Good evening. Good evening. So I just wanted to try and finish up the discussion of the 12-fold chain, and I'm only going to spend an hour at it because I know we worked hard, all of you did today, and tomorrow's a day off. So I'm going to end at 8.30. Excuse me? Oh, please. Yes. So we'll have a ceremony on the 20th, which is the day after personal day, at noon service. And you can bring brief poems or just offer words in spring, kind of a little bit like a popcorn style in the window. And that's on March 20th, the day after personal day at noon service. If you have any questions, you can ask. So we're going back to Green Gulch pretty soon.

[01:05]

So I wanted to give you a chance to ask some final questions about this really important teaching. This is what all Buddhism has in common. Everybody understands the Four Noble Truths and understands that the 12-fold chain is the first and second noble truth. So I think for you to have some working knowledge of this pattern is really, I think, important. So I wanted to do a few things. I wanted to, first of all, tell you about the turtles down here at the bottom. Can you see the turtles? So the turtles are there because I tell this story quite often, and I haven't told it for a while, so I'll tell it now. It's an old Indian story. that there was a shaman woman who was teaching the children of her tribe, and she taught them about nature and about creation and how the world came to be and how basically the earth was being carried on the back of a turtle through the sky.

[02:17]

And so this one little girl who was sitting in front, kind of staring at her, raised her hand and she said, teacher, what's the turtle standing on? And the teacher said, well, on a bigger turtle. And she went on talking and the little girl raised her hand again and she said, teacher, what's that turtle standing on? And the teacher said, a bigger turtle. And then she started to go on and the little girl raised her hand again. Teacher, what's that turtle standing on? And the teacher said, little cross, listen, it's just turtles all the way down. So that's kind of our story too. You know, just turtles all the way down. We don't really know what's going on, but we've made up these great stories, right? So this is one of them. So the first ultimate truth is that there are no stories. There's just the present moment, and it doesn't connect to any other dots.

[03:19]

You can't connect the dots. There's just now, [...] without any elaborations, and that's all we really have. but being that human beings have figured out some way to connect the dots using this kind of magical thing called language, we actually have a second truth which we can talk about called the relative truth. Relative truth is that we connect dots and make stories. So that's what this is all about. The relative truth is that we've made stories that are causing us terrible pain. So part of the deal is how do we tell stories that end the pain? It's just going to be another story that's going to help you. Your problem is, basically, the Buddha said, stories. It's what you're thinking. So this is how we think. This is a map of thinking. So first of all, I wanted to go just once around the outside links, which I did quickly when I first hung this up, and tell you a little bit more detail.

[04:19]

So this first one, Ingras, in Sanskrit is avidya. And ignorance of this, of impermanence, of the four noble truths, of the 12-fold chain, and of no self. If you understood that, you understood the workings of your mind, you wouldn't be ignorant. And you'd be free. You wouldn't be falling into it. You wouldn't fall for it. There'd just be these kind of magical appearances that wouldn't bother you at all. Hard to imagine. So because we don't have that kind of understanding, most of us don't, we end up getting onto the wheel right away. We're on the wheel. That's our ticket on, is ignorance. And then the second link of the wheel is the samskaras, which I've mentioned before, are these many, many different elements. Basically, intention is the primary, that your volition, your will, what you do based on your own intention is

[05:24]

is what compels your life. So there's some choice here. Now these two, first and second, are basically from the past. This is past life. So that verse from the Dhammapada, what we are today, comes from our thoughts of yesterday. These are the thoughts of yesterday. Conditioning our present life. So the third link is consciousness in the present. So the consciousness we have in the present, this present life, is a result of conditioning from the past. So already your consciousness has been kind of infested by your past influences from your past. Even it could be your parents, it could be your, you know, whatever. If these folks were into literally, you were reincarnated from another life. So, you know, you can believe that if you like. It's certainly optional. Belief is optional. So this consciousness then has been kind of preformed and influenced from the past, so not too much choice there.

