As I said this morning, the good news is that the universe, all beings, all the goodness, are already eternal. So it's kind of a matter of not making it useless, but realizing it. not to create intimacy, but to now enter. And that's the basic method of Zen, is to put your in, put your in this evening. So, this afternoon I wanted to bring up another way of, another version of the basic method And the one teacher, Wong Bo, his basic method was to give up conceptual thought.

[01:13]

Give up all conceptuality. The first level of giving up conceptual trauma, you could say, is the practice of tranquility, where you experience things, experience phenomena like your body, your breathing, and give up being conceptual about it. Give up just wandering thoughts in relationship to, for example, your physical experience. Just let sound be sound. Just let what you hear be what you hear. And then the next layer of letting go of conceptual thought is to let go of the actual concept by which you grasp the phenomena.

[02:40]

And that level of learning called the scripts of thought develops into what we call insight. There's a scripture which actually last year I think I've discussed with you in Pittsburgh last year, a scripture which is called Revealing or Unraveling the Deep Intention or the Deep Meaning of the Buddha's Teaching. Sama Nirmacana Sutra. And one of the basic things in there is it says that, I'll put it positively first, that is that you can learn to not strongly adhere or conceptually grasp what you think things are as being things, then you can open to the ultimately true way that they are.

[03:50]

But negatively, if you grasp what's happening as being or ideas of it, then affliction arises. So affliction arises from believing that our imagination about things is the way they actually are. And when you stop grasping strongly to your imagination of things as being the way they are, then you're open to the way things really are. And the way things really are is that they're not reached. by any of your ideas about them, none the slightest. And when you see that your ideas about them are absent in events, then you're seeing suchness.

[05:08]

You're seeing the way they are. And if you meditate on that suchness, you evolve. you're actually entering into actual evolution towards Buddha. But it's kind of a difficult situation to learn how to do this. It's somewhat difficult even to start loosening up in your belief that how you imagine things is the way they are. That's difficult. And then once you actually loosen up somewhat, and aren't so strongly adhering to your imagination of things as being those things, that's a difficult phase too, because the way we know, the way we actually know things is by grasping them as being our imagination of them. And if you don't grasp things through your imagination, you can't know them.

[06:23]

And also, as someone said to me earlier today, this person was describing her practice to me, and she told me about her practice, and I was listening, and I heard her telling me her ideas about her practice. which is usually what people tell me about their practice, is their ideas of their practice. And I said to her, well, what I thought I'd just heard you say was your ideas about your practice. And she said, well, yes, otherwise I wouldn't know how to articulate my practice to you. And I said, right. So actually to tell somebody about your practice, to speak about your practice in an articulate way, of language. You sort of have to project a fantasy onto your practice so you can then talk about your practice via the fantasy. Without putting a fantasy on it, It's hard to have articulate speech about your practice.

[07:27]

You can't talk about your practice in what he'd be saying. You'd come to something, you'd sit down, you'd say, Yikes! Wow! Something like that. If you actually want to tell me something about it, other than that, you sort of have to project an image upon it, and then take the practice as that image. And then you can talk about it. So in order to talk about things and have conventional discussions about things, we sort of have to do this funny thing of projecting our imagination upon them and packaging them so we can grasp them and talk about them. So it's kind of like we're in this bind, but it's so kind of difficult to undo it because we're so involved in that. But it is possible to undo it. Not that the name of the sutra is Undo Buddha's Teaching, but Buddha's Teaching is also about how to undo our entanglement with our own fantasies about existence.

[08:29]

So, when it comes to your practice, or yourself, or somebody else, everybody has, almost everybody I know anyway, has ideas about their practice. And almost everybody has ideas about themselves. And most people seem to have ideas about other people. But whatever idea you have in your practice does not reach your practice. However, your ideas in your practice are not separate from your practice. They're not separate because they're based on your practice. But they're not, they don't touch the planets at all. Not in exaltion, no connection. But not separate either. So it's like, I don't know what, it's like the far, maybe not even that much, let's use that example, it's like the far bit rises up out to the ocean and floats over Greenwich, or floats over the California coast.

[09:45]

It's inseparable from the ocean. In fact, it formerly was ocean water, probably, to some extent. But it's not the ocean. But it's based on the ocean, not the ocean. You say, well, doesn't it tell you something about the ocean? Isn't there water in it? You say, well, yes. So that example doesn't work very well. So a better example is you look at somebody Look at a person, and you see them, but you don't know you see them. But then you make an image of them, which is not them, but then you can see them as that image. The image is not the person, but you wouldn't be able to come up with that image. And you can prove it by taking the person away, and you can't have that image anymore. When you walk out of the room, you can't do it. Now, you can close your eye, you know, and look at it, but you can see that that image in your mind is not the same as the person.

[10:50]

If you can't, then you're a psychotic. But most people can tell. Children, most children don't have a problem. They do not accept their idea of their mother as their mother. They try sometimes, you know. When they get older, they try to imagine their mother as their mother. And it works, but, you know, it's very tentative. When they're little, they just, they need the mother to, they also imagine the mother. And their imagination isn't the mother either. But they need the mother to come up with the image of the mother. And actually, they're knowing the mother through the image too. But they do not have the ability to take the woman out of the room to keep the image up, so it's like all or nothing for them. Whereas we can say, well, that kind of person probably will come back someday. So, So your practice is your practice, moment by moment. You do have a practice. You are you, moment by moment. There is somebody there. It's just that what you are, what your practice is, and who other people are, just simply is not reached by or touched by at all.

