Good evening. I'm in a different place, in case you're wondering. I'm up on Mount Tam at my partner's place. It's wonderful. There's this storm. For those of you in California, the rain has come. And last night, there was just this amazing sound, which we haven't heard for way too long. Anyway, it's lovely to have the rain. So why don't we sit for a few minutes And then we'll continue with our review of the Mind Only School. I wanted to not forget to say that December 27th, which is the few days after the Christmas holiday, I will not come on.

[06:03]

There's going to be a break for everybody at Green Gulch, including the people behind the scenes. So just in case I wanted to let you know that. So next week is fine. And then the following week, there'll be a time off. So welcome back to... Vasubandhu and the 30 verses, which when I was reading that earlier to my friend, it sort of sounded like a holiday special, you know. And I really want to try and keep this alive because I think it's very easy for this material to get sticky or like, oh, no, what is this? So for me, the more often I've gone over it, the more friendly it becomes and the more like, openings happen you know like oh that's familiar oh that's what that meant you know the terminology begins to become part of like a repertoire that you have and looking at the mind only teachings which then occur in other teachings too so then you could go like oh yeah i i read that in the 30 verses so um i've been watching this wonderful show i just discovered a british thing called the repair shop

[07:19]

And I don't know if any of you have seen it. It's absolutely wonderful. These very skilled craftspeople take these broken treasures from people's homes, like, you know, old chests that was grandpa's or some vase that was dropped or whatever. And these amazing craftspeople restore them to their pristine, just as they were when they were brand new. So as I watch them, you know, it's painstaking and delightful. They love doing this thing just over and over and over again. you know, polishing the wood or sanding the wood or whatever they're doing. It's quite, I feel like they're real bodhisattvas and acting bodhisattvic work. You know, they're so happy to give this back to the family member and everyone's crying because this was grandma's base and it connects the family and all that. So I think that's what this is all about too. These are connectors to the family, you know, the Buddha family and all the ways that These teachings have been treasured and carried.

[08:21]

You know, as I mentioned, this wonderful film about Swansong, who traveled the Silk Route with these sutras. He went after the Yogacara teachings. He went to Nalanda in India, spent four years getting there. So this idea of craft, I think, is a really good one for what we're looking at, too. Excuse me. So, Lasu Bandhan, the 30 verses. So I think... I just want to keep reading the first three because they're short. And kind of, you know, as this point of review, hopefully you all have your own copy. I don't know. Jenny, are you there? Can you put that in the chat again? The 30 verses, if you have it. I will try to find it. OK, I can I can get it for you for next week if you don't. Maybe I'll put it on the screen for a minute. Let's share it. Screen share.

[09:23]

Here we go. Okay, so the 30 verses, just to read through them a little bit together. Again, trying to get this familiarity with the vocabulary. Everything conceived as self. or other occurs in the transformation of consciousness. So this is all about, this is the mind only school. They're really trying to convince us that it's just the mind. What's going on here is mind only, consciousness only, conscious constructions. And they're coming from here, from your own mind. Number two, this transformation has these three aspects, the ripening of karma, consciousness of a self and the imagery of sense objects. So then now Vasubandhu goes into this first aspect. He said three aspects. This is the first one. Transformation of consciousness known as alaya, the ripening of karma. The first of these aspects is called alaya, the storehouse consciousness.

[10:26]

So I also have that. I'll show that in a minute. The diagram. Heather asked about a diagram and I kind of... added a few features, so I hope it'll be more clear. The first of these three aspects of transformation is called alaya, the storehouse consciousness, the store consciousness, which contains all the karmic seeds. Karma means intentions. Everything you've done has been planted and you're unconscious and you're carrying it around with you all the time and you don't know it. It's not conscious. What alaya holds and its perception of location are unknown. I don't know where this stuff is, but it's kind of like the cloud, you know, somewhere. It's having this big impact on our lives. Number four, a lie is always associated with sense contact, attention, sensation, perception, and volition. I went over those last week. A lie is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. It's kind of neutral.

[11:28]

It is unobstructed. Nothing gets in its way, just goes along, and it's like a river, like a river. In enlightenment, it is overturned at its root. So then we move on to the second aspect of transformation of consciousness. So they mentioned three. We've just done one. Now we're doing the second one. And this is the manas, the lover, the lover. So dependent on the alaya, the storehouse, And taking it as its object, remember the lover is in love with alaya. This is all going on in the unconscious, this self-love thing. Manas, the consciousness of a self, arises, which consists of thinking. So that's where this thinking, you know that noise that's going on in your head? This is coming from manas. And it's using material in the alaya, very familiar stuff, your memories, your language that you speak, your childhood. That manas is just pulling this stuff up out of the unconscious and offering it up for your conscious awareness.

[12:34]

It's kind of random. Have you noticed? Any of you who meditate regularly, just notice how random these offerings are from manas. Manas, the consciousness of a self arises which consists of thinking. Thinking, okay? This is the big plumbing from the unconscious kind of bag of stuff. translated into language, and then it's fed to us as thought, mind-only thought. Number six, it, manas, is always associated with four afflictions. Manas has a problem, inborn. Self-view, belief in a separate self, that's one of them. Self-delusion, you know, all the stuff we think about the self. Self-pride, very important, this one. And self-love. It's obstructed, but karmically neutral. And along with these four, from where it, manas, is born, come these things, these five universal factors.

