Anything you'd like to say about or observations you have about this five skandhas? Let me say one thing. It's extraordinarily subtle in its practice. But it's also extraordinarily simple. Five things. He immediately relates it to what he does when he plays golf. Five things, right? And yet, it's unknown to Western culture. Why is it unknown to Western culture? I would say the main reason is we have this idea of natural, that somehow we are the way we are, given at birth or by God or something, and we don't deconstruct ourselves. And Buddhism has assumed we're constructs. So you can deconstruct. You can deconstruct consciousness.

[01:02]

Nothing magical about it. It's just a way of functioning. So it seems like simple ideas can have a powerful limiting effect on a culture. And, of course, our culture is, I mean, in any cosmic terms, extremely young. But I think it's just extremely young in generational terms, demographical terms. It seemed like a long time ago to Christ or to the Buddha. But I, my grandmother... I don't know was born in the late 19th century the extended family she grew up with great aunts and others go back prior to 1850 and I've talked to them I know all kinds of things from how they lived in you know in America in the late 19th century

[02:21]

And certainly I have students, people I practice with, like Ravi, who are going to be around in probably 2050. Or longer, let's hope. Okay, that's 200 years. That's a unit I have some relationship to. Ten of those units bring us back to Christ. That's really not a very long time. Fifteen of those units bring us back, or twelve of those units, something like that, bring us back to the time of Buddha. This is really not a very long time. I think of the fact that it's Yeah, only now, I mean it takes, first we lived for millennia in groups of usually not bigger than 35 and now we're trying the skills of larger groups, nations and civilizations and right now some sort of global awareness or humanity or idea of humanity or the idea that

[03:29]

You know, though certainly you see in the Balkans, there's no, it's all tribal. If you're a Muslim or you're some different kind, slightly different Serb, you don't belong. I mean, look at what's going on in Israel right now or Palestine. So the idea that we can live together in big groups is still very primitive. Primitive, not very well worked out for sure. And it's only in my lifetime that anybody has thought that women might be equal. I mean, this is nuts. I mean, it's nuts. How long it's taken for us to begin to say, well, women deserve careers or education. And there's still honor killings in the world. I mean, we live in a benighted, crude, in my opinion, world. Benighted means endarkened. It's not that you've been knighted by Queen Elizabeth.

[04:36]

You know, it always amused me as a kid, or it took me a while to be amused because it took about 35 years before they thought to pad dashboards of cars. Before that, when I was a kid, they were hard metal. Thousands of people had their brains broken open on the... Somebody says, maybe we should put padding on the dashboard. There's only been 175,000 people killed. It takes a very long time for an idea to take hold and affect people, like padding dashboards. So for some reason, our civilization has decided not to deconstruct consciousness. Yogic civilization has decided to deconstruct consciousness. Both civilizations, I mean, your Asian civilization did not develop science in any way. They had a science, and Needham has done a big study of science in China, and China developed gunpowder and paper and stuff before the West.

[05:44]

But overall, they didn't develop experimental science. And so now these two civilizations are relating to each other. But to me, it's astonishing that something so simple, which is so powerful, takes, you know, what? This has been around more than 2,000 years to get into the Western thinking, you know? We're doing it here, this group. It's not me, it's really us. I'm one of you who's decided to, like, look at things differently. So, is there something you'd like to say with my little historical riff? Yeah? My mind is still up in the mind. Really? Okay. I thought about these five skandhas, and as I said, it's a very

[06:45]

for me a finer form of feeling in the golf, why you do a routine over and over in order to do it in the surrounding. So I thought for myself, how can I do this with my kids? To go with them so they have a ritual whereby fooling them into this finer form of feeling. And then I thought about reading a fairy tale, isn't it? When we are telling tales around the fires that we have done, as you said, historically, isn't that very... around the whole world, what we have been doing? Isn't that the same? I was just spinning my mind. I tried to do it practically. How can I do this with my kids? So I cultivate their mind on going there. Whether they know it or not doesn't matter. Just so they have cultivated a nervous system to do it. Or... Yeah. Stuff of fairy tales, isn't it? I just went into my own experience. This is blurb in my mind right now.

[07:48]

Yeah. What about historically? Yeah, I suppose we could write some fairy tales. I mean, if you analyze, I think, European fairy tales, the particular mythology and grim and trying to put together a world view. And if you look at Chinese fairy tales, they're They often have the Buddha in it. And one of the most famous is a monkey who's got a little pool of water on his head, which is very much like this chakra. And when it's dry, he's weak. But when he can function in a way that he can keep the water there, he's strong. That's a children's tale, but it teaches you something different than our children's tales would teach us. It's a sneaky way of raising children to put in the fairy text the things that you want them to. Yeah, I don't think it's sneaky. It's smart. Yeah, but in a sneaky good way with a gleam in your eye.

