Yeah, I was speaking last time about how objects are the territory of the mind. And we can notice how our mind gets our attention, our projections, so forth, gets entangled with objects, attached to objects, etc., Yeah, so this is, you know, yeah, it's not. What we're talking about is ordinary daily activity, and yet simultaneously I find it extraordinary, almost miraculous, how we can look into this activity in a way that's prior to psychology or

[01:01]

different and maybe beyond psychology, at least prior to psychology. And if we just have a just note, I mean, again, we all know that we look at things and have some feelings, likes and dislikes, etc. But once we notice it and say, hey, attention there's an activity of attention, there's an activity of mind, which objects are the territory of, which objects, etc., are the field of. Then to explore that is, you know, yeah, the rest of our life. Or we have a phrase like, let the mind flow freely without dwelling on anything.

[02:06]

I mean, when you first hear that, I think many people when they first hear that, it's the sixth lucky woodcutter of the sixth patriarch. Yeah, whoa, that sounds nice. But when you look at it and try to practice it, try to wonder what, how that, you know, what's, what's the craft the teaching within such a statement. And again, it's the rest of your lifetime is its exploration. Now, I speak about the initial mind quite often. And it took me actually a long time to... First, I didn't like the word initial. It's like... Sounds like a beginner's, maybe beginner's mind is initial mind. But I, yeah. Anyway, I somehow didn't. You know, I found myself noticing that, thinking that way, but I didn't like it too much.

[03:12]

And I've emphasized it now and then over the years, particularly the last few years, more and more. found it really is one of the pivots of practice. We could call it initial awareness mind, or initial mind. I mean, there could be many initial minds. What initial mind is most beneficial for us in our living and in our practice? And... So in letting the mind flow freely, we can say that, but when do you start letting the mind flow? Where's the starting point? I mean, you have to start somewhere. You hear the phrase, and is it just... I mean, we don't want uncovering ideas, like something's going on under the surface that we're just uncovering by practice.

[04:19]

That's not a fruitful way to... It's a beginner's way to look at practice, but not in the long run a fruitful way to look at practice. And so initial mind is a discontinuous mind. It's not innate. It's a discontinuous mind. It's related to circumstances, but not entirely dependent on circumstances. And now I'm speaking about, let's say, what initial mind? If we're practicing the Dharma, and Dharma is this sense of discrete momentariness of things, then, you know, things have a beginning and an end. And can we enter into that beginning and end? Can we find a mind, a beginning mind, an initial mind?

[05:20]

So, usually I... I say, the initial mind of acceptance. And then, so I would say that one of the great tasks, most essential tasks of mindful attention or mindfulness is to generate, learn to generate, establish an initial mind of acceptance. or initial awareness, awareness mind, I can say. And I think if you, you know, and it's hard to do in ordinary life, I think. It can be done, certainly. Should be done, I think. At least should, from the point of view of practice. But it's also, you've got a good chance here for these months, these weeks, to see if you can establish

[06:24]

develop the habit of an initial mind of acceptance. Sometimes I call it an attitudinal mind, a mind generated through an attitude. Your attitude is somehow I want to have this initial mind of acceptance. And this initial mind of acceptance would be the mind of every encounter. So you have to establish it on some encounters. until it can be on every encounter. Because there's a kind of space, a kind of spaciousness on each moment of activity, within each moment of activity. And we can say this is the mind of not being busy and blah, blah, blah. But now let's just talk about this initial mind of awareness or initial mind of acceptance. Now I've also been speaking about non-conceptual consciousness, non-discriminating consciousness, and non-discursive consciousness, rather, I think we should say, and discriminating consciousness.

[07:43]

So now I'm saying let's notice three minds, three consciousnesses, non-conceptual consciousness, non-discursive consciousness, and non- and discriminating consciousness. Now, again, we're not taking off concepts. We're not removing concepts and seeing something. Ooh, there's water! Well, we remove discursiveness and we say, ooh, there's the same water. You know, it's not the same water. When you remove non-conceptual, when you remove concepts, there's a different, there's a non-conceptual mind, which is different than a non-discursive mind.

[08:44]

This is the teaching of form is emptiness. In other words, and that's also the teaching that there's no uncovering. The other half of conceptual mind is non-conceptual mind, we can say. Now non-conceptual mind tends to be boundless. Tends to, yeah. And integrative. integrating, integrative, and accepting, and absorbing. And non-discursive mind tends to be an observing mind, a non-graspable, non-grasping, observing mind. Now these distinctions, you know, even if you practiced a long time, may not be accessible to you. But, or even as a beginner, they may be accessible to you.

[09:52]

It's, you know, it should, to me, it ought to be accessible. It's just a matter of noticing. But anyway, I'm sort of, I'm describing the territory. And I'm using English words to describe the territory, not just English words. I'm also using our Western habits of discursiveness, of conceptualization, and so forth. And I think you won't find exactly these categories of mind consciousnesses in the teaching, but you'll find something very similar. That if you look in... Yogacara teachings. I think what I'm saying is completely Yogacara teachings, except I'm using our Western habits to index these minds. In other words, you know, when I use, say, notice that things are interdependent, that's really, if you keep noticing that things are interdependent, you take away

[11:03]

the habit of seeing them as entities. So if you keep taking away their entities, you're really indexing the practice of emptiness. If you see everything as a construct, you're seeing things as impermanent. If you see things as an activity, you're seeing them, you're indexing the practice of no-inherence. If you see things as the activity of mind and perception, then you're practicing noticing mind only. So in other words, we can use the categories in which we think and notice to index the teachings. Okay, so we have this territory, wider territory.