[12:04]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Are you actually talking about the problem that all of our concepts are put in terms of language? And a language is exact, it's symbolic, it's not perfect, it doesn't do a good job of recreating reality. So is that sort of what you're getting at? I'm talking about something related to that. What I'm saying is that in order to be able to use language, language has all these problems we're talking about, but in order to be able to even use language, for example, to say Fred, and to put it on you, in order to be able to do that, I can't even use the word Fred without projecting onto you a sense of you being separate from... Kareem, and Sally, and Virginia, and the chairs, and Walt.

[13:11]

First of all, I have to, like, package you as an image, isolated and having an essence. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense to me to put Fred on you. I don't keep Fred in midair or everybody in the room. I don't do that. It doesn't have anything to do with Fred. What I mean by Fred, you. So I can make a you out of you. But the you I make out of you is not you. It's a pint-sized version of it. There's a packaged version of it. Because I don't put French on an unpackaged reality. So first of all, you have to project onto people a kind of essence with adjectives. And then, because of that, now you can use language. Then you have all the problems of language. But before you have the problem of language, before you can even use language with all of the uses and misuses and problems, you first of all have to imagine people as being some kind of constructed version of them and project on them. And then you use language on top of that.

[14:14]

And before you even use the language, you know, this problem is pre-verbal. So even before you learn how to put words onto things, You've already, you know, a baby does this projection of, an animal's going to do this projection of essences and have to be exhausted. You do that before you even use languages. But you can't use language until you've done this. So in some sense, we have to be ignorant in order to use language. And it's kind of, it seems kind of tough. The positive side of it is that, that I've, Even if you don't use language, you can still be ignorant. So children before they were born will be ignorant before they can use language. And they have to be ignorant in order to use the language. And once you use it, you're teaching by telling them that you're ignorant, and how you're ignorant, and how you become free of it. So this teaching that I'm bringing up now, this basic method,

[15:25]

He's saying that we are, this basic method is predicated on the related teaching that we are innately ignorant and we're born to ignore intimacy and to project onto things non-intimacy, like I project onto rounding in a non-intimacy with all of you and me. project what I want to. I'm innately able to project images on things and I believe them as images of non-intimacy. Images of people being out there separate from me. My mind creates images which do not exist and put them on things which do exist in a way beyond my ideas. And I'm inclined to believe those things. And so I'm ignorant before I even talk. But based on that type of ignorance, I can learn how to talk. learn how to un-hear the teaching, which tells me how I do that in the process of turning over.

[16:34]

So this is another way to talk about how our mind, how we innately obscure intimacy. Even the baby coming out of the mother. When the baby's in the mother, of course the baby and the mother are intimate. And actually, also I want to point out that the mother, that the baby in the mother's womb and the mother, the mother in the womb and the baby, they have a formal relationship, highly structured formal relationship that manifests their intimacy. The baby moves out of mother into the non-mother area, And the baby immediately is able to start, almost immediately, able to start to imagine their non-intimacy with the mother and being terrified by her. They are mainly able to imagine mothers not suffering from them. When they were in the womb, they didn't quite have, you know, even in the womb they still might have been able to sort of imagine that they weren't intimate.

[17:43]

I don't know. Sure. Mothers make up ideas about their babies. Oh, the mother would definitely. But the baby even might be able to imagine. Obviously, the baby and mother are intimate, and the baby and the womb are intimate. But the baby and the mother can still imagine some separation. And then it's accentuated as the baby moves out. But in the womb, everybody can see, of course, they're intimate. And then gradually, we start to more and more think we're not intimate. We imagine that. We always are. And again, that's the good news. But we imagine fossils that we aren't. And we're born to imagine separation from those who we're intimate with. Which is kind of special, but really not. It's just that your mother is most obvious. But your mother actually is intimate with other people who are supporting her to be intimate with you, so you're intimate with all her total support system.

[18:47]

And so there's really no blockage of the intimacy. But we imagine that it is blocked in order to grasp things. Because if Sally is intimate with Fred, I can't really get Sally without Fred. I was working with Sally Anfert, but then I came to Sally Anfert without separating anything from other people. In order to get things, you have to limit them with your mind and cut off the causal relationships. That's ignorance. You're ignoring dependent co-advising for the sake of getting something. I often use the Woody Allen joke. I was a guy who goes to see the psychiatrist. and says, my brother thinks he's a chicken. And some actor says, why don't you tell him he's not? He says, because I need the eggs. So for the sake of getting the eggs, we dream of a false figure. We go along with the big chickens. They're not, but we like the eggs. And we're born to imagine that they're chickens.

[19:51]

for various reasons that helped us collect evidence in the past. But there's a bad side to it. It's that it hurts. It hurts to imagine people the way they are some way and believe them the way you imagine them. It hurts. It's affliction. It causes disturbance. It causes all this suffering. We now are in a phase in our evolution as living beings that we have teachings about how to turn this process around. This is another way to talk about the basic work. And before I accept your questions and you respond to me, just want to say that Like I just told you a story about a conversation I had with someone, but I didn't tell you who it was, so I hope that was all right with the person. But I do sometimes use intimate conversations as examples, like the one about the person who told me about his practice,

[20:57]

You know, to a person that has a story about your practice but doesn't read your practice. They sometimes tell stories about, you know, about their own son, which are quite intimate. But he doesn't actually get any permission to tell his story, and they're different, actually. He doesn't understand about it. But I'm telling him now before he finds out. He tells me that my wife and my daughter come home in stock. People I have student-teacher relationships with, they feel okay as long as they're not identifiable, or unless they give me permission. But I'm using my grandson now while I can still do it. Because they are intimate stories. They're stories either of intimacy or stories of how, you know, how there's not intimacy, even with liberal education. And the other thing I wanted to say is that since yesterday, quite a few people have actually intimately communicated with me about things they're thinking of doing.