[13:42]

Sense contact, attention, sensation, perception, volition. Okay. Manas is not found in enlightenment, the meditation of cessation. These are super mundane. Not super mundane. These are meditation trances in which you cut off thinking. So there's no manas there. When the train of thought is snipped for a time, you can't leave it snipped forever because you would die. So basically you can snip it for a while in certain concentration practices. And then so there's no manas at that time. And not in the super mundane path. So when you're traveling the path, there's no self-love happening there. You're basically devoted to awakening, to wisdom, to compassion. There's no need for this self-centeredness. You've kind of gotten over that. It's gotten over yourself. It's kind of gone. It's gone. And then we go to the third aspect. So first there's alaya, then manas, and now we have the six sense consciousnesses.

[14:44]

So that was the second transformation we just talked about. The third is the perception of the six senses. Six senses, which are beneficial, harmful, or neither. It, the perception of the six senses, is associated with three kinds of mental factors. And here they are again. The universal ones, specific and beneficial ones, as well as afflictions and associated, secondary afflictions, and three sensations, positive, negative, and neutral. Okay, verse number 10. The universal factors, think five aggregates, the five skandhas. Again, we talked about, I'm going to go over those again because I think they're really key. to experiential learning, which is what the Yoga Chara basically is giving us. It's like, pay attention to your experience. And here's a map of your experience. Here's the, like again, at this repair shop, this one guy specializes in old clocks. So he takes his crummy looking thing that's not working and it hasn't worked for 60 years.

[15:48]

He pulls it out of the frame and then he takes it apart and he cleans every piece and puts them back and they're absolutely stunningly beautiful. And then they start to work perfectly. That's kind of like what we're up to here. We're taking all the gunk out of there and we're putting it back together so that it works beautifully. You know, the way that our minds and our senses and our sense of self and other are basically awakened, how we awaken to that is what this teaching is offering to us. You know, that's the point of it. So, okay, maybe that's enough review. I'm going to stop there, stop sharing that. And I'm going to say some stuff. Oh, I think I'll show you first this diagram that I did a little bit of stuff on here. So, And I'll have Jenny get this also in the chat room for next week, so you guys can pull it out and have it for yourselves if you would like to have it.

[16:56]

Okay, share. Okay, so we've talked about this a bit. Some of you may be new and I'm really sorry, but If you are, you can catch up really easily by getting a hold of Inside Vasubandhu's Yogachara by Ben Conley, which is really the text for this conversation. It's a wonderful book, very well done, very well reasoned. And so this is the clockwork. This is you turn the clock around, it says seven o'clock, and you look in the back and it's like, where's the seven o'clock? You know, where's that thinking? You know, where's that coming from? Well, here's where it's coming from. It's coming from this, the clockwork of human consciousness. So again, this line is the line that divides our conscious experience of the world from our unconscious experience.

[18:00]

I just talked about Alaya, which is number eight of the eight consciousnesses model of mind. So this is the... Vasubandhus and the Yogacharas offering to us of what's going on is that there are eight things going on creating reality. And two of them, seven and eight, are below our conscious. They're out of our conscious grasp. We do not know what's going on there. They're unconscious. There's the lover, which is in love with Alaya. And Manas is thinking. basically is the characteristic of manas, is thinking. And there's two kinds of thinking that manas does. One of them is just plain old thinking, train of thought, no judgment there. And the other one is defiled by toxins. And the primary toxins in Buddhist teaching are greed, hate, and delusion. Hate, greed, and confusion and the delusion.

[19:01]

That's how we move. That's how we get off and that's how we suffer. So that's why these are so important to really understand how to get this defiled thinking, neutralized. So the alaya, which is in the present, everything's in the present. There's nothing that's not in the present. So that's just present. That's just what's happening, you know. But we kind of say there's something called the past in this model that is where our conditioning came from. So alaya is the conditioning from the past, which appears for us or doesn't appear to us, but it's with us in the present. It's being carried in the present as our resource, like our library. We've got this big library of experiences below the waterline here. And then whatever we do in relation to the messages that the lover sends up to consciousness. So Aliyah thinking is picked up by number six up here.

[20:02]

So, you know, you could right now, I'm going to stop talking for a minute. Why don't you just check in with something that's going on in your mind? What are you thinking? You know, try to catch a fish if you can. Make a note of that if you caught one. You know, maybe it was a lot. Maybe it was a whole string. But whatever you managed to catch, you know, that was caught. This is the catcher. Awareness of concepts is consciousness that is aware of what the lover just sent up to you. So, you know, my lover, I told you, I think, last week, my lover, for some reason, whenever I asked for a concept, and just did it again, My mama sends me the word cheese. I do not know how that happened, but it keeps happening. It's like I have got cheese as the thing that comes whenever I asked for a concept.

[21:08]

There it is again. Wallace and Gromit, I think, is the reason that happened. If you know Wallace and Gromit, I think it's Wallace. It could be Gromit. This always eating cheese. So that's maybe the reason. I watch too many of those. But anyway, so my awareness of a concept is is this sixth consciousness knows what's going on, but isn't always paying very close attention. I mean, sometimes we're not really attending to what's running through our minds. Mostly we're kind of put it on automatic and you drive your car, you listen to music, you talk to a friend. So your consciousness is jumping all over the place. And that's one of the points that's being made by this study. Pay attention to the present. Because this is all that's happening in the present. All you will ever be aware of is one of these six. A smell, a taste, a touch, a sound, a sight, or a concept.

