So there's a person's physical appearance, which may include their voice and posture, just the two components of physical appearance. Does that reveal anything about their true self, or does it Was there any connection to the true self? Or is it just imagining that person's imagining of the ? First of all, it's definitely based on, can we put the word true self aside? It's definitely based on the way that they actually exist. The physical appearance of something is based on the way the person really does exist. Now, just to reveal something about it, it's interesting that the way things appear is called the conventional truth.

[01:10]

The way they actually are, which is the faces of their families, is ultimate. I probably should adjust that a little bit. I'll just say it kind of hits me with this question. If I'm speaking somewhat loosely, I would say that the way things ultimately are is very closely related, connected with the way they appear. And the way they actually are is that they're free of the way they appear. And the way it exists is it exists dependently. So things have a dependent existence. And that dependent existence is free of the appearance of the dependent existence. And the way they're free of their appearance is the ultimate way they are.

[02:14]

So this ultimate way they are, which is the fact that they're dependent on it, is free of all kinds of heat-dependent projections. So this is three. The ultimate way they are, the way they exist independently, and the way they're imagined as essences, those three ways. And the way they're imagined as essences is that they can appear that way. You can see them as image. That image is based on the way they are dependable. And it's inseparable from the way they are ultimately. And the way they appear, the conventional way they appear, and you can talk about it, based on the conventional appearance, you could use conventional language to designate them. And it's interesting that there's one translation, one word that they use for conventional, what things are, it means obscure, or obscuring.

[03:16]

It means the way things look to a consciousness that obscures things, that doesn't see them as they are. But another way, it's interesting, the Chinese translated this word, another way that they translated it was, the word ,, put two R's in instead of one. Two R's, you could reveal it. So in some sense, the conventional truth obscures the way things are, but also reveals the way they are. Because in some sense, when I look at somebody and I project an essence on them and they appear, it also tells me there's something there. So the appearance both reveals and obscures. It tells you something about the thing, but the main thing it tells you about the thing is that the thing is not how it appears. So this image, in one sense, obscures what it's based on.

[04:19]

In another sense, it reveals what it's based on. But in either case, it doesn't reach what it's based on. Part of the way the apparent reality tells you about things is in conjunction with the teaching, which says the way they appear is not the way they are. So in some sense, there's a revealing and obscuring simultaneously. I'm trying to get at a little bit of path I'll do here. And let's say I have an image of you, whatever it is. I'd like to actually touch in on the ultimate reality And one approach, I guess, would be to look at people and say, you are not what I imagined you to be.

[05:22]

Right. But I'm wondering if it would be useful for me, instead of taking this now project, I would just say, I have the thought that you are very articulate, and so that piece of it I challenge, and then I challenge the next piece of it that comes up to me. So I'm whittling away at this notion that I know who you are. That's good. Each little rendition and each little aspect of you is also the current thing you're looking at. like that I'm articulate, that I'm nice, that I'm stupid, that I'm tall and short, all those things. You can't work any twang with that when you're working on the one that's good. It's worth to agree with on the one that's happening right now rather than just a general thing. What is good? The general thing is good too. But generally, remind yourself that whatever it is, is not.

[06:25]

But also the particular thing you're working on, like if you're working on a person's articulateness, based on something, a word that I think English doesn't reach. So yeah, that's a good one. Could you remind us real quick, again, why originalness? Because the other way of doing it, which is, as you said, the way you get to the day, is we get to the day by revealing that our brother's a chicken. And there's stress in that. And it's not only... A little bit of stress is necessary in life. Sometimes you have to stress yourself to stand up. You have to stress yourself to do certain things. But a little bit is good. A little tennis, a little jogging, a little argument. But this kind of stress is non-stop. It wears you down, it makes you sick. Every moment you're stressing yourself this way.

[07:26]

So we need to loosen it up a little bit. If you can loosen it up, you can open to the possibility that things are actually not reached by your ideas of them. And then you can get some elevation and some relief as possible. And you can get to the point where you actually start harmonizing with the situation more and more this way. And you get to a point where you can still see things, appearances, if you generally stop believing that that's what it is, even though you still see the appearance. You get enough breaks from the appearance that you're actually convinced that things are not how they appear. So you can relate to them very differently. So even if someone appears to be your enemy or your friend, You don't fall for either one. You take away the stress. When you believe in the stress, you interact with the appearance of a friend, the appearance of an enemy, in a kind of glorious way. You keep reaching to see it.

[08:28]

So that's the point. Well, that creates a sort of grasping illusion, realizing that it's not what I can do. That creates a sort of greed-hating illusion, when you stop believing that the appearance of things is the way they are. If you believe that the appearance of things is the way they are, then you make yourself vulnerable to affliction. And there's three kinds of affliction. One kind of affliction is called afflictive affliction, which means you make yourself vulnerable to greed, hatred, and delusion. You think this thing's a freak. You think this thing is going to make you happy. And therefore you try to get it. Even if it's not being given to you, You think this thing is going to make you unhappy. You try to avoid it, destroy it. You think you don't know what to do with this situation. You can't tell if it's going to make you happy or unhappy. So you feel confused.

[09:29]

And so you feel afflicted. You stop seeing things the way you don't even want to think that things are going to make you happy or things are going to make you sad. You don't think that way. You don't believe that. You're convinced that things will not make you happy or make you sad. What you're convinced is that if you can understand, that will make you happy. That will be happiness. You're convinced of that, and you're actually then convinced of reality, and you verify that being convinced in this way doesn't make you happy. And you notice that you're almost guilty. And you're less pushed around by what you think is happening. So when people compliment you, you don't really take it that seriously. And when they insult you, you don't take it that seriously. And when they insult you, since you don't take it that seriously, you're at work to listen to them insult you. You don't run away from their insults. You say, what do you mean? And when they compliment you, you don't say it again. You say, what do you mean? You wonder what's going on all the time. Because you're not grasping how they appear as the way they are.

