I think of various things we could discuss, but I think maybe the most important thing to do right now is to look at what category of, what Buddha category allows us the most access to this practice and this teaching. Now, when you want Yuan Wu, more or less the compiler of the blue-click records.

[01:03]

So as powerful and real an authority on Zen as there could be. One of his advice is establish a mind, generate a mind which has neither before nor after. A mind which has neither before nor after. I would add, and has neither here nor there. Yeah, and my hesitation in saying this, and as I say it, I can feel my hesitation.

[02:03]

is that it seems that, or it may seem to you that this is virtually impossible. And it, yeah, maybe, is almost impossible. Because, as someone pointed out, I read recently... Aristotle's categories by which we notice the world are so taken for granted by our culture that they are the world. So Buddhism tries to create new categories, new categories in their own culture as well as, for us, in effect, new categories. Because it's a question of how you notice. And what you don't notice because you notice only in habitual categories.

[03:29]

Yeah. Okay. So Yuan Wu's Advice is, see if you can be free of categories. Okay, so, well, yeah, but that's quite impossible, almost impossible. Particularly if you imagine not being, not having a mind free of categories, absolutely. It's particularly impossible if you imagine that there's some state of mind which is free of category. In fact, practice is, if you notice a category, in the moment of noticing it, you can free yourself from it.

[04:46]

Or let it go at that moment. Accomplishing things moment by moment is really what Buddhism is about. So now I'm talking about thusness. Which really the whole of Buddhism, development of Buddhism, came to. The best way we can say something about reality is to say it's thus, as it is. And so... Yeah, I have to find my way into this with you. Let's go back to... Yeah, it's raining.

[06:00]

You kind of object to it raining. Let's go back to the example of maybe we find it's raining out and then we think, oh, geez, I have to go home by bicycle and it's raining. So what you notice is your resistance to the rain or the resistance to the weather change. So practice is to notice that resistance and make a shift to acceptance. Okay, now, as I've said maybe too clearly, I really wasn't brought up in a Christian sense. But when I've been in, you know, things look too complicated and Terrible situation.

[07:15]

I found myself saying, oh, God, help me. And I don't know what to, you know, I like saying it. I don't expect any help, but it's nice to say it. But then I thought, I've got to have a little more discipline than this. So for some years I tolerated myself saying, God help me. Or something equivalent. I decided I can't do that. So every time I came to the point of saying, God help me, I'd say, stop. That's exactly Buddhist practice. Because when you notice something, you free yourself from it at that moment.

[08:25]

Because if everything's changing, how things exist is in this micro-moment after micro-moment. And you can only accomplish something in this micro moment. And so we have so stupid saying, superficial saying, like one instant of Zazen is one instant of Buddha. I never found that helped me very much. But it's in a way true. And one of the problems we Westerners have in practice We have the experience of, we think, well, sometimes I'm a little free of thought, but mostly I'm thinking all the time and distracted, so I haven't achieved anything.

[09:44]

And that's because we, I would say, we view ourselves in the category of continuity. We expect some improvement that exists as a stable state or in some sort of continuity. And it is through views like that that subtle forms of selfhood creep back into Buddhism. So one of the most extreme forms of change, of everything changes, is described in a technical term called alterity.

[10:55]

Alterity? Yeah. Alterity. Like from the Latin, alter. Alter. It's always alter. It's always other. Mm-hmm. We don't just say it's always other. Nobody knows the word in English either. But it means, as I said the other day, you are other than I am. I think so, anyway. In many ways you're other. And you're sitting in another place than I am. But when I say that, there's a sense that I'm not other.

[12:02]

But from a strictly Buddhist point of view, at each moment, I'm also other. So if I know my otherness at each moment, I'm more likely to know your otherness. This idea destroyed me first, once too. It doesn't mean there's not continuity. It means that otherness is more foundational or more has priority over continuity. So this is really thoroughly everything changes. And continuity is an epiphenomenon. But basically everything's changed.

[13:25]

So that's the... And that is the deepest way to talk about thusness. And the biggest name for the Buddha, the biggest epithet for Buddha is Tathagata. Which means thus, thus. Or thus. appearing and thus disappearing, thus coming and thus gone. Okay. Now, probably the depth of this idea It's hard to get. I think it is. We accept that everything changes. But it's in contrast to giving priority to continuity.

[14:30]

And it takes time to train yourself in this idea. Even though I would say it's your actual experience. It's not the category in which you conceptually see the world. No, me. So, you know, for many years somebody says, are you Richard Baker? Yeah, I don't plan to say so, but I almost always answer sometimes. I must always answer sometimes.

