who's just looking at the Buddha and he or she is so way up there and far away. I know. Looks like the Zen-do is longer today to me. Not that that matters. I want to talk about something quite basic, and I have to see if it's worth speaking about what you think. Maybe the same old stuff again, but anyway. I thought today, what are we doing? What is practice? And then I thought, well, it's observing our moment-to-moment existence, and there are two things.

[01:03]

It's a crude simplification, but I thought there are two things, thinking and presence. Just to make this distinction, I made this distinction today, thinking and presence. And how does the world unfold from thinking? And how does it unfold from presence? So we study our moment to moment existence. And I think a typical starting point is to study your existence with thinking. I mean, I did that for many years. You know, I'm imagining a very simple situation. It's like there's something in front of you, and you see it, and then you think about it, and you study it, giving it some thought.

[02:15]

What is it? What are the properties? How does it combine with other things? It's a very basic situation. And, you know, you take any object, this floor here, and then you look at it and you call it something and you like it, or you like it, what's the color, like the color, don't like the color, these basic things, you know. It's obvious what I'm saying. But what happens when you turn this process back to your own thinking? That's when it becomes complicated. How do you observe your own thinking with your thinking? Then you start to be a philosopher.

[03:18]

You start to think about your own thinking. Well, how do you do it? It's more complicated because when I look at the floor and I study the floor with my thinking, the floor seemingly just stays there. I can look at it, the shape stays the same, the color stays the same. And while I'm thinking, I can refresh my thinking in relationship to the presence of the floor. It stays there, seemingly the same. But when I want to study my thinking, the thinking is just disappearing all the time. When I want to grasp that thought with another thought, it's already memory. And thinking about it changes how I feel about it. It's such an elusive, have you noticed? Such an elusive process. To say, I have this thought, you know, what does it mean? That thought is gone while you're having the thought that you have. It's complicated.

[04:19]

Maybe that's why it's so disturbing. In physics, I think it's called the observer effect, meaning that when you observe something, you change the observer effect. It's often associated with dramatic results in quantum physics and stuff, but it's as simple as when you want to measure the pressure in a tire, when you want to measure it, putting the measuring device on, you'll lose some air. The connection will make... And then you measure... the pressure after some air evaporated, so there's this interference. It's kind of disturbing, you know, the world doesn't appear in a neutral fashion. There's no realism. It's dependent on your act of observation. As simple as, you know, we've thought about this many times, to call

[05:27]

something, something, and then you've called it something, and then you're not calling it something else, and so you've reduced the object to the category that you put it in, and you took it out of its state of not being known or not being observed, and then it's already boxed into this thing the way you want to think about it. And with the floor, that's maybe not so dramatic because we're happy that this is a floor and we want to call it a floor and it's not such a big deal that we don't call it playground or whatever. But when you think about all this, when you don't talk about this objectivity of the world, but the you know, feeling that you have, and then you think about it. You study it with thinking. You turn it into something. You call it this, and then it loses its rich texture.

[06:29]

So that's all obvious. I'm just saying it established some territory. So what about present? I remember a time in my life when there was no presence in my life. Maybe this is different for you, but it's subtle. It's like the presence was there, but I didn't really recognize it. It's like, it makes a huge difference to recognize presence. What do I mean by that? It all starts with Okay, here you're relating to the world with thinking, meaning there's stuff out there.

[07:41]

Like I said, you see it, you think about it, you think about it some more. And so the senses are folding out to the world and shaping it into various objects. And it's all known to us. So this cultural process makes all this known to us. And that's a continual folding out of the senses and the thinking and knowing the world. And discovering presence is like when you fold away from the sense objects and you fold attention inward, you begin to feel the body from the inside there's this very unsensational, completely ordinary, easy to look over, easy to overlook feeling that's always there.

[08:44]

But when the senses and the thinking is folding out to grasp the world, that feeling Unsensational feeling is obscured. It's overlooked easily. It's not very strong. It's forgotten. Heidegger had this term, self-forgetfulness. I always thought of it. I don't know what he means. You never know what Heidegger means. But anyway, that's what I feel. It's like when you're lost to the world, You've lost yourself. This unsensational, ordinary feeling, it's kind of lost in the cracks. You have to come back. You have to sit in meditation to regain it. It can be that lost, and it's so near at the same time.

[09:54]

So I want to give a little example. Yesterday I had a phone call. It went longer than I thought, and it was a little disturbing because it left me with this feeling of, I'm going to call it annoyance, for the lack of a better word, right? But already there you can see, when you grasp the feeling like that and you say, oh, this is a feeling of annoyance, you know, there's some... Anyway, I don't have to go into why the feeling arose, but it arose. And so, now I'm calling it annoyance, but it's not annoyance. You know, it's really, it's also annoyance, but annoyance is surrounded by a real complexity, you know, that branches out into everything. that's maybe an exaggeration, but it branches out into so many things that I can't grasp them all. How this other person is, how I am, my habits, their habits, how they interact, what I could have done differently to avoid this kind of, you know.