[22:11]

And you may notice, and this is a meditation practice, you can do it for 10 minutes later this evening. Just sit down. and pay attention to what you're aware of and see if any of them meet the criteria for permanent. I mean, part of what this lesson is about is you don't experience anything for very long. Whatever you're experiencing in any of these categories is moving right through very quickly. a word, a thought, a sensation. And our attention can move really quickly from one to the other. So we can kind of track, like our eyes are always moving, our minds are always moving from one thing to another. So there's always samadhi. Samadhi means concentration.

[23:13]

Every moment of consciousness, there is samadhi. That's part of the teaching. There is concentration. However, we are concentrating on a number of different things, one after the other. So we catch them, but then we catch another one, and then we catch another one. So meditation practice is trying to bring our focus onto one thing and not jumping around, like the breath. Just stay with your breath. No, don't go over there. Stay with your breath. Oh, no, stay with your breath. So part of the training, meditation training, that many of us have done for quite some time is to practice focusing our attention, being mindful. of where is your mind? What's it doing? What's it looking at? What's it hearing? This is vipassana, listening in, having some insight into where your mind is. Do you know where your mind is? Do you know what it's up to? So again, this is experiential learning, bringing us into a sharp awareness of our actual experience in any given moment and throughout the day, that we're with it.

[24:18]

We're actually with what's happening to us. That's the invitation. Okay, so let me see what I wanted to say about all that. Do any of you have a question that you'd like to ask now before I go back into talking about the 30 verses? I'd be happy to slow down. Yeah, Lisa. You are muted. Maybe do I have to do something? Jenny, do you have to unmute Lisa? No, she got it. It's working now. Thank you. So it's the idea of karmically neutral. You know, when we talk about the chant is, the atonement is, you know, born of, you know, body, speech, and mind.

[25:24]

How is it the mind then is, karmically neutral? How is it that this manas process isn't creating karma? Yeah, I think ultimately, this is going a little out there, but ultimately, there is no karma. It's an illusion. But is it feeding back into a lie? It's mind-made, yes. The belief... that what's happening, that that was bad. The belief in good and bad is karma. I have this interpretation of the world that I planted in my alaya, and people helped me. Other people told me what good and bad is, too, and about me and other people. So I've been trained to good and bad thinking, to judgmental thinking. So what this is doing is kind of taking that whole cloth that's been woven of your ideations, which are basically...

[26:26]

The consequence of that is you kind of just not. Karma is kind of like this knot of all that stuff that you bought into, and you're still, in some sense, you're a believer in what your mind tells you. I know what I'm thinking. I know what that look on your face means. We say stuff like that. We think that. So we're moving into the disbelievers. I'm not buying it. I don't buy it. It's not so much that we're eliminating things. those negative reactions we have, we're actually welcoming them. Rev's been teaching that for quite a while. Welcome, welcome negative thoughts. Welcome rotten behavior. Welcome. But you're not trying to embody it or enact it. You're just aware of it. Whoa, look what I was just thinking. I got so irritated there. And there's so much to get irritated about right now. So And I'm going to own that. I'm going to own that.

[27:28]

And it will dispel as quickly as it came because it's transient. My feelings don't last. My ideas don't last. You know, I can kick them in again. I can get right back on that motorcycle and race around, you know, really upset. But I can also get off. So, you know, really they're emphasizing choice here. You have a choice. of how you're going to take what's being offered to you. Are you going to get mad back at it? Are you going to hate it back? Or are you going to say, is that one of the great teachings that we've heard over and over is, is that so? Is that so? You really insulted me. Is that so? Well, I hear you, and I'm terribly sorry that my actions were harmful to you. I don't know if they were. Maybe I knew. If I know, I'll say, yes, you're right. I really meant to hurt your feelings. I'll own it.

[28:29]

So it's like we're engaging with ourselves honestly, wholeheartedly, enthusiastically, like scientists. We just want to see it, and then we want to experiment. What would happen if I did this instead of that? How would that go? And this is a moral system. It's not just a like... Like, you know, because we talked about that. It's not just science. It's ethics. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else want to? Yeah, Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi, thank you and good evening, Fu. Good evening. I actually have two questions and I think that they're related and I'll try to be quite quick. One is about the text. What is unobstructed and unobstructed? And the second is about your discussion this evening. I think I heard that the concepts and our awareness of the concepts, the concepts are fed to us by Manas.

[29:36]

Yes. Is it always at root or can we also be receiving concepts from Aliyah? Or is it always mediated by manas? Well, I have a hunch. I'm kind of on shaky ground whenever I'm talking about this stuff, because I'm not a scholar. I'm mostly an amateur. If you read this book, you'll know as much as I do. Basically, my understanding is that Alaya does produce material for us, but not language. So you might have some kind of reaction. Some memory might pop up or something that's not like... Some smell, you know, like Proust in his cookie or whatever. There's something that just stimulates, but you don't have the language yet. The stories aren't being told as yet. There's more like direct experience. But I have a hunch that's probably through the senses. And I'd have to ask, I'll make an inquiry about that. That's an interesting question. Does a lie give us something? I know it gives us our blood pressure and it gives us our heartbeat and it regulates the body, which is an unconscious process.