[15:54]

Oh, sometimes. Not I answer sometimes, but sometimes. All the time, all the time I answer. No, almost all the time I answer sometimes. But I really, the way that that would come out of me, yeah, I really didn't accept. I still gave priority to continuity. Now this is, how can you take refuge in otherness? Let's call thusness now otherness. Okay. The world is hard. Hard? Yeah. Yeah. One of the delusions of childhood is you think when you grow up and be an adult it becomes easy.

[17:24]

When you're a child you want to achieve adulthood and you think that's going to be great. And when you're an adult you wish you were still a child. You look back on how nice it was. So, what do we say? Old age is, there's an expression, old age is not for sissies. Right. But life isn't for sissies either. We need more puberty rights and things to kind of shape us up.

[18:25]

So maybe Buddhism can't offer us a real refuge. Maybe it's just the way it is. You may need it, but maybe Buddhism doesn't offer it. Maybe we just have to accept the way it is. There's nothing to grasp. Okay. That's the bad news. Now, is there any good news? Well, sort of good news is it's good to be realistic. We make better decisions if we're... And if this is the way the world is maybe it's better for us to live it that way.

[19:42]

Now again, what Buddhism accepts is that we have lots of lots of ideas. What accepts is that we have lots of ideas. And the work of consciousness itself, as I often say, the job of consciousness itself, is to provide us with a predictable, chronological, consequential world. Yeah. Because we need that.

[20:44]

I mean, you can't function if things, you know, if I reach over and touch this guy and he's not there and I just put him there, this makes me nervous. So I wanted to still be there. And when I go home, I hope my apartment is still there. I want some continuity, you know. I've been robbed a couple times. Somebody climbed into the roof in San Francisco where I live, and they took the television set, and I didn't care, but it robbed me of a sense of continuity. It was a weird feeling. It's like being violated. What a terrible world. So much of the world lives in and they don't know if they've got water the next day or food the next day or... Okay, so we need continuity.

[21:56]

We need some kind of chronology, succession. When we have to have some meaning, we have to be able to look at things and ask to be meaningful to us in terms of our personal history. So that's true no matter what kind of Buddha you are. Because if you're conscious, that's the way consciousness works. The job of consciousness, so that he can function, is to look for predictability. So wisdom and Buddhism is to, in effect, train yourself Index your behavior so that you notice discontinuity.

[23:08]

So every time you notice continuity, in a Pavlovian sense, you remember discontinuity. What is that? Every time you notice, let's say, to keep it simple, continuity, you notice, well, I mean, you may think, Well, continuity again, thank goodness. That's a... Yeah, we have those feelings and that's a way of noticing discontinuity.

[24:10]

To be thankful for continuity is to notice discontinuity. And it's surprising how this is a kind of philosophy. It's a philosophy which really arises out of the experience of meditation practice. At least meditation practice as I know. Which is not contemplative really. It's unprogrammed. Sitting without views. While you're sitting, you try to let go of views.

[25:12]

When they appear, you let go. So I call this uncorrected mind. You can say thinking, non-thinking. So you practice Zazen for a while, and I'm not recommending... Yes, I'm recommending Zazen, but I don't really care. If you want to sit, fine. You turn on the water in the morning, the faucet, and water comes out. It's a miracle. Whoa, isn't that good? Every morning water comes out. Hey, there comes the water hose. It's wonderful. I don't know why this kind of happens. So you have a kind of gratefulness. All you have to do is turn on the faucet and you feel grateful. And when you walk, you take a step, and as you step up, the floor comes up to meet your foot.

[26:16]

It's still there. Now, what happens? These kind of feelings begin to dominate, predominate. Well, my... Maybe I should have an explanation, right? I mean, I don't really have an explanation, but I'll make up an explanation. Because when we sit, we enter again, which I'm trying to understand better with you and with myself, through myself. We enter this mind of awareness or non-consciousness, a knowing non-consciousness. I don't know what to call it, but it's clearly a knowing But it's a non-conscious knowing.

[27:46]

Let's call it a knowing non-consciousness. And at least from the point of view of Buddhism, it seems to know the world more closely to how it actually exists. And it is doesn't make these distinctions of here and there. And before and after. So you get used to, you begin to have more and more of a feeling of this non-dual, non-discriminating knowing of the world. So I said you have to train your consciousness to notice alterity. Or notice discontinuity.

[28:51]

Now you can train your mind or your habit. Not your mind maybe, but the habits of your mind. And in effect you're training consciousness to notice discontinuity as well as continuity. Now I don't care where you enter this practice. There's lots of doors. Just pick one door and keep using it. Then again, I say over and over again, just use the door, the threshold. When I open the door, like I came in a moment ago, I stop in front of the door.

