The title of this series of meetings was something like Facing Change and Realizing Peace. Now, after several classes, several talks and discussions, perhaps you could understand me changing the title to Facing Appearances and Realizing Peace. Facing the appearance of change. And then, now change face to really fully embrace the changes of appearance or the appearance of change.

[01:29]

Fully embrace the appearance of birth and death. Fully embrace samsara and realize nirvana, which is peace, which is freedom. Freedom, nirvana kind of means freedom, it means actually like to extinguish, it kind of means to extinguish bondage. So you could translate nirvana as freedom or liberation and the meaning of it is peace. There's a way of meeting and engaging with birth and death, there's a way of meeting and engaging with the realm of appearances that is the way to realize freedom and peace.

[02:38]

And that way is basically to be compassionate towards all appearances but also bring together with that compassion a teaching, a philosophy, an epistemology. So an epistemology is saying that living beings are living within a cognitive enclosure. All that we know is conscious construction only, all we know is nothing but mind. And if we practice compassion with everything we know, together with the teaching, the epistemology,

[03:52]

which tells us how we know and what we're knowing. What we're knowing is our mind, all we know is our mind, all we can know. And if we bring that epistemology together with ethics, ethics of compassion and love, then the ethics becomes liberating. If we practice compassion towards appearances and think they're something other than appearances, that will not be liberating. If we practice compassion with appearances and think the appearances are something more than mind, we will not become free of the mind which we're enclosed in. If we hear the teaching that all we're dealing with all day long is mind,

[04:57]

and we don't practice compassion towards the things that are mind, that also will not be liberating. We need ethics together with this teaching. Then the ethics, which is the practice, together with the theory, which tells us what we're dealing with, and also the practices we're doing, we use the appearance of practices to deal with other appearances, like the appearance of pain, the appearance of other living beings, the appearance of birth, the appearance of death. Those appearances are not practices. Being compassionate towards those appearances is the practice, but actually we're doing the appearance of practice with the appearances. We're not performing pain, we're not performing birth, we're not performing death, exactly.

[06:01]

But the death we're dealing with and the birth we're dealing with are the death and birth that occur within mind. They're not outside mind, they are just mind. And the way we practice with them is also mind. But the way we practice with them, we don't practice pain with pain, we practice patience with pain. We don't practice pain with pain, we practice generosity with pain. We don't practice being ethical with pain, we practice ethics. We do practice ethics, we practice ethics with pain, but we actually practice what we know about ethics, and what we know about patience, and what we know about generosity, which is the appearance of generosity and the appearance of ethics, the appearance of being careful, the appearance of telling the truth. The cognitive construction of truth we practice.

[07:04]

The cognitive construction of lying we slip into. And then we practice ethics with lying, if we notice it. Not that we ever know it. This is basically a theoretical, philosophical question, which we need to understand. So, this teaching of cognitive construction only says, it says that our mind is a boundary to which there is never an outside.

[08:13]

We can never know what's outside. Or is it that there is an inside? It seems like you were talking about it in the first place. Yeah, well, tonight's tonight. What lies beyond this enclosure is not simply unknown. It doesn't occur in any way. But that doesn't mean it's non-existent. It just means it doesn't occur. It is unborn. But it's not simply unknown, what's beyond. What's beyond is not just unknown, it doesn't occur in any way.

[09:19]

It doesn't even occur as non-existent. And if there was anything beyond that could appear, it would just be the same. It would just be incorporated into the appearance enclosure. Reality can never be restricted by beyond, outside, or inside. Yes, and Dogen said to some of his students that the Buddha way is the performance of your daily life.

