Good evening. Welcome. So we're in our last day of Sashin. This evening we'll sit two periods. And then tomorrow morning, we'll have another two periods in the morning. And then we're going to do our yearly Buddhist enlightenment ceremony, which we just rehearsed for. Hopefully, we heard there's going to be these big winds somehow coming in tonight, although this is pretty quiet right now. So we don't know if we'll be outside or not, but that's our plan is to be outside and hit the big bell and circumambulate the bell, chanting Om Amid Shakyamuni Buddha. It's quite a sweet ceremony. We have baskets full of flowers and herbs, and some of the students throw them around as we're making this circumambulation together. So... It's a traditional way to end the rohatsu sishin, the sishin that ends, that is commemorative of the sishin in which the Buddha became enlightened the morning of the seventh day.

[01:10]

So I had a very exciting discovery last week about a film that was made in 2016 in China, it's a Chinese film, on location, the most beautiful film journey through the Silk Road, which was a Buddhist empire for many centuries. A lot of the travelers were traveling through these Buddhist monastic temples there and caves and many, many monks living and huge statues like the Mahima Buddhas, those large ones that were shot by the, you know, blown up by the Taliban. for some reason. Anyway, they did this film about this pilgrim whose name is, I'm not sure how to pronounce it, but it's Xuanzang. Xuanzang was a 7th century Chinese monk whom some of you may have heard of. He's quite extraordinary. He traveled on foot. He escaped from China.

[02:13]

You weren't supposed to leave China at that time. You weren't allowed to leave China if you were Chinese. So he basically snuck out into the desert and took him four years. He had this dream that he needed to go to India, to the source of the Buddhist teaching, and bring back sutras because he felt like what was available in China was really limited. So he headed out. He had this dream. And four years later, he arrived in Nalanda University, which was the great Buddhist university of northern India. And he studied there for another multiple years, maybe five or 10 years, and learned the language and studied the sutras and became quite an adept and copied many of them, collected many of them. And then he'd become quite famous during the time he was in India. I was a Chinese monk arrived through the desert. It took him four years to get there. They sent him back with lots of company. They had a whole entourage to take him home, back to China.

[03:16]

And so this film is absolutely beautiful. I just finished watching it last week. And it's called Suansang. And I also have a book, which I've been wanting to read for years, which is about this pilgrimage. You can see this is what he was wearing in the film, too, is this kind of wooden... bamboo backpack that has all of his his possessions his his medicine bowl and his his eating bowl and he's wearing traveling clothes monastic traveling clothes he has his whisk and this is what what he's wearing in the film this is the kind of outfit that the traveling monks wore this book too which i'm really looking forward to reading having now watched the film is basically retelling of this trip and all of the travails that he goes through. Now, what really piqued my interest is when I heard that what he was going after were these Yogacara texts. So I thought, oh, this is so exciting.

[04:19]

Here we are looking at the mind only teachings. And that's exactly why he went to India was to get these texts and to become one of the great students of the mind only. So he did a lot of translations when he came back. He had a large translation team and he had a lot of these texts that he collected, translated into Chinese and then to us. You know, now they're in English. So kind of amazing. And the devotion and the deep wish to bring the Dharma to others. And now we just turn on our computers and it's right there. But, you know, the idea that that kind of heart... for sharing these teachings and bringing them to others is a wonderful part of our history. So I wanted to continue. Oh, so I wanted to just mention these books. There's this one, which is The Silk Road Journey with Xuansang by a woman who actually did a great deal of the same traveler herself. Her name is Sally Hovey-Riggins, W-R-I-G-G-I-N-S.

[05:21]

And so that's one book, which might be enough. And then this film, which is absolutely gorgeous. beautifully beautifully shot every scene is kind of stunning so i highly recommend that and it's simply his name x u a n z a n g and it's on amazon prime if you have access to that um and then there's another big book but i'm not going to even mention that called journey the West, which is his record of his own diary, but apparently it's four volumes and maybe it's not the easiest read. So, the film might even do it for you. It's beautiful. I can't recommend it enough. So, back to the 30 verses, which we've been looking at or starting to look at. I think we've gotten through the first three, and I'm going to move on to number four today. But I wanted to keep kind of weaving them back so we don't kind of lose track of where we've been. So this is a journey of its own, trying to get through these 30 verses and still remember where we started in the first place, where have we been and where are we now?

