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Perception Waves Zen Awakening
AI Suggested Keywords:
Seminar
The talk primarily explores the nuanced distinctions between perceptions, feelings, and emotions, emphasizing the experiential aspects of Zen practice, particularly the significance of non-graspable experiences. The discussion covers how perceptions form the "scandals" of consciousness and how they relate to Zen concepts like the subtle body and awareness. There's also an exploration of cultural differences in consciousness and individuality across societies, particularly in how they give rise to distinct unconscious experiences. Additionally, the talk delves into the distinctions between a mentor and a therapist in Western and Buddhist contexts, underscoring the fundamental differences in approaching the self and mind.
Referenced Texts and Works:
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Lankavatara Sutra: Discussed in the context of water and waves as metaphors for consciousness and perception, illustrating the Zen concept of the non-graspable.
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Michel Foucault's Works: Referenced to elucidate the dynamics of power and social control within democratic societies and their impact on consciousness.
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Ideas: His influence on modern Western individuality is acknowledged, particularly on personal consciousness and cultural identity.
Referenced Authors and Figures:
- Arnie Mindell: His work is touched upon when discussing the processes of consciousness and psychological transformation, drawing parallels with Zen practices.
Highlighted Concepts:
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Sammogakaya Body: Described as a non-graspable experience associated with awakening the subtle body in Buddhism.
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Common Sense: Originally conceptualized as an understanding common to all senses, illustrating the misinterpretation of language over time.
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Perception vs. Awareness in Zen: A critical distinction is made between passive awareness and the active generation of awareness as progressing toward Bodhisattva consciousness.
AI Suggested Title: Perception Waves Zen Awakening
press and deny, you pollute yourself more. And then if you're polluted, then you really affect other people. So basically, if you can learn to sit still, you can let anything happen, it's okay. And the person receiving, when they do receive sex, oh, it's all mine, who cares? Okay, something else. You need some help with the perception of the scandals? Oh, with the perception? Yeah. It's help with the idea of the scandal of perception. Why? You're not perceiving? No. He doesn't understand it. The simplest would be this is naming.
[01:02]
Naming. Grasping something as a concept. Now, it's a little more than that, but that's naming definitely fits there. Yes. Now, some of you haven't said anything about it. Now, please, some people come up to me, like you did, and say, you have lots of questions, but you tell me privately. So why don't you tell everyone? Oh, yeah. We can talk right over it now. Okay. Yeah, well, I'll share it with you. Well, just say something that you feel. What kind of questions? Go on. I shouldn't have to do all the work. We have been talking about awareness and emptiness and consciousness.
[02:10]
And I had brought something in with a dream I had. or this form of dream that I dream like a photo camera. I have no feeling, nothing. I just... It is wonderful thing, you know, for me, the dream, not to grasp anything or to fear of. It is wonderful. When I wake up, then the feeling comes. But whilst I'm dreaming, I just see the thing like a photo camera. and then I want to determine to which of these standards it applies. Amen. Images of images, visual images, generally are in this territory here.
[03:15]
And so when you're dreaming, you're usually working in a big territory of feeling. Now that's not an emotion. Emotion falls into perception. When you have an emotion, like anger, you've taken feeling and turned it into anger. That's a kind of perception. Perception has the sense of grasping You just say that perception is maiming. You can be angry without knowing the reason. No, maiming is just one of the target words.
[04:17]
So this skanda is when you take hold of something. So when I have a general feeling, And maybe that feeling is sadness. But it's when it's real specific sadness. You're shifting it to this territory. Yeah. Now, when you... See, I don't know what the words are. But one of the things you should... What? Mood? Here, feeling . Mood is more in here. But again, for instance, in English you have certain words, like emotion and feeling.
[05:26]
And thoughts. And when I was given the practice to follow a thought to its source, what happens is you see that that thought is connected to several other thoughts, and it's connected to emotions and feelings and so forth. So I had to do a kind of inner dictionary in which I tried to say, well, we have these different words in English. Do I know the difference? It actually took me a long time to distinguish usefully between emotions and feelings. But let me give you another kind of example of how we've lost touch with these words. An example that I've used again a lot. In English, the phrase common sense means something everyone knows.
[06:40]
And that's not what it originally meant. What it originally meant was something that's common to all the senses. In other words, it was taking feelings, hearing, etc., and finding a central unity to those feelings and being able to act in a way that was common to all the senses. We don't notice, we've lost the ability to do that, and we don't notice that we do that. And when we lost ability, the word shifted to meanings common to other people. Yeah. Now, in a culture like Japan, again, in the feelings ganda, There's something like 60 words for love.