[06:25]

And this consciousness is what gets reborn in one of these six realms. So you kind of come to life in hell, you come to life as a fighting demon, you come to life as a god or a human, and so on. And then the rest of the configuration is basically building all the parts you need to have a person. So the consciousness And this next step, which is called Nama Rupa. Consciousness is Vijnana. Nama Rupa is name and form. These two come up together. So you have the five skandhas, basically. Form, feeling, perception, impulse, consciousness. That's the person. That's the self. So these two are the skandhas. And then the next one, the guest house, Gringos guest house, are the six sense fields. So now you've got this person. with all of these apparatus to have contact, but you don't have any contact yet until you get the sense fields. So these two come together.

[07:27]

What is seen and the seer basically are dependently co-arisen. So the world dependently co-arises with consciousness and form. So these basically, the world and the person arise together. So now you have a field, you have a person, and the person makes contact with another person. So we saw that one, that's the hot tub. And then, as a result of contact, there's positive, negative, or neutral feelings. And feelings, so the next step is feelings, which are extremely strong. The picture here is an arrow in the eye. You don't miss your feelings. For all of you who've ever had any feelings, you notice them. It's an arrow in the eye. So, very strong, very strong reactivity right here. Now, I've said many times, I'll say it again, just stop at feelings. That's practice. Just sit there. Let them roll over you, through you, and wait.

[08:30]

By the end of breakfast, you'll be better. Almost always, you know? But that's the problem. We don't do that. We don't wait. We are compelled by feelings, poor Homer, to eat donuts. So, you know? We're just like, oh, I've got to have a donut. So instead of just waiting, we go after some donuts. And then that's really when the trouble begins because this is present life. This is the fruit of the past life. But if you had made better choices over here and not fallen into craving, then actually your present life would not have resulted in these very bad outcomes. If we can kind of master this one link here, that would be a very good benefit for us as practitioners of the Buddha way. So until you do that, you will come into craving, which is kind of a mild version of the next step, the Upadana, which is like grasping.

[09:37]

And that's the second of the Four Noble Truths is grasping. Ignorance and grasping are the cause of suffering. Now you not only want it, you've got it. You've taken a hold of it. Whether it's an idea, it's a view, it's an object, it's an opinion, you're in it. And so that then potentializes your next becoming, your next kind of birth that's going to happen. We've got this conception, the bhavana, becoming, and then we have a new life which begins with birth and invariably ends with death. So this is kind of a summary of the whole sequence. So that's the wheel. Anything else I want to say about that? Oh, in early Buddhism, the idea was that if you eliminated the objects of desire, that that would be the way to do away with this craving.

[10:38]

You just don't have anything around that you want. So women were out. Donuts were out. You know, all kinds of things were not allowed in your field so you wouldn't have to, you know, be tempted or driven. So they did lots of different kind of kooky things to try and make sure that you didn't get near that thing. Like one guy burned off his finger because he accidentally touched a woman, grazed her, so he burned it off. Stuff like that. So that was an approach and, you know... Then we moved along in history, and we've come to the Mahayana, and also the modern practitioners of the older traditions, which aren't into that anymore. To some extent, there's renunciation of various things. I think women are still out, but anyway. But the idea now is that you want to eliminate the view of a self.

[11:39]

If you don't have a self-clinging, desire falls away. You know, there's nobody there, a substantial person that needs anything. So you kind of relax. If you don't have that self, the approach then is that that kind of takes care of the whole thing. So that's more the kind of school that we're in here is just relax. Cormac. Yeah. okay that that's just on the wheel that's okay there's nothing wrong with being on the wheel we all are on the wheel this is about getting off the wheel so that's how humans live we do live like that we cry and we go find a friend and we you know console each other and we give advice and I mean we do that most of the time that's practice discussion you know we are always talking about this process

[12:49]