[10:26]

If you're in a monastery, it's the performance of the daily life in a monastery. If you're not in a monastery, it's the performance of daily life not in the monastery. But it is the performance of your daily life that is Buddhism. The Buddha way is the performance, and performances are appearances. The Buddha way is the performance of the appearance of Buddhism. And one might think, well, isn't there some other Buddhism besides just the performance of the appearance of it? And you could say no, but you could also say, even if there was, it would just be the same thing. First we say, Buddhism is nothing outside the performance of Buddhism, and the performance of the appearance of practice. It's nothing more than the performance of the appearance of generosity,

[11:31]

of being ethical in the sense of being careful and conscientious, and it's the performance of patience, the performance of diligence, the performance of concentration, and even the performance of wisdom, even the performance of the appearance of non-attachment. But this is not saying there is nothing outside. What it's saying is, we do not know anything outside, because as soon as we know something outside, it's inside. And what is outside doesn't occur in any way. The only place things occur is in mind. Outside mind, there's no occurrences.

[12:34]

There are no things outside mind. But that doesn't mean we're saying that only mind exists. This is epistemology. So, conscious construction only, the teaching that we live within a cognitive construction, means that the enclosure is the problem, not the solution. Conscious construction only means that mind is the problem, not the solution. We're not trying to fix our mind as the solution to karma and suffering. We're trying to be ethical with our mind, with the teaching that this mind that we're being ethical with is the problem.

[13:38]

And if we practice that way, we can become free of mind, but not by fixing it. We become free of the problem. The problem is that we live within a cognitive construction. We live within, basically, a mistake. Not only do we live within appearances, but the appearances look like the reality. Is that the main problem? That is the main problem. They appear to be more than appearances. That's the main problem. That's the way appearances appear. Appearances do not appear as though they're not there, really. Conscious construction only means that we mistake the workings of our mind for that upon which they are put. We mistake the projections of the mind

[14:54]

for that upon which the projections are projected. And that upon which you're projecting it is not outside mind. Outside mind is inside mind. Inside and outside is inside mind. But the projections are not based on nothing. There's not nothing that they're based on. They're based on something that's not outside. But also, all there is inside is mistakes about it. Here's another teaching about mind to help you practice ethics together with this teaching. And that is, reality is a cognitive attainment. And I think many of us think,

[16:04]

well, there's my mind and then there's what my mind knows. And my mind can know delusions, which I've been hearing a lot about. But my mind might also be able to know reality. Reality is not something your mind knows. It is something your mind realizes. It is a mind that realizes reality. It's a state of mind that we attain that's reality. What's his name? Henri Bergson said that reality is ultimately spiritual, not physical. It's not to say there's no physical. It's just saying all we know about the physical is cognitive constructions of it. And we are advised to be compassionate

[17:09]

towards all cognitive constructions of physicality. But also remember that when we're dealing with physicality, we're really dealing with our cognitive constructions of physicality. It's not to say there is no physicality. We're just saying all we know about it is mind. And reality is not what we know about physicality. Reality is the attainment of freedom from what we know about physicality. What we know about physicality is a mistake about physicality. It's a projection about physicality. That's what we know. This fall I'm offering a class about how to take care of the body, which will be about how to be kind to the body while understanding that the body you're being kind to is your projection of the body in hopes that there may be a realization

[18:09]

of what the body is, namely that realizing that it's mind is reality. Understanding that what we're dealing with is mind, that understanding is a cognitive thing. The understanding that we're dealing with our mind is reality. Because reality is including that we, spiritual beings, are mistaken. Cognitive construction does not mean that only consciousness exists. If I say there's no outside, and it's not just that you don't know it, but there's no outside occurs at all, it doesn't mean that all there is, that all that exists, is cognitive construction. Just saying all you know. To say that all that exists is cognitive construction

[19:12]

would be ontology. We're not making an ontological statement. We're making a statement about how we know. How we know is we only know the mind. The thing is to become free of this. Not go someplace else, but become free of where we are. So again, we want to practice compassion towards everything that appears, and there's plenty of stuff that appears, right? All these things are mind, and if we're compassionate towards them, while remembering that what we're compassionate towards, and the way we're being compassionate, nobody can know the reality of that. We only know the appearance of it. Which is good, because that means the reality of compassion, and the reality of reality,

[20:13]

are free of mind. Reality is the attainment of freedom from mind. Reality is free of mind, and it's so free of mind that it allows itself to be obscured by mind. Reality does not say, there is going to be no further obscuration by cognitive construction of me. Reality just is this attainment. Also, I think I wrote down, if there were no realized cognition, if there were no realized beings, if there were no realized experience, there would be no reality. In this teaching, there's no reality unless the reality is realized. There's no floating reality.