[06:30]

So the first 16 of the 30 verses are basically Vasubandhu's description of how the consciousness functions, how this thing... what we call our consciousness or our awareness, how does it work? You know, what's the clockwork of our experience of reality? How do we experience the world? What's going on here? So, of course, we've named the senses. That's a big part of it, our sense organs. We've named the mind, and the mind has these different parts. One of them is the awareness of our senses, what happens when we have a sensory experience, and then we name it. We give it a name. Oh, that's a bird. That's a dog. That's the smell of the rose and so on. So we use all of our senses and then we convert those experiences into language. So that's part of the study. And then we end up with this map of the territory. So I've shown you this map a couple of times and I've got it with me again. So there's two parts.

[07:31]

There's that Vasubanda expresses in the map of the mind. There's a dividing line. here between what we're conscious of and what is unconscious, the unconscious part of the mind. And what the first verse of the 30 verses says that everything, everything conceived of as self and of other objects occurs in this transformation of consciousness. So that's the first principle of the mind only. This is what's happening. It's the transformation of our minds. So this is a mind only school. Right. So the first verses are basically describing this map. These first first 15 or 16 of the 30 are telling us all about this map in some detail so we can begin to explore. Does this make sense? Is this am I recognizing how that's so for the map of the territory? This is the territory and this is the map.

[08:33]

So I had to try to put these two together in order to have an experiential knowing of what this is trying to teach me. So this is the theoretical side, and then the experiential side is me taking in this map and then seeing if I can recognize. What about hearing? What is that hearing like? What is smelling? What is the sense of looking? This is very much what meditators do. We spend a lot of time exploring our senses. Particularly, I was telling you, we've been sitting in Sashin, so particularly in Sashin, a lot of the folks who haven't sat this long before are saying things like, I never saw such a beautiful flower before. You know, like their senses are beginning to really become quite alert. They've tampered down that thinking, discursive thinking. By sitting for a while, they start to calm down, drop away some of that short-term involvement with all this and that and this and that. And in calming their minds, they're beginning to be able to discern what they're actually experiencing, which is pretty much the point of it, right?

[09:39]

Like what is actually happening? Right now, what is going on right now? So, you know, we dial down all the all of the busyness and then we dial up sensory awareness. So that's that's what our session is really helping all of us to do. So so if the first half is about understanding the mechanism, the clockwork of of the mind, how it works and how the thinking works, the second half of the 30 verses is to help us understand what the essence or the nature of reality is. So, okay, now you know how it works. Well, what is it that you're seeing? What is a thing? What is a self? What are these? What is the nature of our experience? So then you're coming in the realm of understanding what you're seeing and how things work. So the first part is experiencing it. And the second one is like, well, what is it? And then he's talking about that, explaining that. And so in Dogen's words... This becomes the synthesis between our practice, our experiential life, and our understanding, our realization.

[10:44]

Oh, I get it. So I practice with this map, and then at some point, I get it. The map isn't needed because you now understand it as a lived experience. So this is very much about experiential learning, this Yogacara teaching. So just to repeat the three first short verses, everything, number one, everything conceived as self or other occurs in the transformation of consciousness, the map of these eight parts of our consciousness. Number two, this transformation has three aspects. Okay, we've talked about that. The ripening of karma is one aspect. That's unconscious, the ripening of karma. This is the... area where the right meaning of karma takes place the alaya the storehouse consciousness the consciousness of a self the lover the manas that's number two and number three is the imagery of sense objects or how we experience the world and that this is the unconscious and this is the conscious so this is the imagery of the sense objects smell taste sound sight touch

[12:00]

And language or awareness of the meaning or the language, the names of things. That's this one, number six. Okay. So this is conscious and this is unconscious. And that's all. That's all of them. That's all eight right there. So then he begins talking about with verse three, this first aspect of the transformation of consciousness. So everything is transformation of consciousness. It has three aspects. The first aspect is the alaya, called the ripening of our karma. Karma is our actions. How our actions lead to either positive outcomes or negative outcomes. That's why this even matters. How's it going? How's your life turning out for you? You know, mas o menos, pretty good. Sometimes great, sometimes not so great. But to understand how to basically get on board with what is happening and how we are... contributing to the outcomes is why we're engaging in these practices.