[30:40]

So in some sense, yes, it does take care of us in a certain way. But I think the focus on manas has to do with being fooled by language, by thought, because that's the big deal, you know, what we think. And most of the teachings are about in language, right? Using language to understand the fault of language and how we misappropriate words. fascinating. There's a great book, I think I mentioned called Sapiens, all about the origins of human language, which is not that long ago, what 80,000 years ago or something when it became kind of complex and how we basically just jumped on that creation and, you know, there's a million new words going into the Oxford dictionary, I think this year or something, they're gonna add another million words of like, Will we ever run out of language of words to describe, you know, this thing that's right in front of our face?

[31:47]

It's fascinating what we humans have done. And it's kind of out of control. You know, none of us can figure out anything anymore. It's all, you know, it's way too complicated. So this is kind of, how can we dumb it down to the essential elements of our feelings? our thoughts, not what we're thinking, but that we are thinking, and our senses, and peaceful abiding, quieting ourselves before we go back into the complex language, which I think we all have to do in our jobs in the world. So was that the two things? Yeah? Oh, yeah, go ahead. You're muted again. Okay, there I go. Sorry, I was getting a message that I couldn't unmute myself. The last thing was obstructed versus unobstructed.

[32:49]

Oh, uh-huh. Yeah, I think like Elias described as unobstructed, just like a flow, like a river flowing. And language, manas is obstructed. And I think that maybe has to do with this job that language does in creating barriers and creating the distance between. It creates the self, right? That's an obstruction. That's the biggest one. Belief in self. And so I would say that's the primary obstruction of mamas. It's feeding us this story of our separation from the world. Okay. Terrific. Thank you so much. Sure. Yes. Kelly, Finn, or Bill? Hi, Boo. Hi, Finn. Yeah, I was thinking about that, yeah, that last question just about how it seems like, like I was wondering about the role of how like memory is so finite and so changeable.

[33:51]

And it seems like maybe that's just like our, like when we re-remember something, we're kind of like putting new words to it. in a way and I wonder if that's sort of like how that part of that process is because like we have things stored in our memory like when you get hit with that smell and it's like some abstract thing like there's a memory there but maybe the words have been kind of lost or gotten just miss but I remember something you saying about kind of like something I've sort of been trying recently based on something you said another time about sort of like recontextualizing a memory. Like when I'll have a memory that sort of has some unpleasantness to it, I'll kind of just like, like one was like some kid dance, like doing some dance that everyone was like really kind of embarrassed at watching this kid do this dance. And it was kind of just like a secondhand embarrassment.

[34:54]

So I just sort of re-remembered it like everyone was really enjoying the dance instead. It's a way of trying to kind of like heal that. But I remember you saying like something maybe along the lines of something like that, but I was wondering about that. Yeah. Well, that's a very fun exploration. I think it's called neuro-linguistic programming is the whole thing that... read a book about once. I tried some of it. You know, you basically take a memory, just pick one that comes to mind. And that maybe was unpleasant. And so I had one in mind that was really very unpleasant for me. I was on the Navajo reservation and with a friend, my friend's Chinese, and we went into a grocery store. And there were all these Navajo people there shopping, it was very quiet and they were, some of the ladies were in their beautiful clothing and I started to feel horrible. Like, I did this, you know, I'm the bad person that did this thing to native people.

[36:01]

I just started to feel like such a horrible, I was so, I just wanted out of there as fast as I could. So I went out to the car, I didn't even buy my groceries and my friend meanwhile, who's in there, comes out and she's glowing she said my people she's in there with with the Navajo and she's like oh yeah they went across the varying straits and all you know and I'm like whoa that is so interesting so I used that memory for myself and I used it as an example and I I remember putting my hands on the shopping cart and then I went forward toward the store and then I started walking backwards and then I turned the shopping cart pink And then I turned it yellow. And then I went in through the door. So I actually, now when I remember that, I have this pink shopping cart, you know. I actually have installed an additional kind of layer of, you know, kind of gentle layer over the top of that other thing, which is just a memory that wasn't any more accurate than the one I added, you know.

[37:06]

So you can get in there with yourself. And I think there's good guides for that. I had a wonderful therapist who did hypnotherapy. And there are people who can really help heal you by offering you other ways to remember something that was really just stuck in you. You know, you can't get it out of here. And there's these ways of doing it. I don't know if that's, I don't think it's cheating. I think it's really kind. I really appreciate it. And as a meditator, I feel like there's a lot of fluidity here, a lot of permission to rework, like these crafts people, to kind of rework some of your material so that you feel less burdened by it. So, you know, it's your mind. I always tell people, people say, oh, should I be doing this when I'm sitting? Should I be doing that? I say, it's your mind. I mean, what do you want to do? You know, try things. I've tried lots of things, you know, and it's all been very interesting. There's so many different meditation practices and, you know, you can just really learn so much by trying, trying things.

[38:18]

That's freedom right there. It's like, hey, go ahead. Don't worry about it. So, yeah, don't worry about it. I think that's ultimately the great goal. Just stop worrying about it, yeah. Let me say a little bit. Let's see, Tim. Tim. Please. I just wanted to ask a few. I did that last week. I said I would do research into the verses and the Theravada Nabi Dhamma for you. I got it. You got it. Good. I did. I did. And I thought that was a huge amount of information. I would love to spend time with it. Yeah. It's great. I don't know how many chapters there are, but I stopped at 400. And each one of those chapters has anywhere from 20 to 60 verses on it. So, yeah, I've got a lot of them.