So this is a different aspiration, which is to stop at feelings and see what happens if you do that. You don't have to do that. You're more than, I mean, we do, we all, most of the time they don't stop at feelings. I'm sure most of us don't. It's a practice. Just sit with them. Not stop the feeling, stop at the feeling and let it roll through you. Just experience it. You know, welcome it. What is it? Look at it. Study it. How long does it last? Does it go on all day? Did it stop at 11 o'clock? I mean, if you really look at it, feelings are transitory. So that's part of the lesson is that you can see that they pass. Regardless of what you do, they're still transitory. So there's nothing wrong with what you said. do stop at feelings you're still on the chain yeah right because even though that addresses um craving it keeps you from going that route it still hasn't addressed the underlying ignorance yeah so then how can you talk will that ultimately crack the ignorance or like can you talk about how if that doesn't get you off the chain how will it help you

[14:23]

studying the Four Noble Truths, studying the rising of the self, all these things like, I can't find myself, I'm suffering, help me. And the teacher says, well, bring me yourself and I'll help you. And he goes away. We don't know how long, six years, 10 years. And he comes back and says, I can't find myself. He said, great, I've helped you. So that's what these stories are all about. Not telling you how to do it because I don't think anybody knows how to do it. If I knew how to do it, I would tell you. And I would do it. You know, just stop ignorance. Just stop it. But I think it's a lifelong exploration that we're all, you know, probably, if we're interested, we'll be making, you know, as long as we're alive. What does it mean to stop ignorance? And what does it mean not to be falling into this pattern? What would that look like? What would the world look like if I wasn't, you know, engaging with this as belief that I believe it's true? So we're kind of weakening our hold on belief, I think.

[15:25]

There's some suspicion going on. Itasahara? Noticed? Yeah, I'm just wondering, is there any action that would not be keeping this wheel rolling? Yeah, enlightenment. Awakening to the fact that this is a fantasy. It's a fantasy. It's a fantasy. You would be here observing, oh my goodness, look at what I'm doing. I'm having a feeling. What is it? Rather than... I am the feeling, and my feeling is terrible, and I really am feeling terrible because of these reasons of things that happened to me, and I need to do something. That's believing the feeling, which is what we do.

[16:31]

More about how we relate it than what we actually do. Well, they're fruit. The feeling isn't something you have control over. They just arrive. They're deliveries from the past. There's nothing wrong with them. It's how we relate to them. So, you know, and that mostly we don't think we have any options when we have feelings. If I'm angry, I should go do something. And if I'm, you know, happy, I should go do something or whatever. I got to go do something. These are karmic means action. So feelings are psychological. They're not an action. And this is psychological. Craving is psychological. Clinging is psychological. Becoming is an action. These are actions. You start doing karmic actions up here, which then fruit. Because you did something. You actually made some move in the world with your body, your speech.

[17:33]

These are thought. So they're kind of weak. Isn't becoming a fruit of your life before that? Becoming is a cause of next. These two are causes of the next. They're still in the present, but they're causes of the next life. So they're the fruit of this conditioning in the present life. These are the fruits of that conditioning, but they're in the present. And then they cause... the next life, the new birth. If you're interested, you can really study this material. There's a lot of things on the 12-fold chain. This is kind of the basics, but if you want to look at it, the Dalai Lama's written a really good book about it, and there are many other books about it, and the Abhidharma, you can read that.

[18:40]

You can follow your interests as much as you like about it. Interesting stuff. So the next thing I wanted to say is about the escape. So as I told you, for many centuries in Japan, this was true. This was like people believing, you know, Christian people believing you go to heaven after you die. They believe that's true, right? So this was true. If you behave badly, you would go to hell or one of these lower realms and you would pay. Guaranteed. No way out of this. And if you behave well, then you'll be up here. Well, as I was saying, the problem... Like, what if you're a soldier? Or you raise pigs for a living? I mean, there are all kinds of livelihoods that people have where they are terrified of what's going to happen to them by how they're making their livings. So this was a real condition that was happening for the Japanese people.