[13:01]

I'd like things to go a little smoother. So this is about how to get a little bit of a smoother ride out of this life, hopefully. So the first aspect of the transformation of consciousness is the alaya, the ripening of our karma. So that's verse number three. The alaya is called the storehouse. It's the storehouse of all of our past actions. Everything we've ever been trained or learned or all of our conditioning is all in this bag of unconscious. And we don't know where it is. It contains all these karmic seeds. What it holds and its perception of location are unknown. We don't know where it is. It's unconscious. That's verse 3. Now we're on to verse 4. Still talking about Aliyah. associated with five things. Sense contact, and I'm going to go through these. Sense contact, attention, sensation, perception, and volition.

[14:05]

So the alaya is neither pleasant or unpleasant. It doesn't have a kind of like a stake in the game. It's just a thing. It's just a bag full of stuff. It's not happy. It's not unhappy. It's just neutral. And it's unobstructed, karmically neutral. It's just there moving through with all your stuff. It's like your storage unit. And you're paying your dues for your storage unit. It's like a river flowing, comes along with you wherever you go. There you are. It's the basis of your life. It's what supports everything that happens. Even though we don't know where it is, it's the support for our life. Like a river flowing in enlightenment, it is overturned at its root. So this is the moment when you no longer are submitting to karmic conditioning. You're free. You're not falling for it. All of these little offerings that are being made from the unconscious are just kind of passing through. They're not catching.

[15:09]

There's no hooks. The hooks are off. So that's when the root, the alaya, has been dissipated. And that's true freedom. This is this theory of awakening. or enlightenment. So in this first line of verse, we're on verse four, in the first lines of verse four, we need to take a really brief look back at the five skandhas. So we have these five other things I just named, which are in this verse. And they are closely linked to the five skandhas, which you know from, if you were part of the listening to the Heart Sutra study, you know from the first verse of the Heart Sutra that we looked at, Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, while practicing deeply wisdom, beyond wisdom, clearly saw that all five skandhas, all five aggregates are empty and thus relieved all suffering. So in the emptiness teachings, in the Heart Sutra, these five skandhas are key to freedom.

[16:10]

When you see that they're empty of inherent existence, of separate existence, they don't have their own separate life. And neither do you. You're not separate. This is the big insight the Buddha had. Non-separation, non-duality. So when you realize non-duality of the five aggregates, you're free. You're connected. You belong. You're in. Never alone again. You're part of it. Everything is you. You're everything. And there's great joy that comes from that, knowing that you actually are already there. So the Buddha said, you're already there. Nothing to get. So I wanted to pull up a little side-by-side of these two things and just not get too caught up in the differences, but just to give you a sense of what's going on. Why is he doing this to us? What's going on here? So I'm going to share my screen. And you'll see my notes. I hope you don't mind. Here we go. Okay.

[17:14]

All right. So the five skandhas, the five aggregates form, on the left, under the Heart Sutra, are form, feeling, perception, impulse, consciousness. When we chant the Heart Sutra, we chant those. Form, feeling, perception, impulse, consciousness. And if you recall, my... My way of illustrating those is this little boat on the water of consciousness. So consciousness is the ocean of awareness. The boat, this is a boat, is form, the body. That's my body. That's the body floating along on the ocean of consciousness. And in the boat are these three passengers. Feelings, perceptions, and impulses. And they drive... The things that I do are based on how I feel, what I think I see, and what my impulses to take actions are all day long. I see something. I give it a name. That's my friend. I like my friend, and I go toward my friend, and that's how this boat works.