[39:19]

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of stopped at reading that there were 400. I thought, oh, my gosh, that's going to take a while. But that's wonderful to have these resources. You know, as time goes on and you have more time to look in, that's what scholars do, right? They just spend hours. And that was a recent translation. It was translated in 2017. It's the only English translation of that Pali text. Wow. I'm finding out a lot myself, believe me. Yeah, good. Well, keep sharing. I really appreciate it. And if you have any specific questions, I'd be happy to try and explore them with you, too. Sure. I'm just still overwhelmed a little bit. Yeah. Well, that's the first step. Yeah, we all start there. Absolutely. Sure. So, let's see. What did I want to say to you? So, again, to emphasize, the yoga chara is about really appreciating we have choices.

[40:22]

There's volition. There is volition. It's one of these universal factors is volition. You get to decide that we have a choice in each moment to act in a way that's either moving towards wholesomeness, or towards negative behaviors, habits, old habits. And wholesomeness is the path. So that's what we want to find. We want to find the path. And the other important point is that we can't recondition Alaya. We can't go in there. That only way we can recondition Alaya is by doing things in our conscious room, above the line, those six consciousnesses that are above the line. We can behave there. And that is what reconditions a life. That plants new seeds. It's kind of like farming. You do something kind to someone else, for someone else. You're generous. You're thoughtful. You're not so reactive. It plants a new seed of patience or a new seed of generosity or of ethical deportment. You tell one less white lie.

[41:24]

One of the students told me something, and I just said, that's great. It's just this little white lie. And I thought, that's fantastic. You caught it. And we're all doing that all the time. They're telling these little stories that are like, well, it wasn't quite true. It was convenient. So we're trying to get out of convenience and more into just really authenticity. Like, here it is. Here I am. And of course, as my grandma used to say, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. So there's also that. Keep the... Keep the critical comments for privacy if you need to. And if anything's going to be public, then that should be something kind or generous. I think that's a good principle for those of us living in community. So again, Vasubandhu's using the reconditioning. He uses these images of seeds for the gardener, planting seeds. So those seeds will sprout in some future time as wholesome behavior, wholesome.

[42:27]

So just to refresh one more time, those five universals. So I think last time I talked about you hear something, it's like quack. You hear a quack. That's all you know. You just heard something. It's an auditory sound. One of your six is sound. So you heard sound. Your attention turns to the sound. So that's the second of these five universals. So there's the sensory experience. There's your attention turning toward the sensory experience. There's a sensation of whether you like that thing you heard or not. It's like, did you pull back or did you go forward? Or did you get frozen? I'm not sure. So there's the feeling about it. And then there's the perception when you start naming it. Now, Manas is starting to come into play. It's like, oh, I think that was a duck. You know, Manas has got all those language forms to pull on. And memories of other sounds that are kind of like that. That sounded like a duck. terms of my karmic inheritance, my conditioning.

[43:30]

And then I'm a bird watcher. So the next one is volition. So I'm going to grab my binoculars and go out and look at the duck because that's it. So that's the sequence. You have a sensation, don't know what it is. You turn your attention toward it. You have a feeling about it. You have a naming of it. You're getting in there, starting to name it. And then you have an action. You take an action. So again, this point of this teaching is to help us realize that what is occurring in any moment is just things happening. They're neutral. Just things. Maybe that's what it means by karmically neutral. It's just stuff happening. That's all. That stuff just happened. That's all. There is letting go of self-centeredness in the sense that... I'm going to do something about, I don't, I'm going to make that different, or I don't like that, or I'm going to change that. I'm going to object to that.

[44:31]

I'm going to do all this stuff and manipulate it and, and grab ahold of it. I'm going to own it. I'm going to, you know, I'm, I'm going to work it somehow. I'm going to reject it. I'm personally offended. So all that self clinging is the whole source of our suffering. You know, if, if that self. For a bodhisattva, that self has been eradicated. Bodhisattva doesn't have that self-centeredness anymore. Their impulse is, how can I help? How can I help you? Is there something I can get for you? Do you need something? It's all about turning the attention to the other. What would be useful right now? Is there some way that this, you know, the garden looks like it needs watering? Maybe I'll go get some water, you know? So the bodhisattva has taken this vow to live for the benefit of others, which is kind of a... It's not exactly a trick, but it's a way of turning the interest away from self-interest to caring for others. And, oh, I heard this rabbi give a beautiful lecture. He just passed away.

[45:31]

I forget his name. Lovely, lovely speaker, British rabbi. And he said, you know, his favorite verse in biblical verses is, you know, I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I fear no evil, for you're with me. For you are with me. You're with me. I'm not alone. You know, when he said that, it was like, oh, that's so sweet. You know, I had always heard that as thou God is with me. You know, it seemed very remote, like I hope so. But the idea that you're with me, that we are in community and doing this together, that was like foomp. I thought that was really a beautiful restating of that lovely psalm. You are with me, and therefore I fear no evil. This is kind of like the sangha, the community of like-minded, like-hearted people. So...

[46:34]

Alaya, one of the reasons Alaya, it says right here is karmically neutral is because it leaves room for growth and change. If it were karmically set, then it couldn't change. There would be no way to alter. You're just the way you are, and that's the way you are, and there's nothing can be done about it. There wouldn't be any hope. We just have to all be stuck, you know, but we're not. And we know we're not. And we've all changed a lot over the course of our lives. And again, as I said last week, this transformation ultimately, when a laya dissipates and manas dissipates, what's left is called the great mirror wisdom, the transformation at the base. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a book called The Transformation at the Base about this Yogacara teaching. So the storehouse is transformed into the great mirror wisdom, great mirror wisdom. You kind of feel that, how a mirror just reflects what... it comes into it. It's not deciding, oh, I like that one, I don't like that one.