[22:10]

And, you know, in the spirit of having a non- near and wide relationship with me and the community thereby. And that was great. I felt it was really wonderful. Quite a few people just came to talk to me about those things that I gave you to do. So I thank you. And I want everybody to know that that's happening. OK? What is it? The story about the acrobat? Oh, the story about the acrobat, thank you. This is a story which I heard many years ago, no, many years ago, about 15 years ago. And I thought it was a really good story when I heard it. And I looked for it, and I wasn't able to find it until this year. And it's a story about visiting some meeting in Kaya,

[23:12]

And it's actually in the section on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. And so it's a story about acrobats. And Buddha said, once there was an acrobat, bamboo acrobat, and his apprentice, His apprentice, when I first heard this story from Thich Nhat Hanh, he said it was his daughter, which it may have been, because oftentimes a man's apprentice was a female, often with his daughter. just feel transmitted, but still, you know. But anyway, the story didn't say that it was a jar, but it was an email apprentice, which also made sense sometimes, because acrobatics is sometimes good for the bottom person, but it's wrong for the top person, it's a small word. So anyway, so there was practice of either, there's two ways to visualize it. One is that he stood on the ground, and put the bamboo on his head, and she climbed up on his shoulders and climbed up the bamboo pole.

[24:17]

And so that's what they did. She'd get up to the top of the pole and rebalance it. Another way to visualize it is they put the bamboo pole up, and he climbs up on the bamboo pole, and she climbs up on the bamboo pole and stands on his shoulders. But anyway, whichever way you visualize it, the story goes that she climbs up on his shoulders, and as she's about to get up on his shoulders, he says to her, Now you watch out for me, and I'll watch out for you, and that way we'll safely pull off our tricks. And the apprentice says, no, no, master, no, no, honored master, very respectfully, no, that's not how it is. You look after yourself, I'll look after myself, and that's how we'll protect each other. The Buddha says, then the Buddha comments, the apprentice is right. The teacher had it kind of backwards.

[25:20]

He said, you look after me, I'll look after you, and I'll be safe. And I said, no, you look after yourself. Dad, your boss, I'll look after myself, and that's how we'll be safe. So... in terms of whatever they're talking to you about, in that sutra it says, and how do you take care of yourself, the Buddha says? Take care of yourself by practicing the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. And if you practice the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, based on that foundation of mindfulness of what's going on with you, you will be able to take care of others. So in that way, by taking care of yourself, you take care of others. Kind of says, no, you take care of yourself. That's how you'll take care of me. I'll take care of myself. That's how I'll take care of you. So by taking care of yourself this way, you're able to take care of others in terms of what I'm talking about.

[26:20]

You being intimate with yourself, then you'll be able to take care of me. You being intimate with yourself, then you can take care of me. If you're not intimate with yourself, and you try to take care of me, you're going to be less successful. Doesn't mean you can't be helpful at all. You'll be resting so far. Somebody's coming over to help me, you know, doesn't pay attention to where they're walking, and they fall on their face. They're bringing me a glass of water, but they aren't mindful of where they're walking, or they're not mindful of their fingers holding the glass, and you don't notice that it's slippery, and this falls down, and, you know, breaks, cuts their foot. So they don't take care of themselves, and they don't take care of themselves. or even worse, they bring you some hot water and you're not paying attention to it during the trip, you spill hot and burn you, because you're not taking care of yourselves. So, that's the first part of the story. The next part of the story is, this is how you take care of yourself in order to protect others.

[27:22]

And then the Buddha says, and how do you protect others in such a way that you take care of yourself? It's a little bit different. Take care of others by practicing patience, non-harm, kindness, and compassion. That's how you take care of others in such a way to protect yourself. However, in order to be patient and non-harming and kind and compassionate with others, you have to first of all be intimate with yourself. So first you take care of yourself, then you can be patient and non-harming to others, and when you're patient and non-harming to others, that takes care of you. So you take care of yourself, then you can take care of others, then you take care of others that take care of you. So it goes round and round. But it's not symmetrical. The way you practice mindfulness of yourself is not quite the same way you practice mindfulness of others. It's different. But anyway, this comes to the point of if you want to be intimate with others, first be intimate with yourself.

[28:25]

That's why, first of all, check out what's going on with you. So if you skip over being with yourself and you go find somebody else, you don't have a very good chance. It's not impossible. You're less likely to be successful. So it's not, from my point of view, for you people to learn to be intimate with yourself. It's a good way to take care of me. I appreciate people who are intimate with themselves. When they come to me, They're ready to relate. Which is similar to, you remember, you learn not to believe your ideas as being what's happening. Saying, of course, when you meet me, we're going to have a better meeting. Because you're going to come and think things about me. You're going to imagine things about me. But if you're already kind of on board and not believing that, then you're not going to have a better relationship. You don't believe that I'm a good teacher or a bad teacher or not a good teacher or I'm a monk or not a monk.

[29:33]

You have these ideas, and if you take care of yourself and don't believe them, then when you come to me, we're going to have a better meeting. Similarly, if I don't believe my ideas about you, even though I do have ideas about you, but I don't believe them, then I'm going to have a better meeting with you. When you're open to who you are, because I'm not holding on to who I think you are. So please, become intimate with yourself in order to help others more effectively. Yes? I was wondering if you could talk a little about intention and how that plays into this. I recently just attended a couple of positive programs and they talk a lot about attention. I was wondering how it happened. What tradition? Well, usually I think in the positive tradition when they say attention, what they're referring to is, that's a English translation actually, but usually there's a technical word behind that, which is check them out.