[18:19]

I see something I don't like, a barking dog. I don't like barking dogs. I turn the other way. That's how the boat works. I like it. I don't like it. I'm not sure yet. So that's it. It's pretty simple. We're not that complicated, really. We're basically driven by feelings. So in the Heart Sutra, these are basically illustrated. And this teaching comes from an early sermon the Buddha gave called the not-self characteristic. So he's saying there is no self. There's no singularity called a me, which is the big mistake we make. That's the isolated one. I, I'm all alone. I'm home by myself. I mean, that's true too, but because of the COVID and all, I'm not minimizing the reality of that. I'm just saying that's how we think all the time, that we're isolated. We're alone. We have to take care of ourselves. We have to protect ourselves. Our politics right now are all about self. You take care of yourself or we should take care of you.

[19:20]

No, don't take care of other people. And it's just this constant kind of fight about who takes care of who, but it's all about selfishness, self-centeredness. In the Heart Sutra, we're being basically torn away from that singularity by dividing what the self is into these five parts. You're not a singularity. You have these five moving parts, and they're always moving, always changing. There is no permanent static entity. And you have to prove that by studying that, because otherwise you just keep falling back into it, the I, the me. And that's our primary illness is self-centeredness. So Heart Sutra does its job by no, no, no, no form, no feeling, no perception, no impulses, no consciousness. Okay. Now 30 verses is doing a different kind of job on us or for us. The job that they're doing here is helping us to, first of all, experience this self. It's a kind of tender, it's a tender approach before you get rid of it.

[20:23]

Before you realize it has no inherent existence and therefore you're kind of, you know, in a stupor of emptiness. And now what? It's really a kindness to help us to walk through what is going on right now. What are the experiences I'm having? How do I experience the world? So the 30 verses has changed some of these for very specific reasons. So let me see what I have some few notes to use here on to help understand this a little bit, explain it. All right, let me get that on top and then underneath. All right, here we go. So you could say that basically the purpose of the breaking up... of the singularity of the self into parts is this Zen saying that when I first entered into practice, mountains were mountains, just things are what they look like, just like they seem.

[21:24]

I'm here, you're there, I'm separate from you, that mountain's over there. But when I start to study, when I start to meditate, like I was saying these young folks are doing now, things start to change. They're not assuming. that they know as much as they were. And they're kind of breaking up some of that set views that they've had. They're going like, whoa, wait a minute. It's not quite that simple. My ideas are not quite holding in the way they have been. So that's part of the purpose of it. So in Zen, you say mountains are mountains. And then after a while, I practiced and mountains aren't mountains anymore. I'm not quite sure what I'm seeing. It's much more of a mystery, this world, this reality. You know, what am I looking at? I'm not quite sure. I don't want to just jump on it. I want to study it. I want to think about it. I want to listen to these teachings, which give you a very alternate view of what's going on here. So mountains are no longer mountains again. And in this way that the Yogacharya teaching is working with these five categories.

[22:37]

Sense contact. And the reason they're doing that is to, again, this is about your having an experience. So if I say form is emptiness and I name a form like my chair, I have a green chair over here. Form is emptiness. I can still think that's external to me. That thing that's empty is outside of myself. It's a common mistake. You can do it because you're still languaging my chair. My chair is over there. Sense contact is a really different thing. Sense contact means that there's a moment where I have an experience of something hitting me in the ear. It's a sound. I have an experience of a sound. That's a sense contact. Or I have a smell of baked apples. That's a sense contact. Or a taste of something. You know, tamale. Sense contact. So the actual experience of coming into contact with your senses.

[23:37]

is the term they're using here. And so it's non-conceptual. There's no idea yet. You haven't named it. You're just like, wow, that's curious. What is that? So the first of the five categories that they're using to help us study our experience is the first thing that happens is you have a very basic sense context. So let's use an example of a sound. In fact, I'm hearing one right now. And I think there's a sound. It's like a sound. I have a fear. I know what it is. But I'm not sure. I haven't gone under the house in a while with a flashlight. But I'm pretty sure I know who's down there. And I think it's a rat. So I hear my little rat down there chewing away, probably on the house. And so I have this sense contact. I have this sound. And then my attention, my consciousness. So the next one that engages is down here on the list.

