Now I've been trying to make sense and make experience of this world, make sense of this world and make experience of this world for 85 years. But I really got the... the effort underway most fully when I started practicing Buddhism. And yeah, and really when I met Suzuki Roshi, I could see he had this effort to make sense and make experience of the world. He was far along the path compared to me. I was just, you know, wondering how to do it, and I could see that he had been actualizing it for decades. Okay. So I have suggested a number of times what I call the four tenets.

[01:11]

Actually, I think Christian Dillow named them the four tenets, but I called them the four conditions for a while, things like that. Thank you, Roshi. So the first one is you need to know that transformative practice is possible. And that's not so easy to know. I mean, if you're in a belief system, then you can learn more. But transform? Well, yeah, probably that's not so obvious. So you need to know that transformative practice is possible. Otherwise, there's no real engagement with the teachings. And likewise, you need to know that it's possible to be free of emotional and psychological suffering, or quite free at least.

[02:17]

And if you don't know that, if that possibility isn't there, that possibility won't appear in your experience of zazen, of mindfulness, and so forth. And third, The third and fourth are really attitudes more than conditions. The third attitude is to know the world as close as possible to how it actually exists. That seems like an evidential practice. It doesn't simply mean naturalism or materialism. But it means it's rooted in naturalism and materialism, but it's not assumed that naturalism and materialism explain everything. And fourth, that we can live in a way that's as beneficial as possible to others, to other beings, to all sentience, and to the

[03:37]

environment to the, who knows, distant stars. Anyway, in the least harmful way, it's always harmful, I grind my teeth on killing microbes, you know. So the latter two are attitudes. You want to have an attitude to be as beneficial as possible. And you want an attitude to live as closely as possible to how things actually exist. Okay. Now I'm imagining a really smart kid, quite smart kid, who is luckily somehow, and more likely in this day and age than earlier times, pretty free from belief systems, or thinking there's someone out there who knows everything, or knows what the... No, you decided, original mind, original, you know, here I am, I'll find out for myself.

[04:47]

So he immediately has a problem with the third of the four tenets, to know the world as close as possible to how it actually exists. Now this smart kid, he-she doesn't... he-she's able to see that what we know is known through the senses. Well, how can we know how the world actually exists if we only know the world through the senses? Now, this is my first construction project that I mentioned at the beginning of practice period. It is all a construction, and we're constructing. We have this view, like, let's just start from scratch. Let's not start with Buddhism. To heck with Buddhism. I know the world. Can I know the world through the senses?

[05:54]

And the more you notice this without any belief system involved, you say, well, I can only know what the senses show me. The senses aren't the whole of the world, so I only know what the senses know of the world. Hey, that can't be. How is that close to how the world actually exists? The world is existing in all kinds of ways, and we can only know the five pieces of pie that the five physical senses show us. Or is that true? Can we only really know the five pieces of the sensorial pie? Now, these are the questions this smart kid is asking himself. And so one of the things this kid notices, the kid, the kid notices is that, yeah, and he really noticed, and I think we all really need to know, that the world we know is the world the senses show us.

[07:16]

That's got to be absolutely something close, at least That's so much the truth of how we exist. We've got to know that, first of all, and really know it. You have to find some way to practice. And as you know, I think these phrases we can create, you know, like, the early bird catches the worm. Well, the early bird doesn't always catch the worm. And nowadays with climate change, sometimes the caterpillars are coming out at a different time and the birds are in a different, around a different time when the caterpillars came out earlier or something. So the early bird doesn't always catch the worm, but this phrase has been around forever. And why? Because early bird and catch worm and And those sounds stay together so we can bodily feel them.

[08:26]

The early bird catches the worm, so now I get up early and go to work early and all that stuff. But really, this phrase has been around because of its language, because of its sounds. So a phrase needs to have some kind of language cohesiveness to it. Just now is enough. I think this is a phrase I created. But it took me a while. Just now is enough. Or already connected is another phrase I explored. Now I'm mentioning I did it. I don't know. It's not about me. It's about that you each need to find phrases that work for you so you can keep looking at the world. Only senses. Okay, so there's five physical senses. You can look at only eye world.