[10:32]

And then you start to become more harmonious. and this also starts to free you, you can either train yourself to notice when you kind of get happiness from things, or avoid losing happiness from things, train yourself like that, and this approach I'm talking about now, training yourself to see things this way, you'll stop relating to things as something that came from the blue screen. Again, we're built... Our nervous system is built to create the illusion that something's going to make you pleasurable, and that motivates us to do something. And then as soon as you get it, our nervous system is built to make it not be pleasurable anymore, so it can tell you something else that will be pleasurable. And it'll tell you that it's going to be a lot more pleasurable than it's actually going to be, so you'll go to do it. So the nervous system is basically not exactly your friends.

[11:35]

It's trying to get you to act. It's trying to get you to move. So it creates all kinds of illusions to get you moving. And then, of course, if it's got you moving, and you did something, then it says, OK, that's no fun. Why don't we do this? Our culture is very much built by the nervous system. A billion people like to go buy an SUV or get a mint coat or get a beautiful boyfriend or something, and that will make you happy. But this is just coming right out of our natural nervous system. It's just a great amplification of our basic delusion system. So we need to notice that we think something will make us happy. We think something will make us big time happy. And you go there and get it, and it doesn't make you look happy, but it's not as good as you thought it was. And also, you think something will make you very unhappy, but when you actually get there, you're not as unhappy as you thought you were going to be. And a few days later, after the thing you thought would make you really happy, and after the thing you thought would make you really unhappy, you feel pretty much the same about both of them.

[12:41]

And that's because you've got damp in the system so you can be motivated to avoid pain and work for pleasure. That's what the nervous system kind of has to do. Plus, it projects a sense of separation .. We've got a mess here to work with. But it helped to know the mess. Helps to understand what we're dealing with. Very challenging living system. John, would you? Yes. Thank you. I was thinking of what you were saying. I was just wondering if this is in fact similar or the same. The perspective I've thought about this has been being a perceptual problem, that it's the way I perceive you And the way I perceive me and the way I perceive the world is not actually the way it is, but the way I think it is, or my perception of that.

[13:47]

And it's often, I don't know, if it would be putting a judgment on it to say it's wrong, but it's just not, that's not the way it is. It's my perception. Yeah, well, another way to put it is that In order to perceive things, we have to put them into some kind of a package or a version. So in order to get at things, when we grasp them and perceive them, we have to separate ourselves from them. So in order to perceive things, we have to give up our intimacy with them. We have to construct something projected onto things in order to grasp them. Otherwise, we're in relationship to things. Yes, we're intimate, but we can't get them. You know, we're intimate with our brother, but until we make our brother into a chicken, we can't take any eggs from our brother. So I often use the story, the Greek myth of Amor and Psyche. You know that story? Psyche is a beautiful lady, also our mind or our soul, right?

[14:50]

And Amor is Eros, Aphrodite's son, Eros, Cupid. Come on, three names for this particular creature. This guy with the arrows, the sheep people in Valentine's Day. So this is a long story, but I'll try to make it shorter. But anyway, basically, Psyche, the beautiful Psyche, the immortal consciousness appeared in the world. And she was so beautiful that people stopped worshipping her every day. And God is so beautiful. And every day, she got pissed off and sent her son Eros to bump off Psyche. Huh? So then Eros, he's going to shoot over Eros and he'll shoot the man and kill Psyche. But then he goes to kill Psyche and he sees her and he falls in love with her. So he said, kill me. He explains it. Love comes together with Psyche and blissful Euton, but they do it in darkness.

[15:55]

And she's happy, and he's happy, and he says, this is great. She says, I know. He says, there's one thing I have to tell you. He says, I never see you in the daytime. I never bring a light to look at you. If you look at me, you'll lose me. But one thing leads to another, and she loses confidence in her lover and decides she better find out who he is. So she brings a light and sees who he is, and it turns out it's just fine. Really fine. Nice boy. And now she knows. She's fun to be with, and he's cute. How great. And now I know my toy friend. It's wonderful. But anyway, she spills a little oil on him and wakes up and says, I told you not to do this. Now I have to go. See you later. She flies off. She loses him. That's what happens. This is also called the guard of the lead. When you know the thing, Price of knowledge is excluding from intimacy.

[17:01]

Price of knowledge of what you love is intimacy. But I don't know about the Bible, but by spiritual practice, you can get back together. It's a long, difficult path, but you can get back together with the things you always were into. alienate from yourself, alienate yourself from, by making it into a wrathful package. So perception gives us a way to get some package version of the thing. When we get a consolation prize, at least we can grasp it. And then we get distanced, farther away. But we don't get totally separated. It's still there. We're still intimate. We just alienate ourselves from our intimacy with what's happening by converting, by not converting it, but making a constant version of the glass.

[18:09]

But this we didn't know. So perception means you pull something off. Literally, perception is the British technical language. Perception is to pull the sign of the thing off of it, put it in your consciousness. The sign of the thing is not the thing. And yet, our life is involved in pulling the signs off of things, bringing them to our consciousness so we can know them, and alienating ourselves from them. So we're intimate with things, but in order to know them, we have to let Get away from the closed sign-off, and then you know the sign. So we know. We know we separate ourselves in order to have something we can know about. And they relate. But the sign never gets back to that. You just only relate to that, which you just described, to projection essence. Taking the sign-off was leading to projection of essence out. Ah, let's see.