[24:38]

My attention is turned toward that sound. It's still not a name. I don't have a name for it yet. So I have a sound. My attention turns toward it. Okay, that's number two. My consciousness. So my mind is aware of some particular sensory moment happening in the present. And then I have a sensation. Okay. which is the same as the other ones. This one hasn't changed. They're saying, okay, I have a negative response to that sound. You know, I just can't help it. I do not like the sound that I'm hearing over here on my left. Okay, so that's my feeling. My perception, now I'm ascribing labels. My perception means I'm going to give it a name. I think what I hear, is a rat chewing. Okay, now I've really built up a story. I'm in it. I heard something. I turned my attention to it. I had a feeling about it, bad feeling, and I think it's a rat.

[25:42]

That increases the bad feeling, you know, because I don't want to hurt it, but I wish it would go away. It's kind of like that, and that's why it's been here for years. I don't want to hurt it. So, and then the last one is volition. I want to do something about it, but I'm not sure what to do. Because that rat has a lot of friends. In fact, they lived here for a long time before we got here. They're all over the hills. They're all over the Marin County. So it's really hopeless to think I can really do something about it that would work other than briefly. But I might try. I might get a have a heart. I might do something like that. I don't know. Or I might just get used to it. That's kind of what I do. Just get used to it. So this is how we do. This is the experiential way that we live is through these five things. I hear it or I taste it or I touch it. My attention goes to it. I like it or I don't like it.

[26:44]

I give it a name and then I act. So this is breaking it down into how it is for us, how we do. All right. So we don't have to look at that anymore. So I don't need to say more about that. I think that's plenty. In fact, if you have Ben's book, he does a very nice job of explaining all of this, Ben Connolly's book on the 30 verses. So one of the important points to make about the difference between the five skandhas and the way that these elements are described in Yogacara is that This idea of volition is really key to the mind-only teaching because it really emphasizes that we have a choice to make. I have a choice to make about what I'm going to do. And volition, it means it's a choiceful action. It's intended action. I'm going to do it, and I mean to do it.

[27:46]

I'm conscious of it. I want to take an action, and it's based on how I feel. It's also based on my vows. how have I aligned my life with my values? And if my value is not killing, then I've got a problem in dealing with the rat. That's going to not be so simple. So we have these ethical issues that we're going to have to think about. So we have this choice in the moment, in each moment, to act in a positive way or a negative way in terms of our karma. So again, we're talking about That bag of karmic seeds, I get this thing. I have a history of knowing what a rat is and what they look like. And I've had them in my house before. I've lived in the country many for most of my life. So I know what happens when you get rats in the house. So far that hasn't happened. So you don't want that. Don't want a rat in the house. So I have this karmic history with this experience. And I have a choice that I can make based on what I know.

[28:47]

And by not doing something harmful, that kind of sets me up to not do something harmful in the future as well. Because I'm conditioning myself to not be a killer. I mean, that's kind of one of the things I'd like to not be is, you know, wanton killer of living beings. So I try not to do that if I can possibly help it. So, you know, we're basically sorting out through these various choices we have, what's wholesome, what's unwholesome, and what's the path. to a wholesome life? How do we navigate a path of wholesomeness in this life? So we do have a choice. We don't have a choice about Aliyah. We can't do anything about our conditioning itself. We can't get down in there and change our conditioning. We can't directly know the past influences on us, you know, what our triggers are. Some of them are surprises. I didn't know that would bother me.

[29:48]

That smell, that reminds me of something when I was really little, you know. So there are these triggers that we don't really know where they're coming from. So we can't change that part. What we can change is what we're conscious of, what actually comes up that we can work with. So we can't change alaya, but we can reseed alaya. We can send some different kinds of seedings down in there that will sprout later on. with a different kind of response. One may be more to our wish of how we'd like to be. Okay. So just a real quick recap of what I just said. I think it's helps me to go over it a few times. So I'm just going to do that again. So we have sense contact. This is a non-conceptual, non-conceptual. There's no idea. There's no thought moment of sensory awareness. So I'll change the example from a rat. I'll say, I hear a sound. It's like, I hear a quack. I hear a quack. Okay. I don't know what it is, but my attention turns toward it.