[47:36]

It's just reflecting what it experiences. And that that reflection at its base is wisdom and compassion. How do you take action in response to what's coming here? How can I respond here with wisdom and compassion? So that's the Buddha's mind is the great mirror wisdom, infinite compassion, infinite compassion. universal wisdom. So verses five, six, and seven, the second transformation, the first transformation is elaya. So I'm kind of going back over these a little bit. Second transformation being manas, the consciousness of a self. So manas as the self-maker sees elaya as its lover, its self, and that sense of separation comes from there. and of alienation. And it's really important to not kind of pre-jettison Manas.

[48:39]

It's also very useful. So I said it's the thinker and it's also the deceitful thinker or the, what was the word? The kind of thinking, two kinds of thinking. Defiled thinking. So Manas has this just regular old thinking, which we need that. That's really important for us. And then it has defiled thinking. And that's the one we're wanting to get out of there. That's the toxins. The gunk in our clockwork. Defiled thinking. And Manas is associated with these four afflictions of self-love, ignorance, and so on. And it comes in contact with these universal factors. So it's plumbed in to our conscious awareness. It has these two kinds of thinking. The one that is wholesome or is okay or neutral is talking to the sixth sense consciousness, the one that we're conscious of. We hear that, oh, I got to go shopping. I'm running out of milk.

[49:40]

That's fine. That's mana helping us out there. And... It comes as a train of thoughts. So there's this, you know, what's called prapancha in the Buddha Dharma, the image of a pebble hitting the stream, a pond, or the poem, the haiku of old pond, very quiet. The mind, universal mind is very quiet and peaceful, silence and stillness. And a frog jumps in, kerplomp. That's the famous haiku by Basho. Old pond. Frog jumps in. Kerplop. So that's basically the workings of manas jumping into the calm abiding of the universal consciousness and making a noise. And then when the frog jumps in, it doesn't just go kerplop. Then there's ripples. And those ripples are called prapancha. It's a great name in Buddhism. Meaning one thought led to another. You didn't just stop at...

[50:41]

He kind of went to, oh, I wonder if that was a frog. I wonder what kind of frog that was. I wonder if that frog's going to come out of there again. So that's familiar. We all know about that, this propancha. And we're trying to kind of foreshorten that a little bit. Try to let go of some of that associative thinking. Just slow it down. Sometimes, like when you're meditating, see if you can keep from doing that, which is basically storytelling. We're starting to write novels. about our experience. And that's what the Buddha stopped doing. He stopped putting this and that together. He made them one moment of awareness where this did not lead to that. This and that were one-pointed concentration. Just this. And he stopped the train. He stopped the train of thought. And that was amazing. And then he just looked like a great mirror at the world.

[51:46]

And he was happy. So it says in the book, he was very happy, very joyful when he stopped that train of thought. And when he started it again, he used it to teach. He wasn't selfish anymore. He'd lost the self-centeredness. He'd overturned the alaya and the... So now he was just basically he was generosity. He was ethics. He was patience. He was the personification of these qualities. But it came from him stopping that separation of himself, his thoughts from the world. He stopped doing that just for a little bit. So So these thoughts that we're having are the relative, I don't know if you remember back to the Heart Sutra, but these are the relative truths. These are the truths that manas is feeding us conventional truth.

[52:53]

You know, the way we've taught, the common sense, commonsensical, the regular way we talk, just like I'm talking right now. This is just conventional speech. Nothing very special about it. Just talking, you know, talking, talking, talking. And the problem is, as we create these ripples, you know, our creativity, our storytelling, we get so fascinated by our stories that we kind of lose track of the mystery to which they are applying, you know, like the world or the universe or ourselves or whatever's happening is like, so this propancha, this constant noise and storytelling, is like the clouds that are covering the moon of bright awareness, of the mirror. So, you know, the more stuff that's going on in front of the mirror, the harder it is to see what's being reflected is actually quite fine.

[53:55]

It's just perfect the way it is, this world, the reality. You know, we're messing with it. We kind of made a mess here by our way we think. So, you know, this is a great mystery that we can't know. So that's the ultimate truth. What we can't know with our thinking is everything, is most of what's happening. What we know is like, you know, a little train, little train of thought. That's what we know. That's all we know. Everything else is the great mystery that we can't know with our thoughts. So Suzuki Rishi called that our small mind, that's a little train of thought, and our big mind. which is the universe itself. So it's unproduced. It's unconditioned. It's perfect freedom. And that's what we're not getting. And that's the thing that we're missing out on. We're not missing out on it. It's right there. It's just that we're so noisy. You know, they're going, huh? It's like, yeah, stop. Stop the drain.

[54:55]

Give it a rest. Just stop. So there really is no attachment. There really is no karma. But we think there is. We think things cause things. We think that one thing leads to another. Prapansha. That caused that. That's my story. I tell stories about cause and effect. Buddha told stories about cause and effect to help free us from cause and effect. That's why he was doing that. Cessation of suffering. You know, he taught the cessation of suffering. And he taught how suffering works. And this is it. This is the story of how we suffer. So, you know, there is no attachment. There is no karma. It's just that we believe in it. It's our religion. And that's what causes us pain. So Buddha's activity is not to switch from being too busy to being not busy. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm stopping. I'm not going to think anymore. That's not going to work.

