And once I feel like we have this practice, this great, you know, straightforward practice of sitting and service and words and working and talking about words, sometimes it's not necessary, but then I forget that people are And sometimes what they say is stuff like, why are we doing this? And I want to go home. And so, maybe it was because I wanted to ignore them. Since the scriptures are not necessarily written on the walls, on the tree. So, I speak again. And actually, in one sentence, We're coming to the end of the class period, and some of you are going to try to have a little break, I guess, in class period.

[01:14]

We don't need a break. Some of you are going to leave Paso Hara, I guess. And also, some of you aren't going to be able to see me anymore to talk to. So, in one sense, I don't want to open any of your wounds in your psyche just before you leave. And on the other side, I feel like I'd like to open up some new life, present some new material. Even though it's too late and not a good time. That's not a dilemma I have. We have this somewhat, you know, some understanding of what we've been talking about, and now I don't think everyone will tip it over, but it might happen. But before I tip it over, I want to just remind you of some very basic things, and that is

[02:15]

This nice little quote from the Buddha says, those who practice all virtues are gentle and soft and harmonious. They will see the Buddha. teaching the Dharma, right now. So that's the reason why I'm going to practice in the nutshell. Practice all virtues, be gentle and harmonious and perfect. And I'm going to apply to this class, too. and practice all virtues is unpacked as to go into the mud with all beings, which also means getting into the mud of your own body.

[03:38]

sink down into your experience moment by moment of pain and pleasure and whatever phenomena is manifesting through your experiential dimension. Sink the present with it. Don't indulge in it. Don't turn away from it. passionately listen to and experience what's happening. And then when you get there, be gentle with the situation and be upright and continue to be balanced. Just the way you settled in a balanced way, now continue to be balanced in that practice of all virtues. Getting dirty to help yourself be present, but also getting dirty to help all beings who are down in the mud. So that's the practice there.

[04:42]

Simply, you know, you've been going all the way many, many ways. That's called virtue. You jump off the ice every morning. You listen to the Buddha. In that situation of being present with your experience and upright, the meditation on emptiness naturally unfolds. We don't recommend an active personal effort, kind of dualistic application of analytic meditation. But that does not mean that meditative analysis is not going on. In fact, the analysis spontaneously arises. In other words, the experiences you're having naturally come up and unpack themselves, dismantle themselves, and analyze themselves right before you. In other words, they show you their lack of inner resistance. In other words, they show you that having the ultimate mode of things revealed to us is all new then for liberation.

[05:49]

But to have the ultimate mode revealed to us prior to us practicing all virtues could It's like a badly seized snake. But if you're completely present with your experience and upright in it, then when the ultimate truth, the ultimate mode of existence, the ultimate way that the things you're experiencing are, will not be harmful. You will not mishandle it and will live with it. Now, one other thing I wanted to do here for a little language pitch, and that is, I think it would be great if we could, I think it would be great if we could somehow, if you know how to use this, at least you know how to seize a snake called the word absolute.

[06:56]

I'm not saying that it has a purpose. It's a word we use to meet people who use the word. But in Buddhism, especially in the teaching of Nagarjuna, there's no place for absolutes. And the word absolute makes a suggestion of something that exists in and of itself. The word absolute has that nuance of something that exists in and of itself, something that's independently existent. Whereas in the teaching of the Middle Way, nothing is independent, including nothing. Nothing is also not independent. Even emptiness is not independent. So the word absolute, we should be careful of using that. And, you know, I looked up the root of the word. The word means ab, which means away from.

[08:02]

And salvere, which means to loosen. So to loosen away from. So a thing that's absolute is kind of loosened away from. It's pulled away from context. It has an independent... So phenomena and truths, all Buddhist truths are not, well, excuse me, the ultimate truth in Buddhism is not an absolute. However, the funny thing is that what we call conventional truth is like an absolute. Do you feel funny? That what people's conventional view of experiences is that things are absolute. They see themselves, they see objects, okay? and they attribute independence to it. They think the thing is there, kind of like loose, you know, loosened away from everything else all by itself. So actually, we know the truth. The truth for discriminating consciousness is that various things are absolute.

[09:10]

So the first truth taught by the Buddha, the first truth is the conventional truth, saṃgṛti-sātya. Saṃgṛti-sātya, saṃgṛti means, you know, one means saṃgṛti is to cover or conceal. So it's the kind of truth, it's the concealing truth or the truth of the conceiver. What's the Concealer? The Concealer is discriminating consciousness, which projects independence on its objects, which projects absolutes onto relevance. That's the truth which conceals or hides It's to conceal it.

[10:25]

Also, one way to talk about truth is that truth is something that the way it appears is like it exists. Although it's called conventional truth, it's not really a truth because the way things It's not the way they exist. The way they exist is that they exist in relationship. Everything exists in relationship. Nothing is independent. We project over phenomena independence or absolute existence. But there is that conventional truth. It's not a truth. Ultimate truth is actually a truth because the way things appear is the way they are. Ultimate truth is actually a truth because the way things appear is the way they are. In ultimate truth, things appear to a lack of non-existence.

[11:25]

Things appear in relationship. Things appear as dependent upon arising. All phenomena... What do you mean by appear? They're actually objects of knowledge. You actually can see that things lack in their existence. And the way they appear to you, the way they look, the way you know them, is just like they are. You know them like they are. In other words, you know that they're just coming to be out of tendency. And that's the truth. The other truth is a truth where they appear to be one way, but they don't really exist that way. They appear to be conventionally existing, but when you see them conventionally existing through conventional truth, the conventional truth is that they are conventionally existing. Conventional truth is they exist independently. So it's funny, isn't it? There are things that come to exist through causes and conditions and have that kind of wondrous, conventional, temporary appearance.