[19:12]

It sounds like the same thing is going in the opposite direction as well. Ah. The sign is the way you connect the imagination of essence to the thing. So it isn't arbitrary. But the sign is not the same as the imagination of essence. The actual thing has a sign. The interdependent things do have signs. They offer us some way to bring the thing into contact with our imagination. But the sign is not identical with our imagination of essence.

[20:16]

But the imagination of essence, the projection of essence, goes to the sign. It goes to the sign. It uses the sign. You will not be able to imagine essence without pulling a sign off something. There's a real perception. Perception requires a sign. But then, in addition to the perception, there's a false imagination that the thing that has the sign is separate. It has an independent existence of its own essence. Whereas, actually, you're totally interdependent with it. Doc, there's the sign of the thing, and then are you projecting essence onto the sign, too? You could, but I don't think there's so much projecting essence under the sign. I don't think so. I'll think about that. The sign also doesn't have an essence.

[21:17]

It seems to be either to be talking about or it is already there's projecting essence on it. That's because we're talking about signs. Yeah. We're talking about signs, and that's the thing we're talking about, is you put essence on something. So if we're talking about out... If you're talking about a salad... Then Sally, the interdependent being Sally, has signs. In other words, interdependent beings offer us something to grab onto as a basis for our imagination. So in fact, the way the world works for us, what our life is, is that things do give us a chance, do allow us to make a fantasy of it. And each thing gives a different sign. And in that example, thinking that... And if you talk about signs, and you're a signer to try to do it, and that will also... Signs will give you signs, too. But things that aren't just signs offer signs, and signs offer signs.

[22:20]

Every claim, all conditioned phenomena, Actually, you could say there are signs. All these compound phenomena, all these composite things, they either are signs or they have signs. And to perceive them, we bring that sign in contact with our mind, and then we bring a concept to our mind, and we make a perception. And the perception is essence. And then we can talk about it. But neither the sign nor the imagine essence is the thing in it. It's such and such. Neither one is such. Correct. You're not going to get such and such. In particular, we say such and such is, you could say, signlessness. Or you could say such and such is essence lessness. Is mine essence or essence? Essence lessness. The way things really are is that they don't have essence.

[23:22]

But the way to grasp them is by projecting essence. And if we don't project essence, we keep language on things. But we don't have a problem. We do project essences, and we do talk about things. So that's the situation now. How to untie this is the force. I do have, we have intimacy, but we've divorced ourselves and isolated ourselves, or alienated ourselves from it. And the price of that is so we can grasp things and talk about them and have our healing life. So that's the deal. The fortunate thing is there's words coming to us now which can help us untangle this and loosen things up and create more freedom and harmony. I don't know who to call on next. If Kathy hasn't asked a question. You'll see that I've not finished my question.

[24:24]

It's just, one more time about the signs. It seemed that that would help unravel the problem of referring to Ken as a fish as opposed to, or seeing Ken as a fish as opposed to doing it. That would be like misappropriating the sign. Yeah, misappropriating. There's no sign in there. I didn't have a question. Amy, did you have a question? So there's an ultimate me and an ultimate you, and I don't know my ultimate me, but I have an imagination about it. And you have an imagination about you, and I have an imagination about you. Yeah, and ultimate you and ultimate me are the same. We have the same suchness. Both of us have the same suchness. So we're arising every nanosecond or something.

[25:28]

Yes, right. And where are the karmic obstructions? The karmic obstructions are, due to our past thinking, we're inclined to believe our present thinking. through our past moments where we thought certain things and believed that they really characterized what was going on, we're predisposed to imagine, for example, subject and object separated. And one of the teachings here is that at a state of, as you become more and more wise, you can still see subject and object separated. You can still see that, but you're free of the compulsion of the disposition to do that. You can take a break from it occasionally. Most people are inclined or predisposed to, moment after moment, imagine themselves separate from what they know.

[26:31]

By training yourself, you don't necessarily stop doing that, but you're free of the disposition to do that. And one of the things that will convince you to not be predisposed that way would be to have a moment where you actually see that you cannot find actually anything that really does justify this appearance of separation. And the thing that promotes that is to find out that your ideas of things, that you look and you know right where they would be and you can't find them. may be convinced, but even before you actually see that, you can still be convinced more and more that it's true that the ideas of things are not the things. That's a warm-up to that. So as you drop your ideas, you're dropping your karmic obstructions? But they're all imaginary? There's no foundation for them in the ultimate, in the suchness?

[27:37]

Your karmic obstructions would be The fact that because it would be the appearance of separation that was involuntary. Your involuntary sense of separation. Your involuntary sense of not being intimate with people. That's your conduct of structure. But if your mind could imagine that you're separate from people, and you do that voluntarily, and you can take a break from it if you want to, then your conduct of structure is clear. So a Buddha can see people and see them as separate. And because seeing them separate, projecting essence on them and seeing them separate, the Buddha then could talk and use language. You have to enter that world of the illusion of separation in order to make essences and make designations. Even the Buddha would have to do that. Or bodhisattva could do that too, an advanced bodhisattva.

[28:40]

But they can also switch over and not believe that and see that there's no essence there. So although you're using it, you're not using it compulsively. You don't have to . Now, we don't choose to imagine somebody's out there separate from us. It's compulsive. It's automatic. You're heavily inclined to do that by training yourself. That's why it's always interesting that texts don't say that you actually stop doing it. What stops is your compulsion to do it. So you can do it when you need to talk. When you don't need to talk, you can stop and just actually face the fact that things are not appearing. And then when you come back and do it, you don't fall for it anymore, even though you're doing it. You don't believe it. Even when you put a projection on somebody that doesn't have any necessity to talk about it, you don't believe it. So when you say, you're being mean to me, you know, you are being mean to me, you do that and you say it to the person, but you're just kidding in a way.