[30:51]

So attention is the mind becoming aware and turning toward the sound. I have a sensation. Sensations are very basic. They're generally unconscious, sense positive of either positive, negative, or neutral. Just one of those three. I kind of like that quack. I kind of want to go find out what that quack, where that quacks coming from. And then I have a perception. of labeling, I'm not going to label it. It is a duck. It's a duck. It's a duck. And, you know, now either I'm a hunter or I'm a birder. If I'm a birder, my action is to get my binoculars. If I'm a hunter, my action might be to get my weapons. So that's where this pivot happens. It's like your action is really based on your conditioning. What are you doing out there in the woods? Are you looking at birds with your binoculars? You know, it's kind of fun. I've done that a few times. It's wonderful. So that's the sequence, okay, in the simplest way. And again, the point of this teaching is to help us to realize that whatever's occurring in any moment is just things happening.

[31:59]

That's all. It's just things happening. Neutral. Things are happening. And allowing our self-centered... Our self-centered tendency to try to grab a hold of things, control things, to take them home with us, to take them personally, to manipulate them, to possess them or reject them. So if we de-center, if we get this thing distracted by... checking out the process of how the mind works, which is a really great fun, you begin to meditate on the processes of your life. It's so fascinating. I promise you it is. It's very fascinating. You kind of lose track of like, but I want to do this. I want to do that. That sort of whining that we do begins to kind of quiet down because we're engaged. We're engaged in life and how it works. And, oh, wow, look how this thing works. How interesting. You kind of become the car and how it works.

[33:02]

And you get to be the engine and you get to be the steering wheel and you get to go fast on the freeway. That's you. That's you embodied and curious and so on. So Alaya is karmically neutral. It's simply a place where karmic processes take place. That's all. Which leaves lots of room for change and growth. There's lots of space for things to happen there. We're not stuck. with our old habits. It feels that way because we keep doing them. It feels like I always do that. I always do that. And so this is an opportunity to stop thinking that way for one thing. That's also a habit. I always do that is another habit. So we want to look at those habits of mind, habits of body, and recognize, actually believe that we can do something else. That every moment is a new opportunity to be creative or to be playful or to be curious. You know, you can do something else. You know, it's never too late. So a lie is like a river and all of its seeds are like a torrential flow.

[34:10]

In enlightenment, it is overturned at its root. Okay. So this last line of this verse, we're told that we can let go of our karma and finally come to rest. It's called nirvana, utter contentment. When a lie is overturned, It's also called transformation at the base. A lie is the base. A lie is the support for our life, for our bodies, for our minds. So when that dissipates, there's a whole other experience that has more like kind of a uncontractedness to it, has an expansive spaciousness to it. The storehouse, when the storehouse is transformed, what appears in its stead is called the great mirror wisdom. The great mirror wisdom. That's how the Buddha sees the world. There's this vast mind, just really open, mind like the sky, this vast mind, unobstructed by afflictive emotions, you know, wanting, not wanting, delusions.

[35:16]

I don't think anyone likes me. Whatever that kind of delusions and fog that come in on us from our languaging and our presumptions and our history, conditioning all of that is shut off so you have this mirror-like wisdom that's the transformation of the storehouse consciousness is to mirror like wisdom universal wisdom and infinite compassion that's another name for the buddha wise and kind you know so i mean that's our that's kind of our aspiration i mean i know that This is sort of the pinup we have on our altar here. We've got a number of them all around Green Gulch. We have pinups of the Buddha and Kuan Yin and so on and so forth. So when you walk by them, you go, yeah, that would be nice. That would be really nice, you know. It's a wonderful aspiration to universal wisdom and infinite compassion. So, all right, that's verse 4. So I'm going to go on a little bit longer.