[21:15]

Reality is only the realization, the cognitive reality is only a spiritual thing, it's only a great attainment. The Buddha taught in the Eightfold Path, karma has consequences, and the consequences of karma are coming from living within cognitive construction, and then acting within cognitive construction has consequences. Next thing is, there is father and mother. In other words, you do have a father and mother. You weren't born from nowhere. The other is, there are realized beings. He didn't say at that time, they weren't ready for it, but now I'm telling you when he said, there are realized beings, he meant there is reality, and somebody's taking care of it for us, and we can join them by receiving the teaching about how we know,

[22:20]

and receiving the teaching of how to act within confusion and mistakenness. Mistaken beings can practice ethics. They can become more or less skillful at practicing compassion. But they need also the teaching that what they're working with all the time is this enclosure. Somebody gave me a poem, which she wrote with a pen, so it's hard for me to read, a brush pen, and she wrote little, so it's hard for me to read this, I might be reading it wrong. The poem is by Wendell Berry, and it's in a book called Standing By Words. The Chinese character on the front of the book is a character which means faith, or trust, and the character, as you're looking at it, the left side of the character

[23:23]

has the ideogram for person, and the right side of the character has the ideogram for word. Put the person by the word, that's faith. A person standing by word is the Chinese character for faith, and the name of the book is Standing By Words, which you could also say standing by appearances, standing by mistakes, standing by projections. Words are projections. We've got to stand by them. He says, what can turn us from this deserted future back into the sphere of our own being, the great dance that joins us to our home, to each other,

[24:25]

to other creatures, to the deed and the unborn? I think it's love. I am perforce aware of how badly and embarrassingly that word now lies upon the page. For we have learned at once to overuse it, abuse it, and hold it in suspicion. But I do not mean an abstract love, which is probably a contradiction in terms, but a particular love

[25:28]

for particular things, places, and people, requiring people, requiring stands and acts. Showing its maybe successes in practical and tangible effects. And it implies a responsibility just as particular, not grim or merely dutiful, but rising out of generosity. I think that this sort of love defines the effective range of human intelligence, the range within which works can be dependable,

[26:28]

can be dependable, maybe comma, beneficent. Only the action motivated by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous. Desire for future produces words that cannot be stood by. But love makes language exact because it loves only what it knows. Epistemology comes in and says your loving appearances, which you take to be real. If you practice love with these appearances, and again, as I've been saying, ethical responsibility

[27:31]

follows from generosity. Being ethically responsible to particular forms and particularly the forms right now. Remembering what you're dealing with here. You're dealing with mind. Not your mind, mind. You're dealing with cognitive construction only. You're dealing with the problem. And what do you do with the problem? You remember you're dealing with it. And you deal with it with love in a very particular way. And you fail at it and you notice particularly how you fail. And one of the main ways we fail is by not being particular enough. Or by being slightly particular about a slightly different problem, please. Resisting dealing with this one

[28:36]

thinking that we would do better with another one. I could love somebody else better than this person, so I'm going to go over there and love that person rather than this one. Or I'll deal with this one but I'll wait until later when this one changes perhaps into a more attractive version of itself. And if you do, when the future comes to be the present, that's good. But it's better to not wait because waiting to practice love is not the practice of love. Conscious construction only also means excuse me, conscious construction only is a reduction of the human condition to mind.

