One of the problems with being this age, or at least my version of this age, is once I lose my balance, it's all over. I can't catch my balance again. This is new. I used to love jumping from rock to rock. I'd better not do it now. And I almost slipped here, but I did catch my... luckily caught my balance. And the jisha said, don't fall backwards, you'll break the incense. She didn't.

[01:01]

She didn't say that. She said, fall backwards, it'll be... But I didn't. Yeah. So your comments have helped me a lot try to understand how to speak about the Vijnanas. So let me just speak to various aspects of this looking into the teaching of the Vijnanas. The Vijnanas are not just things in the category of the many things we know. I spoke about the Virginianas as maybe you can imagine a house of several rooms.

[02:06]

But each of the five are physical and six Vijnanas. It's not the root. It's maybe the space of the room. Or if you imagine an auditory space where you've somehow managed to only hear sound. And then you imagine maybe a gustatory space, one where you only taste, feel yourself through taste. It's interesting how taste As you become more, it's actually an extension of you like this color or this space.

[03:31]

It's somehow related to how we taste the world. And this is interesting, this taste. It also refers to how you like this color or this room. There is a relationship to how we taste the world. But in any case, this is more like the electrical system of the house, perhaps, or something like that. Okay. So the point of the Vijnanas is to notice that they are each separate. A deaf person can't hear, but they can see. So the first practice is to notice the separateness of each of the five physical senses. And to realize that a lot is happening in between and around and in every other category of the five senses except the five you can feel.

[04:53]

there's lots happening in between and around the five senses the five senses are categories there's a heck of a lot going on infrared so each is separate and each is showing you what we humans can know of this infinite complexity. So in no way is it the whole of the world. It's just our little part of it. I say little, it's huge, it's enough for us, but, you know, it's still... So, you know, this seems completely obvious, but we...

[06:13]

maybe don't really notice the degree to which each sense is separate from the other, which assumes there's stuff in between. Yes, and each sense then, in addition, each sense has a limited capacity. As I said, when you hear your own hearing, you're hearing between 2,000 and 4,000 hertz. And birds that sing, as I pointed out, hear between... 229,000 hertz.

[07:28]

Singvögel, wie ich das gesagt habe, die hören in einem Spektrum zwischen 200 und 29,000 hertz. So you're only hearing what's within the capacity of your hearing. Du hörst also nur was innerhalb deiner Hörfähigkeit liegt. We have a modest place in the world. Okay. Now, you've recognized each sense is separate. You've recognized each sense has limited capacity. Okay. And third, you noticed that there's an attentional dynamic to each sense field. So that if you bring attention to each sense field, each of the five physical sense fields, you develop the acuteness of each sense field.

[08:29]

Yeah, and you can study the people who use one sense field predominantly. Actually, their brain develops to reflect the predominant use of one or the other sense. So if you bring, now that you know there, Separate and limited. If you bring attention to them, you not only develop each sense field, you develop the skill of attention, the muscles, the capacity of attention. If you have noticed that they are separated and have limited capacity and now bring attention to them, then you develop the abilities, the ability of attention in every sense field.

[09:55]

Yeah, and this is part of what's meant by the practice of mindfulness. You develop your mindfulness in each of the physical aspects. sense fields, each of the physical vijnanas. I think it's Heidegger who used thrownness, was sort of thrown into the world. Yeah, so you find yourself in this world. What the heck am I doing here? I don't know. Well, I seem to experience some kind of here-ness. Now, why don't I see what's going on? So if you look at the capacities with which you're born, most of us have five functioning senses. And if you just look at the equipment or the capacities with which you were born, then most of us have these five bodily senses.

[11:20]

Yeah, and we're put to... Excuse me, five functioning senses. Yeah, and put to... You go to school and you learn something through the senses. But unless you're a musician or a craftsman of some kind, you don't usually develop the particular senses. But if you are not a musician or some kind of craftsman or artist, then you usually don't develop the specific or the specialities of a single person. Yogi, practicing Zen Yogi, practicing mindfulness, does spend some time developing each physical sense. Yeah, okay. Now, so there's the attentional dynamic.

[12:21]

The fourth is that each sense is also inseparable from mind. Each sense works through mind. That joins each sense. The five physical senses. So mind is called the sixth sense. Because it's part of each of the five physical senses. And as your auditory sense brings sound into the mind-bodily complex.