[11:28]

This is all present. I'm calling it annoyance, but it's just like limiting the feeling. But the feeling is ungraspable and it's very rich. So any, it could be any feeling. I'm just taking the one that I had and that lingered all the way into this morning, through my dreams. Okay. So if I don't want to grasp it with, oh yeah, this person did this, and then I got really annoyed, and then I'm thinking about Reasons and so if I fold away from that I'm just left with this feeling That is rich complex ungraspable Branching out into many things And then I'm inviting it to be fully present and It's almost like I'm trying to find a neutral space around the feeling, a neutral space that's even wider than that feeling that can host this feeling that I'm calling annoyance, but it's not annoyance, it's much more.

[12:43]

And I'm trying to host it. I'm trying to invite it to be as rich a complex as it can be. I allow it to speak to me. And so some thinking is involved in this process, and some of the thinking is more useful than other parts. And so I'm engaging the parts that are useful, a little bit more. And the ones that are not useful, I'm folding away from them right away. But the ones that are useful, I'm also, I'm kind of, I always want to keep brackets around the thinking. As if, like, I don't want to box you in feeling. I want to give you as much space as possible. And then you give it space, really space. And you can read about this in any Buddhist book, you know. That is what you're detaching from this feeling. And one effect, of course, is that when you do that, instead of thinking about the feeling, trying to understand it, trying to come to conclusions through your thinking, which is studying the world with thinking,

[14:01]

you can maybe find that you have more possibilities to carry the feeling forward. It doesn't have to go in the already existing grooves of your personality, the way you deal with the feeling. You may, if you're lucky and you do this process well, if you're getting good at it, you may find new options. And that's a big... step because it's it's obvious why it's a big step it's not it doesn't box you in so much you feel freedom but i think the results are much more dramatic than that because when you when you uh when you invite i mean you host the feeling like this what's hosting it is presence And you discover that you are more the presence than the feeling.

[15:09]

It's like, I think another thing, what happens there, for me at least, is that it really gives me access to my energies. What do I mean by that? When I have this feeling that I call annoyance, and it's not annoyance, because it's richer, if I have that feeling, and I'm noticing it, and I'm folding away from thinking, I'm noticing that it is a shadow, it casts a shadow on my basic energy. I can't function in the world with my full energy because there's a shadow of this feeling that needs a resolution. And this is a practice intention, is to, when there's a shadow and this full energy is not available, stay with the feeling until there's no shadow anymore.

[16:24]

Okay, but this is paradoxical, right? You want the feeling to go away so that there's no shadow and you have full access to your energy, but that's not the way it works. It's like you let the feeling be there with the shadow, and by noticing the shadow and hosting it with your presence, you're noticing that although the energy is overshadowed, you're actually engaging your full energy. By staying with the feeling and knowing that you're not going to let it, that you're not going to push it away until it is resolved, until it is lived through. With that intention, your full energy is accessed. Are you following me? It's almost like when it is engaged like that, when the feeling is engaged like that, although the energy has a shadow, but because you're giving attention to it, the shadow doesn't matter. The shadow is transformed into some kind of light that gives you, where you sort of say, hey, I'm so glad I have this funny feeling, because now it's going to give me some new information of how to continue with my moment-to-moment existence.

[17:47]

It's unavoidable, it's there. And now I'm going to use it really well. And that is gaining access to your full energy, despite the fact that those are shadows. It's a little bit like I said, you know, the unconditional contentment underneath the sadness. But now I'm taking the contentment away. It's almost like the contentment can be, it's like this homecoming feeling. Hey, here's this presence. I don't have to be so disturbed by the feeling. That's a reason to be content. It's like, hey. I felt my home base. And here, from here I can act and that makes you smile. But you can fold away even from the smile and just be there. That's fine. That's just another layer. Don't go, you don't go for the, in this case, you don't go for the contentment.

[18:53]

You go for full energy that you have available despite the shadow. Or actually, paradoxically, because of the shadow, all your energy is engaged. This is a problematic word there, but it's a real shift in identity, right? You're not the feeling anymore. You're this presence that's hosting the feeling. Speaking of identity, How can you as a human being, you know, how can you have any confidence

[20:15]

there's all these imperfections. When you think about yourself, it's like, oh, there's this, and there's this, and there's this, and then I have that habit, and then I did this in the past. I mean, when you start thinking about it, it's like it's all imperfect. There's no basis for confidence. Occasionally you can say, oh, yeah, well, you know, there was this person who said, like, I did this well. Okay, good. So I have that in my, under my belt. Okay, now I can be confident. But this is such a fragile state, you know, to be dependent on other people confirming some sort of thing that you did, and then the bad news is what you did is in the past anyway, so how can you be confident about the present? presence is Well another Heidegger term being in the world Being in the world comes in two ways It comes as appearance Like we appear to each other right so

[21:48]

And we appear halfway to ourselves. It's like my knee appears to me, but not my eyes and not my face. But you all appear to me and I all appear to you. And then, you know, like I said, you know, you're in there. You're appearing and where do you get the confidence for that? So that is one way, your appearance in the senses. And then there is presence. What I mean by that is presence is sort of how the world generously gives me to myself. It's like how I experience myself through this unsensational, ordinary feeling that's always there that, if I allow it, penetrates the whole body.