[12:22]

Now I'm talking about... another way to look at the way objects are the territory of mind. Well, objects are concepts. Objects are something we think about. So now we're relating to objects, but non-conceptually. Or we're relating to objects non-discursively. And if you relate to objects non-discursively, in other words, a discursive mind arises, and then you find a way to not think, to think non-thinking, and there's an observing consciousness appears, a non-grasping observing consciousness. Now, if you... Now, these are things you have to find little... You know, it's sort of like getting a plastic bag open sometimes.

[13:24]

You can't find the edge and some of these packages you can never open unless you have a hammer and a screwdriver. So it's like the surfaces of the mind are just layers of clear plastic and you don't see where the edges are. But at some point you see a sort of shadow or wet your fingers a little bit, wet your mind a little bit, and that you can separate. Now, if you discover this by using concepts, peeling the concept off the airplane you hear, as I always say, taking the sweater off the airplane, the sweater of your saying it's an airplane, et cetera. If you get in the habit of the feel, of the physical feel of taking concepts off,

[14:26]

the activity of the mind, then you have a kind of boundless, open feeling. If you get in the habit of taking the thinking about things off, well, there's a certain... the mind now has a certain presence, but it's an observing, non-grasping, observing presence. But in a little different way of relating to objects. These, then we have discriminating mind. Now discriminating mind is most powerful in its thinking when it is based on, rooted in, non-conceptual and non-discursive consciousness. So these different minds mature each other. Different minds mature differently.

[15:28]

And the minds mature in a way that they mature each other. Now the key to this, one of the keys, one of the big doors, plastic and it's hard to see what the door is, but still one of the big doors is developing, establishing this initial awareness mind or initial or initial mind of acceptance. This is also very close to the word presence. I mean, Igor has a certain presence. He doesn't have to do anything. He doesn't have to be thinking. He doesn't have to be... Just Igor has a certain presence. And it's different at different times. And Charlie has another presence. Dan has another presence. Oh, sorry, I put you in the same category, Dan. Dan just walks in the kitchen. There's a presence there. You know, each one of you. That presence is something like close to what I mean by initial awareness mind.

[16:36]

One's presence isn't always the same, but it's before thinking. Okay. Now, initial acceptance mind. or the mind of acceptance, the initial mind of acceptance, or initial awareness mind, is kind of open to the so-called seeds of the alaya-vijnana. In other words, if there's not thought coverings of discursive thinking of concepts, it's almost like the seeds of your experience and memory are right on the surface of the mind. They're accessible to what's happening. So in this initial acceptance mind, initial awareness mind, whatever I call it, you're maturing your experience. And then your memories aren't just like compartmentalized in a storehouse.

[17:42]

They're active catalytic factors. And hopefully as we get older, and especially if we practice as we get older, our experience matures. And if you understand what I mean by this initial awareness mind, your experience matures in relationship to non-conceptual consciousness, in relationship also to non-discursive consciousness, and discriminating consciousness is then based on all four prior three of these. And I think people who do particularly creative thinking really somehow hit upon this, discovered this, or found that it functions in their thinking sometimes, special circumstances as an artist or scientist. And I say this, you can see, I think why I say this is prior to psychology.

[18:47]

This is the basic way the mind works. that we constantly are generating functions, or can function. So the first step is to find ways to generate this initial acceptance mind, mind of acceptance, initial awareness mind, which is discontinuous and yet opens up the door to these other minds. And the window, maybe when they talk about the wounded healer, you know, as a kind of dimension, often an opening dimension for a shaman, this wounded healer, the wound part is like I think, quite similar to really having this initial mind in which the seeds, so-called seeds of the alive jnana, are at the surface and accessible to what's happening.

[19:59]

So the richness of your experience is brought into your activity when the mind is open enough through its non-conceptual and non-discursive dimensions. So this is also about let the mind, from this initial mind of awareness, let the mind flow freely without dwelling on anything, but flow freely into non-conceptual and non-discursive consciousness. So what we have here then, and I would say that the initial mind of acceptance, this attitude you have to discover and establish this, or initial awareness mind, is, we could say,

[21:07]

The way we can participate in bodily, one of the ways we can participate in what I would call bodily awareness. I don't like body-mind. It's two nouns, they create a different feeling. So I prefer bodily mind. There's a bodily-ness to it. The bodily mind is awareness or presence. And yeah, your body, if you've been born and you're living, there's some kind of bodily mind. But it's the practice of non-conceptual consciousness and non-discursive consciousness that opens bodily mind, that allows bodily mind to flow freely without hindrance.

[22:19]

And mostly without... It's a not knowing mind, without even non-grasping awareness. But you... I'm sorry to make it sound so mechanical, but you kind of create an an inter-non-face, an inter-face, an inter-non-face between bodily awareness and non-conceptual and non-discursive consciousness. And Dogen talks about, you know, bodhi citta citta is discriminating consciousness joined to bodhi and this would be this discriminating consciousness which is the kind of vehicle for the fullness of bodily awareness non-conceptual awareness and non-discursive non-discursive consciousness

[23:43]

So whatever you have understood from what I said, I think it was pretty clear. You can begin to, I hope, feel these possibilities and notice them, maybe already have a sense of actualizing them, but really to make it all work, to enter into this study and actualizing of the mind prior to personal history, prior to psychology. The sambhogakaya body, we could say, is a non personal history, non personal history body, mind. The nirmanakaya body, if we try to understand what I've been saying in these categories, is when there's the flow of these twin or three streams of mind, where the streams of mind come together in your activity, we could call it Nirmanakaya Buddha.

[25:18]

Well, this is enough. Thank you very much. May our intention deeply penetrate every being.

[25:45]

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