[07:46]
We just don't make the distinction. It's like Eskimos have about 20 words for snow. You almost don't need the word for snow in lots of places. We don't know. Blue snow, you know, this kind of snow. So, we just don't have a lot of words for this because we don't have the topography of the territory. So, where were we? What is really the difference between feelings and emotions? Emotion, at least in English. means a, like when you're angry,
[08:47]
you have an articulated anger, which excludes other things. And if I'm angry at you, everything you do makes me feel more angry. If I look at you, that anger carries over to you. but if I have a feeling it's inclusive it allows lots of things to happen in that field but anger allows only anger to happen but again these Thoughts, feelings, you can take something and track it, and sometimes it's the thought that moves into thought, sometimes it's an emotion, sometimes it's a feeling, sometimes it's just a bare perception. And as I said earlier, these are understood as clouds.
[09:52]
And this cloud can contract and move into this one and so forth. These are not real. There's no sharp division. Okay. Yeah. The Israeli feeling is weak and an emotion is a moved feeling. Feeling, what feeling is weak? Weak. Weak. Weak. What? Vague. Vague. And emotion is a group feeling, or a feeling that is pointing to something. Directed? Yeah. I wouldn't say vague is right, but yes, emotion is more directed, more articulate. Again, we go back to that song. I hear the song.
[11:03]
I have a kind of I have a feeling. It's almost impossible not to have feelings. Um Now, we tend to use in English feelings to mean emotion. I can walk in this room and have a feeling. It's not an emotion. I might start to feel anger. Or I might have feelings about you, then I actually mean emotions. But if I come in this room, there's an atmosphere to the room. Now, feeling is the most ephemeral. It's hard to grasp. Intangible. It's the most intangible from the point of view of definition. But it's the most tangible, in a certain way, from the point of view of no definition.
[12:24]
From the point of view of no definition. For example, when you're practicing, as I talked last night, you're beginning to recognize a subtle body. And a subtle breath. That's at the level of feeling. And as soon as you're in motion, you're out of the subtle body. Now, I didn't say it last night because I thought it was too much. But if you develop inner seeing, you can actually see your chakras. And you can sort of move your feeling of seeing to the back of your eyes. which affects your cheekbone and your ears.
[13:29]
It affects the way your head feels here. And you tend to look not at things, you begin to develop a sense of field seeing. The way a juggler does. A juggler can't look at any one ball, but has to look at them all at once. And it's actually a physiologically slightly different state. And if you develop that kind of way of seeing a field, like I can see this room all at once, and I apprehend it in a whole way, if I can turn that feeling inside, You can begin to, if you develop the skill, while you're sitting you begin to see kind of things moving.
[14:34]
At first it's unfamiliar territory, you can't. But then if you sort of locate yourself here or here, you can actually start to see a movement like that and then you can actually with a kind of intention at the level of imagination you can feel that reverse but it actually goes it goes, it's a glow, it goes in all directions, it goes this way as well as this way. And you can be able to feel how it affects your health or sense by the movement. So all those, these chakras are not exactly medical and scientific. You can't locate them. you'll find if you try to develop the sense of an inner location, you can't hold an inner location here.
[15:41]
It's very difficult too. But if you move it to here or here, these are where it suddenly will settle and heal. and when you settle it there there's a kind of way you can organize your whole experience from that and this is very close to the undivided world so when they talk about the Buddha has 32 marks circles in the palm of his hand or on his feet. That means the ability to see the subtle body which is close to the undefined world. Or the undivided world. Undivided world. So what I'm trying to suggest is this is actually within the realm of our experience.
[16:43]
But the quality is it's non-graspable. So graspable experience is here. And non-graspable experience is back this way. And when you begin to be able to have non-graspable experience, you begin to awaken the subtle body. What's technically Buddhism? It's called the Sammogakaya body. Was that too much or was that interesting? So what else? We should go to bed soon and cook dinner or something, but... We are also taught now the concept of perception is reality, and if you change perception, you can change the reality.
[17:49]
I understand. Of course. But if you change the feeling, you change reality, too. Okay, now the last thing I should say probably today is that the more you live down here, the more you create an unconsciousness. I was talking to Luigi about this a little earlier. Now, contemporary psychology often assumes that the unconscious is a given. like your nose or something. And all cultures and all peoples have an unconscious. I'm sure that's not true. And you can all, I think, already see that the way you define yourself is a different combination of skandhas than ours.