[12:30]

then we lay this thing over on top of them, and make more out of them than they are. And that's conventional truth. That's ordinary worldly knowledge. Ordinary is to make too much out of things. To see things the way they actually exist, to actually perceive the way they, in the same way that they exist, that's the ultimate mode. The ultimate mode, then, is not exactly the same as liberation, it just condition for liberation. And the other one, the other view, unaided by the second truth, the Buddha conceived both these, unaided by the provident truth, then you're just unbounded. The one thing I want to say is I think I, whether I said it or not, I think I was, I was hopeful of saying something like the two truths are two ways of seeing the same thing.

[13:34]

I took that back if I said that. I would say more it's like the two truths are two ways of seeing. But there's not a thing of it that they see. They're in the same realm of being. In that way, they're one, because they're really two aspects of life. But they're really two ways of seeing. Not the same thing, but two ways of seeing. In other words, the two truths are phenomena. Two kinds of phenomena. One kind of phenomena, phenomena of something being concealed. It's a phenomena that has a concealing over it, or a layer over it. The other phenomena are coming to be moment by moment, or have come to be. What do you mean by seeing?

[14:46]

Well, an object of knowledge. neya, unknowable. Like in the Heart Sutra, it says, you know, there's two kinds of structures. Actually, there's three. There's karmic, klesha avarana, and neya avarana. So, these truths can be known. They can be known. They can be objects. They are objects. And so, you can, in fact, you do know. You go around knowing things that inherently exist. We know of things that inherently exist. That knowing, that type of knowing, that object which we know in that way, that's conventional truth. We also can know things. As an object of knowledge, you can know something as lacking inherent existence. At that time, however, your knowledge is no longer an obstacle, there's no longer an instruction, and you're no longer afraid.

[15:54]

I think what you've, what I've done is two ways of seeing the conventional. That's pretty good. That's better. Yeah. And seeing the conventional as conventional is the ultimate truth. Seeing the conventional as ultimate, coming out of absolute, is concealing the conventionality and the arbitrariness, not arbitrariness, but the codependence, the dependence of the conventional. Okay, now... How are you doing with that? Yes? I know that what I was doing about yoga, you were saying that the Buddha is a combination of the meaning of Buddha and us, and we are the meaning.

[17:03]

Yes. And I was thinking that if this object has knowledge, would that be the meaning between the object and us, or would the object have knowledge that we just see? Are you asking a question about the object now? Yeah. Object of perception? Mm-hmm. What's your question? Well, to say that the object has knowledge is a little bit beyond the scope of our discussion so far. That's introducing a new dimension. I'm just saying now, instead of saying that there's a truth over on the side of the perceiver,

[18:08]

And then that truth is the way you see things. Actually, I'm shifting the language into that the truths are objects, are phenomena. One kind of object is an inherently existing object. That inherently existing object is, for the person who's looking, and they think it's a truth. They think that that object is a truth. In other words, they think the way it is, is the way it appears, the way they're thinking about it, is the way it is. And they actually have made a statement of existence, and the mode of existence that they're stating in the conventional realm is that it exists independently. You could say seeing the object that way is the truth, but I'm saying no.

[19:15]

Let's put it the other way. The object is the truth. Seeing the object. Of course, you make the object that way because you project the synonymy the way you see, but for you, it is that way. Objects actually inherently exist. It doesn't exist. See it that way. And so the way you see it, or the way it appears to you, the way an object appears to you, is that it doesn't exist. However, it doesn't exist that way. So it's not a truth, really. It's only a truth for the obscuring consciousness. The other case, where what you see out there, the way it looks, when it appears to be exactly what it is. That's the ultimate mode. So then what you see is everything's kind of dependent on everything, and nothing is like absolute and cut loose from this context.

[20:17]

You don't see it that way. This is a regular old perception. Right. It's just that the object has changed. So the same equipment you use to perceive inherently existing objects, In other words, you perceive emptiness. In other words, emptiness is just an ordinary object of knowledge. Completely ordinary. As a matter of fact, it's more ordinary than the conventional things you see. It's perceiving without messing around. And what you want to say is that it's the object of perception that makes it that way and not the perceiver? No, no, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying the truth, these two truths are objects. You see, it makes them no more than objects.

[21:19]

Something out there. There's not like a thing out there called the two truths. They're just two objects. They're phenomena. Now the thing, of course, is one person looks out and sees what the phenomena they see is the truth of conventional existence. In other words, the truth of things are inherently existent. One person sees that, or one consciousness sees that. Another consciousness, for example, the consciousness of what we call Buddha, looks out and sees dependently, dependently to arising things, all of his ways. In other words, the object that the Buddha sees is... ultimate truth, left and right. Does the Buddha ever see even 100 ultimate truths? No. And people who aren't Buddhists can see both. Sometimes you see one, and sometimes you see the other. So the Buddha, all the objects of the Buddha are, you know, life-inherent existence, or emptiness.

[22:30]

I see your hand over there. Wait a second. The answer to this question hasn't been answered yet, I don't think, in a way. You know, it's not going to matter anymore. That's why I wasn't going to ask you that either. But I... So, now Marianne was talking about this thing she read in Dogen where something about the Buddha is something about the communication between us and the Buddha. Something about that? I guess it would be that the meaning of Buddha is that for you, everything you experience I think we need to drown this point.