[19:43]

And... There were several centuries where various mystical teachers came up with ways to get out of this. There are ways to get out of this. There are different schools that developed, Zen being one of them, as escape plans. There are four primary strategies to overcome the terror of karmic conditioning. The first one is called infiltration. which happens within the six realms. So remember again, these are the six realms that you incarnate into states of consciousness and infiltrating each of these realms is a Bodhisattva. So they've snuck in and it's, you know, you call, you call out to them. So if you end up over here, you know, over here, you call for, so who are the great Bodhisattvas that we call for during service? Who do we call for? Kuan Yin.

[20:47]

Kuan Yin is the goddess of compassion, and we call for her with great vigor. Come and help us. Come and save us. Kuan Yin. And the other main one is Jizo, which is why I brought Jizo's staff. Jizo carries his staff, and it is no coincidence, look how many rings there are on Jizo's staff. So Jizo walks around with his staff, and if you call for Jizo, these are keys to unlock the six realms. And it was really amazing when we were in Japan, you know, now that I've been, oh, this is a great book, by the way, The Karma of Words, which has a terrible subtitle, Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan. But, It also says a splendid book, and it really is. Karma words. So, the man who wrote this did a beautiful job.

[21:52]

It's wonderful to read, and it's all full of information about this very thing, this belief in the Roku-do. Roku means six, Do is realms. Roku-do. So... So infiltration, so you call to Kanon, you call to Jizo for help and come and rescue you, but you're still on the wheel, you're still coming around to these realms, but they will come and give you advice and direction on how to work your way up the ladder to the higher realms. So that was one strategy. And at Rin Soen, when Mea Wender and I went to Japan three years ago now, It's the first time I'd gone, and we went to Rinsoen, Suzuki Roshi's temple, which was totally wonderful. And on the way up to the temple, there was this shrine, and there were six jizos. Those stones, not little, they were big. Right there, just as you walked right up to the temple.

[22:53]

And they have red lipstick, or I don't know lipstick, but red lips. And I'm not sure why that was, but... So then when I read this, I went, oh, that's what they were. They were the six jizos for the six realms. So there are also six different manifestations of Kuan Yin. Same thing for the six realms. So these were antidotes to this frightening situation. So the second strategy, so that's the first one, infiltration within transmigration. The second one was kind of a new invention called getting out of it altogether, transcending... the six realms, by praying to Amida Buddha to help you to be reborn in another realm up here called the Western Paradise. So if you pray to Amida, Namo Amida Buddha, Namo Amida Buddha, the Nembutsu, do you know the Nembutsu? Namo Amida Buddha, Namo Amida Buddha, Namo Amida Buddha. This is actually a practice many people do. And that's generating the merit you need in the name of Amida Buddha.

[23:59]

to get you into the Western Paradise, which means you're out of here. This is it? We're there? California? Very good, very good. Yeah. So, Jodo Shinshu, Amida Buddha, Western Paradise. So that's transcending the six realms. That was the strategy. You get reborn in the pure land from the divine power of Amida. And then at the time of death, people who are part of that faith tradition, the person who's dying holds on to five colored threads which are attached to an icon of Amida Buddha. And that's kind of like the pyramid thing. You're going to shoot your soul to Amida Buddha while everyone's chanting with you. And then the third strategy is called co-penetration, which was kind of a combination of the infiltration and the escape hatch.

[25:06]

And this one was created by the Tendai school, which is the Lotus Sutra school. And basically, rather than having six realms, they added another four on top. So they came up with ten realms. So you've still got the basic six, which are not so desirable. And then you have these other four, and the other four are familiar. They're the Shravakas, the hearers, the ones who hear the teachings, the Prajika Buddhas, the solitary enlightened ones, the ones who become enlightened. They don't teach. They really can't explain it to anybody. A Prajika is a rhinoceros. The rhinoceros has its horn pointed at the star. I mean, they've awoken, but they can't really do anything with it. They don't... produce offspring. They don't have disciples. They're solitary. So that's the second one. The third one is the Bodhisattvas. And then the fourth one is the Buddhas. So these are kind of graduated realms above the six.