[29:38]

And it's a reduction to the human condition to ethics. And it's also saying all the problems we have only exist within this realm. There's no problems other than this realm and there's nothing outside this realm. When we're free of this realm we are free. But we don't go someplace else, we just become free of this. Because there is nothing outside or beyond this. Outside and beyond are the stuff of this. Outside and beyond are cognitive constructions only. But freedom is unborn. Our actual life is unborn and free. And it's realized

[30:43]

right now. There is a reality which is free and realized right now. And the realization of it is the beings that have realized it. They're not beings who have that realization. They are beings which are that realization. And that realization is not beyond this enclosure. That realization is the freedom from this enclosure which is not beyond the enclosure because that wouldn't be this freedom. That would be just the enclosure again. This is maybe enough. So I like the expression epistemological ethics. Epistemological ethics are liberating ethics. Ethics without an epistemology might not work because you might think

[31:44]

that what you think is good is something other than a cognitive construction of good. You just might. As a matter of fact, this teaching says you will. That's the mistake we make. That looks like good and it really seems like it's true. And it's not that it's not good. It's just that what we're dealing with is a mistake. But to be mistaken about something that appears to be good doesn't mean that it really is bad. It just means I'm dealing with my story about it being good. And if I remember that, and also, by the way, part of compassion, stretching it a bit, is to be really concentrated on compassion and really be concentrated on this teaching. And it's hard to concentrate on this teaching

[32:44]

because the cognitive enclosure keeps saying this stuff's real. These appearances are real. And if you don't say so, you might be nihilistic or something. But this isn't nihilism. This teaching saves the insubstantiality of appearances from being nihilistic. This teaching, I feel the disruptiveness of it. The teaching is to disrupt the enclosure. The teaching of enclosure is to disrupt the enclosure. It's strange for me, too, to think that reality is a cognitive attainment. It's strange.

[33:47]

I'm getting used to it by saying it over and over many, many times and reading it over and over and writing it over and over, but it's still strange. It seems like reality, there's reality and there's me. Or there's reality and people who understand it. No. Reality is the understanding of mind. Reality is the understanding of mind which releases us from mind. Reality is the understanding of which liberates us and gives us peace. Yes. The cognitive constructions are unstable.

[34:49]

Could one say they're limited as well? Or would that cause problems to the psychology? Well, limited is... Boundaries are kind of related to the word limited. Except this limited is a complete boundary. It's kind of limiting, it's limiting, but it's a totally successful limiting. It's really a totally including limit, a total horizon, nothing but horizon. Boundaries and limits are kind of related. Boundary and limit

[35:50]

is one thing. Enclosure doesn't mean mistake. We're enclosed in this mind and the mind is a mistake. One way of talking is to point out that we can't get outside of the enclosure which we would want to get out of when we find the enclosure is one big surface of error. All attempts to get outside of the enclosure dash the realm of mistake are further mistakes. We think that this thing will get us outside of this thing. But that's just another version of what we're trying to get outside of. The dog lives with a different mistake. Their mistakes are pretty much

[36:52]

the same. It's just that their images are not as linguistic as ours, apparently. But they live also within an enclosure that they think is real. They think their enclosure is real. They can hear that we can hear with our mistakes. They can hear them much lower. They're limited in a different way. They're limited in a different way except I think they're totally enclosed like we are. And they think their limits, their low sounds, they think those are real. They make mistakes, too. And they suffer, too. If they didn't suffer, then we wouldn't have to be nice to them. It would be no problem. But they do suffer because their minds create a false impression

[37:52]

of what's going on so they're cut off from realization just like we are. Dogen used the example of water that for a fish it's like a palace and for us it's like flowing water. And for a hungry ghost it's like a river of poison and pus. For a hungry ghost it's like a river of poison and pus. For a celestial being it's like jewels. Different beings see the river in different ways. But if you would tell the fish they're living in the river, right? If you tell the fish that their world is flowing they'll be shocked. The fish are living in the water, right? Which we see as flowing. But they think it's a shopping mall. They're having a nice time but if you tell them it's flowing they go,

[38:52]

what? For them it's a stable world of appearances that they live in. They do not see the way we see but we see within an enclosure too. We can't see what it's like to be in the water the way they are. But all of us are enclosed and the similarity of the enclosure is determined by the similarity of the karma. So humans live in a similar enclosure because our karma is similar. Particularly our linguistic karma is similar. So we do live in different worlds but also we also live in the same world as the fish. The same planet, the same water and yet the way we see the water and they see the water and other beings see the water it's all different depending on their karma. But everybody's living within an enclosure. All living beings live within an enclosure. Is something happening up there? Did you find anything out?