[55:58]

It's not going to work, for one thing. But Buddha's teaching is... Rather than to not be busy or not be anxious or not be frightened, it's to not abide in being anxious or frightened. To not live in it. To not feed it. To not give it a, you know, a new sweater. To not make it something that you identify with. It's basically saying, I hear you. I see you. Great mirror. I see it. I see that busyness that's going on. That's amazing, you know. But I'm not going to buy it. I'm not going to make it mine. This is not mine. I can move fast without being busy. We all can. And it's just what is it that's causing us to label and to judge what's happening in harmful ways, mostly to ourselves. So... So what this mind-only teaching is helping to help us to see is that phenomena, things that we experience, really are just our minds.

[57:06]

It's just our minds. And this is the Yogacara approach to liberation, to convince us that that's just your mind ticking. As Dogen says, karmic consciousness is words and phrases which can be used to liberate karmic consciousness. So Dogen used a lot of words, a lot of phrases, so did the Buddha, to help us to free us from words and phrases, from being unliberated by how we think. So they were very kind. So right here in this teaching is this need for the middle way between the extremes of, well, busy, for example, and not busy, for the other example. Well, those are two sides of a seesaw. Busy, not busy. Middle way is between the two. Busy, not busy. It's balanced. It's like I'm not giving up busy because I got to be busy sometimes. I got things to do. And I'm not just going to fall into not busy because that's not even possible.

[58:10]

So how am I going to do this dance of balancing between these two expressions of my human life? And there are all kinds of things like that. This is non-dual. Middle way is the non-dual relationship to these dualistic appearances, self and other. What's the dance between self and other? How do you do that dance so that you're not splitting yourselves from each other? That's the trick. Middle way doesn't eliminate either one, but just holds them in balance. Just right. Just right. Just right. Upright. And the Eightfold Path includes cessation, cessation of suffering, of letting go of this self, which does take place in these deep states of meditation. And it also includes seeing the imaginary self. So it's not just you get to see what it looks like without it. You also get to take a good look at it.

[59:12]

Like, what is that self that I'm being? I'm acting, enacting. How am I enacting this belief in a self? And the way you watch for it is in your ethical behavior, your deportment. The mirror of being seen by others helps you define how is this fantasy, this fantasy self appearing in the world? How am I doing? Please help me with my blind spots. So we do a very careful analysis of our behavior. And, you know, of our deportment. And that's the Eightfold Path. Right view. Do you understand the balance, the middle way? What's your intention? How do you want to live? Bodhisattva vow is a pretty good one. I want to live for the benefit of others. Okay, that's good. That'll work. And then there's speech, conduct, livelihood. How you enact your wish, your intention by how you live. You know, Eightfold Path is a way of life. How you speak. how you talk to your friends, how you conduct yourself.

[60:14]

And then there's mindfulness and meditation. So you spend some time contemplating these things. It's part of our thing, making an effort to be mindful and to be concentrated. So this imagined self can be a very useful tool to create a healthy sense. of ourselves and the world that leads up to a time when we don't need it anymore. It just drops away like a booster rocket. You need all that energy to get out of gravity. But once you're out of gravity, it's like, whew. Okay, now you get to ride around and around, taking care, taking care of this beautiful world as you go around it. First half of the 30 verses is taking care of our work of transforming the self. And the second half is the realizing that there is no self that allows for blessed rest, nirvana, the letting go of that booster rocket.

[61:20]

First, you got to get it really energized and working hard and polished up and safe to ride. You know, make sure it works. You don't want to just shoot yourself off there without a real sense of like the craft of it, you know. The craft of this practice is really important. This soto zen is the attention to fine detail. That's the name of our school. Mamitsu no kafu. Paying attention to the fine detail of how you're doing your life. And then at some point, it's just details. You're just doing details. So in the Lotus Sutra, it says the first step of our practice is to empty out, get the gunk out. You know, get rid of that stuff. You don't want it anyway. It's been just smelling up your attic for a long time. And you get that stuff out. The clashes, the afflictions, the defilements, greed, hate, and delusion, pride, skeptical doubt, wrong view. Just kind of work on getting those out of there. You know, you have to see them for what they are.

[62:22]

And they go, no, I don't think so. I don't think you're in my, I don't want you in my house anymore. You know, I don't need that. I don't need that stuff. And then we fill up again. So the Lotus Sutra is empty and then fill. So you empty out the stuff, and then you fill up with generosity, the paramitas, the precepts, kind speech, all of that, patience, effort, concentration, wisdom. So that's how it works. It's all going in the alaya, cleaning out the alaya, and then you fill it back up again with great intentions. So I'm going to end here. And then next week, I'm going to focus a little bit more on the sixth sense consciousnesses. And then we'll go from there into the second half of the 30 verses, which is this exciting part, which is back to the emptiness teachings. So Vasubhanda is setting us all up here with this clockwork. And now we're going to turn the clock around and start looking at time itself, you know.

[63:26]

on these concepts like time and person and so on, like how the clockwork creates these illusions. And then there's a wonderful three-part understanding. And this is the most exciting part of these next 15 verses of the Yogacara and why I really am happy to be looking at this again, because the three characteristics of all phenomena, everything, has three characteristics. And that's what he's starting to do in the second half. And I'm not going to tell you what they are now because I want to tell you next week. This is the kind of the frosting on the pudding. So any other questions before we end? Get the gallery shot. Hi, Patrick. Do you want to unmute? Hi, Fu.