[08:53]

The way your culture should be. Yeah. I mean, the real thing is how do you pass culture on to the next generation? And there are more people alive today than have ever been alive on the history of the planet. Well, you know, if you have a slight increase in each generation, you can pass it on. But when each generation goes like this, how do you pass it on? How does this generation pass? And technology is taking on the job of passing it on quite independent of the parents. Most parents, I'm afraid, at least in America, don't have much sense. They turn their kids over to the school system. And they don't say, the school is helping me educate you. which is, I think, the way it ought to be. You know, when we count, we count our breaths often to get started in zazen. What's amusing is, you know, we know how to count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.

[09:59]

But when you do zazen, partly you start thinking and you can't count. Or you count to three. I call it counting to one because you get to one and you start thinking about something. But it's also that awareness hasn't been trained to count. Consciousness, we've trained consciousness to count. But awareness isn't trained to separate things out. When you teach children the ABCs, or here and there. When you teach children to count and to say they're ABCs, you're actually teaching children to notice, to begin to see relationships between things, separate awareness into parts and into here and there. And for instance, Yuan Wu will say, establish a mind without here and there or before and after. That's not consciousness. Establish a mind without here and there or before and after.

[11:04]

So that's a mind that doesn't know how to count yet. So in a way, when you count your breaths, you're also training awareness to begin to function in relationship to consciousness. Now, my saying that is an example of being thorough. You look at, you count your breaths, but what's really going on? It's also that not that you're just so distracted by your thinking. It's also that awareness doesn't know how to count. Okay. I have a question. I hope. I can hear from different parts of the world, I was going to say, about, you know, this need for new consciousness, this global consciousness kind of, and it's... as far as I understand it, like a protest to the conventional mind, kind of. And that it's needed for providing the earth with a sustainable development.

[12:12]

And people are gathering, you know, to kind of... You spoke about this quark thing. Quark, yeah. And that when you're... They're talking about that when... many enough people are passing a certain limit, kind of, it will show itself simultaneously over the world. What do you think about that? Well, Rupert Sheldrake has this idea of morphogenetic fields. Yes. And I really like Rupert. He's a sweet, extremely intelligent, beautiful man. But I don't agree with his science. So... You were worried because I might have been? Yes. And the 12th monkey or 11th monkey or whatever that stuff is, you know, that's a great story. It's been shown that it's not true. I just don't think it's true.

[13:17]

But there is some sort of critical mass that at a certain point things do get passed rapidly. I often used to say a good joke gets from Boston to... Los Angeles by word of mouth in about two weeks. A bad joke requires television. So things do get passed. I mean, I think global consciousness, et cetera, is in many ways a business scam. to try to make everyone get involved in world business and agree to, you know. But it's also true that we need certain ideas about humanity taking care of each other and so forth. But, I mean, we certainly shouldn't do it in Bush's way, you know, bomb people into democracy when he himself doesn't practice democracy.

[14:18]

I mean, he is elected by fixed elections, by dishonest elections, and this is really horrifying. Horrifying. And it will be sad, of course, if we lose the particularity of cultures. I think, just look at the pleasure I'm having being in Sweden. I wouldn't want it to be an amorphized EU, you know. I'm really worried about Ireland because Ireland was the country in Europe which kept a sense of magic and openness to each other. But now it's really caught up in being wealthy and it's very quite successful and the EU is homogenizing things. I see it happening in Portugal. Okay, somebody else want to bring something up? I said... I would mention something else.

[15:20]

We could spend more time on the five skandhas, but I think mainly I would like to seed you. Seed? Seed, C-E-D-E, the five skandhas to you, or the seeding, S-E-E-D-I-N-G, sort of way. Seeds to seed is to offer. C-E-D-E. I think a useful entry into the difference is accessible, experienceable entry to the difference between minds. other than waking up and going to sleep.

[16:23]

It's what I call the three minds of daily consciousness. They are simply moral consciousness, secondary consciousness, and immediate consciousness. Okay.

[17:32]

Very simple. Something taught by the Dalai Lama. It's traditional teaching within Buddhism. And it... A lot of people object to the idea of borrowed consciousness because they identify with consciousness. They don't want it to be thought of as borrowed. But the technical term for it is Translated as borrows. And it has point. Okay. So, I can sit here and look at Leonard. Is that the way you pronounce it, Leonard? Or Len-heart? Leonard. And say, I feel your presence. Without thinking about it, it works better. So that would be an example of immediate consciousness. I can also look at you and say, yeah, you're younger than I am.

[18:39]

And I've made that conclusion, I've drawn that conclusion by looking at you. So that's secondary consciousness. But I don't know your first date. I mean, I take a wild guess, but your birth date is borrowed. Your birth date is a designation developed through culture of calendars and time. Your parents said no kid would know their birth date unless your parents tell you. So it's borrowed from other people. So much of our Western education is about our consciousness and how much information you have, what you know, etc. Okay. So say you're taking a walk. Let's go back into the woods. If you can't, of course, I can read the keys. Awesome. Awesome.