[36:21]

It's 536. I think I want to get into verses 5, 6, and 7. So we've done the first transformation. So there's three aspects of our transformation of consciousness. The first is the alaya, and we just read those verses. The next three verses are the second transformation of consciousness, which is the lover, manas. So we just did this one, the bag of tricks. And now we're turning our attention to this one. The lover. The lover is a product of the bag of tricks and has fallen back in love with its maker. So it's narcissistic, really. The lover loves itself and makes a self. This is the self-maker. The one that makes us into separate and self-protective and so on. So now these verses are about Manas. She's called or he's called Manas. Manas. So this is verse number four.

[37:23]

Dependent on the storehouse consciousness, so dependent on the storehouse consciousness, and taking it as its object, looking back at it, manas, the consciousness of itself, arises, which consists of thinking. This is our thinking. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Manas is just like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Using material from Elias. This is the library of stuff you can think about. A lot of us are thinking in English, I would guess, because I think I'm talking in English. Anyway, so I got my English from my storehouse. I was trained, conditioned to speak this language. So I'm thinking in that language. All of my material comes from here. This is the thinker. The lover is the thinker. So manas is the self-maker. And it sees the aliyah as the self, the beloved.

[38:25]

And it sees everything else as other. So me and my aliyah are hanging out. And we are in opposition to all the rest of it. You know, that'd be all of you. And everything is other, except for me and aliyah. That's the bag. That's the trick that's being played on us. So manas is both central to our sense of separation. and alienation, but it is also a fundamental and useful aspect of a healthy human consciousness, human first. So Amanis isn't all bad. It's like, we do want to have a healthy narcissism. I mean, children actually need to have a healthy narcissism. They need to be taught that they're, you know, they're pretty great and they're not too great, but they're pretty wonderful. And they, they really do things we admire and we, we go to their games and we, you know, admire their homework and all that. We do all of that kind of affirmation for our children because they thrive on that and they need that.

[39:28]

They need that kind of soil. Not if you do it too much, kind of spoils the child, right? My grandma used to say that all the time. You're so spoiled. You know, I said, I didn't mind. But anyway, we need to balance that, get that about right. But basically it's a useful aspect. Self-love is just bad, but most of us go too far and we get trapped in it. So that's where then it becomes dysfunctional. An unhealthy narcissism. Okay, so verse number six. Manas, the lover, is always associated with four afflictions. Self-view, there is a self. So I do think I'm here. I do think there's a self. I'm really sure of it. I'm sure of it thanks to Aliyah. I know I'm here and I know that I'm separate from all of you. Self-delusion, ignorance, that there is such a thing of separation that I could possibly separate from all of you from the universe and exist separately as a delusion.

[40:33]

Self-pride, pride, you know, me. I mean, I try not to show. But anyway, we all have this little pride of self, this pride of place. It's supposed to be a good thing, actually. You'd be a little proud of yourself. It's one that's considered an affliction. And then the next one is self-love. Above all things, as the Buddhist said, one loves oneself. Above all things, we love ourselves. So it's pretty good to admit it. I mean, it's sort of like, let's not be into denial because these come with the territory. We're born with these. It's not like we had to go out and get them. We came in with these. So it's okay. We just have to come into relationship with them, an appropriate relationship with them. So from where the manas is born come these five things that I went through with you. Sense contact, hearing. Attention, averting to the sound. Sensation, I like that sound. Perception, that's the sound of a duck. And volition, I really going to look at that duck.

[41:36]

So these five come along with manas. So they're companions. They're all in cahoots with one another. So the connecting, the conscious connection is Manas is talking to our conscious awareness. So the language that's being spoken in our minds, that's coming through from Alaya, through the manas, the thinker, you know, that blah, blah, blah going on in our heads all the time. That's manas talking and talking in cahoots with our sensory apparatus. And so there's a whole little thing going on, a little complex of behaviors. So manas is not found in enlightenment. So that's gone too. When you wake up, there's no more of that self-regard, self-belief, self-love. It's not necessary. It seems kind of like, well, that's silly. Who? Can't find it. You try to find it. I think Rev once put up a bounty for anyone who could find their self.