[09:30]

Maybe only scene world. Maybe only eye world has a better kind of repetitiveness to it, alliteration to it, something like that. Only eye world. Only ear world. Only nose world. Like, why are the nose and the center, et cetera? Only taste world. Only, well, now the proprioceptive or the physical, this sense is a real, not so simple, it's a physical sense, yes, touch, but really is engagement. This fifth so-called physical sense of touch, proprioception, it's more, you know, I think it's the sense which engages us with others and with the world.

[10:33]

Even smelling a flower is a kind of physical engagement. So again, I'm trying to look at these categories, how useful these categories are. I mean, I never could have thought up the five skandhas on my own, the five skandhas. I could notice the five physical senses on my own, but really, still, even so, I want to explore these things. When I explore this experience, which I call mine... Do I end up with Buddhism? I don't know. I've been trying it out for, as I've said, 60 years. And mostly I do end up with Buddhism. I think I do, almost entirely. And even if I don't quite, Buddhism is such an effective, powerful, effectual way of looking at the world.

[11:40]

Yeah, let's just jostle it into place and make use of it. Yeah. So here's this smart kid again. So Ishii sees that the world that we know is the world the senses show us. And he knows There must be world... probably there's things outside the category of the five senses. Maybe He-She decides to explore that. And then, at some point, He-She notices, hey, not only is the world shown to us through the senses, the world is showing us the senses.

[12:46]

The world is a kind of keyboard on which we play the senses. Can we get better at playing the keyboard of the world on the senses? So now we're engaged with the world in a different way than just receiving it through the senses. Now we're using the world as the keyboard for the senses. Yeah. So then this smart kid again thinks, notices, you know, I can notice each sense separately. I can notice each sense separately on the keyboard of the world, and I can notice each sense separately in knowing the world through the hearing or seeing, etc. So then he says, he, she says, well, yeah, maybe it'd be good to know each sense separately because the world, I get the world like as a package deal, a brain-wrapped deal.

[14:07]

Yeah, but maybe it'd be good to separate the senses. And the word vijnana, if we go into a little Buddhism here, Visjana really, I think, is best translated as to know things separately together. The five Visjanas, the eight Visjanas, to know things separately together. Okay, well, I don't know anything about Buddhism. This kid doesn't know anything about Buddhism. But he, she notices that, yeah, you can notice the senses separately. And when you start noticing the senses separately, you notice, oh, the senses each have a capacity, and that capacity can be developed. So now you're not just receiving the world shown to you by the senses, you're transforming the senses to receive the world in more acuteness, more resolution, depth, more

[15:09]

more feeling, more connected feeling. So when does the capacity of the senses that you're exploring make you feel the world? Again, I love Sukershi's statement, when is a tree a tree and when is a tree a poem? When the present is slowed down somehow and the present is slowed down somehow in the senses. So now he's noticed, he, she has noticed that, yeah, the senses can be known separately and I can practice with each senses. And when I see something, not only do I see it, I feel there's a physical quality, dynamic that appears with seeing and I can actually enhance the seeing through the whole body.

[16:14]

I can begin to know when seeing leads to the body feeling the seeing, and then I can concentrate not just on the seeing, but on the bodily quality that goes with the seeing. This is good. Something new. And then you can feel it with hearing, too. And when you cut out other distractions and let hearing be the dominant, and you find out hearing changes space. I mean, when you're seeing visually, you only see what's near. Hearing doesn't have near and far in it. A sound far away is still near for you. So your hearing changes. In a way, distance disappears in sound. And when distance disappears, the body actually feels a little different.

[17:19]

So you're now studying the body through the senses. I mean, you study in school, you study subjects. You are the subject and the object. And you're not going to worry about Buddhism or something like that. You're going to just like say, hey, what's going on with these senses I happen to have? Or happen to be? Or happen to find a location within? Yeah, and then, as I said, it's the world of the smell and odors which, you know, dogs have a dominant sense for some animals. We're an animal too. But you can make your sense of smell more acute.