[19:43]

And avoid hugging trees. In America, it was dangerous. She showed us how dangerous it was. She had kind of a slip of the tongue with her storytelling. But, and you know, of course, I guess in Sweden too, environmentalists are by, people who don't like environmentalists are called tree-huggers. Of course, Reagan's famous for saying, you see one tree, you see... The idea is to cut down all the redwoods, but what? I feel like I'm living, I feel sometimes I'm living with gorillas. Gorillas are more intelligent. A little more respectful of the environment. Anyway. Okay. So you're taking a walk with some friends.

[20:46]

And you're just enjoying the walk. You're walking along, you're viewing past trees. No one's saying much. And then someone says, oh look, They cleared a path over there that wasn't there last time we walked here. That would be secondary. You've noticed something, but you've noticed something within your own situation. You're still rooted in your own situation. Yeah, so you walk along, you may notice some other things. God, there's more finches out. each day, there's swallows. That's all secondary. But then someone says, oh, you know, get to be four o'clock, parachute today, open soon. I've got to check out my room. I've got to make some phone calls.

[21:51]

That's boring. And you can feel energetically, is it different? Is it going to bump you, girlfriend? You can be in immediate consciousness, and there's only a little bump when you go from the bump to secondary consciousness. It's easy to go back to immediate consciousness. But once you've gone to a little bump to borrowed consciousness, oh, I've got to make a phone call, very hard to go back. Now, we don't have to think of these as categories, but rather as directions. So, But we can use blue this time. My daughter's new favorite color. The favorite color used to be red. She's announced to me that some determination is now blue.

[22:53]

A Japanese family went to the school, and they said, the mother came in, this is a true story, went to school and said, you know, go to school and tell me. And said, I don't know how to fill out this form. I was sent this form when my daughter was eight. And it says, check on what her favorite color is. We've had big discussion. I mean, in the mornings, we like one color. In certain situations, we like other colors. We don't have a favorite color. How do I do this? It was quite funny. She really genuinely thought, colors is bad, etc. Whenever I do something like this, you know, I feel, I'm getting to be a real teacher. I have to improve my handwriting probably.

[23:55]

This is what teaching is supposed to do. music green, blue, and black, and it's probably the highest stream being exhibited here. Oh, how much? All right. Oh, no. Stumbling into our own consciousness. Stop. So, say that you're in immediate consciousness. And you notice, oh, they've built a fence over there, you know, like maybe there's a gate that you can't get through. So this is immediate consciousness. And you go up to secondary consciousness, noticing the gate. And then it's quite easy to go back down. Now you might actually... go all the way up into bar consciousness. You say, God, I've got to make a phone call later, but gee, let's put it off. You go up there, you go back to secondary, or even back.

[24:59]

So there's a directionality to it. And of course, you started out your walk in bar consciousness, kind of shifted into, and again, you can feel the bumps. Now, if And the way I do this is, this would be consciousness and this would be awareness. The more you're in this direction, so this direction is to consciousness and this direction is toward awareness. I was at a in Munich at an event with Dalai Lama, who I know quite well, did know quite well, because the first place he stayed, I think the first place he stayed in America when he came to San California first was at my center, Green Gulch.

[26:18]

I don't know, 19, something like that. I guess it must have been around 79, because we did a big dinner party. 250 people at Green's Residence. But he didn't have an entourage in those days. He barely was a world figure. So we got to hang out together for nearly two weeks. And we were about the same age, six months old. But a few years later, I was going to München to do a seminar, and someone said, you know, picked me up, said, the Dalai Lama's in Munich today. We got some tickets for this event. Let's go. So they took me from the, I think we went straight from the airport in a train station to this event.

[27:26]

And it was some kind of Protestant young people event. So there were lots of young Protestant men and women, boys and girls, you know, 20, 18, 17, 25. And it was in, there were adults too, but it was mostly, largely young people. And it was in a, like in a kind of, some kind of field that had been made at the Olympic Games some years earlier. And it was huge, you know, I don't know, it was vast, like a big football stadium, soccer stadium or something. Full of people. So we sat down somewhere in the middle, and, you know, I don't know, it was way up there. And, uh, because in those days, not everybody had shaved heads like here. There weren't so many. And he saw me, and he behaved to me, you know. And he's, you know, he's not just a monk, he's sort of a chick-monk. A chick-monk is.