[18:56]
You need a different psychologist. So the same kind of psychological practices that worked in one culture may not work in another culture. Everyone's going to have problems with their mother and father. In every culture. But the way that manifests and the way to work with it and the way it helps you or harms you will be different. Okay, so the more you move in this direction, the more you're creating unconscious material. If you're strongly located down here, you're going to have bigger unconscious than if you're located up here. Now, my own opinion is that the necessity to have a highly defined functioning consciousness is a productive consciousness, is a post-industrial phenomenon.
[20:01]
is that since the Industrial Revolution, we've begun to have more unconsciousness than before. And also democracy is one of the culprits. And I think when you create a democracy, you've got to have a high degree of social control within each individual. When you have a monarchy, for instance, if I'm the king, I can let you do whatever you want. Because at some point you get to be a you get to be a problem off with your head. So I can get, you can all have orgies, you can do whatever you want, but you know, as long as you don't mess with the princess. You mess with the princess off with your head. Okay, but if I'm the president, I can't say off of your head.
[21:37]
There's laws against that. So I have to get each of you to control yourself. And Michel Foucault is very good at this. how our social forms create power, punishment, etc. Punishment, power, etc. It's the shadow side of democracy. And I think democracies and industrial societies have a much bigger unconscious identity that runs parallel to the conscious identity. Democracies and industrialized societies Create a self which creates unconscious. We're almost done. I've said it's a lot easier for me to talk than for her to translate. It takes more energy to translate. Okay, it's a simple idea. Your existence is bigger than yourself.
[22:56]
And the more defined yourself is, imagine there's a little ship. The more defined this ship is, and the less water it lets inside, the more stuff is going to fall overboard. And if enough falls overboard, So if we have a little boat here, if a lot falls overboard, we simply have to pile up and interfere with the boat. Then we have to have somebody help us work this out. And I think that one of the I mean, I think one of the great contributions to the world is democracy. And it's based on Greek and Christian ideas.
[23:57]
And part of that is the individual's relationship to God. But that individual is, you're an individual because you have a relationship with God. And that relationship is often mediated by a priest and confession. And out of that context, the idea of therapist arises, who mediates your individuality, helps you with your individuality. In other cultures, there's no idea of therapist. There's uncles and aunts. There's good friends. There's mentors. Now, I'm a trained mentor in the Buddhist tradition.
[25:03]
I'm not a trained therapist. I know a lot about therapy, but I cannot do certain things with a person a therapist can do. A therapist can precipitate certain kinds of resolutions in a person that I can't do. That's not my training. To let something come out of the person. So I think actually therapy and Buddhism have territory together. And this just has not been developed in Buddhism because there's no idea of a therapist in Buddhism. And the kind of culture that existed before Probably a therapist wasn't needed. But I think nowadays we need therapy. And I think, again, cultures which have a high degree of individuality need therapists.
[26:13]
It's very difficult to make it work all by yourself. And I think that Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the people who most created the Western idea of individuality. And he talked about going on alone in his own thought processes. And he got so far out there by the end of his life, he didn't think it worked. so in any case we have a this is in response to your question about the unconscious is that when you move more back this direction And you're in this area, and the less defined you are, you don't pile up so much unconscious material. But still, I feel that we are this kind of person. And our culture does emphasize this area.
[27:27]
So we have to figure out how to make it work. And there's values to the way we are. And she, Helena, asked me earlier about this stunt. In a way, as if it were a progress over this. And I gave her an example. I saw a little sociological film once. And it was a little blonde South African girl and a little black South African girl. There was a kind of tree trunk, I think it was, or table, but I think it was a tree trunk. And they had about 25 or 45 things all piled up on top.
[28:29]
And they brought both little girls up and just walked them by. They kind of looked at it, and then they cleaned everything up. And then they turned the two little girls around and said, put them back on. The little white girl had no idea what to do. She tried to pick up a couple things and put them on. The little black girl with no effort reassembled everything once on top of it. She was completely here. She saw the pattern and could reproduce the pattern. She saw all the associations. Now, we only see associations as they go back and forth. We don't emphasize this as a territory. So we'll have to, again, tomorrow we're going to have to talk about the stored house and unconsciousness in another way. And how to be present in your unconscious.