[18:22]

I remember I noticed in high school that when I got up that I could sort of know what a person was, it felt like I could know what a person was feeling. So I experimented with it. Why do I have the feeling that I can know something about this person, what they were thinking or feeling? And I sort of started exploring the senses. Not the way I'm doing it now, but to some extent. And I noticed that if I got sort of two feet or three feet from the person I could know, but if I was farther, I didn't know. And I suddenly realized I was smelling the person, smelling their kind of state of mind, emotional sense. And I noticed you could smell crazy people. And you could, you know, I won't go, you know. So I discovered pretty clearly it was the sense of smell which was giving me information that I was turning into somehow noticing the mood the person was in.

[19:34]

Well, I didn't learn that in school, but I learned that by noticing, just noticing, that at a certain distance I knew something about the person I didn't know at another distance. Okay. And taste. Taste is a big part. When you're a little nervous, your mouth is dry. Ah. and how the kind of tonal quality of the mouth has a lot to do with your overall kind of feel of the body. So you can kind of tune your body through the mouth. The tip of the tongue at the roof of the mouth, where you keep it usually during satsang, And the tongue at the roof of the mouth completes or makes certain chakra channels.

[20:44]

You're not just doing it for the hell of it. It also tends to limit too much saliva in your mouth when you're sitting. And a lot of saliva in your mouth is related to discursive thought. So you kind of limit discursive thought by having your tongue at the roof of your mouth. Now we're still exploring the senses. Tongue at the roof of the mouth. And the tongue at the roof of the mouth is somehow touching this chakra. Yeah. So again, this smart kid is noticing that these senses can be experienced individually. There's a keyboard of the world you're playing them on. And you really know that there's more world, there's a more-ness out there than the senses are showing us.

[21:49]

So you're walking around in a world that's way bigger than the senses, but your senses are showing you how to kind of function in the world that's bigger than the senses. It's exciting. Then you notice, oh yeah, now I've begun to develop each sense separately. You know, you can spend actually a few days. I found in my own experience a park was a good time to do this, to take a walk in a park and walk in the park for two or three days with just as much as possible just the nose telling you where to walk and how to find the path and the autumn leaves, perhaps, as I remember it. The path has a different smell where the leaves are than where the worn-down part is. So you practice for two or three days if you have a chance in a park, just smelling or then just seeing.

[22:59]

You try to limit all the senses and just see until you really activate seeing. I mean, you are this sub-object, ob-subject. Better start the study. You've been given the senses to start the study and not just believe the world is the way somebody tells you it is. Let's find out what the world is with whatever capacity you have. I would say... one of the reasons Sashin and monastic life limit you, and you don't have visitors and all that stuff, is to really put you in a situation where you do not have any choices but your own senses. And you don't give it to yourself alone. You have to have the wisdom or the tradition which says, okay, you know, the so-called...

[24:03]

It's a wonderful documentary made by a German filmmaker called The Elder Brothers or something. It's about a Peruvian tribe who noticed that the upper reaches of the Peruvian mountains are drying up and they realize it's the people at lower altitudes who are screwing up the environment. But there, if I remember correctly, I saw this movie and studied and read books about it years ago, but they take certain children, I don't know if it's males and females, I forget, and they put them in caves in darkness until they're teenagers or something like that. And they come out with a different kind of sensory apparatus. They know things that others don't know. So there may be some wisdom in saying, okay, well, I can't do that to my kid, but maybe there's some wisdom in saying society can choose a few people who seem to have the capacity to be shamans or whatever.

[25:19]

Or maybe we can just build it into a kind of lineage practice where we actually say whether you like it or not, this is a way to practice. to discover the senses, not only separately, but now you can begin to choreograph this music, like a musical composition. You can begin to choreograph the senses so they play together differently than just all at once, dominated by visual. You can make the domination aural, aural, a-u-r-a-l, or you can make it More, you can actually make it more taste. And in a good meal you do that. So you can begin to choreograph how the five physical senses start stringing themselves, tuning themselves together. This is vijnana practice.