[28:27]

Yeah. Like, uh... Neck corner. Neck corner. Yeah. Because he kind of looked around. He's a totally sweet guy. And he's really a fine person, really. So he gets up and gives a talk. And also Baitsecker gave a talk, who was the brother of the physicist who was the president of Germany. It might have been the physicist. I don't know which Baitsecker. Did he have a bald head or not? I don't remember. Anyway, it's not important. I can't remember right now. Anyway, he gave a talk, which was quite good. Environmental, about the environment, global warming stuff, and all that stuff. Very intelligent talk. But it was entirely from Borough of Constance. And everybody sat there, you know, listening intelligently.

[29:28]

But Dalai Lama got up. He talked about, I don't know, 25 minutes. Zero content. His talk was, we all want to be happy. Don't you want to be happy? I want to be happy. I mean, his fairly standard puppet talk, which has no content, it's just nice. And he talks about happiness, that we all want to be happy. But except for a couple remarks about the Chinese of China, he was entirely in the media consciousness, secondary consciousness. He didn't stray into borrowed consciousness, though. Everything he said was derived from the situation. People were blissed out. People were kind of like, just, hello, my new lover, my new friend. And afterwards, it was such a good feeling that this huge crowd of young Protestants streamed out of this thing into, and it's the kind of good feeling you have in a peace march.

[30:37]

Because often not many of the peace marches you had in this camp, maybe, but people feel good, and they walk, and they throw flowers, they sing. So it was like, suddenly, it was this atmosphere of a peace march, and people streamed into the underground subway, whatever it's called. Trains going and singing. The trains were singing. I mean, one train had passed us, and people would be singing in that one. People were singing in mind a couple of grouchy barbarians in the movie. Just relatives of yours. She was telling me about her German relatives. Anyway, some grouchy barbarians didn't like that yet. But basically... What was it? It was a city. A city is a special power. Catholicism is called charism. You have to have certain charisms to be a saint.

[31:41]

This is a city. He was able to stay in immediate consciousness and secondary consciousness and give a talk with virtually no content. And thousands of people were blissed out, were happy, singing, walking, feeling good. So maybe this is NLP. You say obvious things like, I'll stay away from the story. Isn't it a nice day? We all are sleepy in the morning, but we hate to get up right away, et cetera. Universals. Well, that's what he did. He does it in a way that everyone felt nourished. So you can notice yourself. You can begin to notice the difference between immediate consciousness and secondary consciousness. And a practitioner tries to stay in secondary consciousness, immediate consciousness, most of the time. But often we start doing conscious and soon we're on a walk, or we do this, that, that, and you lose contact with where you are.

[32:47]

So these are kind of real simple things, but when you begin to feel the bumps, until you feel the bumps, you can't do much about it. If you start feeling the bumps, you experiment a little, you can kind of stay below this bump, unless you have to use this, because it's a tool. It's a tool for, you know, et cetera. So if you have a feeling for this, which you can get on a walk, you know, you know all this, then that allows a deeper feeling or opening for the bumps between me for the transition between okay i think that's enough for our tj interlude I've tried to give you some of the basic teachings which have a form that you can get a feeling for and remember that can allow, I hope, allow you to play with these things, practice these things as you wish and when it occurs and seems appropriate to you.

[35:03]

There's things you can do in a dentist's office when you've got nothing better to do. BELL RINGS I'm sorry.

[39:53]

I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[41:24]

Thank you. Thank you.

[44:50]

Thank you so much for being willing to try this out for three days. Taking three days out of your busy lives and your families and so forth. I'm touched that you did so. It was wonderful for me to be here with you. Thank you, Robbie, for making it happen. Thank you. He told me three years ago. If he'd said, let's go this year, I would have said, oh, no, I can't. But three years, I said, well, three years, I can probably do it, you know. And then suddenly it was three years were up, and I said, oh, well, I guess I'd go. I'm glad you tricked me, you sneaky guy. I wanted you to see Sweden. Oh, really? And the food. And the food. And these seven people. That's right. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you very much. Now I'm just happy to stay here. You can leave. I feel so good.

[48:08]

I'm rooting for your babies. Thank you very much for coming here and sharing with us. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you. Sharing your person. Thanks for sharing your hearing. Now we just hear the hearing. Yeah. And you went to the trouble to get cushions and it's out of time. Depressive. I hope we're not thrown into the junk heap now. No, we're going to find more. My pair is even going to try and sit on a bench. I'm going to need to do some stretching.

[49:09]

Yoga helps. Yeah, I have a yoga... She's a yoga teacher? No. Enough to give you something. Yeah, enough for me. In my eyes, yes. But this one is very good for you. Yeah. We're doing that. Ready for that. I'm very pleased that the knees weren't hurting. Yeah. I've been trying that out. Yeah. So that's one step closer. Well, if I, you know, take it, I have real stiff joints and it's taken me a long time to learn to sit. So I can't say if I can do it, you can do it, but probably it's true. I'll take it as a fundamental and go with it.

[49:53]

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