[29:39]
And the difference between the sense of a storehouse and the sense of an unconscious. That's quite a lot for today. You always say yes. At 2 o'clock, I said it was quite a lot. What I wrote here, just for your curiosity, this is only waves. Only waves. And here waves plus water. And here's water. And that's the standard image in the Lakhavatar Sutra. Water, waves, and whether you see just the waves, you see the waves and the water, or you really live in the water, but sometimes it's waves.
[30:53]
Now, I'd like us to sit for just a little while and then we'll stop, okay? Some dog for me, dog. Now, please sit. in any way that's comfortable for you. Take a stretch if you'd like. I would have liked to have sat a little more, but I feel that it's uncomfortable for some of you, so. And I don't want to keep you in Zazen prison. If you come to a sasin, then you have to be in sasin prison.
[32:15]
You have to break out of yourself from inside. Perhaps some of you have... some thoughts about all of this from sleeping on it. If you do, please. Thank you for helping me today. And you may get a relief around noon. Okay. You said yesterday that in industrialized societies, the consciousness is higher and therefore the consciousness is also higher.
[33:16]
Not higher, more defined. Consciousness is more defined. More defined. Yeah. And that, does it mean that then, that now he does realize people have more awareness, that they're more aware? Maybe. I think so, actually. I think you find, you may find, you know, an ordinary farmer or fisherman less conscious but more aware. I don't know, you know, how do you know? It's just an aesthetic guess. Maybe you should say in German. in societies where consciousness is more defined, where it is clear that there needs to be more environment. So that such consciousness is more activated.
[34:19]
And in my case, then, there are people who are more aware in this state. I don't always know what to say, but this attention is also important. Now, I think the distinction has to be made here, though, In Buddhism this is not passive. You're not passively aware, passively conscious. There may be people who are because of their culture or life, may be more aware. But it may be a kind of passive awareness. In Buddhism, the practice is to begin to identify awareness as something different than consciousness.
[35:23]
Then get the ability to reside in that awareness. Then get the ability to generate that awareness. What? To get the Bodhi. To abide in, to live in. Abide in that awareness. Sorry, but the noun is Bodhi or body. Ah. Body. Did I say body? I didn't say body. Oh, okay. I thought you said body the first time. Sorry. Yeah. Well, body is good, you know. Well, why not? There's a body to reside in this awareness? First is to become aware of the distinction between awareness and consciousness. Yes. And then is to be able to reside in that awareness, not just passively be aware.
[36:38]
And the third is to be able to generate that awareness. This is one of the differences between the awareness of a baby and the awareness of a bodhisattva. Das ist jetzt einer der Unterschiede zwischen der Achtsamkeit des Säuglings und eines Bodhidharmas. Im Allgemeinen denkt man, dass bis zwei oder drei Jahre, dass die Säuglinge mehr achtsam oder wachsam sind, als dass sie wirklich bewusst sind. And I think that language doesn't interfere with awareness in babies. But when language begins to create a sense of a past and future, and a continuity of self, they lose awareness. But even so, a baby's awareness is not a bodhisattva's awareness. Because a baby is passively living in that awareness and not generating it.
[37:40]
No, you have to understand I'm making this up. How do I know what babies do? I don't know. I've actually studied babies quite a bit still. I'm trying to use these examples to create a picture in a language, not to say it's absolutely true. Yes, Luigi? Maybe the example of animals is more clear in that sense. Animals are very aware, but never get to the perception of their awareness. Yes. Yeah, I know, for instance, I like the story of Mike Murphy and Dulcy's dog.
[39:03]
That's his wife, Dulcy. And she had a dog, which when she was coming across the Golden Gate Bridge, the dog would get up and stand by the door Of the car? No, of her house, which was 20 minutes away. And I'd be sitting with Mike, and the dog would go over by the door, and Mike would say, oh, Dulcy's at the Golden Gate Bridge. And then about, after about 20 minutes, the dog would stand up and start pointing at the door, you know, with his tail, yeah? And they had long stairs that went down to the street.
[40:04]
You had to walk up about 80 stairs to get up. And when the dog stood up, Mike would say, oh, she's parking the car. She'll be here in five minutes. Five minutes later, Delcy would walk in. Now that's awareness, not consciousness. And there's actually... Koan, this koan or the phrase where knowledge doesn't reach that I mentioned to you. It starts out with cows and dogs know it. That doesn't mean it's better to be a cow. It means there's a big kind of intelligence that we participate in. That we can enter in more deeply, even with our consciousness.