[23:44]

It turns out that the consumer and the object, and although the object is, you see, whatever you want to call it, a living, if you are communicating with that object, then there's something that's happening there. Also, that's alive. I feel true to that, that everyone's not only determined to arrive, but you are part of that experience, and you are part of that experience. To me it sounds like you're making too much out of it there by saying you are part of the thing. This is just talking about truth. Two kinds of truth. There's no you being discussed here. Nobody's willing to bring up you or me at this point. If you want to, we can do it, but this is talking about, if we're just walking around all day long just perceiving objects, right now you're doing it. The question is what kind of objects do you perceive? including looking around and having a sense of perceiving yourself.

[24:45]

Self is one of these things. Like you can look at somebody's face, or think of the Buddha, or look at the wall, and you can also project some idea of yourself out there and look at that. When you look at yourself and you think about yourself, there's these two truths, two ways you can see yourself as an object and be aware of yourself. One, is as an inherently existing independent operator. This is the usual way. The usual way, in other words, is to make an absolute out of yourself. The other way is to see yourself as dependent before arising. That's called enlightenment. Enlightenment arises with that. In other words, that's all dharma is coming for in confirming itself. Rather than, I'm this thing going around and the spell. That's the relative meaning to the absolute. Now let's look at the name.

[25:51]

We started using the same language to describe seeing a non, seeing an object. And apparently, there's an object. Seeing a non in her. And in the web, in the footages, there's a shift. When you go to seeing, when you're seeing a non, When you see something that's dependent on code, that it's not the same, it's not an object. It's not. That's right. It's not. It shifts from being an object of knowledge which has an overlay of identity on it, which has an overlay of independent existence on it, which we are capable of

[26:59]

We have a consciousness which can project these baggies around everything. And if you're present with that, most of us have that available to us to see things that way. If you're present with that, then stop messing with it. Stop messing with it means stop activating the mind around objects. Don't activate your mind around objects. You can sit there and watch your mind activated around objects. Watch your mind wrapping everything with independence. Watch that and watch it, and finally, you notice, in some sense, what it is to see without activating your mind around it. Then the object appears without that packaging. And then you can see that the object is in its dynamic relationship with everything. So the object analyzes itself into its condition. They're different to you.

[28:03]

In other words, that's to appear as something which tentatively co-arises and therefore lacks inherent existence. Well, actually, when you see an object, ordinarily, when you see an object, it is not you seeing the object. You don't do it that way. We don't do it that way. Not at the moment. What's happening? When you see an object, you do not say, I challenge you to do it.

[29:23]

You do not say, I see the object. At the moment of saying, I see the object, you're looking at the object, you're looking at its eyes. When you ordinarily perceive something, you can contemplate that you're not an object and you're looking at another object. Or you can make a moment to switch. You look at yourself. In other words, consciousness perceives itself. The self is now the object of our consciousness. And you can put your very self out there to be the object of your consciousness. But at that moment, there's not a self back there looking at that self. As soon as there is, you switch around looking at this one. That's not the way the mind works. There isn't a self. Except when the self is not known to think about the self, unless you put the self out into the object of your consciousness. The mind works according to you. It's always the same. It's just a question of whether the very well-established pattern of projecting independent existence onto objects Whether that gets a break or not.

[30:30]

When it's operating, that's the usual way that people see it. That's the way we sort of like work together. We have conventions about how to project the self, or how to project identity. We do it with language. Put a word on it. Walk around, you know, have this experience, have that experience. But therapists do that. We clap a word. We clip a word on there. We do po-po-po-po-po-po-po-po. Word. Everything we experience, we gotta work for it. Everything we experience consciously has knowledge. All this truth business is about knowledge. In a realm that's not about knowledge, we're not working there. This is not the problem area. The problem area is in terms of objects of knowledge. Yaya avarana. That's the ultimate cruncher that stops us, is these objects of knowledge, things we know. You don't have to be dropped in order to become completely fearless and awake. It's about knowledge. The way the mind operates, the funny thing is, again, is that the ultimate way of seeing things is the most basic.

[31:34]

The most ordinary. It's like, you know, not quite putting yourself into a corner. But turning yourself way down to like the basic idol. Like if you look in the Abhidharma charts of the Theravada Buddha, you know. They have all these states of consciousness, you know. And then they have this very, like, they have this kind of consciousness, I think it's called kriya-vijnana or something like that. It means functional. That all minds are going through, you know, like all these overlays of all these other consciousnesses. But the Buddhas always have that going on, just like we do. And so they just can get right down there and just operate in this very kind of like, hey you. That kind of thing, you know. Hey you. It's like that. Hey you, yes. What Buddha, huh? When you're perceiving the ultimate mode of existence of an object, when you're perceiving the ultimate mode of existence of coal,

[32:36]

The ultimate mode of existence of peace, the ultimate mode of existence of pleasure, the ultimate mode of existence of pain, the ultimate mode of existence of self, of Buddha. When you perceive anything as an ordinary functioning perceiver, the ultimate mode is just completely ordinary. What's extraordinary is what you're seeing. What you're seeing is life. And what you're seeing is the universe come together on this object. and all you do is put your hands together and you have a slight smile. Anyway, it's very unique. If you've just recently been putting this junk on, just recently, up until recently, and also for quite a while before that, you've been putting stuff on this object, and suffering because of it, and now there's a break. Instead of doing this extra special thing, which is very common, onto objects, and perceiving them in an ordinary perceptible way. Now you stop doing that and you continue to perceive in an ordinary way. Now what you see is ultimate. But in the way they are, they've been overlaid by our fantastic imagination system.

[33:54]

But the perceptual process is like very ordinary in some ways. Now it's so beautiful to see things this way. Now Charlie and John and Mark and David and... Anna, and Randy, and Roberta, and... Carly? I thought you said previously that the Buddha sees the two truths simultaneously. Right. But today you said the Buddha just sees the ultimate truth. Yeah. So the Buddha sees the four truths simultaneously, but the Buddha doesn't see The Buddha doesn't actually believe that things in heaven exist, but the Buddha can see that there is that truth. The Buddha sees the truth, but doesn't perceive it as truth, because it's not his understanding.