[29:50]

And then they say to you, no, I'm not. And you say, you're right. You know? But you can still say you're being nice to me, and they say, no, I'm not. You say, you're right. All true. You're not stuck. Because you didn't do that when you did it. You didn't believe it when you did it. You just did it so you could talk to me. So you sort of have to conjure up a fabric of instruction. No, not fabric of instruction. You have to conjure up essence. You have to project essence onto what doesn't have any essence in order to talk about it. The price of admission to conventional reality is to project essence onto things. Otherwise, it makes no sense to put a word on something that doesn't have an essence. Why put there? Why put, you know, Nancy over there if there's not a Nancy essence? Why don't I put it over here if there's not a Nancy essence? Or, you know, whatever essence.

[30:51]

Well, we don't. We don't have to sell it. So we put Sally Essence, Amy Essence, Bob Essence, and then we say Bob, Amy, Sally. That's what we do. The Buddhists do that too if they want to talk. So if they're giving a talk to people, they say, you know, Bob, Amy, you see, they do that. And they say, Amy, would you please come over here? That's what they're telling you. But they don't believe that there's some essence there. Actually, at the basis of the word any, they just put there so they could think about it. They put the word any, and they need the sign to do that. So any has a sign by which I connect and put an essence on it so I can talk about it. And Buddhists can do that. But they don't believe that there's an essence And therefore, if you say, I'm not angry, they can say, I know, dear.

[31:55]

You can say, I'm a falcon. And you can say, you're a mole. It's like they're flexible. They're on your team. They're intimate with you, and they know it. Because all those are using the same stuff, which is a karmic hindrance when you believe it. And it's karmic hindrance because in the past you have believed that what you imagined things to be are them. And you've acted on the basis of that. And that action, which is based on delusion, has now made you impulsively, compulsively, habitually, tending to believe these things rather than just use these conventional delusions. You have to do it, and you believe it again. When you clear up your karmic hindrance, you can still use this equipment. without believing it. So then it doesn't hinder you. So then you can feel intimate with people who are calling you rat shit.

[33:01]

What people are saying to you and how you see them no longer hinders your awareness of your intimacy with them. so they can hit you and slug you, and you just respond skillfully. Would you... I'd like to develop a form of grief about you hitting me. I'd like you to stop hitting me now. If you keep hitting me, what are we going to do about that? So you talk to them, but you're in touch with your intimacy, and this person is hitting you. You'd be perfectly happy to give your life for them. But you're not letting the appearance of their separation They believe. You're just using it to talk to them. But the karmic hindrance is that due to past karma, you're hindered in your relationship with them because you believe that how they appear is how they are. That's a karmic hindrance. You do that because in the past you've done that mistake, and now you're habitually in that groove, so now it's hard for you to see what's going on.

[34:06]

It's hard to see your intimacy. It's hard to see if the person's ungraspable. But even though the person's ungraspable, it doesn't mean you can have a good relationship with them. As a matter of fact, in intimacy, you can't grasp them because they're not out there to be grasped. You're interdependent, not grasping each other. You're totally mutually creating each other, so either side is graspable. You enter into that, and then you come back to project the essence as if you grasp people, but you don't believe it anymore. So now you manifest this enlightenment in the relationship of conventional reality. And you can do some stuff to prove it. See the precepts, not lying to people, not stealing from people, not harming people, not getting you know, angry at people in a way that's not helpful. And so on. Because you're still doing it, but it's no longer a hindrance to enlightenment. You're still talking to people, but it's no longer a hindrance.

[35:08]

You're still projecting a sense of separation so you can talk to people, but it's not a hindrance to enlightenment. Because you're convinced it's an illusion. So the Buddha can still see illusions, but also with the simultaneous they see there is no illusion. In other words, you can't find any basis of it. And bodhisattvas prior to the Buddha switched back and forth. They spent part of the time looking at illusion, and they spent part of the time looking at the absence of illusion. But still, when they come back to illusion, they remember that they saw a little while before that this illusion was an illusion. So they don't, they remember, just that they can't see it simultaneously. The Buddha can see the illusion and know it's an illusion, see the illusion and notice the illusion, and also see the absence of illusion and notice the absence of illusion, simultaneously. The switching back and forth is pretty good. But the difficult part is even to start listening up on your illusions a little bit. And as you start to listen up and get ready to see the absence of your illusions, when you have to see the absence of illusions, you're ready.

[36:14]

You've made a creed. You're somewhat enlightened. You start to see the ultimate truth. And once you see it, you realize, oh, yeah, I actually saw the absence of my ideas when I was alive and kicked them. And you come back and see your ideas again, and you remember what you saw. So it transforms your life. You just keep going back and forth until you're a Buddha. But even before you pop through it, you still start to realize how intimate you are with beings, because you've got a chance to see that the way you separate yourself is totally illusion. Your non-intimacy is an illusion. And you see that. You look for it, and you did not find anything non-intimacy. You did not find any separation. But of course, they didn't look like they looked in separation. They don't look like they're out there separately anymore. And that's how things usually look still. It's a new way of things to look called their own appearances anymore.