[41:04]
As you all know, it's our very talents which often are our biggest problem. A beautiful person's biggest problem is their beauty. An extremely intelligent person's biggest problem is their intelligence. So our consciousness is our biggest problem. Now I thought, you know, yesterday we talked about some of the differences between psychology and Buddhism. And one of the big differences is there's no therapist in Buddhism. And for those of you who weren't here, I'll just mention that I think that in our kind of society, the psychologist as the mediator of individuality and individuation
[42:13]
is necessary. And even if a person doesn't see a therapist, to be in a culture which has the concept of a therapist is different than being in a culture which doesn't have the concept of It means you work with yourself differently and have a different sense of what self is. But I think, you know, trying to work at this, Buddhism is really, I mean, it's not a psychology really. Trying to work at how this relates. I'm going to meet, it looks like next year, for three or four days with a group of 20 professional psychotherapists in Vienna. It's going to be partly a presentation by me, but mostly it's going to be discussion among us to try to see what we can make clear.
[43:38]
But I would say that Buddhism is a mindology, not a psychology. It's a study of mind, not of psyche. Now, when psychology shifts more toward being a mindology, the study of mind and consciousness, then they overlap a lot. And when it shifts more toward psychology, then the professionally trained therapist is more important. Okay, something else? Yeah. Just a question.
[44:41]
If you just, as you say, the difference from mindology and psychology, when I see the skandhas, the main part in skandhas working, as I call it, is the coasts, up or down. And in psychology, if I say, by the way, as Mindell works, for instance, that's a process too. There's something similar. Well, I've read Arnie Mindell's books some and read in them. And I even saw a videotape that Ulrika had. I saw a bit of it while she was watching it of him working with the group, and I liked it. I thought, oh, great. But I haven't really studied it, so I don't know. Definitely Buddhism is a process. It's not... I mean, that's where it's at. Now there's a world of things in uncorrected mind. And that's partly... Thank you.
[46:06]
If I knew him, it might be nice to do something with him. I recently did an hour and a half with Pir Vlaik Khan, followed by an hour and a half with Sogyal Rinpoche, followed by an hour and a half with Brother David. We had a great time, actually. Oh, Pir Vlaik Khan was first, and then Sogyal Rinpoche. He's head of the Sufi Order of the West. And Sogyal Rinpoche. And Brother David Steindl-Rust. A Zenedictine. I mean a Benedictine. But But I will say something, still the context of this is not your personal mind.
[47:46]
But how the mind works. And then, Buddhism says that's the base, now you can do the rest. but I can show you some more about the dynamic of this in a minute pardon no I mean I've done I mean I've seen tens of thousands of people actually because I used to do doksan all the time and I had San Francisco I had 400 doksan students So I do 20, 30, 40 doksans a day, day after day. And much of it was a kind of psychotherapeutic thing. But when people needed more than psychological advice, when they needed actually a psychotherapeutic interaction including transference and so forth,
[49:05]
I recommended or sent the people to trained therapists. And I didn't do that enough, actually. Because I mostly, I was just willing to be there, but I ended up being the object of so much transference and stuff. Yeah. It was like molasses all over the place. But anyway, I'm a trained mentor, not a trained therapist. You weren't here yesterday, but we talked about this in some way. But there's no cultures in the world except Western which, and only recently, have the idea of a therapist. Other cultures have uncles and aunts and so forth and people, and mentors, but not therapists. Okay, something else? Yeah. You said that yesterday in a small room, it was very small, you know what I mean?
[50:41]
We're both, I'll see that they're trying to figure out where, I don't know, some process or anything that we've changed. We actually did more of a Chinese puzzle where the method of the process, the process would sort of go up and down if you were looking at this going to a result. I mean, I've been, so I'm mainly not, um, So figuring out where the process-oriented channel and signal system fit with the five skandhas. So if you're validating your answer, what a bigger kind of consciousness thing goes to the methods of psychology through each of these five. Yeah, my... You want to say that in German? Maybe you can sum it up a little bit. I'm not quite sure I got your whole meaning. I didn't quite grasp all of what you were saying.
[51:43]
But you get the gist of it, right? Well, I prefer to emphasize differences rather than sameness. I mean, the sense that all is one is one of the biggest distorting ideas going. We have a phrase in Buddhism, one has many kinds. Two is not a duality. Although I prefer, and I think it's more fruitful to see the differences, and I think, as I say, different is different, when you take a slightly different approach, something else happens, even if you're in the same territory.