[13:42]

And so wie dein Gehörssinn Klang in den Körpergeist mind-body complex in den Körpergeist bring sound and auditory space. Der bringt Klang und den akustischen Raum. And the eye brings visual space. information, color, etc., and shape and visual space. Now, one of the aspects of Zazen practice is you practice with noticing and isolating each of these sense fields. If at the root of Western culture is the Socratic dictum to know thyself, For in yogic culture, it starts with knowing each sense field.

[14:59]

Let's worry about the thiness later and the selfness later. Let's just start with the simple sense fields. Yes. So, this is something we do non-consciously, unconsciously. The Vijñānas says, make it more specifically your practice. It's your choice, of course. Okay, so now you're noticing not just the attentional dynamic, but the fact that mind is part of each sense. So that mind allows you to relate the senses to each other and almost like you're in a quartet or something like that or a quintet, you can bring the various senses together in different combinations.

[16:31]

And there are probably infinite, well, thousands of possibilities of these five things. So zazen allows you to sit in the midst of the music, maybe of these five senses. Okay. Yeah. Okay, now, mind is part of each physical sense. And for that reason, it's called one of the six senses. It's also called one of the six senses because it's the source of information.

[17:50]

In other words, the ear is the source of auditory information. In other words, the ear is the source for acoustic information. And the mind is the source of ideation, ideas and concepts. So the mind brings new information, just as the eye and ear bring new information into you. Now, again, doing Zazen, doing it regularly, and Sashin and extended periods of Zazen help, So you can really look at and see, get used to, how you're constructed through these six source senses. Yeah, now I'm sorry to be so obvious, you know, this is all obvious.

[19:08]

But to make the obvious, you're... Actual experience is important. Not just pass it off, oh, I understand it. No, make it your experience. Okay, so we've got five physical senses. We've got mind as also a source sense and part of the five physical senses. And mind gives us the opportunity to unite and play the possibilities of the five and six senses. But mind also brings in, what does it also bring in?

[20:18]

Pandora's box. Flying out. Consciousness. Get back in that box. But you can see it brings consciousness in. so suddenly there's all the associations of consciousness past, present and future karmic baggage angst oh dear And you can't close Pandora's box because it's your actual six senses.

[21:26]

You all know Pandora's box, right? Yeah. That Pandora. You never name a child Pandora. Here's my kid Pandora. Oh dear. That name's been spoiled. But it may be true that your kid is... No. Okay. Okay, so now we come to sitting. Now, as I said yesterday and the day before, We don't have the sense in Buddhism that suffering is because of our first parents, Adam and Eve.

[22:39]

We don't really want to try to look at the unconscious sources of our suffering. I mean, you can use Zazen as a kind of psychoanalytic vertical couch. Yeah. So, we mostly look at the present conscious aspects of our suffering.

[23:44]

And as I said, it coincides quite conceptually with cognitive behavior therapy and dialectical behavior therapy. So now you've kind of experienced the five physical senses and mind as a source sense. And you can see how consciousness enters in with its concerns about past, present and future. And perhaps you can imagine it might be possible to not bring consciousness in to the five physical senses.

[24:57]

In my first family in California, A lot of the people who... In America, Zen practice started out as very counter-culture. And in San Francisco, most of the early practitioners were painters and poets. And one of my friends, I don't know if it was, maybe it was Mike Dixon, painted a big version of Marilyn Monroe, the famous, in my generation, famous picture of Marilyn Monroe that was on a calendar, and she was, you know, fairly naked.

[26:05]

I mean naked. And Mike did a big painting about as big as that square door over there that was a door to the other room. As a pink flesh-tinted Marilyn Monroe against a completely blue sky. Yeah. It was hung in our kitchen. I never thought about it. But I had a pre-teen daughter.

[27:06]

She was now in her 50s, but she was then about 9 or 10, and she had other friends of the same age. And they didn't like going in the kitchen. And they asked me if I could take it down. And I said, well, what's the problem? It's just pink and blue. So this became a joke in our family. Yes, Roshi says it's just pink and blue. But to my preteen daughter and her friends, it was a naked girl. So I took it down eventually.

[28:09]

I didn't care. I think I gave it back to Mike eventually. Okay. So is it Marilyn Monroe or is it just pink and blue? Well, if it's just the five physical senses, it's just pink and blue. It's consciousness which brings in, oh, this is a naked lady. Okay. Okay, so if you're going to practice noticing when something comes up that bothers you, then Buddhism has developed maps.