[30:47]

in Sanskrit it's chitinaya, and also in Kali it's chitinaya. And it's translated as intention, motivation, volition. And it is... Is it getting darker? I kind of don't like to use electricity, but you don't get to turn the lights on for a thing. When the lights aren't on, you want to monitor this. How many people want the lights on? I wonder if over there in the kitchen there was one. There was one. Or maybe something will get that lamp in that room. Do you want to go outside?

[31:49]

Music? In the rain. Do you like playing in the rain? I used to do a mini-solidware train. It used to go right around on rain passes and slide in the grass. Can't do that in California because there's a rain in the summer. Is there a potluck around here? Yes, there is. Excuse me. This word, this word shaken up, the intention, the motivation, volition, will, But also, it basically means thinking.

[33:03]

I told you about it earlier today. In a given moment of consciousness, the overall tendency of the greatest factors of thought is called thinking. And it's also taken on, is the definition of karma. So checking out your intention in a given moment of consciousness, checking out your intention is checking out the definition of your karma. So also in the technical study of the mind, it's recommended that you learn to be able to tell when your thoughts are wholesome or neutral. So you learn to watch your shape of your mind and see your intention about whether it's going in a skillful direction, unskilled, or kind of ambiguous direction. And so in Mahayana traditions or Zen tradition, also being aware of your motivation, it is very basic.

[34:09]

That's why I started out with this retreat. Did you hear me? The basic motive. So the basic motive of not just Zen, but I think also Vipassana tradition, I think the basic motive of Vipassana tradition is also peace and harmony in the world, right? There may be a little bit more emphasis on your own mind, but in the same way there is too. But the emphasis on your own mind is, again, just the first step. Get intimate with your own mind. But the basic motivation for getting intimate with your mind is not just so you know a lot about yourself, but so you can be then able to harmonize, to be at peace with people. Again, you can take care of yourself and be intimate with yourself. You're going to be able to potentially have intimate, harmonious relationships with others, too. Same thing. All the way down there. And once you achieve harmonizing, you go back and enter the process of intimacy with yourself again.

[35:11]

While you're around, keep checking out yourself, being intimate with yourself, and the fruit of intimacy with yourself is freedom from yourself and the ability to harmonize with other people. And a lot of times at the beginning of training sessions, we knew, but at the beginning of the training sessions, I spent some time asking the people in the training session to look inside and see what is your ultimate concern, what is your ultimate motivation and intention in life. And when you find that, If you do it, sometimes it takes me up to weeks and weeks or months to find it. And then we can say, well, then what kind of practice would go with that? So if your motivation is harmony with peace, then I'm suggesting the kinds of practices that go with that are practices called closed,

[36:16]

practices of intimacy with yourself and others, practices of not adhering to your ideas of people as being who they are. In other words, not being a bigot from autonomy. So, motivation in terms of what your ultimate motivation, and then What's your current motivation at the moment? And I'd say, well, my current motivation is to continue this discussion with someone else. My current motivation might be to go to the toilet. And you look, is that a wholesome motivation? And they say, yeah, it seems like a good idea. Kind of like, I'm not doing it to harm people. I feel like it's a good thing to do for my body right now. So you can actually learn to check out and sort of inclination of your consciousness, then watch how that works.

[37:21]

And that's meditating on motivation, it's meditating on reactions, and it's part of the enlightenment process. It's part of becoming siddhana. It's part of practicing the foundations of mindfulness. It's to notice what kind of consciousness you've got. Where is this pretending? The tendency of your consciousness is your current Intention, your current motivation, your current will. But even when you're being current with it, because I'm current, we might feel like, I would like to get away from this person. I don't know, you know, this person's really irritating me. I want to get away. That might be your current intention. And it would be good to notice that you feel like, I would like to get away from this person. But your ultimate motivation, even though you want to get away from this person right now, your ultimate motivation would be to some way have a harmonious relationship with this person. And you might say, I think that getting away from this person right now actually might be a good idea, even in a context of ultimately three friends that you've been thinking about.

[38:28]

Because right now I'm getting a little broke with this person. I think that's a good way. that I can rest for a little while and come back. You know, be more relaxed in a skillful way. So my overall thing is to have a good relationship with all people. But sometimes my short-term intention is, which might be in harmony with having a good relationship, might be to get away from this person. But also my short-term intention might be to ask the person if they'd like to know what my problems with them are. Because my long-term intention is, If I'm a typical Zen student, my long-term intention is to have a harmonious relationship with everybody. So if I've got a problem with somebody, and I'm aware of the problem, and I feel my motivation or my intention is to have a long-term good relationship with them, but currently I feel some impulse to get away from them, but I also currently might feel the impulse to just tell them I'm having difficulties.

[39:32]

And I say, oh, that seems like a good, getting away from it seems pretty good, but actually asking them if they want to hear about my problem seems even better. So I see that intention, and it seems like a good intention. When you see, when you see, when you look at yourself and you see a good intention, generally speaking, it's recommended that you give it a try. In other words, again, I said yesterday, I think I was talking to Kathy about the three kinds of karma. Was it you I was talking to? Yes. Who was I talking to? Somebody might be talking about three kinds of karma. Karma of thought, karma of speech, and karma of body. The karma of thought is your intention. So in a given moment, the tendency of your mind is the basic karma of that moment. Even if you don't speak it or you're not acting with your body, that still is a karmic act to think something. To think of talking to somebody in a certain way is a karmic action.