[30:01]

And I put my hand on the doorknob. And I feel a certain, as I often say, completeness in just putting my hand on the doorknob. And then I have, I just developed this habit. And I just developed this habit. And there's various teachings, usually in monasteries, of how to develop this habit. And you know the most common way is to always know which foot you enter a door with. In the West, we The way to practice that would be to, if possible, always enter the door with the foot leg nearest the hinge. You don't have to do as I do sometimes, and I see others do. You get to the door and you've got the wrong foot there, so you do a little dance and then you...

[31:03]

You don't have to do it the way I've already done it. If you do it with the so-called wrong foot, you make a little dance so that you're on the right foot. Monks get a crazy reputation. They do this door dance. Some have a strange representation that they do this door dance. But the point is, you know, just enter with any foot, but you notice what foot you enter with. You don't enter with... Now, this is just a way to use the body and the physical situation you live in to index an experience in the mind. Now, this gives priority... to the artificial over the natural.

[32:15]

Now, if you believe in the net that I want to just behave naturally, and Zen is all about being natural, I used to think that. One of the things that attracted me to Zen You don't have to wear shoes. You don't have to comb your hair. You can go to church barefoot. I like that. But at some point I recognized actually it's all artifice. In other words, everything is created. We're mentally structuring things. There's no natural. Natural is artifice we're used to.

[33:24]

And we want to get to the point where artifice is natural. If you just enter the door without thinking about your body, or just enter without thinking about this, and you're still in your continuity of mind, etc. That's also artifice. That's just one way of behaving. It's okay. And then once you realize it's all artifice, I can bathe in any way. It's all artifice. But some artifice makes us feel better than others. Okay. Phil, let's take the door again.

[34:26]

I get ready to open the door. I put my hand in the door knob. The door might be locked. Who knows? Andreas might be playing a Zen trick on me. Ha ha, the road she can't get in. Who knows? So I put my hand and hey, it moves. And when I open the door, I don't know if anyone's going to be here. When I open the door, whoa. And then I just feel you in my stomach or my heart. It's like you all just disappear into my body and I disappear into your body. I feel you with an all-in-ones-ness.

[35:51]

Now, this is just this moment. Then I come in, I have to say something, I don't know what to say, you know, so I sit down. But for a moment I cut off whether I have something to say or know what to do or anything. It's just... Yeah, you are. So this is training yourself. No, you're not training yourself. This is training your consciousness. No, it's not training your consciousness. It's training consciousness which partly belongs to you and partly belongs to your culture and your friends and your parents. So you're training consciousness by indexing it to certain

[36:52]

Behaviors like coming in a door. Or noticing consciousness. I mean noticing continuity and shifting to discontinuity. And every time you do that, you're generating a mind of acceptance. A mind of acceptance that accepts the way things are, whether we like them or don't like them. It doesn't mean it removes all likes and dislikes. It means for that moment, in the mind of acceptance, you're free of likes and dislikes. Now you've got a partner in crime here. I mean a partner in enlightenment.

[38:05]

Which is awareness. Because the Abhidharma, all the Abhidharma lists, particularly the ones that Zen has chosen to work with, Our ways to index our noticing or index our consciousness to train our consciousness so it lets awareness in. It lets non-dual, non-discursive non-conscious mind. And the door is the mind of acceptance.

[39:22]

So the mind of acceptance belongs to consciousness, but it's also the surface, or more than the surface, of awareness. So you're not just training consciousness in wisdom. You train consciousness to create a mind of acceptance which then lets awareness infiltrate consciousness. And when awareness pervades consciousness, We call that enlightenment.

[40:24]

Okay. That's your prescription. Appletaker. From the Appletaker. You know, it's something we can do. Something within our power. And it's not so difficult. If you do Zazen, that helps. And fairly regularly. Because you want to establish a continuity of awareness in your life. And it's often satisfying. But basically you do it five, six, seven times a week if you can, and it establishes a continuity of awareness, at least underneath the activity of your life.

[41:32]

But it doesn't enter your life so much, your actual living and the categories in which you think and notice. Unless you also in-depth your consciousness, to start to notice from the point of view of awareness. So usually if you look at koans, the phrases in koans etc. are all based on the world known through awareness or non-conscious knowing. But you install that phrase in your consciousness, and it begins to reverse. It changes the critical mass, sort of, and suddenly reverses into consciousness, reverses into awareness.

[42:34]

That's also an enlightenment. One reason it can be sudden. Yeah, that's enough for now. Yeah. I didn't know if I could get into that, but I did better than I thought. But still, a long ways to go. For me.

[43:26]

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