[34:57]

The Buddha sees that the conventional truth has to be taught. in order for people to be taught the other one. He sees that, keeps that in mind, and is teaching it all the time. So in that sense, the Buddha sees it, sees the necessity of it, you might say. He sees the efficacy of bringing up that truth. But the Buddha doesn't actually see that truth. For the Buddha, all objects, including emptiness, he sees as an object. It's not just kind of like a nifty fluffy thing. It's actually an object. It's actually something you see. And maybe just before I answer questions, I'll just briefly mention that emptiness is structured. The world of ultimate truth, okay, is a lot of emptinesses. It's not one big fat void. It's a structured void. Highly structured. How is it structured? It's structured. It's not equivalent to

[35:57]

It's not identical like a photograph of conventional reality, but it's structured by conventional reality because it is the conventionality of conventional reality. The conventionality of conventional reality is not identical to conventional reality. It's always based on it. If you have like an emptiness of a person, that means you have some kind of like person. Some person comes together in some way. You see how it comes together. You see its potential arising. You see its emptiness. That's the emptiness of that person. That's not the emptiness of another person. Each person has their own emptiness. There's all these different emptinesses. So in the big picture of ultimate truth, there's all this content. What's the content? It's not all the inherently existing things piled up in our relationships. It's all the emptinesses of all these things.

[36:59]

So there's this interdependent, and that's also another reason why the emptinesses are also not inherently existent, because they're also related. So all these different lights, all these different radiances are pulsating and working with each other, but they're very definitely located. They all hook into some conventional existence, because there is conventional existence. Because the conventional existence is just that, nothing more in that realm. It's a jam-packed, highly social world of emptiness, with lots of different emptinesses playing with each other. Also, they're constantly pulsating. They only exist as long as the thing that they're emptiness of is around. They don't hang around later in a library of previous emptinesses of things that are no longer around. It's the current living emptiness of all things. I want to just briefly describe the kind of process of moving to the modes of perception.

[38:12]

Because I'm trying to figure out how it corresponds to the way you're talking. And I have a feeling it does, but I'm not sure exactly how. One, I think, is the perceiving of this as entirely existing, which is basically not having your expectations disappointed. And so seeing things as kind of boring, not seeing the same qualities people are always seeing, seeing the same objects people then the second way seems to be a kind of dynamic process where there is some kind of questioning of who is perceiving so it's walking along the creek and noticing that not only rock falling down, but seeing this whole kind of sweep of movement of the mountains, and then questioning the kind of salient time span for Nate as a human or me as just kind of walking along, and then seeing this whole kind of movement, seeing the mountains as walking.

[39:18]

And then, you know, hearing a bird and then wondering what all of this looks like from a bird's point of view. Yes, I know. And the third is where there isn't this kind of analytical process, but there's just a lot of, kind of, surprise. You know, there are colors you've never seen, there are sounds you've never heard, and it's just, there's a kind of a lot of mystery. Which seems to come after, I mean, the second seems to kind of prepare the ground for the Yes, uh-huh. Now, is that, do you see that as corresponding to conventional and ultimate? No, I would see it as corresponding to, the first one sounded like conventional, pretty much. The second one sounds like meditation leading up to, hang in there, leading up to vision of the ultimate. And the third is just that everything you just said, whatever it was, out of each one of those things, each one of those things is just dependent upon the rising period.

[40:32]

That's it. And if I could possibly just shift a little bit to another practice period. 1994, you're studying Boston Founder, right? And he has this teaching about We have this mind of projecting inherent existence on things, right? That's the first thing. Things are going pretty well, yes, but basically the system's hanging in there. Then you have, but what the system is, the concepts that you're dealing with, which is the objects of your knowledge, you've projected inherent existence on them. That's the system, the conventional world. studying what's called vijnapti-matra. In other words, you start studying the fact that these concepts that you project reality onto, they're actually just concepts. You start wondering, you start questioning, you're becoming suspicious, not of the concepts, but of your existence.

[41:41]

You start to be suspicious. You start to be questioning, and things start moving. You move into another realm, but it's another realm within conventional, where you still believe in conventional reality. It's kind of an intermediate realm called training in vijnati-mātra, a time which is called vijnati-mātra-sīna. City means you master it. In other words, you actually see things as just concepts. In other words, you see the conventional world as just And then these wonderful experiences you had, eyes and the swirling, blah, blah, blah, that can still happen, but you also see that as just invention. It is better in a way, it's more fun, in a lot of ways, than ordinary kind of boring. But sometimes what happens in those realms is the boring comes and gets you there too.

[42:44]

But it sounds like the person's moving out from the neutral patterns and basically elaborating and intensifying the study of what's happening. The reward you get is this loosening up and getting new information and surprises and stuff like that. So it's coming to you. In other words, this is the harbinger of revelations that are coming for rising. But when it actually reveals itself, it would not be. There's no dharma by which it would be different from the previous one. So you could wake up being surprised by... something, or by being totally stuck, you know, totally in cooperation with the program, you wake up right there too. But given what you said, and given that I know you, I think you're moving into the truth of this, that your description is not the description, because there's no, there's no dharma by which you would specify how the

[43:47]

how the thing would look different. But isn't that what you're perceiving, Mike? So what's the role of habitual mode? I mean, it seems like you do that. But once the ultimate is attained or not attained or whatever, what happens to those habits? Well, there's two kinds of habits. One are conventional habits, you know, And among the conventional habits, there's one that will drop, and the rest of them will go on. The one conventional habit is to make the conventional into absolute. That one will drop. And all the other equipment will keep going. And you'll still be John to me until you come to me and specifically tell me that you've changed your name. And even then, what happens? What about a conventional discussion? So all the conventional equipment goes on as usual. So the kind of laziness of a procession, which can be a kind of set of perceptual habits, also goes on?