[29:17]

And these maps of the Vijnanas are a kind of map. But the maps have a topography. The six Vijnanas are a map. But if angst comes in, there's a bump. And if you want to practice this, you've got to have an intentional durative field developed. Which notices the bumps. Or I could say notices the triggers. No, these can be triggers of a headache, for instance.

[30:30]

Or feeling physically sick or feeling anxious. Now, this is another aspect of mindfulness practice. You've located your cognitive, you've located your perceptual experience in the six source senses. Dann hast du deine Wahrnehmungserfahrung in den sechs Quellsinnen verortet. And you're walking along here. Und du gehst hier durch die Gegend. Over to the Johanneshof. Und du gehst zum Beispiel rüber zum Johanneshof. And there's the snow and there's the sky and there's the slippery bridge and so forth. Und es gibt den Schnee und den Himmel und die glatte Brücke und so weiter. And that's all fine. Und das ist alles in Ordnung. And then suddenly you realize you've got to do something or should do something or somebody said something to you and you didn't, blah, blah, blah.

[31:52]

And that... And suddenly you feel a little anxious. So if you want to free yourself from mental suffering, you really have to notice these triggers. And you have to kind of track them down. For instance, headaches. Usually, at least I've discovered, I've never had a headache in decades, but at one point I had headaches occasionally. And I noticed a headache would occur with a little ping on the side of my head. But usually, I mean for a while, the ping occurred when I wasn't too present and by the time I noticed the headache, I already had the headache.

[33:13]

But I knew earlier in the day I didn't have a headache. So what's wrong with my mindfulness? Why wasn't I present when the headache started? So I went on a search, okay, well, I have the headache now, but when did it occur? And eventually I got, so I was present at the moment a headache started. Which has something to do with the blood in the brain and so forth. So when I could feel the moment it began, I could interrupt and stop the headache. Now, once the headache started it, you know, it then went all this and that and, you know, what my mother said.

[34:31]

But I stopped it before I got there. It doesn't mean you shouldn't examine the presence of your parents in the space around you and in your past and etc. But I would say the first several years of practice are really an examination of the way karma, associations, etc. appear within the six source senses. So something may make you anxious.

[35:35]

But when did it start to make you anxious? What visual or auditory cue... happened at the moment you remembered that this person cheated you? Well, they cheated you or betrayed you. There are certainly people in my life who have institutionally or individually cheated me or betrayed me, etc., Well, if I can't do anything about it, there's no reason to be bothered by it. Yeah, it's in the past. So, if I can notice what triggers that in the middle of the night sometimes, or triggers it in ordinary circumstances.

[36:55]

So you can't be conscious in some sort of narrow sense. You have to have an open field of mindfulness. And you notice when that association comes in and you just stop it. When you say, well, I can't stop it right away. There it is. It's already starting cancering through my mind. Or I take some energy away from it. It happened long ago. It only cost me a few million. But... I may not be kidding, but it... But it... Yeah, I can't do it, you put it, so let it go.

[38:12]

And you develop a skill. If you can't catch it at the trigger, you develop a skill at letting it go and dissipate. So the development of the... So the developing... an awareness of the construction process of the six source senses, which construct your immediate experience. And then that immediate experience is disturbed by associations of consciousness, karma, etc. So you get experienced at acquainting yourself, knowing your accumulated karma,

[39:18]

And simultaneously knowing the contrast of the associations with the direct experience of immediacy. Of course there are functional associations that come with immediacy. It's not just that you smell the air. You know you're walking on the bridge, you know you're walking to Yanisov, you know you have to go help in the kitchen. Yeah, but that's a kind of functional immediacy. And you can feel when the topography changes.

[40:33]

No, I have to stop, because otherwise we won't have lunch. Or work. Or sand on the bridge. All right. Stay here. We don't need sand on the bridge. That's right. You know, this guy's no dummy. All right. But again, what I would like to have gotten to is I would have liked to have gotten to just the how... the development in zazen, of stillness, is what gives us the power of an attentional sphere which can notice triggers.

[41:33]

So the use of the map of the Vijnanas is inseparable from the yogic skills developed in Zazen. Yeah, and it's amazing how much time it takes me to try to explain these things. But I'm trying to make all this accessible to our practice. and have its own territory, useful territory, as a teaching in the midst of all the other things that go on within us.

[42:54]

And I hope to, and maybe I can tomorrow, or this afternoon, explore interior attentional space. Which is also a function of stillness. Okay? Even if it's not okay, that's all you get. You know, because I've seen people like that, I've seen people in the States and on the street.

[43:43]

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