[37:18]

Does that make some sense? It's a thing. It's a thing. It's a thing to realize. Now you're hearing about it, so this is the possibility. I'm learning this. I'm finally still wondering how we got to this place. In other words, was there a state in the way that we were created? My positive take on this is that when more insight that we're doing now, that the universe somehow wants the psyche to know what love is. So I kind of feel like human beings, and we're not necessarily only beings on the planet that do this, but we're examples of human beings which make the universe able to know itself. Before this happens, we have living beings on the planet, but they aren't able to look up at the stars and know them.

[38:32]

We are intimate with the stars, of course. We're intimate with the sun. But in our intimacy, we don't know the sun. So the price of knowledge is the separation. So I kind of see it as that part of what we're doing for the universe is the universe created living beings, and living beings then to keep conscious. Consciousness of living beings helps the universe know itself in ways it can't know itself, except it is very unusual creatures. Stars are creatures, too. Moons are creatures. Planets are creatures. Galaxies are creatures. But living creatures are also creatures created by causes and conditions of the universe. But we don't really feel that stars know each other. But stars give rise to light, which knows the stars, or the stars. We are born of the stars, and we are the way the stars become conscious, in a sense, connected to the stars.

[39:34]

So through us, the universe has become aware of itself. The price of that is some kind of separation of intimacy in the universe. But the plan was imperfect because it left us with all this suffering. Well, it was imperfect at the beginning, but now the new thing is that it's that then-Aprodite in the story. And I guess God says, well, if you people work now, if you work and practice religion, you can regain, in some sense, some of what you lost and get to work for it. Before, he got it for free. I think your knowledge, you lost it, but now you have to work to get it back. Now you have to work to get it back. So although it was kind of a... We're servants, you know, so you can say, well, it's imperfect that the servants have to suffer to do their job.

[40:35]

But in some sense, you could say it's not imperfect because if it weren't for the suffering, we would just continue to be separated. This is my point, is that there's two kinds of suffering. One kind of suffering is the suffering of separation, the suffering of ignorance. The second kind of suffering is real affliction. If we only had the suffering of separation from that which we love, that might not be intense enough to force us to do the hard work. But it's not just the longing to reunite with intimacy. That's part of it. The other part is that there's actually another set of intense afflictions that motivate us also to reconnect. So when you reconnect, you not only get free of the suffering, but you get the joy of intimacy. So this process is not just that you get free, you get liberated from intense affliction, but then you also get the joy of harmony and peace.

[41:47]

So nirvana is liberation, but nirvana is also peace, a wonderful peace. So I kind of feel like once we get the job of performing knowledge on this planet for the rest of the universe, and it'll probably be some other surfaces and other locations that are also participating in this knowledge service for the universe, but once we do our thing on this planet, In order to do that knowledge thing, we had to separate from our equal self. But that wasn't painful enough to motivate us to do the hard work of giving back to it and reconnecting with it. So we got this additional pain which motivated us to make a Buddha. We got this Buddha, and then we got the Buddha's disciples, and now we want to continue to make more Buddhas to give more teachings to help more beings reconnect with intimacy while doing the job of knowledge.

[42:55]

So it's just that we crawl back into intimacy and lose knowledge. We've evolved to have knowledge. We're doing this job for the universe. We can't go back. So again, the more in psyche, psyche does not go back to the pre-knowledge state. She goes forward knowing now, knowing her lover, but also getting over the separation. And they came back to her. And they got together again. They reconfirmed their intimacy. But this time, she knew him. It's like the mind knows the object. The love itself, in some sense, does really know. So that's the positive view of this story of pain and suffering, that it has this positive Sometimes it has to go this way. You can back up before there was knowledge, and then you just have blissful union. That's the card of Eden, but that's more in Psyche, just loving each other without knowing.

[44:02]

But to move, but then also Psyche doesn't really know. She doesn't know love, she doesn't know nothing. She didn't really know much before she met that person. So before you really meet the universe and know, you haven't really got knowledge. Once you get knowledge, you're kicked out of easy land, kicked out of the garden, and now you have to go to work, spiritual work. Natural division starts. It's tremendous. It's the hero's wound. So there really isn't such thing as non-intimacy. That's right. Non-intimacy is a holy delusion. In the story, it sounds like Amor really did leave Psyche. But he didn't really leave her. It's her knowledge of him that caused it to leave.

[45:03]

And we don't really leave the Garden of Eden. It's our knowledge of the Garden of Eden that extrudes us from it. But we can't go backwards unless we become psychotic. And some psychotic people do go backwards. They go back to the pre-knowledge state, in a sense. But then they can't function. You can't make verbal designations. Or people with brain knowledge can also not know things and certainly not be able to talk. But that's not enlightenment. Enlightenment is to make this mistake and get over it. So learn from your mistakes. Are you saying that the double pain, I hear the longing, and then is the other being tricked into delusion? The other is that, for example, you have to behave in delusion. The other is you start to think that something is out there separate from you, and you have to go take it, even if it's not given.

[46:07]

You don't have to take it in the way... I think good is coming. I've got to get it. I said to that greed, and also, I don't want that. You do mean things to get it, keep it away. So greed, hate, delusion, and then of course when you have those happening, and you just keep cranking the wheel around, it gets worse and worse and worse, and worse and worse and worse. It just gets worse. The more you climb it, the more powerful the opportunities become. But sometimes, even while you're getting in more trouble, still sometimes you manage to pull off some kind of... Because you are intimate, it uses this oxygen to do something good right where you make those mistakes. You still can do some good thinking. You still can be somewhat kind and thoughtful because you are intimate. your actual intimate Buddha nature does sponsor you to do some good stuff and you need to avoid greed and delusion.