[39:56]

I didn't see anything. All living beings are within an enclosure. All sentient beings just have karmic consciousness. Fish have karmic consciousness, elephants have karmic consciousness, whales have karmic consciousness, banana slugs have karmic consciousness, humans have karmic consciousness, divine beings have karmic consciousness. Do Buddhas have karmic consciousness? Actually they get to a place where they do not. However, they also are totally realizing the freedom from karmic consciousness so they're not the slightest bit separate from beings who have karmic consciousness because they are the ones who realize the nature of karmic consciousness. So the realization of Buddhas is not inside or outside of our karmic consciousness. The Buddhas are right with our karmic consciousness in realization. Bodhisattvas

[40:57]

who wish to receive this teaching and practice it, they can actually realize reality while still being a sentient being who has karmic consciousness but they're free of it. It's possible that beings that are not Bodhisattvas could also realize the nature of mind and thereby be free of it. The problem for elephants and so on is that I do not know that they have instruction about how to... I think they do know how to be kind. I think elephants do know how to practice compassion. I think baboons and gorillas and banana slugs I don't know what a banana slug is but a lot of mammals do know how to practice compassion it looks like. But I don't know that they have a teaching which tells them that they're living within cognitive construction

[41:59]

and that they're mistaking appearance for reality. I don't know if they have that teaching. I think they need it. I think they need it. I think they suffer. I think elephants are magnificent beings and they can be compassionate but I think they're afraid. Humans are afraid. I think tigers it seems to me that lions and tigers are really afraid. They're like afraid of fire. And they're actually afraid of humans. The humans are really far away it seems to me. They're afraid of them but they don't you know they're far enough away so it doesn't bother them. When the humans start getting closer the fear manifests and they move away. And when humans get really close they get so frightened that they attack. But I think they're attacking out of fear. And we attack out of fear too. We do not attack

[42:59]

out of love. We attack out of fear. And we're afraid of humans too. But we're basically afraid of life as it appears because the way it appears is birth. And birth has been a really scary thing particularly for females for a long time because they know they've seen and they can feel that they're on the verge of death when they're delivering babies. And the babies are also they're afraid too. They're getting squashed it's frightening. Birth is frightening. Death is frightening. Life is not frightening. Until it gets put into a cognitive until it's limited and put into this container then it gets scary. Then we know and we're scared. Before we know we're not afraid. But Bodhisattvas

[44:02]

willingly come into this enclosure where it's scary and they receive these teachings of the nature of the mind and they receive teachings on how to practice compassion towards this mistaken enclosure. This enclosure of mistakes. And they're very happy to be there practicing compassion practicing love practicing ethics with the teaching that they try to stay focused on so they don't get fooled by the mind because if you get fooled by the mind you get distracted from compassion. Like you think this person is not worthy of compassion. This person is perpetrating injustice so I should not be kind to them. Would you say the mistake is all mind or is it all sensation? Sensation is cognitive construction only. Experience is the basis

[45:04]

upon which we construct our world. Our actual life experience which has everything that our life has is not an enclosure. And it's not outside mind either. But within mind within cognitive construction we have feelings ideas impulses all kinds of motivations and fears and hatreds and anything we know is within this enclosure. And we do know pain and pleasure. We do know all kinds of feelings. All the things we know are just mind. But our life itself is not really something we know. It's just our life. Just hearing something is not the mistake. When we know what we hear what we're dealing

[46:06]

with is our cognitive construction of what we're hearing and we think that we're seeing reality. There's this radio lab show which pointed out that the people in Greece didn't see colors. This kind of teaching is disruptive. I can see you're getting slightly disruptive. They called it the wine-colored sea. They didn't have a color. They called it the wine-colored sea. They called it colored and they didn't see the color. All they saw was wine. The show is about Greeks