[26:10]

So that's another strategy. And what happened in that particular strategy is that... Juri was a very famous teacher of the Tendai school, actually said, well, rather than have these realms be some kind of hierarchy going from worst to best, you know, from hell to Buddha, they're actually interpenetrated. All the realms each have ten realms. So the animal realm has all the other nine, and the hell realm has all the other nine. So he made this whole kind of bubble thing. of all the different realms, have all the different realms. So there's a little bit of hell in the Buddha realm. There's a little bit of Buddha in the hell realm. And basically this is the non-dual understanding of how these are all interconnected, interdependent. Evil and good are not separate. They're basically on a continuum. It just says light and dark are on a continuum. They depend on each other. You can't have evil without good. You can't have good without evil because it wouldn't mean anything.

[27:12]

So everything's basically in... So that was that approach. And then the last one, which is my favorite and probably the one that we are most familiar with, is called ludization, where the Rokudo is understood to be an arena of play. This is a playground. And because of this understanding of the kind of ludicrousness, of the whole thing, Japanese came up with all kinds of wonderful spoofs and plays and comedy, which were all using these themes and making fun of it. And, of course, the understanding, too, is that the bodhisattva enjoys what they're doing. They don't go in here and have a terrible time. They're having a good time in hell.

[28:14]

They're singing, they're trying to cheer people up. If they went in there and became hell beings themselves, that wouldn't be any help. Did I tell you about the social worker I met? When Grace and I adopted Sabrina, For about five years, we had social workers coming because she had been a ward of the state. Until we were actually her adoptive parents, we were kind of inspected periodically to make sure she was well and cared for and all that. So most of them were not very cheerful. And they seemed really worn out and kind of, you know, like they were really carrying a lot of weight, which I couldn't understand. I felt they probably were, and it was hard work. Except this one. woman who showed up who was so cheerful and like, hi, how are you? And she was like, and I said, who are you? What is it?

[29:16]

How have you become a cheerful social worker? And she said, well, I didn't used to be a cheerful social worker. I used to be miserable. And I'd go to these people's homes and there'd be so much sadness and I would feel so terrible and I'd try to help them and nothing worked. And she said, and at some point I realized that my job wasn't to change them. My job was to come and be their friend and to give them some brochures and to tell them about detox or whatever and then to say goodbye. And if they picked up the brochure is wonderful. If they didn't, it's okay. It's their life. She stopped trying to make it happen. And she said... I have the best time with my clients. We're really good friends. We enjoy each other. And I just thought, okay, that's like the bodhisattvas. They're basically there to offer help, but they're not going to wring your neck and make you cooperate, something like that. It's like, here's an offering, and we really would like to help you, and that's why we're here.

[30:17]

So this idea of play, that the bodhisattvas go to enjoy the work they're doing, to be of benefit. That was another idea. Only when the bodhisattva enjoys what they do can they actually be any good for anybody. Salvation for the bodhisattva is the ease of their practice because it's not goal-oriented. They're not trying to accomplish something by being there. They're just trying to practice with people. They want to practice with people. And so their compassion for the bodhisattva is not attached to some outcome. Zen in particular is very fond of play as maybe we all have noticed. There are a lot of playful elements to Zen. It pretty much is credited to Matsu in the 8th century who began to play quite a bit. One of the things he said was about transmigration because people were terrified of coming back as a hummingbird.

[31:23]

or a cat or a pig or something like that, he said, oh, go for it. Enter into this species with wholeheartedness. How great to be a pig. Can you imagine being a pig? What a wonderful thing. So he was all about, yeah, get in there. Find out what that's like. Rather than being terrified and trying to stop somehow some bad outcome, he said, yeah, just find it out. This will be great. This will be amazing. So the emphasis in Zen was on freedom. Not on necessities or restriction. It's like, yeah, find a way to be free whatever your conditions are. So, you know, freedom from attachment to self-projected goals, like I want to be Buddha. That's a self-projected goal. It's like putting, you know, one of those things on your forehead, a stick with a carrot on the end and running after it. Run faster. Can't get it.