[53:12]
At the same time, we're all, you know, Pretty much human beings. And we're all probably descended from one kind of genetic stock. And all the human beings in the world can interbreed. What do you say? Make babies together. And those... What did you say? Well, it sounds similar to what cows do. Yeah. Well, there may have been human-like creatures that got wiped out by archetypes who we couldn't interbreed with.
[54:16]
But in any case, we're all similar enough that I think when we that when in our culture we talk about a soul, spirit, and so forth, and Hinduism talks about Atman, and Buddhism talks about Anatman, non-self, but Buddhism also talks about Buddha nature, we're actually probably experientially in pretty much the same territory.
[55:18]
But conceptually it's different. And the conceptual difference is really important, but experientially it may be quite similar. Okay, so what I would like to talk about today, if I can, I've decided last night or this morning to do it, If I could present this stuff, I'd like to give you a sense, since some of you are psychologists and all of you are people working with self, the sense of what Buddhism would mean by the provisional self and the essence self. or Buddha nature and refined Buddha nature. And I would say that essence self or refined Buddha nature is very, it covers the territory that we try to cover with soul, spirit and self. Particularly soul and spirit.
[56:32]
So at the physical and experiential level it's probably very similar, but at the conceptual level it's different. But again, the conceptual level makes a big difference. For instance, the experience of enlightenment and Protestant conversion experience is experientially virtually identical. It can be. Protestant conversion experience. Conversions, we use that in the hysteric definition. I don't know what English is. Oh, when a Protestant has an experience of God and the world turns into jewels and brightness, they call it conversion. It's like you had a small conversion experience there.
[57:43]
But the conceptual text in which it exists makes the experience very different. Okay, something else? Yeah. What is the difference between this definition, what is for you a mentor and in our Western country, what I call a therapist, what is the difference when there are also questions and pretensions? The difference between the mentor and the psychotherapist. Well, this, I've never, I mean, I know it's different. I've never tried to articulate the difference. And let me say, I really, let me insist and beg and plead that some of you who haven't said anything, say something. The same people are speaking mostly.
[59:08]
It's very important that we All hear each other's voice. And the sense of it is, in Buddhism, is that we're always maturing our mind continuum. If I hold this up and look at it, if I look at it without distraction, I'm not just looking at it, I'm also maturing the eye channel. And every person here is a participant in a continuum that exists here. And each of you helps mature the continuum if you just say anything. And this business about I shouldn't, I'm not good enough, not smart, this isn't important, I should talk to... It's all vanity.
[60:25]
I started practicing Zazen when I was reading a book, walking back from lunch one day. I was working in a warehouse. And that's walking along, coming back from this little diner I used to eat in? A book warehouse. A book warehouse, right? Sounds like where you get beer. Yeah. So I was walking back to the Lagerhaus from lunch.
[61:26]
And I was reading, walking along reading this book, you know, that was my style. And it suddenly said, to think you're not good enough to practice Zazen is a form of vanity. And I'd just been thinking before that, oh, I'm not good enough to practice Zazen. So I saw that in the book and I said, oh, shit. And I know what I'm getting direction. So I went to Zazen the next day and I haven't stopped. It was 1961. Quite a while ago. 62, 61, 61. Okay, mentor and a My job is to teach Buddhism.
[62:46]
And my job, I suppose, is to more than that, know how to let people understand Buddhism without my teaching. And my job is to know how to interact in their mental, intervene and interact within their mental continuum. But not to work with their personal story and so forth. For instance, my teacher told me, in effect, get your life together. Which he meant, have a way of supporting yourself, work out your relationship with your spouse. Come to some practical way of existing in the world.
[63:50]
And So he said this to me in various ways, and so I worked on that. And after about a year, he called me into his office. And he said in effect, not this directly, but he said in effect, I like the way you're taking care of your life. Now I'll start teaching you. Now that's different than a psychotherapy. How I took care of my life and got it together was not his job. Now I used to because in the 60s, I mean so many hundreds and hundreds of people were coming to places like my center because no one knew what to do. And plus so many people were, I mean the majority of the young population was taking LSD.
[64:52]
And everybody was open, vulnerable, with the flimsiest idea of self. So I was operating a rescue service for a long time. But now I try not to do that. My ex-wife and Renee, a Dutch woman who lives in my family, came to my center in Crestone just before I came here in April. And with my daughter and my sort of daughter. And so we were all there having a good time. And at the end they said they really liked the center and all. And there's one youngish man there, very talented on a spiritual quest.