[47:09]

That has kind of a consequence too, which is somehow somebody gets to become a Buddha and teach us. That person is kind to us. And even though we missed a greed, hate, and delusion, some people are so skillful that they come to us in their clutches and go, thank you. And I say, that was good. Say it again. Thank you. Thank you. And I give a really awesome. I say, thank you. And you start to evolve. Even while you're still greed, hate, and delusioning along and still deluded, you start to generate this other thing called practice alongside of it. Gradually, you start to realize that non-intimacy is delusion. But the green-headed and blue-headed are more just longing. They're worse than that. Cruelty is worse than just longing. We have longing and cruelty. But the cruelty is what turns us all out. It makes it impossible to go on and show on. It's just too horrible. The longing is kind of, I'm not saying it's easy, it's also kind of amorphous.

[48:13]

We're not clear that we're deluded or something. In some sense, you're not feeling it too long. Perhaps you're yearning for something that you kind of do belong to. So it's kind of . Yeah. And that's why greed is not so bad as hatred. Greed is a little bit like trying to get back this time. People overeating and stuff like that. It's kind of related to like, they kind of want to get back together to alienate. So greed is a little bit more tricky than that. Hatred is like totally about the lunch. Real will is no application at all. But greed is a little bit trickier because it's a little bit like compassion. It's just compassion from the back to what you're separated from. So when you practice compassion, you can kind of relax and start moving in with these people you feel separate from. in an appropriate bilateral way.

[49:16]

I put my finger in your nose, Ken. They said, you have something in your ear. I think it's a bug. Do you want to try to get it out? I'll help you if you need me to. There you go. With this feeling of not being afraid to get hurt, Get in there in a helpful way. People need you. So I was lucky in college. I worked in a rehab center for paraplegics and quadriplegics and hemiplegics. And I particularly worked with the young men. And I got to really get into it with them and help them. I got to reach up inside of their body and pull their shit out of their intestines, out of their colon, I mean. They couldn't move their bowels, so I'd reach up and pull their shit out. That was good for me, to do that. And they were kind of like, I can get into it with other people's shit.

[50:23]

It's not that much on me. I work a lot. But I could do it with barehanded, too. Anyway, I was at work, and it wasn't that bad. The first thing, this is going to be not much fun to take your hand up somebody's butt. Well, she doesn't bother me because they're paralyzed. They didn't have much feeling. They didn't say, oh. They didn't have to bother me that much. Actually, they appreciated it. They felt better after, you know? They felt kind of clogged up. They were comfortable. And I bathed them, you know? I'm not, you know, I'm not in charge of my homosexuality, so it wasn't a robotic thing for me, just a service, and it was good for me. I preach it to even men best. And you can do it, you know? No big deal. And I didn't give the, I didn't, there were, actually, there were no, there was only one woman, anyway. Which is another thing I wanted to say. The high percentage of qualities compared to these are men.

[51:26]

And all these men are young. And they all got in accidents from being jealous. And the woman was the passenger in the car driven by a man. You don't do such wild physical things. They don't have so much of a sense that they're being humble and young-minded. a little bit more enlightened in terms of the way that we do breathing. So young men sometimes think, OK, man, no problem. Here we go. Oops. So that was good. It's good to be able to be in people. So just practice how to be in people. And not just close to them, but also realize that they're not really another life. they are your life, actually. That they are your life. Other people have more your life than you are, than what you think you are. And I said, I thought you could open to that when you stopped holding to your idea of yourself as being really you.

[52:32]

And you said, well, maybe John's me. Maybe Jenny's me. Maybe Alice, a.k.a. Sally, is part of you. In fact, teaching is other people really who you are. What is that? Huh? Why? Because you exist again. You don't... The one thing that doesn't make you is you. Other things make you. You don't influence yourself. You influence... You're created by other things. Other people are telling you more about who you are than your idea of who you are. plus other conditions than your idea of the main character. That's my essence. But in order to talk about ourselves and what there is to project essence, it's quite a wonderful dilemma of being human. Yes? This whole teaching is starting to make sense for me of the Bodhisattva vow, which always has perplexed me.

[53:39]

It made me feel weird because, you know, who am I? I can't save anybody. I can't save myself. But if you're looking at it from the ground of our DNA, well, we're not separate. If I realize that, then I have saved everybody. Exactly. And when you realize there's nobody out there, it's separate from you. That saves people. You can help people while you still think they're out there separate from you. And I think most of you, from what I know, most of you do help people a lot while you simultaneously think they're out there separate from you. You're still helping them. But to save them is nothing. In order to save them, you have to realize that there are no beings out there separate from you. In order to save them. You have to enter into this relationship in order for them to be saved. By then, it's when you're saved.

[54:39]

Before that, you're helping them, but you're helping them move towards that point where they'll be saved. You're helping them by practicing compassion and inviting them into trusting and relaxing and planning and creating and then understanding. And then, that's liberation. And the more you understand the more you can invite others into the process. And save them by getting them to enter the process. But if you don't understand that they're not separate, if you haven't understood it, you're less able to invite them into the process for them to understand that they're not separate. It's dinner time. Yes? She's not asking anymore. Yeah, that seems appropriate. First, I just wanted to report to you as well, as directed earlier, that some people have lost their property in the last 24 hours in the region.

[55:42]

I need somebody to fund my vacation home. I don't know if I thought what to expect, but it happened. I have to say I really feel very ungrateful that people made my job easier. I want to thank you. And then on another note, we tried the ability to, there's a fire pit over in the corner here that we have a fire loop for, and that's just part of the facility rental, and some of us would like to do that, right? So, I love that it's beautiful. Yeah. Is it dry over there? It had that cover. But I'd like to, we want to ask you to grab it and talk to them about that. You want to make a fire pit? Bonfire. Yeah, bonfire. We don't make a bonfire. We don't have any marshmallow. I would consider it fun. Well, I guess it's bonfire country.