[47:06]

being colorblind. That's the name of the show. Check it out and argue with them. The historians of the Western Hemisphere say that the Native Americans living in Veracruz and so on when the Spanish arrived couldn't see the ships. They had no way to imagine those ships. They saw them. They experienced them. Their eyes saw them but they couldn't cognize them. They were having a life experience and they were there and they were alive with the ships and they couldn't see the ships. Their minds did not have the karmic background to construct those ships. One of the people figured out how to construct

[48:06]

the ships and taught the other people. It's a construction and not all beings can construct the same things as other beings. We construct things now that we didn't used to be able to see. After we construct them, we're tricked by them. They're tricking us. There are lots of theories about why we evolved this way. What kind of question? It appears to be stupid. It seems so obvious to be the answer. What that means, it would seem to imply that there is a whole lot here that we're not seeing. It's not quite saying

[49:06]

that there's a whole lot here that we can't see. To say it's here is a cognitive construction. What this teaching is not saying is that there's nothing but this construction. It's not saying this is all there is. It's not saying that. But also it's just saying whatever you say about what is, that's within here, that's in the enclosure. Any statements about what is and what isn't and what we have and what we don't have, that stuff you know about and that's only conscious construction only. But it's not saying there's nothing else. It's just saying you don't know about it and it's not outside this or beyond this. But it's also not inside this. Beyond and inside are just more the same stuff. The way anything besides this is, is inconceivable. And we sentient beings

[50:08]

have problems with the inconceivable, so it takes us a while to get cozy with it. By being kind to the conceivable and remember that what we're dealing with is conception only, we become free of conception, we understand conception only, we become free of it, and we become intimate with what is free of conception only, which is free of any ideas we have about it. It's our life. Our life is free of our mind. But we have to understand our mind in order to realize how our life is free of our mind. Is it not possible to have Buddhist metaphysics because we can have no experience of physics? First question, is it not possible

[51:08]

to have Buddhist metaphysics? Let's put it this way. Today, it's probably a good idea to not use metaphysics until after we're free. If you think metaphysics would help somebody, fine. But I think this teaching is don't use metaphysics to become free of metaphysics. Use epistemology to become free of metaphysics. What we're dealing with is the freedom from the mental construction of metaphysics. Again, the way of dealing with metaphysics is to realize that we are dealing only with the conscious construction of metaphysics. And we should love it. But love it doesn't mean like it. Love it means give it away. After you're free of metaphysics

[52:08]

and all other conscious constructions, you might find it interesting to do some metaphysical work. It could be helpful. Some people look at Mahayana Buddhism and they think when they're talking about these world systems within world systems and there are infinite realms within each atom and there are Buddhas inside each one. That's metaphysical. But we use metaphysics as images and as appearances. You meditate on them but you don't try to figure them out. You use these pictures of things which are so far out that when you meditate on them you become free of your mind which usually would feel really weird

[53:08]

about thinking about this stuff. So in that case a metaphysical teaching might be useful. Anything that would liberate beings is fine. But in this situation it's probably like let's just set metaphysical right in the same place, let's keep it in the same realm and then we want to use these pictures, these grandiose imaginations of universes within universes and Buddhas and Bodhisattvas inside all the particles and all that kind of stuff. If we want to do that we realize what we're doing is we're actually massaging and working with this conscious construction only. And so if the Buddha in service of epistemology and

[54:09]

then when you're free you can use metaphysics to help other people in service of epistemology. Yes? What about the second part of the question? Excuse me, can I say something? You say we don't have direct experience of physics. We only have our ideas of it. We only know our ideas of it. And the reality of physics is a cognitive attainment. So we actually can realize the reality

[55:10]

of physics. But this reality of physics is a cognitive attainment. We actually are, all day long, I think, I guess, I think, [...] that all day long we are actually physical beings. And we are actually physical experience all day long. We are physical experience. And the reality is the realization, is a cognitive understanding of our physical existence. The reality of physical existence is an understanding, which is not really physical. It's the reality of physics. So I think we are actually physical beings. And