[32:23]

So these are self-projected goals. And you'll never get them. You can never get to one because it's a goal. It means it's not here. You don't have it. It's in the future. So automatically, by definition, you will never get there. Linji said, if you will bring to rest the thought, of the ceaselessly seeking mind, you will not differ from Buddha. Do you want to know, Buddha? None other than you who's sitting before me listening to my discourse. Bam! The true person of the way makes use of his past karma, accepting things as they come. She puts on her clothes, and when she wants to walk, she walks. When she wants to sit, she sits. She never has a single thought of seeking Buddhahood.

[33:24]

And then the last one is Wumen's comment on the story of Yakujo and the Fox. You remember Yakujo and the Fox? Yeah. So Wumen says, if you have an eye to see this story... then you'll know that the former abbot enjoyed his 500 happy blessed lives as a fox. Never thought of that. So the last thing I want to read to you, and if you have any questions, or otherwise we could go to bed so early, it's unbelievable. All right, jump under. Last chance. You're good at your job, you know. You're really good at it. We're going to get you another job real soon. Okay.

[34:27]

So this is instructions to Bahia from the Buddha. These are quite famous, a beautiful thing. So Bahia, thus you must train yourself. In the scene, there will... just be the seen. In the heard, just the heard. In the reflected, just the reflected. In the cognized, just the cognized. This is how, Bahia, you must train yourself. Now, Bahia, when in the seen there will be for you, just the seen. In the heard, just the heard. In the reflected, just the reflected. In the cognized, just the cognized. Then, Bahia, you will not identify yourself with it. And when you do not identify yourself with it, you will not locate yourself therein. When you do not locate yourself therein, it follows that you will have no here or beyond or midway in between. And this would be the end of suffering. Greg!

[35:31]

Good old woman. Yeah. I've got another quote by him too, but I won't give it away now. I'm going to save it for Sashin. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that guy was good. So anything else you all want to bring up? I really don't have more I wanted to cover. And I don't mind if we end early. But if you wanted to ask something, it's okay. They'll still be your friends. Bahia? Yeah, sure. That's in the... Where is that? That's in the... Where is it?

[37:02]

It's in the sutta. It's in the Pali Canon. Middle length? You can easily find it. Whenever you're near a computer. Yeah, exactly. The Access to Insight website has everything. Thus you must train yourself. In the scene... there will be just the seen, in the heard, just the heard, in the reflected, just the reflected, in the cognized, just the cognized. This is how, Bahia, you must train yourself. Now, Bahia, when in the seen there will be to you just the seen, in the heard, just the heard, in the reflected, just the reflected, in the cognized, just the cognized, then, Bahia, you will not identify yourself with it. And when you do not identify yourself with it, you will not locate yourself therein. When you do not locate yourself therein, it follows that you will have no here or beyond or midway in between.

[38:05]

And this would be the end of suffering. Sounds like great advice. Is this an escape route? You know, it sort of seems like it's not an escape route. It's more like a truth. Like that's really what it is. In the scene, just the scene, you know? Yeah. I don't think it's an escape. I think it's a how to live. Yeah, the escape route, you know, if you end ignorance, if you put an end to ignorance, this whole thing collapses because there are no karmic formations. Same thing with karmic formations. So, you know, if you have no past influences, guess what else you don't have? You, anything. You don't have you. You don't happen.

[39:06]

So that's called nirvana. You have extinguished your future life. This is the arhat. They do away with this, influences from their past. They have no more of these samskaras that do not occur. Therefore, this doesn't happen. Gone. Blown out. We are bodhisattvas. So we've got all these other things we've got to kind of, you know, like become skillful at this because we promise we're going to stay here for as long as we have to until everybody's been freed. So we're going to have to, you know, just really learn the skills of each of these realms and how to be beneficial to others because that's the vow that we've taken. What is that? Freedom. They are, but everyone has to go ahead of you. Yeah, but you have to wait for everyone else.