[40:34]

to think of getting away from someone as a kind of action. And in a given moment, you could see, I see a tendency to go away from this person. I see a tendency to interact with this person. I think going away is maybe neutral or slightly positive. I see talking to them looks more positive. So you're actually looking for yourself and checking out the inclinations of your mind and evaluating the relative skillfulness. This is part of all of Buddhism, really. But some Buddhist schools put more or less emphasis on that. But I would say it's a very good practice to pay attention to your attention. Look inside, see what your intentions are, and then try to assess as best you can In the context of knowing that this is not ultimately the way you are, at least on the surface, this seems to be a wholesome action. And if it is, it may be something good to speak about physically.

[41:37]

Some thoughts you don't necessarily... Even thoughts you can't enact, you can still tell someone what you can say. I just played a thought that I wanted to give you the meaning of. And I know it's not mine to give, But I just wanted to tell you that I just had this thought of giving the moon, and I thought really good about it, so I thought I'd tell you. And also, before I told you, I thought about really what we're doing, and I thought that would be all right. I didn't mean to do it in a seductive way. I just wanted to tell you that. But if you actually thought... Now, if I tell this person I want to give them the moon, they might... They would make me so moved that they would throw their arms around me and kiss me in an inappropriate way. So I know they will tell me because I think it would be too provocative under the present circumstances. So then I said, I'll pass on it right now. Maybe I'll stand a few wires away. And maybe I'll send them an email.

[42:40]

And while we were talking the other day, I had this feeling like I looked up at the moon and I thought, I'd have to give that to you. Very nice of you. But you look at the whole situation and try to assess what's most wholesome. That's part of intimacy with yourself. Check out what's going on inside. Your own mental conduct is very, very important. Very, very helpless. Yes? What about our tendency to project things onto other people and our tendency to rationalize and not be, really be honest with ourselves about our motivations? Well, when you say our tendency to, did you say project on other people? That's what I was talking about earlier. But when you're giving the example, like, well, I have a problem with this person, and so... You say tendency, but it's really, really, really, really strong.

[43:45]

I mean, basically, you say our tendency to project on people, but actually, it's like we're doing all the time. You're projecting a packaged version of people. If you don't... If you don't project on people, you will probably not be seeing any people. So when you see a person, that's because you're projecting personhood onto somebody. People are persons, but your way of grasping them as a person, that is because you projected an image upon them. This is more than just a tendency. It's a built-in thing that happens every time you see a person. every time you see the person. And you can also look at a person and not see them as a person and relate to them, you know, in a spiritual way when you don't grasp them. But when you know them, you basically have projected on them. Okay? So it's very strong. The way you said it sounded like once in a while you do it.

[44:50]

Well, I wasn't meaning so much the imputational character or that... What were you meaning? I was meaning like how... Like, when you were giving an example of, like, I have a problem with this person, I wonder if I should tell them about this problem I have with them about, and I was thinking of how a lot of times we project onto them, like, personality tendencies, like, that are really our own. Well, they're either your own, but they're definitely your own idea. Yeah. The idea of what you think the other person's personality is, is what you think it is, not what it is. And so it's not so much that you have the same... Like, when I project my personality on my grandson, I'm not as cool as he is. It's not really mine. I'm not really that way. But the way I imagine him is my idea of him. He's like another person from... But it isn't my creation of him that I'm looking at.

[45:52]

But it sometimes helps... If I talk to people about my ideas about them, it sometimes helps me not take my ideas so seriously. But if you're talking to somebody in order to prove your idea is true, I would say, forget it. Go do something else. Wash your face or something. But if you're talking to people in order to loosen your belief that they are what you think they are, that seems worthwhile. OK? You don't have to rationalize your delusions about people. You need to get them up. And then you can deal with the people and be happy. When we're checking our motivations about something, and we might say, yeah, I really want to help this person. But the truth is really that we're really wanting to help ourselves. And we delude ourselves in that way, and then later on we realize, well, you know, I really wasn't wanting to help that person.

[46:56]

This was really about me. Yeah, well, your story just then might be a story about when you look inside and you only see a certain section of the landscape. So part of looking inside and committing to yourself is, you know, as you said, oh, I think there's no spot. I'd like to help that person. You see that? But you don't notice this part over here. I'd like to help that person so that they'll help me. You don't notice this part. So, again, your attention is actually the whole field of your consciousness. When you first start looking inside, you may see only certain sections of your consciousness. And actually, you may even see a negative section and think that's what you're up to. And if you do see a negative section, you probably should not act upon that negative section. But if you learn to watch more carefully, you might say, oh, actually there's this part here which changes the context of that negative section, so it's really not so negative. I'm saying when you see a positive intention, and as you look inside, and you act on positive actions, this is part of the thing about interacting with people.

[48:02]

You look inside and you say, it looks pretty good to me, and you put it out there and the person goes, oh! You say, what's the matter? And they say, blah, blah, blah, and you just go... Oh, and you look back at the mind again and say, oh my, there was this little thing over there in the side. I really was trying to insult them by saying, you know, you make the rest of us look really ugly. You're so beautiful. And you say something like that. You think you're just giving a compliment, but really, you're envious and angry. But you didn't notice that section. And when you tell them, they say, and then maybe say to you, maybe they're more scrupulous and say, You know, it sounded like a compliment, but it really hurt for some reason. I think the part that hurt was you told me what I made you feel bad. But you put it in this other way of saying how nice I looked. But you didn't tell me actually, you know, when I see you look nice, that makes me feel bad. Rather than, you know, the way you dress makes me feel bad. So the more you look inside, the more you're going to learn about yourself, the more intimate, the more you're going to be skillful at assessing the whole field of what you're up to.