[44:55]

Yes. You can have lazy, lazy perceiving duties. Although people might come up to them and say, Buddha, excuse me, but we'd like to take a course. We'd like you to sharpen up your perceptions because you're such a wonderful person and we want you to be able to do this other thing too. Okay, fine. I've got no investment in being the kind of person I was when I first wrote that book. I don't know who was next. I think it was Mark. Was he? I think so. I'm not sure. Well, do you want to kind of ask my question? Okay, great. No, no. When we were talking about it, I remember something that Kateri Roshi used to talk about. Yes. Although, I'm not sure anyway. Yes. we should be vibrating between form and emptiness, like, you know, very quickly, like incredibly fast. So I'm wondering if that is the same as, you know, going back and forth between the two truths, seeing the conventional truth on one side and then seeing the ultimate truth on the other side, and actually have this vibration.

[46:01]

Almost the same, but not quite the same, but we see in... Well... I can't say what he meant, but now we're talking about form and emptiness. Form is a possible object. Another one is feeling. Another one is concepts. When you know them. This applies to both conscious and unconscious processes, or objective knowledge and non-objective knowledge. Same five skandhas going on. Then there's consciousness itself. It cannot be perceived. as an object, except this concept of consciousness, and then this huge mass around it, which is all kinds of mental formations. All these things, except the consciousness, can be an object of knowledge. Now, the vibration, one vibration is, there's an object of knowledge, you should vibrate between that object, seeing the object, and realizing its emptiness. So you see the object, realize its emptiness. Or the conventional.

[47:02]

Where does the... Actually, they also feel like two entirely different modes of perception. One is liberating. The same mode of perception. Same mode of perception. The one feels like in bondage. The one is in bondage. Same mode of perception. Which is good news, by the way, folks. You don't have to get your perceptual processing done. You can go ahead with your basic, same brain. Same body, same culture, same friends. Unless your friends don't practice Zen. Same friends. Bondage. And without remodeling your consciousness, you just keep cranking it away. What does liberation arise out of?

[48:07]

Liberation arises out of, liberation arises out of, liberation arises out of. What does it arise out of, David? Tell me. It seems like the object of knowledge. Yes, and what is the object of knowledge that liberation arises out of? The ultimate truth. The ultimate truth. You've got to have the ultimate truth for liberation. That's the number 10. In other words, when you see the pentacle arising, you're seeing ultimate truth. When you see the pentacle arising, you see the ultimate mode of things. The things that depend on the co-arise, they're mode, they lack inherent goodness. When you see that, you see Dharma. When you see Dharma, you see Buddha. When you see Dharma and Buddha and the dependent co-arising and emptiness, you are liberated. You can't stay in that moment. You have nothing to hold on to. You are the liberated thing. And also, you get to have your consciousness.

[49:09]

You're as usual. Unless you didn't eat enough rice. Then monks eat rice. Remember that. Eat before enlightenment. And brush your teeth afterwards. Yes. And then eat after enlightenment and brush your teeth afterwards. Okay? Same perceptual process. Different object. Different truth. Different truth. Different object means different truth. Same way of thinking. Normal human being. Hopefully. Your mind's working just like everybody else's. Not playing any funny games like making up your own language or something. You know? You're vulnerable to, you know, dictionaries and everything. There you are. People can ask you if you have an MRI, everything. Nothing funny about you. You're just one of the boys, okay? You are. You're one of the girls.

[50:09]

This is conventional truth. If you're into that, you can watch it as well as anybody else. But when the truth changes, when the object changes from appearing different from the way it is to appearing just like it is, then you get liberated. That's all about it. And our training is to make us just drop, for a minute, that's all we have, just for a minute, just drop all worldly affairs. Just for a second here, folks. Just for a second, just sink down into what's happening and just drop drop everything and just let something appear without slapping and having resistance on it for a second. But that requires quite a bit of training. Because it doesn't count to do it and sort of think about it. You have to be in your body, in your mind, and when it's actually happening, to just let the thing

[51:15]

without all this activating consciousness around it, then that's the training, that's the training, that's the training. So John described something that's happening to him while he's training. And as you start the training, things start to move around a little bit, be a little different. Before you have actually dropped the whole thing, things start to change a little bit. Your sphincter muscles loosen sometimes, you develop some hip problems. You think things that you never thought before. New things appear. BJs start acting funny. All this stuff happens, you know. But that's just sort of like kind of like loosening up around the edges. That's like getting ready for the big drop, you know. When the drop happens, there's nothing to it, you know. That's it, and that's liberation. But it's hard for us to train ourselves with that. That's why, in some sense, we don't need this class. We just sort of do our practice, and the practice does it. If you do the practice, that's good. Just follow the schedule, sit upright, chant with your whole heart.

[52:20]

That does it. That's training yourself. Just leaving it alone. Just be a Zen monk. That's enough. Of course it's not, in a way, because you can't believe that this could be all there is to it, because we're talking about ultimate reality here, we're talking about absolutes, but then all stuff comes back in. Or perhaps even somebody needs to sort of like call you on some attachment to the understanding of teaching or something like that. Because, you know, we can slip into these new, tricky ways, like, you know, I'm not going to speak English. Okay? That's it, the training. This training. Now, not perceive differently, but perceive something different. In other words, see this thing that's right there all the time, namely the panic arising. It's always right in your face. You can just leave it alone. All right. Now Jack wants to butt his head in. Do you want him to go ahead of you?

