mind. Anyway, okay. Now this afternoon, I'm gonna hope to be able to present the Vijnanas this morning.

[70:09]

because partly because not only do they make this come alive in a different way but I think they're actually practices and we have to practice them this I can explain and then you can keep them in view But the vijnanas, for you to get a sense, I can't just explain, we have to practice. And I think that they are more useful I think they have a therapeutic application. In other words, I think you could use them with clients, if you're a therapist, as ways to practice. Okay. Now, as I said, when you practice is that when you try to practice with the five skandhas, you're going backwards.

[71:28]

And you're going backwards in time. It's a little bit like you had, here is consciousness. It is as if you take consciousness here. Time goes in this direction. The moment when this feeling arose was here. You go back in time in this direction. This is what Sergio pointed out. But you're also going back into the present of the past. Okay, so when you go back, this actually shifts to here. Yeah, right. So actually you begin to have form here. and consciousness in the past.

[72:47]

Something like that. Do you get the picture? When you begin... That's for scientists. Anyway, when you go back into the past, But when you start to reside here, you're moving into the present of the present. Okay. Also, when you begin to go back here and reside here, you're transforming these things. So that at first form is just the initiation of a process that leads to consciousness. But when you can reside in these different places you're beginning to mature them and then they begin to have a horizontal life. And And, okay, so here's another one.

[74:06]

I'm going to erase this. Is that all right with you? Okay. Here's another way to look at it. Which is you have... Form and feelings. And then you have perceptions. Perceptions and associations and impulses. And you can read that pretty well.

[75:09]

Okay. These two... These two tend to be non-graspable. Our grasp. Is that understandable? Not understandable. Okay, because I think as we talked about the difference between emotions and feelings, So emotions fall into this category. And feelings here. Now, if I said to you again, I walk in this room now. And there's a certain feeling in this room.

[76:10]

Right now the feeling in this room is different than if we're outside. It's a feeling created by the continuum of all of us. That's not an emotion. Is that clear? Okay. The emotion I can grasp, in a sense. I can be angry at you. That's graspable. Does that make sense? I can feel, in fact, I'm grasped by the anger. And when I'm grasped by the anger, I have no... you know, it takes me over. And I can pay attention to it, I can say, boy, am I angry, this is... And in Zen practice, what you do is such a thing, just as an aside, you learn, you get the habit of not necessarily expressing your anger,

[77:49]

Not suppressing the anger. But feeling it completely. But through zazen practice you don't have to act on it. But you don't inhibit it. But you might have this tremendous anger and you say to somebody, you make me very angry. Anyway, I'm kidding. So that's graspable. But if I walk in this room and sense the feeling of this room, I can't grasp that. As soon as I grasp it, I can't know it. Do you understand? That makes sense? So the feeling, at the feeling level, it's not graspable. All right.

[78:58]

So, when you... So, this leads to consciousness. And this leads to awareness. And this leads to the... This leads to the subtle body. Okay. So when you practice the five skandhas, so normally the five skandhas are here. Form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness, right? But awareness is up at the top. Awareness, form, feelings, perception. So let's take awareness from here and put it over here and take consciousness from here and put it here.

[80:09]

Then you can see that when you reside here you're tending to produce the perception of yourself as the usual body and as consciousness, a divided way of looking. When you begin to get the ability to go back here and in the process maturing the mind continuum so it can stay with feelings without grasping them and then form begins to be seen as simultaneously permanent and impermanent. and you begin to get a subtle sense of form.

[81:13]

So my teacher saying, you breathe through your feet, begins to be something you can feel. Then you're in this non-graspable territory, which begins to produce awareness. Now, generally, you don't, again, you don't, make this so explicit to students. Now, if you're practicing with students, like I would do in a situation like Christo, I would tend to... When a person is speaking to you, they're giving you lots of different messages. In fact, I would say that there's... a world view.

[82:15]

And then there is unconscious stuff. And then there's the person to use Mendelian terms as the person's primary process. And then down here is the person's secondary process. Okay. Now, most people are somewhere in here. Most people are somewhere in here. They're in their primary... I don't know if I'm using these terms the way a Mendelian analyst would use them, but I'm just using the way I use them today. The fireman's primary process is to put out fires. His secondary process is as an arson. He loves fires.