[49:06]

And if you express yourself, generally speaking, on the basis of what you think is helpful, you sometimes get feedback that it wasn't helpful. And then you sometimes can see, oh, there was something else going on. Sometimes the other person can even point it out to you, what else might be going on in your head that caused what you thought was to be a compliment to be an insult or to be very tame over here. He thought it was a compliment. It really hurt them. And then he said, would you please go back and look at what you were really up to then? He said, just a second. He went, oh my God, I'm sorry. We can get my scale full. Yes. He answered my question. It's not the shadow. Yeah, right. Oh, I had this interesting example of what we did at Green Gorge. I got this message from some people. I was going to do this ceremony, this ceremony of putting ashes in one of the... This used to be the Sub-Zen Center.

[50:14]

You could just have a ceremony and put the ashes in the ground. And I got this message from... I don't know how I got it from various sources, but the message I got was, from some other priest, we would like to learn how to do the ceremony. We'd like you to teach us how to do the ceremony so we know how to do it. I thought, great, sounds fun. It's a positive thing, right? They're interested to learn how to do this. They're honoring me as someone who could teach them. You know, nice, but that's the... And the shadow side of it is I got a message from somebody else told my assistant, the other side of it was, you know, Don't leave us out. Don't ignore us. Don't not train us. We need to know this. Don't exclude us. That's the shadow side. So something positive, the shadow side of it is, don't leave us out. You see, you look at somebody who's doing something, you know, and it's good to know that one part of me feels like, you're going to leave me out?

[51:16]

I hate you. The other part is, I'd love to learn this from you. So whenever there's something good, there's usually a negative There's another way of doing it that's also probably there. That's the way. And that's the general characteristic of religion, is when a bunch of people get together to do something positive, not doing it, it's like negative. Those who do it are good, and those who don't do it could be outsiders. So this is partly the way the mind works. Got to be careful. Yes? When you said, when we're born, you were talking about language, and the necessity of language just to be able to communicate, and then we project these images of people.

[52:18]

The necessity, actually, the necessity is when we are actually produced. You can't get any dates if you can't talk. Cat snitch. So just to be in our home. That was probably funny. What is it? Cat snitch. We're not humans. Oh, you're human. You can't talk. You have to at least be able to say, well, you want to go home? You can go home. So anyway. It sounds like you don't need language to communicate. You need language to get along with other humans. You need language to be in the world. To be in the normal human society, you need language. But a lot of people have language and cannot communicate. They do not communicate with language. They just bundle along. But they get included in a group because of being English. Some people who can't speak for whatever reason live in language.

[53:21]

I'm not talking about communication. I mean, language is in our... There is no human world without language. Right, exactly. But I'm saying that you can't speak. Actually, the reason why you can't speak is because you're mute. That would be all right. But you could make verbal patterns and you couldn't speak, and you'd be institutionalized. where the mute doesn't necessarily institutionalize. They can talk, but if they have the mental ability to do it, they could go on about it. So I don't think language is really primarily for communication. I didn't get to my question again. The question I have is, you were talking about language. You were talking about how we project an image of someone, just be able to relate to them. We have this image of them, and we relate to them, correct? We can perceive them.

[54:23]

In order to know things, we have to construct something about them. People don't actually walk around in knowable... When you walk around, you're not walking around as a knowable thing. You're just a living being. For other people to know you and you to know yourself, you have to inject something on yourself, construct something upon yourself so you can be grasped. Okay, if you take all of that, and then when you start deconstructing it, and so this is, we talked about this last summer too, and the world can get kind of crazy, but then if you start deconstructing that, and you get it, and you start deconstructing it, but then you still have to relate to, it's almost like you're in a fight with these people, and you keep wearing your little costumes, and you keep doing your deal, but at the same time, you, at many times, just want to get off the stage. Yeah. So, what do you do? You keep getting on the stage and getting off the stage? Yeah, yes, you do.

[55:26]

I guess what I mean is, you think you get on the stage, and you think you get off the stage. That's what you think is going on. And something else is happening, which is the basis of putting it off. You know, you think you're on the stage, you think you're off the stage. Something else is the basis of that, which you can't grasp. which is your intimacy with all beings that's going on all the time. And we put that into these little stories about what's going on. So my story now is I'm on the stage, my story is I want to get off the stage, my story is I'm off the stage. And these are ways I grasp a way things are that doesn't come in these little packages, like on and off stage, being a good person or a bad person, being a man or a woman. These are like just ways the mind makes things graspable. And we do. But we don't have to believe that the way we're grasping them is, you know, we don't have to hold to that strong one.

[56:33]

We do have to believe it somewhere in order to talk. So part of the spiritual process is to put yourself in a situation where you can take a break of talking. Because you can't talk when you take a break from believing that things are what you imagine them to be. Because if you loosen on that a little bit, like if you look at me right now, if you loosen a little bit on what your idea of me is, and you start to open up a little bit to the way I am, in the absence of your ideas, You start to open up to something you can't really see in the grass. You can't really talk about it, but you start to open to it. And that's part of what would be good to know how to do. Is that like, first there's a mountain, then there's no mountain, then there is?