[66:03]
But at 19 or 20 years old, he already had about 100 acid trips. And we'd kind of taken him in because he called me up and wrote, and finally I said, let's just come to visit. And he's got a real capacity, but he's still pretty... You know, you ask him to do something, he stands in the hall for a while and stares at things. Virginia said to me, everything looks great, but I see the old Zen center standing in that guy. She in effect said, watch out, don't take care of too many people again. Anyway, does that partly answer your question? A little bit, anyway.
[67:10]
But there is an overlap. OK. Can you all ? Now, I get the sense from most of you that my working on this board has been helpful Okay, and it's very interesting I was saying to Luigi last night when you take something like this and you divide it into parts When you see the parts you begin to see different ways they can be put together.
[68:20]
And Buddhism tends to have certain rules about dividing things up. Things are always divided up in ways in which they can be rejoined. So distinctions like body, speech and mind. Anyway, okay. Now this after I would, I'm gonna hope to be able to present the Vijnanas this morning. because partly because not only do they make this come alive in a different way but I think they're actually practices and we have to practice this I can explain and then you can keep them in view but The vijnanas, for you to get a sense, I can't just explain, we have to practice.
[69:33]
And I think that they are more useful, and I think they have a therapeutic... application in other words I think you could use them with clients if you're a therapist as ways to practice okay now as I said when you is that when you try to practice with the five skandhas, you're going backwards. And you're going backwards in time. It's a little bit like you had... Here is consciousness. And time is running that way. A moment in which the feeling arose was back here.
[70:44]
So you're going back in time this way. This is something that, what is your name? Sergio pointed out. But you're also going back into the present of the past. Okay, so when you go back, this actually shifts to here. Yeah, right. So actually you begin to have form here. and consciousness in the past. Something like that. Do you get the picture? When you begin... That's for scientists.
[71:45]
Anyway, when you go back, you're going back into the past. But when you start to reside here, you're moving into the present of the present. Also, when you begin to go back here and reside here, you're transforming these things. So that at first form is just the initiation of a process that leads to consciousness. But when you can reside in these different places you're beginning to mature them and then they begin to have a horizontal life. And Okay, so here's another way.
[72:50]
I'm going to erase this. Is that what I've written here? Okay. Here's another way to look at it. Which is you have... Form and feelings. And then you have perceptions. Perceptions and associations, impulses. And you can read that pretty well.
[73:51]
These two tend to be non-graspable. Our grasp. Is that understandable? Not understandable. Okay. Because I think, as we talked about the difference between emotions and feelings, So emotions fall into this category. And feelings here. But if I said to you again, I walk in this room and there's a certain feeling in this room. Right now the circ-feeling in this room is different than if we're outside.
[75:14]
It's a feeling created by the continuum of all of us. That's not an emotion. Is that clear? Okay. The emotion I can grasp, in a sense. I can be angry at you. That's graspable. Does that make sense? In fact, I'm grasped, grasped by the anger. And when I'm grasped by the anger, I have no, you know, it takes me over. And I can pay attention to it, I can say, boy, am I angry, this is... And in Zen practice, what you do with such a thing, just as an aside, you get the habit of not necessarily expressing your anger,
[76:24]
Not suppressing yet. But feeling it completely. But through zazen practice you don't have to act on it. But you don't inhibit it. But you might have this tremendous anger and you say to somebody, you make me very angry. Anyway, okay. So that's graspable. But if I walk in this room and sense the feeling of this room, I can't grasp that. As soon as I grasp it, I can't know it. Do you understand? That makes sense? So the feeling, at the feeling level, it's not graspable. All right, so when you... So, this leads to consciousness.
[77:44]
And this leads to awareness. And this leads to the... And this leads to the subject body. Okay. So when you practice the five skandhas... So normally the five skandhas are here. Form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness, right? But awareness is up at the top. Awareness, form, feelings, perceptions... So let's take awareness from here and put it over here. And take consciousness from here and put it here. Then you can see that when you reside here,
[78:47]
you're tending to produce the perception of yourself as the usual body and as consciousness, a divided way of looking at yourself. When you begin to get the ability to go back here and in the process maturing the mind continuum so it can stay with feelings without grasping them and then form begins to be seen as simultaneously permanent and impermanent. And you begin to get a subtle sense of form. So my teacher is saying, you breathe through your feet. It begins to be something you can feel. Then you're in this non-graspable territory which begins to produce awareness. Now, generally, you don't make this so explicit to students.