[40:09]

No, I didn't say you can't get extinguished. You can be extinguished, but after everybody else. So, can I catch 22? Huh? Sounds like a story? Which one? The whole thing is a story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what else we got? You got that? Yeah, but you got that? She says nirvana's no stories. Yeah, but this is nirvana. This isn't happening. Then you're not going to tell me you got nirvana if you got it. You're out of here. Extinction. My understanding of it is that there's no more, like the Buddha extinguished the pentacle rising, he was no longer on the wheel.

[41:15]

That was your bonnet friend, that he wasn't on this wheel. He is a special case. Because the Buddha's not a person. It's a teaching. So the teaching is eternal. That's kind of the understanding. The teaching is teaching us right now. I'm not. But any of this that's the teaching is not extinguished. It's here for us. So in his advice to Bahia, where on the wheel is that advice? Is it that there's just this bare recognition? There's this consciousness of what's arising, but there's no perception, there's no identification, there's no interpretation of... Yeah, you're not elaborating. You're not elaborating on it. But it's not nothing. You're in the scene. There's the scene. In the herd, there's the herd. Yeah. Contact. You're not adding anything to it.

[42:19]

It's just... And if you're saying, well, cognition too. It's like, huh, I'm just saying something like cognition too right now. But I'm not even saying that. I didn't say it. That would be attributing a self. So that would be, you know, like, that would be, like, hard to find. Where is that? Where is that? That self thing. This is the self, you know. The human consciousness. This is the story of humans. And that's the thing we're committed to is to be this story and to understand this story and to understand it for the sake of others who are trapped in it, who think it's true, that they're real and that there's no way out of their feelings and there's no way out of acting on their feelings and they're righteously angry and they should do something about it. That kind of suffering is what we're trying to understand so we can help by figuring it out ourselves first.

[43:26]

You don't have to do that. There's a lot of choice in here. The Mahayana came up with something called non-abiding nirvana. You don't stay there. You might slip in there for a little visit, take a shower, and then you don't stay there. Because you're committed to this. You've got a job. It's fine to take a rest, but you've got to come back to work. You mean if you force it? You mean being mean to your no self? That there's no self? Are you saying that's mean to say there's no self?

[44:38]

So it's like you go through this chain and the way to get off it is no self, but then here we are all here, not extinct, seemingly. No, you're here no self. You're here representing your no self. You don't have a self. You're not a self. Well, see? And it's fine, right? You're okay with that. I guess the idea of extinction, like non-existence, kind of, you're creating something. Like creating an idea that's almost like this carrot again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right. And proposing this non-self, kind of like putting out this carrot... Well, it's a concept.

[45:43]

Carrot's a concept, too. And the thing I said, the stick, that's a concept. It's a concept. Self is a concept. They're all concepts. We're just chatting, you know? We're just blah, blah, blah. Did I say earlier about relaxing? Yeah, relaxing with the chatting. While we're chatting, we should relax. Otherwise, we get really tense and burn off our fingers and do all kinds of things. It's like, oh, my God, I'm not a self, so I better jump in the fire. You know, it's like that kind of reaction. Is this what happens here? And that's why we're saying, wait a minute, guys, don't do that. Don't stop at feelings. I know you're freaked out that you don't have a self. But let's talk about it some more. Let's see that it's really okay. That actually you already don't have it, so it's not something you're going to lose. It's already not, you don't have it. So, you know, don't get one in order to lose it. Just see that you don't have one and then... You don't have it.

[46:46]

What? Wait a minute, you get too many no's in there for me. You don't not have it. That's a double negative. You do have it? You do not have it. You guys can do this. I can't. One negative is all I can do. If it makes you tense, if it makes you feel like it is like the burning off your finger, back away from that. That's not a good, it's not time to be looking at that teaching, you know, because it's just talk. There's other kinds of talk too, but it maybe doesn't feel like it's threatening. So I would, you know, just keep looking for the things that make sense to you that are also, don't create a kind of anxiety or, yeah, anxiety.