[57:36]

It's like that. First there's a mountain, then there's no mountain. So we need to, in order to open up to how there isn't a mountain, It's not that the mountain isn't there, it's just that the appearance of the mountain is gone. So appearances require packaging. Again, people like us, all things are not actually appearances. You're not an appearance. You're a real person, not just an apparent person. But in order to know you, you have to be converted into an appearance. Just like, again, a hamburger is not actually edible. You can't actually live on a hamburger. There's no hamburgers in the bloodstream. Your cells can't handle hamburgers. So you eat hamburgers, and you break hamburgers down into something that you can grow on. So the reverse is that we see hamburgers

[58:41]

based on our actual life. We make blood, and not even blood, we make our life into blood, and meat, and things like that. That's what we see. But actually our life is not coming into the compass. It's much more dynamic than that. Yes? Is this related to when your parents die, Some things like I find I don't have a picture of my parents anymore, but I have a kind of ethereal feeling about them. But their appearance is sort of gone. And sometimes I find that with people, you know, like I meet here, I may not remember specifics about appearances, but I just sort of remember my own essence. He said, you're liberal in essence. And that's what you always do. But in that case, you see it.

[59:43]

And you said it. When your parents were around, and you had an appearance of them that you're working with, the way you got that appearance was by projecting your customs on your parents. Now your parents are like, whatever. So you projected customs on them. There's not just a package with an appearance of words? Well, a package is an essence. Okay, so that's right. So an essence isn't deeper. An essence isn't deeper than... An essence isn't deeper. An essence is really just an illusion. It's just like a package. Like there's something over there. There's a, there's a, I could, and Alice, something, something, an Alice-likeness onto you. And I feel justified to say Alice. I put Alice essence onto you. You are the reference of the word Alice, but there's nothing about you that justifies the word Alice, of course.

[60:45]

So again, most adult people understand that the word Alice is not you, and you're not the word Alice. But even the mature adults think that there's something about you more than the word Alice. It gives the identity Alice. But actually, your identity, of course, you're not just Alice. You're not just Alice. You're not the word Alice. And you're not just the word Alice. Right? Everybody knows that. She's Sally. That's horrible. That's very horrible. That's horrible. That's horrible. That's horrible. Let's start with Sally.

[61:50]

Sally refers to you, but you're not the word Sally, and the word Sally is not you. People think that there's something more to your identity, Sally, than just a word. But actually, there's no more to your identity in the word Sally. There's more to you than the word Sally, of course. But there's nothing more to your identity than the word Sally. And Michael pointing out that your name is Sally rather than Alice. All I did was change to Sally, and I got it. But there's nothing more to your identity than the word Sally. But we think there is. And that's a projection of essence. But there's some essence, then, that justifies putting the word salary on it.

[62:56]

So there's really no... I mean, when I think about my parents who are gone and I just have a feeling, what is that? It's still just a package. You said essence. You said essence. And you're still putting essence on the departed parents. And that's how you say departed parents, is that you have a sense of a departed parent. which you can't see anymore, but you still have a sense of innocence there. So you use that word for it. And that's an illusion? Yes, it's quite genetic. Your parents, whatever they are, mental, whatever the consequences of their parents' life is, that was not an illusion. But that's ungraspable. But you can grasp it by saying, the peasants are my parents. And you've got them to be grasped. What they really were is them. What they were, all the times you knew them before they died, every moment you had a relationship with them, the way they actually are is ungraspable, yes.

[64:03]

What you are right now is also ungraspable. But I can make an idea about you, which does refer to you. And it's based on you. I wish I can grasp it. And I can grasp that idea, but I don't grasp you. I just grasp that idea. Is that like the compound idea or the compound something you were talking about earlier? Like you're saying there's ultimate truth and space and then everything else is compounded? Everything's compounded, yeah. Compounded things? Sure. Almost most of the things we're dealing with in daily life are compounded things, like people. Living people are compounded things. They're impermanent, constantly changing, not worthy of confidence, because they don't make themselves. But not everything is a compounded thing.

[65:05]

For example, the way, the suchness of things is not compounded. The fact that you're not reached by my ideas about you, that's not compounded. It's always that way, and it doesn't depend on your parts. It just depends on you, the fact that you, who depend on parts, a conditioned, impermanent thing that you are, that I can't grasp. And the way you're free of my ideas about you, you're always free of my ideas about you. And that's not compounded. And that's not impermanently. You're always, you're permanently, you know, every manifestation of you is free of my ideas. So you're always free of my ideas. Permanently. So is that ultimate truth? That's ultimate truth. If you focus on that, you're going to do it eventually. Yes. You said earlier, something you started to say, like when you start stopping up the grasping the narrowly conceptual as it, and start to meditate on suchness, there's a little problem that people have.

[66:22]

And you didn't say what that problem was. Well, the problem is that when you actually see, when you look at somebody, I look at you, and I see the absence of my ideas about you. I don't see anything. I just see the absence of my ideas. I don't see you without my ideas. Because the way I see you is actually an idea of you. So you look like you're nothing. When I'm looking at the absence of my ideas about you, I see the absence of my ideas. I'm looking for my ideas. I don't find them anywhere. So I don't see anything. So it's difficult at that point because people then may slip into thinking that there's nothing there. But you are there. It's just you're not the way you are beyond my ideas. And I actually see that for a moment, but for a while, off and on, I have trouble slipping into that there's nothing. And also if I turn it around over here, this way, This is a really scary place.