[56:48]

I didn't know that. I went to the retreat, you know, near Cincinnati. And there's bonfires down there, too. I always wish we could send you guys some of our rain. Exactly. They said, no problem. Nothing. Our pitch isn't fired yet. Never? Never? Next fire, there's no. Okay. It's green. Everything's green. Yeah, what in the world? I guess it's OK. So for anyone that would like to join us, I'll show you John and Robert Lillifier signed after the city. I'd just like to add that there's also a really wonderful play structure around by the cat hill going up toward Brits.

[57:56]

and they'll run, and there's little maps of the desk, but it's more like a four minute walk, and there's like, it's just some artist built out in the woods, and it's, I know some might be a thousand, but so I heard you hitting chimes, and there's a big xylophone, and there's piano strings strung from white big structures, and you can pluck instruments, and it's really fun. And it's big. So it will be a concert at Bonfire. We've got the playful part down. I can add something. I don't know. Plus, I think this seems a whirly gig on and off. There's this thing called the Whirligig pond, which is just a little pond behind the center. And it is full of water lilies, robins, living irises. And it's just like some kind of pond. So the Whirligig.

[59:02]

If you're really quiet while you're there, you'll see the great blue man. Are any people here married? It just struck me that just a few seconds ago, I thought, maybe they're married. But I looked at their stories, you know. They're not exactly matched, but they're not. They've got their shop together. They were. I bought them for him. I don't know what it was, but I just noticed him while I felt like he was married. What, you got that one right? And Ginny and Ben? Oh, yeah, I knew Ginny's past. So I didn't know you were married. And, uh, yeah.

[60:04]

And he's like, I'm married. Don't you blame me in the first place. Well, he insisted. Man did the best. So your last name's Rannigan, and your first name's Rannigan. How'd that happen? Well, I was called Rannigan a lot of times. Oh, I see. It was a nickname. I took it as my first name. My real first name was Susan. But I don't use it. I don't claim it. You're a ranting man. I know I'm ranting and Welsh. I do. I do. It's quite a show. Although it was during the phase when I didn't, you know, there was like 15 years there when I was out of touch with pop culture.

[61:09]

And that was part of it. So I missed quite a bit. Are you in touch with it now? Well, to some extent, yeah. I still don't have television. Yeah, so I was fortunate. Since I can't use anything now, I need to watch television. Because, you know, I grew up on television. I'm sorry. That's the biggest thing. It's reading Buddhist scriptures or literature or something, instead of watching television. That's my comment, I think it is. Yes. But I didn't really think there were songs on TV. Oh, I just wanted to say that. apropos of the lady being married, is that Bodhisattva is basically allowed to marry all beings, to be true to all beings, honor them, and care for them with sickness and health, and rich or poor, better or worse, and also the type they draw.

[62:36]

other beings, not just one, but gradually to all beings. Which is quite a feat, but that's a vow. It takes a while to actually be able to do that, to be able to meet people with that dedication, that devotion, that openness and honesty. Not just to be honest, but to be honest with the truth that you'd like to know. That's part of it. It's another way to put the voice up. If you're married in this way, the saving occurs. Young children, can they, I mean, if they start to be taught these concepts at a really young age, you know, imagine some cultures that happens. I'm just curious as to, like, how, how are they, you know, is it possible for them to learn? Is that practiced in certain cultures? when they're infants or toddlers, that they can somewhat derail some of this Buddhist thinking?

[63:46]

Yeah. But if you teach them in certain ways, they may reject the teachings. So Zen Center is rather non-doctrinaire about the way it teaches children of Buddhism. We do have children's programs on Sunday that can be helped. But my own daughter was never interested to do any instruction, any Buddhist instruction. But if you watch the Zen Center kids, without having any classmates, and they just walk by the Zen door, and they can look in the Zen door and see people sitting there, and see people year after day after day. Not just take very many days when they're deceased, but walking to the Zen door and going in the Zen door and sitting, they cut that down. And they got the chanting down, the lecture. They got all the forms down. They learned very, very fast. But most of them were not interested in doing any of them. My daughter sat one period of meditation in her body so far.

[64:50]

She was visiting me in the monastery. She went to Zazen one time. She sat right in front of me. And she spent most of the period really turning around and looking at me. But she did sit one period. That was the last one. And I didn't force her to do that. And she never wanted to do one before or since. She liked our Bodhisattva ceremony, our monthly confession and repentance ceremony. She liked that, and she went to that a few times. She goes to weddings, and she goes to funerals voluntarily. Generally, we don't really hardly even encourage our children to go to events because, I don't know why, but my feeling is I was not encouraged by my parents to go to Buddhism, but I went. It was always good. I wasn't forced or pressured or encouraged. I did it on my own. I think that's something else. They get exposed to it, but they don't get

[65:53]

They don't get caused by it. They have exposures enough. And some of them decide to do it finally, and some don't. I think it depends. My daughter came to a lecture one time. She sat the first few minutes when I was teaching, actually, I think it's called Logic of Unsupported Thought, of the Dhamma Sutra of Protection of Wisdom. And that logic of unsupported thought is a very fact But ABA is not A. The very reason why A is A is the reason why A is not A. So Buddhism doesn't teach that A is B, which is false. That's kind of a dictionary reality. But it teaches that the reason why A is A is why A is not A. The reason why A is A is that A satisfies all the requirements and conditions for being A. Because A being B depends on things other than itself to be A, A is not A. That's the logic of unsupported thought, that what things are are unsupported.