[56:11]

understanding how we are is a spiritual or cognitive attainment, which we only have when we become free of our ideas about physics and our physical existence, which we like because we know our ideas about our physical existence. We know our ideas about our body. We know our cognitive enclosure of our body. We know our body within the cognitive enclosure, but we're trapped there and that's where we suffer. When we become free of that, we realize our physical reality. We realize physics. And we could become physicists from that place. Maybe some of these people that we have heard about got to that place by working with their mind. By working

[57:11]

with the cognitive enclosure of their mind, they worked with that, they understood that, became free of that, and realized physical reality and then came back into cognitive enclosure to make mathematics and so on. So I think Einstein may have done the very thing we're talking about. Because in fact, there was a cognitive enclosure about physical reality that he was looking at and he kind of thought, this is a mistake. But I think he was kind to it. He didn't spit at it. He was careful of it and patient with it and generous with it. He gave himself to it a lot of the day and he also knew it was a mistake somehow. I don't know where he got that information but somebody conveyed, this is a mistake. And then he became free of that and in that freedom he got

[58:11]

some realization of physical reality. Then he came back within cognitive enclosure again and imagined mathematics and language and so on and then they made ways to test it. So that's one story about that. Yes? Yeah, that was the history of modern physics, A. I think when you were talking about metaphysics and epistemology, I'm not sure I understand it, but what occurred to me kind of in common... I'm not sure I do either. Yeah, exactly. What occurred to me in common language... Apparently exactly, apparently exactly. In common language, the process of idolatry, you know, a lot of times there's a focus on what the idol stands for. This is just an idol. But it seems like we're talking about studying the process of idolatry, this important thing, whereas a lot of other traditions, maybe traditions

[59:12]

are just our tendency, is to focus and say, that's not the real thing. That's an idol. That's right, this is studying the process of idolatry with compassion towards idolatry and teachings about what idolatry is about. Namely, idolatry is simply, of course, of course, of course, it's just cognitive construction. But even the idol worshippers could maybe say, no, we're just worshipping a representation of that. But they have a conscious construction that there's something beyond that, which is incorrect. So they need some more education. The idols aren't necessarily saying, we're beyond that. The idols might be saying, no, actually, we're part of the process by which you're imagining us. They're sending that message, you know, through various means, like music and poetry and

[60:13]

dance and love. They're sending that message. Yeah, it's particular. Exactly. And people do that. And now we're saying, that's good. Now, we just want to bring this teaching in to remind you that the idol you're working with is just your mind. It's not even just a representation of the idol. This representation is not other than your mind. This representation is not outside your mind. people do know this is a representation of the idol, but they think the representation is not mind. And that the idol is something, too. That it's something that it's about. Anything else tonight? Or tomorrow? Sorry, I'm just kidding about tomorrow. We're not into that. We're just

[61:16]

into now, right? And we're into now. And again, we're into now, but also we're into being thoroughly, you know, thoroughly exhausting the now. And part of the way to exhaust the now is to point out that now is a cognitive construction of now. Now is a mountain of now, and we should exhaustively study and analyze this now with teachings which test to see if we're tricked by this now, which, of course, we are. And the more we realize how we're tricked by this now, we do value now, but we also value the teaching that we're dealing with the appearance of now, because we like to know now. We know an appearance of now. We do know an appearance of now. But the

[62:16]

actual experience of now, we don't know. However, if we understand how we make now into an experience and we're kind to that, don't beat up on that, and we have this teaching, we can actually realize the experience of our life now, which is freedom. Our life is actually already free. It is already realized. The Buddhas have already realized it. It's just sitting there waiting for us to enjoy it. However, we have quite a bit of work to do because we're living in a cognitive enclosure where we're a little bit afraid, which is normal. So we have to be really kind to the situation in order to really open up to the life which is not inside or outside of our imprisonment. I was thinking you had said something much earlier about beings who had realized this, like you just said the Buddhas have realized Much earlier? You mean like last week? No, earlier this

[63:21]

A couple of three times. It almost sounds like there's a Buddha that exists. It almost sounds like that, yeah, except the way I said it was. It's easy for me to talk, it's hard for you to keep up with it. But I said these Buddhas are just a realization. They're not something outside of you. The Buddhas are the way you actually are. Points in time are also cognitive constructions. The realization of all that is Buddha. Realized beings, they realize the nature of mind. And the realization of the way we actually are living right now, the realization of our actual experience