[67:25]

And I look in here and I don't find any of my ideas myself, and I feel like, well, I'm not here, I'm gone now. And people get terrified at that point. And so that's part of what it's, you know, that's assistance. And a mentor who can say, this is okay, you're going to be all right. This is the end of the universe, and you can't find your ideas of yourself anywhere around yourself. And when that terrifying awesomeness happens, it's actually a great spiritual step, but it's very scary, and people need a lot of assistance at that point. They need to warn them beforehand as they approach it. This might be really scary, because you can convert that into that there is man in man. That's not true. It's just that there is man in man. Let's grasp a little bit of all the demons. That's a big difficulty. And different people have to do comms with it, and there's some kind of reactions. So it's part of why it's good to bring some teaching with the staff, to assist you at that point.

[68:32]

And... I know you think that, but I'm saying you are not. Okay. Because part of the reason I could accept that is because I know your notion of me is different from Alice's notion of me. And so, they both can't be right, I suppose, isn't it? They both can't be right, and I'm saying as neither. Right. And if neither can be right, then they can't be right, I feel. That's right. Nobody like me and you, including yours, touches you. Right. Although it doesn't touch you, none of the conditions of your life actually touch you. But you depend on them. And one thing you depend on is the idea that you don't reach it. But that's how we get through the day, isn't it?

[69:37]

We have to have these graspable constructs that we can rely on and work with. And what does it mean... You can't rely on them, but... Well, at least rely on enough to sort of... I know that when I get in the aisle, that notion of what that is, that can take me somewhere. Yes, right. We've worked that out. But this is not like... I was thinking for a while, maybe this is like an iceberg, where the notion of your idea of a thing is the tip of the iceberg. whereas there's all that underneath it you don't know about. But then what you've said, I think, is that that's not right, because that actually is a piece of it. And you're saying that we don't even know a piece of it. Well, you do know a piece of it, but the piece you know has nothing to do with the rest of it. In other words, in this example, the actual iceberg under the water

[70:43]

That part of it actually is totally, or in some sense, it's similar. There's nothing about the tip that's in the part below the water. So in that sense, the analogy might work. There's nothing about the tip in the part below the water. But the tip is actually part of the iceberg, though. The tip is based on the iceberg, and that's another place where the analogy works, is that your ideas of yourself are based on yourself. I shouldn't say, your ideas of yourself are based on the interdependent nature So the way you actually appear or disappear in the world, the way you exist, is dependently. And Buddhism affirms that you do exist dependently. You don't exist independently. You exist only dependently. And that way that you are is the basis for the way you imagine that you're independent. And when we imagine when things appear to us, they appear independent. If they don't appear independently, we can't grasp them. If you look at something and see it independently, there's no place you can get a hold of it.

[71:47]

Like I reach for you, but I glimpse Sally and Alice. And in fact, in physics, I'm not a physicist, but isn't there the notion that when you get small enough... small enough particles, even hard objects like tables and chairs and walls disappear. In other words, it has to do with a density of molecules as opposed to any sort of graspable identified object. So there's that, that all these objects are mostly, I mean, mostly space. There's that. But then there's also that when you get to the part that's not space, and you start looking at that, and you realize that part is also mostly space. And the particles, and all the particles that are there, they also, they are independent from lots of other forces. So mind and physics, although it's a function from philosophy and Buddhism, it's tending in a certain direction that makes people think of Buddhism.

[73:02]

Could be in the particle line, the particle, but it's a pattern. It's a probability distribution. Huh? Well, by rain streams, right? Well, by the sky. That's a thing. That's a legend. That's a legend. Yes? Could you be more correct about, a little more closer to someone's true nature, nature of your idea? Like, if I thought that kennels of fish had to be further off than I already am, or is that probably my equally off? What's my idea? Um... Well, we do distinguish between, let's see, I don't know why I'm saying it, but there's a difference between thinking that this appearance, which we call Ken, is a person, and thinking of this appearance, which we call Ken, which is a different stuff.

[74:14]

So yeah, how do I put this? All conceptual ambitions of people are mistaken, but some are in addition just invalid. And it's possible to have a valid conceptual impression of someone even though the conceptual impression is wrong in the sense that it's not actually what's ultimately there. So just as Your ideas about yourself are based on your independent nature, even though they're not.

[75:24]

They're not. That nature is. There could be your idea of yourself that's not even based on that. Is that what you mean by invalid? One thing that was invalid is that I think he's a fish and you look at him and you don't think he's a fish at this time in time. But if we both agree that he's a man, we're both really skinned, we're both wrong in the sense of thinking that he is a human. Even though we agree He's still, both of our ideas don't teach what he is. He's not actually existing in the way he appears to us, but we both agree that the appearance is Kim. So, if we're correct in the sense of, you know, what the word Kim applies to and what the word man applies to, versus what the word fish applies to, what was he correct in thinking that the way he appears to us is the way he is?

[76:25]

It does not appear the way it actually is. The way it actually is is that it's actually free of our invisible voice. It appears to be our invisible. So it was... We mutually thought it. We both looked it down and said he's a man. We're mutually polluted, but we're not necessarily invalid in our perception of him as a man. A map and terrain analogy could be used. A map and terrain analogy, and the flippant way you say this is to say the map is not the terrain. But each of us carry around a mental map of this Ken thing. And if your mental map has Ken mapped to B, a human, your interaction with Ken is going to be much more productive. If your mental map has him mapped as a fish and you tried to feed him worms, your interaction with Ken is going to be less productive.

[77:29]

But none of those maps, they're all maps, none of them are indeed And so maps have different varying degrees of accuracy based on it. And sometimes when you just deal with someone who takes your parking ticket at the garage, your mental map of that entity is very small. You have a limited amount of interaction with them. But it's useful to you because that's all you need to map with that person. I don't know. He hasn't stopped much.

[78:05]

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