[23:04]

And I could say, this is what I am, most fully what I am. This is what I am. But it's so unsensational, you know. There's no How do you argue with that feeling? I think that's the basis for confidence, because you can't argue with that feeling. It's just there. It's just there. And you don't really share it with anybody. It's fully yours. You don't need any reason for it. You don't have to make any excuses for it. It's just there. I think you can give energy to this being there. It's like this hara feeling. You know, then you have this hara energy presence engine that you turn on, and then you're just there, and then you're more there.

[24:10]

It helps to exaggerate it, maybe, to feel you're really there. And it's different from appearance in the senses. Because it's fully your own feeling. It's like where you allow yourself to be yourself. Not in any particular form, but actually in a formless way. Just there. So if my confidence is dependent on what others say, it's very fragile. But this is because it's always there, or let's say it's always accessible, if I turn my attention to it, I can really make that a basis from where to venture out into the world. When things get complicated, you can sort of make it a habit to check in with being in the world as presence and you can sort of renew your confidence that there's a next step.

[25:42]

Baker Rush, I think recently has written somewhere in one of the texts, I just remembered, I don't know where, that the West has left us with this Socrates phrase, know thyself. And that in Buddhism, the equivalent would be know the mind. How do we know the mind? Not as a self, but I'm thinking presence is the basis that you can peel away from all the forms that mind manifests in. And so you can study the forms, and you can know the forms of mind, and you can know the presence of mind, and that interacts.

[27:00]

And so you You don't limit yourself to one particular thing that you want to call the self, but you open it up to this unending process of studying the mind with the mind. And really maybe what I've been talking about is my own simplified version of what the practice of mindfulness is. Dekarashi has said there's two... This has helped me in entering the territory of mindfulness practice. What's that? He said... Mindfulness practice has two reference points, the breath and to know the immediate situation as mind.

[28:11]

Okay, two reference points for mindfulness practice, the breath and knowing the immediate situation as mind. And the breath is Always always the first Always a first target target door because It's like if if our habit is to study the world with thinking and we notice For an instance that we're getting lost in the world of thinking we can Grab our breath by the caller, you know, like, now I'm going to take you. You put it into this para-presence machine, and then you initiate a shift in identity.

[29:17]

It's like, oh, I'm going to bring myself back. And you open the door to what I've been calling presence. So the breath is this kind of opening door to that shift, to initiate that shift. And then also I think it's because, let's say you have a feeling like I have that I call annoyance, then that feeling really is, when it's strong and disturbing, it really pulls thinking in. So you need some counter force and the breath is that kind of, it can counteract the pull where the thinking is pulled into the feeling and wants to understand it or whatever, mess around with it. And the breath is a,

[30:20]

Counteracts that and it's it's maybe you could say you're ventilating the feeling it's like you open the windows to get the stuffy air out some new way of Breathing fresh air into the feeling and the breath has this wonderful Potential to do that Plus it gives you it reminds you of this basic aliveness that you are and as you're bringing attention to the breath because with each breath you know oh this is my aliveness and you know as long as I'm breathing I'm alive or when I'm alive that breathing is going on so it's the reminder of being at home so it combines a whole bunch of things you just bring attention to the breath and you're already kind of rescued yourself And then to know the immediate situation as mind.

[31:34]

This is not so difficult to understand in thinking, right? To say everything that appears, appears in the mind. Where else does it appear? there's no mind, it's not appearing anywhere. It's not so difficult to understand. We all understand that. But to experience it is a different matter. And I think it works through, I'm using Bekha Roshi's already introduced terminology of folding, I think it starts with folding away from thinking. And now we can expand the thinking into the five skandhas. It's not just thinking, it's also emotions and conditionings and perceptions and feelings. We're folding away from these things.

[32:43]

And then we're folding the attention inward. Rather than staying folded outward into these phenomena, we're folding inward and we're discovering and developing and strengthening presence. And then when from there you fold back out into the senses and you're taking the presence with you, it's like the sense perceptions now, or the thinking, or the feeling, it now has a glow. And the glow is the presence of your own mind. And so in the midst of, ah, here are all these things happening, in the midst of that, that feeling of being at home, the presence of mind that can study existence from moment to moment, is actually, it's not forgotten.

[33:58]

It's now folded together with the folded out sensory. Thank you for listening.

[34:28]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_88.94