[53:23]

Anna gives it up. Can Jack go ahead of you? Objects do not have knowledge. Nobody said that, but I heard if they did. Objects do not have knowledge. Objects are objects of knowledge. Emptiness doesn't have knowledge. It's a question of knowing the emptiness of an object. And then knowing the emptiness of objects is knowing an object called . So the object, and then knowing its emptiness, knowing the emptiness of objects you are perceiving, you have knowledge of, the emptiness of it now becomes an object of knowledge.

[54:33]

Versus the emptiness of the object, the emptiness of the object can be an object of ordinary perceptual processing, an object of knowledge. It doesn't have knowledge. It's okay to say has, or you can also say is. Yes, it is an object. It is, huh? It is dependable arising. Every object sort of delivers you information about dependable arising. A perfect example. Not perfect, but a wonderful, luminous example. Every object is... It's right there saying, do you want me to tell you? I'll tell you about the pinnacle of rising because I'm thankful. And you say, yes, I do. You say, okay, first thing you do is don't move.

[55:36]

And just now, now, just sit. Are you listening to me? Now, listen some more. Now see if you can listen to me and hear those sounds and not activate your mind about what I'm saying to you. Can you do it? If you can, you're going to get this dependent co-arising and you're going to realize who I really am. Listen that way. That's the information every object is giving you. All the time. Non-stop. All of them are like that. When you hear it, when you see it, then the object says, now you see how I'm not really here inherently? And how you don't have to make me into an absolute thing? And you say, yes I do, thank you. I'm a happy Roberta. I appreciate the information. Yes. Yes, right. Right. But I like seeing it in terms of information and in terms of knowledge.

[56:58]

Right, it's good to see it in terms of knowledge. You could say that. No, it's okay. It's more healthy to see it in information than To see it as knowledge is incoherent. It's just incoherent to see it as knowledge, that's all. There's no place for that view except incoherence and nonsense. That's unconventional to see it that way. I don't know if anybody has the convention to see it as knowledge. But seeing it as information is... There's other conventional views of it besides seeing it as information. Seeing it as information is actually not conventional, but it's common sense to see it as information. What you're presenting is common sense, which is more like Nagarjuna would see it. It's useful to have stop signs. They have different colors. You can look out and you communicate.

[57:59]

Cars are not nice to get hit by or be hit in and all that stuff. All this stuff is part of the practical, conventional reality and information about stuff, science, all of it's there, and the information is coming on and it's very useful and practical, and Buddhists continue to use that. They wear their safety belts when trained to do so. They do not wear their seatbelts. The wearing of seatbelts by Buddhists is dependent on the co-arises. It's not an information thing. It's all just information. That's what we're doing. Right? That's it. There's nothing more to it than that. And that's liberation, if you can accept that. And to have knowledge of it being like that, we have knowledge about that, and we have knowledge about less information situations, namely when we want to make things not very informative and just make them be the way we want them. They were yesterday or something. And we close off the information in our knowledge and it becomes knowledge of inherently existing things. And based on that knowledge, There's a slogan that computer captains have that I like, that I always thought was a Buddhist slogan, too, and it's, information wants to be true.

[59:11]

Which they're using, you know, to say that they don't want to copyright this stuff, but it always seems to be something that's true, and information wants to be true. You know, I think that's right that information wants to liberate itself, but the key thing is, in order for information to liberate itself, in other words, for inanimate objects to liberate themselves, for the information of a rock to liberate itself, what's necessary is that we hear the anxiety of that information calling out, wanting to liberate, the anxiety of things saying, please listen to me. Yes. Listen to yourself, first of all, your own information. When you can listen to your own information, then you can listen to all the other information. It's anxiety. It's wanting to be free. Because we're in relationships. So if we're in bondage, because we won't face our own stuff,

[60:13]

and open up to our own information, and just let it be information without making it into an inherent existence, then all the rocks and computers and numbers in the world are also locked into that bondage, and they're crying out to be released too. So, all the numbers in the world are saved by our practice. So, Nadja, are you still alive? That's okay. It's kind of the color of the road. Did you see how that happened? Ah, yes. A friend of mine used to say he used to have lots of enlightenment experience. No, the practice doesn't do it. The mind, by nature, has an active and passive aspect. So you can say, let it drop or drop it.

[61:39]

You can hear drop. It has the ability to think of things that it does, and it has the ability to think of things that have been done to it. This is just language. I'm just using this language. There's this wonderful poem. I don't know the poem, actually. I'll tell you the narrative of the poem. There's this guy outside this woman's house, and he calls her servant. The servant's name is Jade, Little Jade. There's a Chinese lady who has a servant named Little Jade. So he calls, close to the door, he calls, Little Jade, Little Jade, because he doesn't want to call her name, you know, when people know it's outside the home. So he calls his servant's name. So, you can't actually, you can't actually say. It's not the word, you know. And this is where the meaning comes in. is that when you express some word, somebody can experience it.

[62:42]

And there's a meaning, and in that meaning, in the energy of that meaning, the meaning can manifest. So I say, Rafa, I'm trying to talk about how you can let something, let an experience come up, and like, you know, not... I can drop all that stuff that laid on everything. It's already dropped. But also, it's actually already dropped. The thing actually evolved. Simultaneously, the thing is actually all by itself, and it's pure, dependent, co-arising, without it. It's not added to it, or dependent, co-arising, taken away from it. Pulling the dependent, co-arising away so it's by itself, or pushing self-existence onto it, these are ways we activate our mind around objects. So just drop all that. So we say drop happens? Drop happens, yeah. Drop happens. In other words, but also you're willing for that all to drop. You trust. You're willing. You can see that that's causing all the problems.