[67:06]

Thought is unsupported because it has no face. It just depends on things other than itself. She went to lecture and learned that. And she gave it to you five minutes later. And she probably still can because she learned it when she was seven. So she remembers that perfectly. But some of you, maybe later today, won't be able to remember it. We're just going to go over and over it together. But she got it from her kid. She can still tell you the logic, and I support her product. Just like also in the Dhamma Sutra, it says, harmonies of Buddha fields, harmonies of Buddha fields, has no harmonies of Buddha fields on its top. Therefore, we say harmonies of Buddha fields. But the principle is that what things are is really, the one thing they aren't is themselves. They're really just a sum total of things other than themselves. And therefore, we say what they are.

[68:14]

So again, salary. this talk about the Buddha has not been celebrated, but we say it's not. It's the logic, and it's the Buddha talk. So she got that. But, you know, if she voluntarily went to the talk and didn't ask her to go to talk, the reason why she got to talk was because some of her friends were attending. That's why I don't want to talk to the provider or her father or anybody else. But we, at meals, we dry our palms and chant, venerate the three treasures, and we pray for Jesus to build our community upon the sufferings of other forms of life. We do that. So she did that. So now, when her son comes over, we do that. And he puts his hands together, looks around, and starts talking to me. We don't force it. We don't say, put your head together. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it goes like this. But now sometimes he makes a very beautiful little joint poem. And you know, he may start chanting like this.

[69:18]

This is what we do. He gets to see it. And he also knows that granddaddy's job is to go to the Zen club. He knows that's my job. He's gone with me a few times. One extra one. One time I was going to say, do you want? One time I was going to say, no. And he had spent the night over at our house, so he kind of attached to me. And I said, and it was a children's lecture that day. It was the beginning of the talk for first tenure. You do a talk with children, and the children go to the program. And then we had an adult lecture. So I said to his mother, want to bring him to the talk? She said, no, I got to leave. So I don't want to go. I said, just take ten minutes.

[70:21]

That's all. I'll just go to that and leave. She said, no, I don't want to. So I started walking out the door, and he went, ah, ah. And I said, oh, should I take him with me? She said, okay, take him. So I took him with me, and I was giving the talk. And so I carried him down to my room where I changed my clothes. And I wanted to put him down. He said, don't put me down. I have to put my robe on. So I put it down. And he wandered off. And I put my robe on. And I went up to the zendo. And I saw him. And I said, do you want to go in? He said, yeah. He said, carry me. So I carried him into the zendo. And I went up to alter the bow. And I said, I have to put it down now so I can bow. He said, bring it down. I went off and said, and I came back to bow. He was standing right between me and the Buddha. So I put my bow and bat down, and I bowed to the Buddha and him. He stood there and received my bow and bowed back to me. Three hundred people are watching.

[71:23]

The granddaddy bowed to the Buddha and his grandson. They're going, boom. And I'm like, oh, my God. So then I get up and leave the altar to go up to where I sit to give the talk. I start walking up there, and I said, come on, Maceo. Let's go. And as I walk up there, and I turn around, he's behind me. And he's picked up my bowing mat, which he thought he forgot holding up to me. And the way he picked it up was just like the attendant picks up the bowing mat. See? We're gathering it together and holding it up like that. I did this, and I said, no, that's okay. But to me, that was like, I'm going to go figure it out. It's like he did exactly what he intended. Nobody told him to do it. And I walked up, and he came up with me. I got up on my seat. I was just going to do what he wanted. I had talked to people beforehand and said, I have to talk so I'm not going to be able to, like,

[72:27]

I tend to him very long. They said, it's fine. You can do whatever you want. I got up and crossed my legs, and I got up together. I didn't even notice, but he got up next to me and crossed his legs. So we're both sitting there, crossing like a facing group. There's the sitter, and he's looking at the other people. And I get the talk, because everyone's looking at him. But he's just sitting there, calm, and he's sitting through the thing. Did you see that? Anyway, he's sitting there for a little bit of talk, and then the children's lecturer's over, and then the other kids start leaving, and he comes over and gives them a lap. His mother comes and starts to take him away. He turns over the microphone, and he says, So he's in the situation. He's in a situation. And at our time, at the beginning of the session, I still had to go to the session.

[73:33]

He said he wanted to come with me, so I brought him with me. I sat in my seat, and then I put a dog next to me. And he sat there, and he said, why are all the people facing the wall? And I said, well, that's what we usually do. He said, I don't like that. I'm scared to see all the people facing the wall. He said, I don't want to go, so I took him out. So everybody was tied down. Yes. Glasses, it's all money. Lock it for five minutes. That's me. So he's experienced it, but I don't push it at all. And I made him a send-off. Lock you? So we'll see what happens later now. When he was little, people thought, But now RepThings is really going to have his grandson as a disciple.

[74:57]

But I don't know if he's going to go for that. If he wants to, I don't think it's... I think he likes his mom better than me, at this point. That'll change. So I patiently wait. He's not seeing his mom anymore. But right now, she's like, cat me out. She's the greatest. I got to admit, I'm really second fiddle, at least. She's a great mom. She's a great mom. They have a lot of fun together. I don't see the dinner out there. They're outside. No? Yeah. Rabbi, I have a question, if I may, about Christianity and Buddhism. In the lesson that you taught this afternoon, I hear something that I've heard and wonder what you think.

[76:05]

Hearing Jesus' words of be in the world but not of it,

[76:09]

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