[64:26]

It's actually Lee, Patrick's wife. Hi, Lee. I saw you earlier on Reb's lecture. Oh, right. Yeah, I got two today. It's a small town, isn't it? Two reaches today. Thank you so much for... Patrick and I are trying... I'm attempting to follow along with his study of the Yogacara. And so I just wanted to clarify about the thing that causes you to feel that you're separate. And isolated. What was that piece again? Can you say that quickly? That's the lover. Manas. That one is the one that mistakes the alaya, the unconscious for a self. The alaya creates a sense of a self. And then that little sense of a self turns back and falls in love with its creator. Very common, you know. We fall in love with our parents. We fall in love with people. Some people fall in love with God, our creator. So there's this whole idea of of falling in love with something that made us. So that's that part that has a heart.

[65:28]

It's called the manas, or the self-maker. And the self-maker makes a self, and everything else is other. And that's the feeling of isolation and utter aloneness. Yeah, I alone. I'm here. I exist, and the rest of you are outside of me. And that's how we see it. I mean, there's not a fault. It's just the way we're born. And it's a trick of the mind. So the Buddha basically woke up from that trick. He said, whoa, wait a minute. This is a trick. It's actually not like that. I don't have to see it that way. I can see it in different ways. I can try on different glasses. And he did. And... So, yeah, so that's that. I will have Jenny next week give you that little map with the eight consciousnesses and also the verses, if you don't have those already.

[66:33]

We've got Ben's book. Oh, great. Perfect. Okay. Good. Thank you so much for your teaching. You're welcome. You're welcome. Anybody else like to, you all good? Good. We have a saying at Zen Center that silence is a scent. That's really good in meetings. If you don't say anything, that means you're in favor of it. So that gets all the hands up in the air. All right. Well, you all take care. Have a lovely evening. And I hope I'll see some of you next week. If you'd like to unmute and say good night, please feel free to do that. Thank you, Fu, for the teaching. Thank you. Very helpful. Thank you very much. Good night. Good night. Thanks, Fu.

[67:34]

Thank you and good night. Good night. Take care, everyone. Thank you, Fu. Bye. Good night. Thank you. Say good night, Mama. Say good night. Stay well. Yeah, you too. You too. So far, so good. Yes. Yeah. Boy, something, huh? Yeah. Wow. Next few weeks. I know. We've got everyone locked down again. I know everyone's locked down, I guess, too. You guys at Back East locked down, Lisa? Yeah. Well, not so much. Massachusetts is lower than most places. Oh, well done. Yeah. Heading up. We'll see. We're off the charts. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well, the vaccine is coming. Yeah. Well, my husband's works in a hospital and they got notification today, you know, telling them to read their email every day so that they know.

[68:45]

Wow. So it's real. It will. That's great. Yeah. It will be there eventually. Good. As members of the elder class, I think we'll get ours somewhere. I think I'll be elder by the time I, you know, it comes. By the time the lines. Yeah. So I have a crazy question that came up when I was meditating. Yes. And I was thinking about the map. And I said, and I said the model. And I said, but what's the paper? Oh. You're a clever woman. You know, what's the pain? You know, what is this all sitting on? And I wasn't sure if it was a totally off-the-wall crazy question. Well, the whole thing's crazy, don't you think? I mean, it's like wacko. It is not crazy as in negative crazy. No, no, no. Crazy wisdom. Yeah, it's crazy as in you really can't get it.

[69:48]

That's right. You can't get it here. I told you the story about the Navajo, right? The little girl who's asking the old woman to tell her about the universe. The old woman says it's being carried by a turtle. Yeah, turtles all the way down. Turtles all the way down. I think that's the paper. It's a paper all the way down. What's holding the paper? Well, there's another one where the teacher said, my student asked about the first cause. What caused this? And the teacher said, I wrote that question on a biscuit and tried to feed it to my pig and my pig wouldn't eat it. Well, I think what really brought me to thinking about Zen was the idea was the time is not what you think it is in ordinary thinking. Yeah. And so there's no first cause. Right.

[70:50]

Right. There's no first cause. And this is the result of all that's ever been, is right now. But that implies time. Oh, just presence. Just presence. Maybe so, but it's also just like, well, if there's anything we can say is like, well, this is it. How to get here? Kind of. kind of complicated. And that's where language is failing. Language fails, but it is making a good effort. There's astrophysicists and everything. My eyes get wider and wider every time there's a new nebula. Yeah. And that bulge is a black hole. It's just great. There's pictures of it. It's like, whoa. That does tell you that It's an image and an illusion.

[71:52]

Yeah, but... You're making it up from the equations. Yeah, but it's a very wonderful illusion. You know, that's the thing. It's all an illusion. But how lucky to have color. Oh, you ever see those pictures of the... There's some YouTube things of these colorblind... They were fathers in both cases where their children bought them these glasses that they could put on. Do you see those YouTubes? Were they... They gave him a gift of these glasses so they saw color for the first time in their life. And they just started to cry. They were like, he was going, no, no. And it's like, oh, my God. And he could see, you know, these colors. It's so touching. It's just absolutely amazing. I wonder how long before they kind of get used to it, you know? Yeah. And the glasses break and you're really unhappy. Yeah, like the rest of us, yeah. Well, be well. Good night. Good night, Emma. Good to see you guys.

[72:55]

See you next week. Yeah, yeah, great. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

[73:01]

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