[83:24]

And sometimes they make a shift. Some arson's secondary process is being a fireman. So we're in here somewhere. If you're healthy. Okay. And then most people don't have a very clear world view but they have basic assumptions about how the world works and they're in here somewhere. And they have an unconscious stuff going on parallel. And And from my way of experiencing people, the secondary process is only a part of their unconscious process. And it's more related to the primary process than to the unconscious. So my feeling is people float somewhere in here. And if they're healthy, they have a pretty strong rubber band that goes up to here.

[84:44]

Now, if you lose connection with this rubber band, for instance, you get deep into zazen. and you lose connection with your primary process. And you're a borderline type personality. You can get lost out in here. You can get lost in drug experiences. So you have to teach somebody to keep this rubber band going until they're quite sure of how to reestablish it. And that we use zazen as a way to kind of create a territory that relates to all this. So in other words, when a person is relating to you, They're relating to you in terms of their primary process, secondary process, unconscious stuff, assumptions about the world.

[85:50]

And what's uppermost on their mind right now. They just had an argument with somebody and their spouse just criticized them. So, if you're practicing with them, you have a sense of how they exist. And you may not respond so much to the perceptual level, but I may, while they're speaking to me in a perceptual level, I may respond in a feeling level. Or I may respond in a proprioceptive level. Or I may respond by changing their worldview. They have an assumption about the world which I can see, so I do something else which contradicts that assumption.

[86:55]

Now, I mean, this is not so far out. I mean, it's actually somewhat, a lot of this is cultural knowledge in the Japanese business community. Like, I mean, I don't know, I can run through my little scenario of a business meeting in Japan. The Japanese businessmen all sit down at the desk and they have, everyone has yellow pads of paper, a glass, two or three pencils, and a magic marker. The Japanese are very formal. They've learned this from the West. Everyone wants a yellow head. Usually there will be a bottle of mineral water with gas. So it's actually done to give the Western and American business person, say Swiss and American business person, the illusion that everything is normal.

[88:08]

And then the Japanese business people line up their stomachs underneath the table. And there's a business term for it called harage, which means belly talk. And the same business people will say, oh, we know nothing about Zen. But actually this all comes from Buddhism. And some of them are more conscious of it and some are less conscious. But their sense of where they exist is here. And their culture which responds very subtly to each other's individuality.

[89:11]

They really feel a continuum among each other. And again, one of the basics in this kind of culture is that, as I've said the other night, space connects us, space doesn't separate us. And that's a different world when you feel that. Okay, so they've lined up their bellies. Really not exactly or only to exclude the Westerners. But also, certainly the secondary process is to exclude the Westerners. Okay, so they line their stomachs up and once they feel it, they start the meeting. That may take five minutes or so.

[90:12]

In fact, it's easier if the Westerners get a little anxious or antsy. So the Westerners start tapping the paper. Why is this meeting starting? That allows, that distraction allows the Japanese who are not distracted to connect. Okay, so then they have this feeling of connection and they start the meeting And they also develop a connection in here with this part of the body above the table So at certain points in the meeting when they really want everyone of the Japanese or the group within it who are bonded to make a decision. One of them reaches out and takes a glass and moves it in the table. And all the Japanese, in on the glass, focus in. And they know that's the point at which to bring their energy together to make a decision.

[91:29]

And Westerners are simply amateurs at this kind of stuff. So they come after the meeting, they go out, and the German businessman says to the American businessman, you know, there was just something very important I wanted to put on the agenda to bring up. In fact, I insisted it be on the agenda. But every time I tried to remind people, I just felt my energy going out of my body. So this was, I could never, I couldn't mention. I kept trying, but I kept forgetting to mention it. And the Japanese clearly didn't want it on the agenda, and they create an atmosphere which makes it very hard to mention certain things. And these are pretty conscious business techniques. That's probably the reason why you don't learn Buddhism. Why? What?

[92:44]

She means not in order so that we could react and say, man, you mean like... She means, like, if we would start the Buddhism because of this reason...

[93:00]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_74.66