[26:24]

This is what's expected of a simple word like vijnana, to know things separately together. It means you have to do it, not just say, oh, I know that means something. No, no. You have to spend some months knowing things separately together. But the practice is, you know, kind of some sort of cognitive game you're playing. Yeah. Okay, so now the smart kid has seen that the senses are what we know. We live in a world the senses are showing us. And yet we can exercise the senses by playing them on the keyboard of the world. And we can know the senses separately. And then we can notice the senses together. And then the kid asks him or herself, but hey, there's this whole world outside the senses.

[27:34]

Does it show it to us in any other way? Does it only show it? Does the world, which we want to know as close as possible to how it actually exists, but how it actually exists, it's mostly outside the senses. Right? Is the world going to show it to us? And then the kid says, hey, I'm standing on the ground or on the floor. I'm standing on something. The world is showing itself by letting me stand on it. And so the world, now this kid has a, you know, he's a, she is a, great-grandparent actually. Newton didn't know this, a great-grandparent of Newton. And he, she thinks, why do everything just fall in one direction?

[28:37]

Well, something's going on. He doesn't know to call it gravity, but he, she says, you know, something's going on here. The world is showing itself just by everything falls in the same direction. And I can't smell gravity. I can't see gravity. I can feel it proprioceptively. But it's really gravity is outside the senses. But yet I can... How did I get there? The world is showing itself in more ways than the five physical senses can show it to me because I know there's something like... Later it will be called, I mean, or was, is now called gravity. So the world is showing itself in ways other than the five senses. Hey, so that means the world is not simply what the senses show me.

[29:43]

The world is also present in other ways, in ways I think right now the only word I could find for it is engagement. The standing on the ground is a kind of engagement. Now, are there other ways the world is showing itself? Like gravity? Or outside smelling and tasting and hearing and seeing? Because you can't see gravity. You can't hear it. Maybe that's a little bit of its sound. But, you know, it's outside. So what... What... I want to be open to. If I'm going to know the world as it actually exists, I want to be open to. I'm waiting for the world to show itself. So now I'm in the mystery, and I'm not only in the mystery that it's a mystery, I'm also waiting for the mystery to talk to me, to start showing itself, to pull the curtain aside.

[30:48]

And now the kid notices something else. He tries to find, she tries to find a word maybe for, because what the sense is that showing is a world that seems to be outside. There seems to be an outside there-ness to it. But we don't know if outside or what, but it's an outside created by the senses and the brain. But it's an outside created by the senses, so we can't really call it an outside. What is the side? Where are the sides? And what is out? But let's call it an outerness. It's an outerness known through the senses. But now this smart kid also notices that you can actually have the senses notice the senses. There's a recognition, a recognition, a recognition, which usually people don't have recognitions if they're in a belief world.

[32:09]

It takes... a sense that transformation is possible before you recognize the world or notice the awareness of awareness or notice the sense of mind appearing on every object. So now you discovered there's an outerness that you're living within and now you can begin to actually hear Your own breath. And you can hear your own hearing of the breath. And as I said the other day, you hear your own hearing of the bird. Or you hear your own hearing of the tractor driving by in Yonassal. Do tractors sound that way? Well, tractors sound that way to our ears. But I don't know how they sound to dragonflies. So now... This smart kid recognizes that he or she is also creating an inner-ness.

[33:20]

There's a depth, a kind of depth or a kind of feeling to the inner-ness when you turn the senses inner, when you sit still, when the aperture is wide open. And what you feel is an inner-ness which flows into the outer-ness. And now we have Buddhism. This is where Buddhism really begins, when you explore how the inner-ness absorbs, transforms, reveals, satisfies. The relationship between outer-ness and inner-ness And it's zazen practice, mindfulness, mind-fulliness, that brings us into an innerness which can realize an outerness.

[34:30]

So what I just said, really it touches on Buddhism, but it's really you exploring how this construction project of the five physical senses, with a little help from mind. Thank you very much.

[34:53]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_90.99