[63:44]

So you say, I would be willing for that to drop for a second. And then it drops. It actually drops all the time anyway. But it also actually crops up there. It's very dynamic. But if you're willing for it to drop, the dropping can be realized by the drop. If you're opposed to dropping, then that resistance can block it from being realized through you. I said this before, but I'll say it again. Bodhisattvas can want to help. Bodhisattvas can want to drop all body and mind. That's fine. But to say, I help people, is not Bodhisattva recommended course. To say I help people is arrogance. To say I drop body and mind is arrogance. But to want to drop body and mind, Bodhisattvas, that's where they're at.

[64:44]

They want to drop body and mind so they'll be happy and everybody else will be happy. They want to help people so that they'll be happy and everybody else will be happy. They want this, but they don't go around and say, well, I did it. And this is the way it is. But if you're willing, somehow you can, you're available for things to be that way in your life. And one of the ways that practice makes you want to do it. But, you know, practice comes from wanting to do it. In practice, when you settle into your suffering, you get to see all these examples of how you activate your mind around things and cause all that pain. So you say, yeah, I can't stop this brilliant, you know, activating I'm doing around this object. I'm willing to drop it because it's, yeah, I'd rather be actually, uh, happy and free and smart. And also, I know that after I'm happy and free, I'll just be smart anyway. It's a matter of priorities. Just a second. I want to give on. No. I'll come back later.

[65:45]

And then I think is... I don't know. Were you ahead of Wendy? So Wendy and Jennifer and Stuart. Well, a lot of what I was... Yeah, I saw you nodding your head. Well, I actually had a diagram that worked for all this, but it had to do with... I wonder if it would be okay if I draw it, and then maybe I can say it. Sure. our next guest. I'm hoping that would calm me down.

[67:17]

Let's see. Oh, what I started with. So up here, this is conventional, ultimate reality. This is a little X, which is five standards. Yeah, I know. And I call this time. And then going in two directions, and I call that eternity. And then there's all these arrows coming in, and I'll show what that is. Okay. So here are the five standards, and they exist conventionally, and experience them in the realm of time. And in the realm of time, there's all of this information coming in to the five standards. And what they're doing is they're just choosing particular ones.

[68:19]

Because to experience all of this at once, they're not capable of that. But what happens is this conventional reality will come around it. And the ones that are perceived will be sort of actualized for that group of five sandhas and the given substance. But at the same time around it is this ultimate reality, which includes all of this information coming in. So what these five sandhas actually can begin to believe is that they exist in time and knowing that they exist in time or that they conventionally exist in time these two realities come together and actually liberate them the way this feels then is there's eternity is running through this and that's where liberation happens because the

[69:39]

The ultimate reality that allows the five skandhas to see their existing time also allows them to see their existing candy. So I think that then what it... Okay, I didn't say what this feels like because there's actually a sense of all of this coming in, and there's a way that it's released out this way. I wonder, is this, like, reaching anybody?

[70:48]

It's reaching. Okay. Okay. I just think you're seeing some notes that I wrote there. It's a very light team. Well, I think that that's actually what it starts to be. It's indescribable. The unimaginability or the unthinkableness of it is actually how it releases us, one.

[71:53]

It's the effort to take this structure and describe it. or pin it down, or prescribe it, or package it. I think that the way this functions is to free us. And I think I've kind of erased everything in here, which is kind of interesting, because I think that's actually what happens with all of this. conference to release gifts into this experience. When you came to this idea and visualized it, What I think I was trying to understand was something that I read from Isa Eckhart, which was, he says, to see God, you must place all of your hopes and desires in eternity.

[73:12]

And what that meant to me was my hopes and desires are something that I contract into a little place and make them substantial. That they actually can be realized or something like that. But when I put them in eternity, then they become... They free themselves. And how do you do that is to know that this conventional reality is conjunctive with ultimate reality. maybe use an eternity in a different way that's used, you know, in a common Western sense, but, you know, in the dedication to the Moolamajamaka, you know, it says not eternal and also not terminable.

[74:35]

So, you know... Yeah, and this eternity is both of those. It's not eternal and it's not terminable. It's... What I think that... It's not now. See, that's the problem that happens, is that there's a tendency to think that there is a now, and there is an eternity. But there's only this eternity. Therefore, if you place everything, it all gets mixed, or spread out, or it doesn't keep sticking and sticking and sticking. Now doesn't stick either. Now doesn't stick. Now is always now. But it's still stuck. Now is stuck. Because you're saying, something is happening now. That's when you say it. When you don't say it, it happens. It's never happening. What happens when it never happens? There's eternity. Because you're not... The sense of it is that the tendency...

[75:42]

to grab a few of these, which creates an idea of time. So, a now is an idea of time. But where else, I mean, what else are we talking about? So, the now is grabbing those and putting them into time. I don't know if this is helpful, but it was a... a way that I could stand to try to explain what I think is the essence of this. And it seems to me that when the first Gandhi noticed this grabbing, those very, you know, the very things that are created there by that grabbing, They purify this grabbiness by saying, I'm in eternity, I'm in eternity, I'm in eternity.

[76:51]

What you're seeing is just the grabbing and making something out of you. That's all we're seeing. The grabbing, the specific disinformation that we can stand. I don't know and I that the this the way then that this is liberated also is the way it liberates everything in a very there's not a something that is liberated what there is, is liberating everything at the same time by also by also letting everything exist internally.