[79:59]
Now, if you're practicing with students like I would in a situation like Presto, I would tend to, when a person is speaking to you, they're giving you lots of different messages. In fact, I would say that there's a world view. And then there is unconscious stuff. And then there's the person, to use Mendelian terms, as the person's primary process. Okay. And then down here is the person's secondary process. Okay. Now, most people are somewhere in here. Most people are somewhere in here.
[81:22]
They're in their primary... I don't know if I'm using these terms the way a Mendelian analyst would use them, but I'm just using the way I use them. The fireman's primary process is to put out fires. His secondary process is as an arson. He loves fires. And sometimes they may be shipped. Some arson's secondary process is being a fireman. So we're in here somewhere. If you're healthy. Okay. And then most people don't have a very clear world view, but they have basic assumptions about how the world works and they're in here somewhere. And they have an unconscious stuff going on parallel.
[82:31]
And from my way of experiencing people, the secondary process is only a part of their unconscious process. And it's more related to the primary process than to the unconscious. So my feeling is people float somewhere in here. And if they're healthy, they have a pretty strong rubber band that goes up to here. Now, if you lose connection of this rubber band, for instance, you get deep into Zazen. and you lose connection with your primary process. And you're a borderline type personality. You can get lost down in here. So you have to teach somebody to keep this rubber band going until they're quite sure of how to reestablish it. And that we use zazen as a way to kind of create a territory that relates to all this.
[83:52]
So in other words, when a person is relating to you, They're relating to you in terms of their primary process, secondary process, unconscious stuff, assumptions about the world. And what's uppermost on their mind right now. They just had an argument with somebody and their spouse just criticized them. So, If you're practicing with them, you have a sense of how they exist. And you may not respond so much to the perceptual level, but I may, while they're speaking to me in a perceptual level, I may respond in a feeling level. Or I may respond at a proprioceptive level.
[84:55]
Or I may respond by changing their worldview. They have an assumption about the world which I can see, so I do something else which contradicts that assumption. Now, I mean, this is not so far up. I mean, it's actually somewhat, a lot of this is cultural knowledge in the Japanese business community. Like, I mean, I don't know if I can run through my little scenario of a business meeting in Japan. The Japanese businessmen all sit down at the desk and everyone has yellow pads of paper, a glass, two or three pencils, and a magic marker. The Japanese are very formal and they've learned this from the West. Everyone wants a yellow pad. Usually there will be a bottle of mineral water with gas. So it's actually done to give the Western and American business person, say Swiss and American business person, the delusion that everything is normal.
[86:28]
And then the Japanese business people line up their stomachs underneath the table. And there's a business term for it called harage, which means belly talk. The same business people will say, oh, we know nothing about Zen. But actually this all comes from Buddhism. So, and some of them are more conscious of it, some are less conscious. But their sense of where they exist is here. And their culture which responds very subtly to each other's individuality.
[87:29]
They really feel a continuum among each other. And again, one of the basics in this kind of culture is that, as I said the other night, space connects us, space doesn't separate us. And that's a different world when you feel that. Okay, so they've lined up their bellies. really not exactly or only to exclude the Westerners. But also, certainly the secondary process is to exclude the Westerners. Okay, so they line their stomachs up and once they feel it, they start the meeting. That may take five minutes or so. In fact, it's easier if the Westerners get a little anxious or antsy.
[88:35]
So the Westerners start tapping paper. Why is this meeting starting? That allows, that distraction allows the Japanese who are not distracted to connect. Okay. So then they have this feeling of connection and they start the meeting. And they also develop a connection in here with this part of the body above the table. Okay. So... at certain points in the meeting when they really want everyone of the Japanese or the group within it who are bonded to make a decision. One of them reaches out, takes the glass and moves it in the table. And all the Japanese, in on the glass, focus in. and they know that's the point at which to bring their energy together to make a decision.
[89:44]
And Westerners are simply amateurs at this kind of stuff. So they come after the meeting, they go out and the German businessman says to the American businessman, you know, there was just something very important I wanted to put on the agenda and bring up in fact I insisted it be on the agenda but every time I tried to remind people I just felt my energy going out of my body so this was I could never I couldn't mention I kept trying but I kept forgetting to mention it and the Japanese clearly didn't want it on the agenda and they created an atmosphere which makes it very hard to mention certain things And these are pretty conscious business techniques. That's probably the reason why you don't learn Buddhism. Why? Why? She means not in order so that we could react in the same manner. You mean like... She means like if we would start Buddhism because of this reason...
[91:13]
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