[64:22]

right now is Buddhas. So Buddhas are with us right now, but what they are is they are simply the realization of our life. It's not like they're one thing and the realization is another. The realization of our life right now is actually our life, is the reality of our life. And I'm saying that this is being realized, in other words, there's a being of realization. Realization exists. Realization exists. And we can access it if we're kind to the way we exile ourselves from it. And also listen to the teaching and stay focused on the teaching that we are exiled from it by our addiction to appearances, which isn't going to stop. So we use the addiction to appearance to liberate experience, I mean liberate addiction to experience. We use addiction

[65:24]

to appearance to liberate us from addiction to appearance by being kind to the addiction to appearance. And also remember the teaching that we are addicted to appearance and that all we got since we're addicted is appearance. But there is actually the possibility of realizing, understanding this and becoming free of it and also that realization is present, which we call Buddhist. We call the awakening to reality of this cognitive construction only, we call that Buddha. Or we call it awakening. And awakening, you can say awakening is the awakening itself, or you can say it can also be a historical person who can teach these things to people. It's also a Buddha. But the one I'm talking about now is actually the awakening itself. Once again,

[66:39]

it is required that we concentrate on this teaching and also concentrate on being kind to appearances. And that's a challenge to be really concentrated. When so many other appearances are calling for our attention, it's almost like they're in competition with the teaching that what's being called, what's calling us is an appearance. And some scientists and some appearances even say to us, I'm not an appearance, I'm a real person. And it's not that they're not a real person, it's just that how we know them is an appearance. You're not appearances, so if you tell me you're not an appearance, I agree. But all I know about you are these nice knowable things. All I know

[67:40]

about you is the knowable version of you. But you are not the knowable version of you. And you are not simply just the unknowable version of yourself, but you're also not beyond the knowable version of yourself. You're free of appearance and you're free of beyond appearance. But to me, you're the walls of my prison, the ceiling of my prison, the floor of my prison, and the sky surrounding my prison. You're my enclosure. But I have a teaching that says I should be compassionate to how I see and that will get through to you. Because you're not beyond the appearance

[68:40]

of you, which I know about. And I'm not beyond the appearance of me, which you know about. I do not occur in any way beyond the appearance of me that you know. I am unborn. I am unborn and I am unborn and I'm always just unborn. And people make appearances out of me, and I even make an appearance out of myself, or my mind makes an appearance out of me, too. This is a disruptive teaching that liberates us from

[69:42]

disruption. It liberates us from disruption. It liberates us from our ideas of disruption. And this makes it possible for us to be with disruption and to be free with disruption. To be free of disruption and to be free with disruption, we need to be free of our ideas of disruption and non-disruption. Free with and from. You appear to be quiet. You appear to be smiling. You appear to be a mystery. I know you, but I don't know what you are.

[70:44]

I'm happy remembering that I don't know what you are, or who you are, or where you are. And I pray that we will remember the mystery and remember the teaching that we are enclosed in our mind, or enclosed in mind. That would, I think, be really good. We have two minutes left to chuckle. Two minutes left to dance. The great dance. Does this practice

[72:00]

make the enclosure seem like it's becoming a window? The only window there can be is the enclosure. People want to get outside the enclosure, but actually that's closing the window on the enclosure. Only by being kind to the enclosure does the enclosure turn into a window. When we're free of the enclosure, there's no windows. There's no frame on the universe anymore. Yeah, but

[73:11]

it's not like that. That's another layer on the egg. And accepting that you just did that and I pecked back. Just keep going back and forth like this and you'll be free of the egg without making the egg the slightest bit thinner. You don't have to make the egg thinner to be free of it because it's just your mind. And you really can't make your mind thinner. But you can keep pecking on and discussing various things to do with the shell and I'll peck back. You can put a window on your shell. We have one more class. I hope you come because I'm going to. Unless I don't.

[74:07]

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