[77:59]

Did I have to come back up here? Thank you. Thank you. actually always . It is always . It's always immediately available. And we can find this in what we would describe as what we're not interested in and what we don't notice.

[79:05]

That what we're not interested in and what we don't notice is available. in some way impact on us, but we don't construct it yet. We don't name it, we don't recognize it. And every once in a while, something like that sneaks up on me, and I realize that there is something there, and then I notice it, and then I have a name for it, and then I have an identity for it, and a relationship to it. But my life is still continuous. When I hear you say that, then I have just taken whatever happened all over the world, including what you said, and I brought it into, through dependent colorizing, I brought it into something I didn't know I could experience.

[80:21]

In all that's going on, we just select some part of it moment by moment. But in order for that thing that's selected to be something by itself, unknowable, a concept or a word on it. Otherwise, we don't have experience. That's where we're built to operate. We don't have another kind of experience in terms of knowledge. When we use sense experience, although we don't put a word on it, there too we're selecting. But in our sense experience, we're also selecting among all these different things. We don't know our sense experience because we don't put a word on it. In sense experience, in the realm of sense experience, we do not have conventional reality. We don't have a convention about how to see colors and so on. We do have a convention about how to see colors when they become known to us because then we use words.

[81:26]

Conventional reality is equivalent to the world of knowing. However, this additional thing is also very common and has become basically a convention. Although, to admit it, it has become conventional and ordinary to make the conventional world into more than what I just described. And that's the part that causes the pain that actually can be seen through by opening up to the way we made our experience in the first place. You can't figure out how you selected it. That's inconceivable. But you can see how you put the word on it, and you can also see how you put more than that on it. That we can do, that we can witness. And witnessing that is witnessing all things coming forward to create something.

[82:35]

And also, it's turned the other way, it's witnessing there's something forth to put on the coming forth of all things. This is the delusion, which when we see as more than delusion causes suffering. If we just see it as delusion, What kind of TV do you do? Together? Together, did you say, or separate? Separate. Well, we're all very happy to hear that because otherwise you would be violent and conduct me out. Earlier in this class, we started reading that information, what I call stuff, and then all the hands went up.

[83:46]

All of a sudden, I realized I had to go to my note of salvation because I was I couldn't say the name of the group, so I went back to my two favorite characters. So, um, 2415 is a long, confusing, not just, you know, a slow-witted person. It is, like, a badly seen snake, or wrongly executed in completion. And 2415 is a zero, it's not an errand data, it is just people announcing on your board, so forget about it. And then, my two favorite people now, wasn't it? Excuse me. I know it could go on, but I find that you just said animals have instincts. Well, I think that's my... do I have?

[84:54]

And so they helped me do that too. There was no bell in the class and I was like, does anyone else want to hear a bell joke? I was like, he's out there. And Andrew's all out. So those kind of things brought me back to you. I was finally really thankful for having you as a teacher. So what did you want I want to say that I don't think I miss anything, including these books, except you don't have anything, including these books. and then animals depend on the color eyes, and just like us, we have some bodies. Okay, now I would like to practice.

[86:04]

Could you ask me a question after we practice this chanting? Let's practice this chanting. I'd like Neil to tell you how to say the Sanskrit. We'll do our best. We'll say it after you. Okay, the thing about number nine is it says Shasta.

[87:11]

Actually, it's Shasta. So that R doesn't belong in there. So it shouldn't be Shasta. It should be Shasta. and [...] Number two is Arhat. Arhat. Arhat. Number three, Samyak Sambuddha.

[88:22]

Samyak Sambuddha. Samyak Sambuddha. Samyak Sambuddha. Number four is, I think there's a little line over the first A of the yajna. There's a little dot under the N in karana. So that gives you vidyacarana-sumhanya. Vidyacarana-sumhanya. Number five. Sugata. Sugata. And number seven, Anuttara.

[89:25]

Number eight, a little bit unfamiliar to me, so I'm just going to talk about it. There's a little dot under the S. Yes, sorry. And then the A following the second S. We have a long mark over there. That's something like Purusha Dhamya Sarathi. [...] Let's do that one again. Purusha Dhamya Sarathi. Purusha Dhamya Sarathi. Good. Number nine, then. It's quite hard to find that.

[90:27]

It should be Deva, not Dave. Yeah, if you want to know all the little funny marks in that one, there's a bunch of them. The first answer is the long mark. Then after there, that A has a long mark. Then the A that follows the N has a long mark. Then the S before the Y has a dot under it. Then the A after the Y has a long mark. Then the N has a dot under it.

[91:30]

Thank you very much. Now, Silvia. My question goes after an answer about information wants to be believed, all things want to be believed, the society that creates us, broadens them. So that makes me, after we said also that we are in the universe, the only thing that we know of, object-subject differentiation in that way.

[92:44]

So, would that be that we have such a responsibility over all beings to realize it, to liberate them as well as they experience it? Because we are doing it. I don't know if they're suffering just because we're doing this, but I know they're definitely suffering because we're doing this, not just because we're doing this. They may have some other problems, but we definitely, they're definitely hooked into our suffering, just like we can be suffering. But I think anyway, before you speak to that, we do have a responsibility. That is our responsibility. We have a special responsibility because we have a special problem. We can become especially wise I'm especially compassionate. So that is our responsibility as human beings. We had a great opportunity. We definitely can cause suffering to other beings. That's for sure.

[93:46]

What they would be like if we weren't around, what kind of problems they would have, who would be the leader of that group and have the responsibilities to save the rest of them, and whether they would have the ability to do so. Since we have the most problems and we can cause the most trouble in the known universe, we have the responsibility to get our thing together and liberate all beings by understanding what's going on.

[94:12]

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