[47:56]

or show up in the 86th realm. And possibly they might arise in forms that you might not expect, like someone saying something and you're feeling resistance. Is that a manifestation of that invocation or of them supporting you? Do you mean the one you called came in a form you didn't want? Yeah, in a form you didn't want or some kind of arrival or a sensation. That's right. an opportunity to meet something? Well, in that case, you sort of like stay with it and see if it transforms for you into something beneficial. Maybe the initial thing is like, I don't want to hear that. If I invoke him, you say something to him that gets me upset. To him? Yeah, Aaron. Aaron, yeah. Is that potentially the support of this Buddha? No, we probably want to call Greg in and see if we can make it work out better.

[49:06]

We actually will use whatever tools we have at hand. Get something that looks like the bodhisattva for you. If you need a bodhisattva, you want it to look like a bodhisattva. Otherwise you'd just be thinking you're not getting helped. This is not help. So, I mean, they're calling on this idea, this particular strategy, was that that manifestation would come, you know, maybe in a prayer, in a vision, or, you know, or an actual friend who came with a friendly, you know, just at the right time or something like that. You know, I don't think they would think it was working if something negative showed up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, and that you eventually would see that. That was really good. Now, who was that masked man? Later on, you realize that that was a very helpful thing.

[50:08]

But oftentimes, in the time it's happening, we're kind of being defensive, maybe. There's two kinds. There's one with remainder while you're still alive. According to the old, you know, the nirvana people. That's what you're after. There's one that happens while you're living. You become an arhat. You're kind of done with all that. And you won't come back. And you just have this remainder, which is your body, your physical form. And then there's after death, there's nirvana without remainder. You're really gone.

[51:09]

Can't find you anymore. That's one idea. I don't know if I would... Yeah, I guess I don't know if I'd use the word enlightened necessarily because that's used in different ways by different schools. I mean, some don't feel like that's the complete perfect enlightenment that you would enter into nirvana. That would be more like personal liberation. You would enter into nirvana, but that's just for you, and then you're gone, and then everybody else is still stuck here. So there's this other school, the one that we've arrived in here, that says, that doesn't seem right. Maybe I should wait for the rest of you before I go. I'd like to go with you, actually. So why don't we go together?

[52:10]

So that's called this non-abiding nirvana. We're not going to stay there. We're just going to, like I said, take a rest and then come back to work because there's more than just us in this room. And we're determined. Well, the only way I could approach that question would be to just try to imagine it myself.

[53:26]

Imagine extinction. I've tried that. I can't really do it. I can't because I'm not. But I've tried. And I don't get there. So I don't know. And I can't imagine animals being an animal other than this one kind of animal. So right now, we're kind of stuck with the one we got, which is we're alive. We call being alive. We define ourselves as alive. And we're humans. So we've got to work in our own realm, really figure this one out for a while. We can speculate about what happens if you're extinct or what happens if you're a hummingbird. We can speculate about that, but that's sort of like using your imagination to imagine things that we don't know. We can't really say. But some people would find their imagination of one of those more attractive than their imagination of the other one.

[54:28]

Still, it's their imagination. So once they see it's their imagination, that's closer to becoming free. Oh, I'm just thinking that. I'm just imagining that. Oh, my God. That's closer to understanding how this works. It's a dream. We're dreaming. Are you sure we're going to really be dreaming? I had an interesting dream the other night. Lauren was in it, and we were late for an airplane, and I was supposed to fly somewhere and pack all my bags, and she was very patient and trying to help me relax because I was really tense. Went on for, I don't know, the whole night it seemed like. Thank you so much. You were very kind, and I missed the plane. I know. The woman, the same guy that he was saying before the advice. Okay, well, I will. Women, if you haven't... About the fox or the one before that?

[55:30]

The true person of the way makes use of her past karma, accepting things as they come, putting on her clothes. When she wants to walk, she walks. When she wants to sit, she sits. She never has a single thought of seeking Buddhahood. That one? Yeah. You can put he in there. I put she in there, so... I know. Person makes it feel more like I can be in there too. All right. Thank you so much. Have a nice evening and see you in the morning.

[56:04]

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