[42:37]

He was going to pay them something, 25 bucks or something. Nobody ever finds their self. So you look for it, you try to find it, you try to prove it to yourself that you're really there and you can't because you're not. It's an illusion. It's this illusion that's being made in this way that the Yogacara is helping us to, if it's useful. I mean, it's a useful map. I find it really useful, actually. I enjoy engaging with it as an experiential, like, ah, I can watch myself when I hear a sound going through these five steps. It's like, I just named it. It's interesting when you get it wrong. It's like, whoa, that's not a duck. That's a quail. So all of a sudden you have to do a little turn there when you get it wrong. We hate to get it wrong. That's not our favorite thing. So manas is not found in enlightenment. It's also not found in meditations of cessation. So when you're doing long meditation, like we've been all doing this week, there are times when the discursive mind

[43:39]

It's quiet enough that there's no thing going on. There's no appropriating of objects or trying to go find out, do you want to do something about that thing? You're just receiving sound. You're receiving impressions. There's a contentment that actually, I mean, one reason we like doing these practices is because some contentment. comes to you. And you can see folks, I can see the folks in the room starting to soften. You know, some of them have never sat a Sashim before. They're kind of getting real melty. They're starting to look like younger than they did when they walked in. You know, something is starting to soften for them inside. There's a little bit of a meltdown in a good way. So that's nice. So in the meditations of cessation, when there is no longer that kind of noise, running through your head, the radio show is turned off. Manas is not there. There's no self. It's kind of a relief. You get a little break from self-maker.

[44:42]

And also she, I like to call her she, the super mundane path. That's the bodhisattva path. That's not self. It's selfless. And it's for the benefit of others. So when you're on the bodhisattva path, it's not for you. You're here for others. And that, you know, it's like... It's kind of turning, reversing the whole process away from self-centeredness. Like sometimes I'll say to the kids, just kind of, you know, jokingly, I say, you got to get over yourself. You know, you got to stop focusing on yourself and start thinking about what you can do for someone else. A student asked their teacher, you know, what do I do when I get discouraged? And the teacher said, do something for someone else. It's a teaching. Do something for someone else. That'll help you. That'll help you break out of your self-absorption. So that's how this bodhisattva path is a devotion to the benefit of others. So manas, again, we're on the lover, the little heart. Manas has two kinds of thinking that it does.

[45:48]

And they sort of come up at the same time. Again, they're kind of entangled. One is just plain old thinking. Just... you know, thinking about this and I got to go to the store and I'm getting something. It's benign. It's not harmful. And this is the one that's connected to the sixth consciousness, this awareness itself. You're just thinking about stuff. There's no harm involved. You're not plotting or evading or, you know, whatever, whatever the things you do that are maybe not so wholesome. It's just thinking. And that's just fine. But, It's connected with what's called defiled thinking. And defiled thinking is the one that's yoked to these four passions that I mentioned, the self-love, self-conceit, ignorance, and self-pride. So because it comes along with your usual thinking, it's kind of easy to slip into that one when you're stimulated, when something challenges you, you know, somebody...

[46:50]

you know, closes the door in front of you at Whole Foods. You're about to walk through the door. You think they're holding it for you and then they let it go. It's like, ah, you know, there's that moment where you can really easily get into self-defense. We're very, very well wired to protect ourselves at the slightest drop of a hat, as they say, you know, we're, we're, we're trigger. We're kind of triggered for self-protection and self-love. So that's, that's part of why Manus is so tricky, you know? So conventional designations, relative thinking, just normal language, are the products of our self. Our consciousness is just producing mundane thinking about the world. We're all familiar. That's all we do. It can become more and more creative. As you begin to explore thinking, and the trouble is... these creations of ours can become like real, you know, like we can be really creative, but then we don't, we forget that it's not more than just creative.

[47:57]

It isn't that, well, that was clever. And then it becomes something like, but that was my clever, you know, that was my idea. You know, we can start to have these, make these things, these formations out of our minds, but then we get possessive. They're sort of being like, well, that was my idea. I've noticed that in meetings sometimes when I'll have a really good idea and I put it down in the meeting, you know, and somebody disagrees with it. Well, my hand's still on it. You know, like it's not just my idea that they're disagreeing with. It's me. They just kind of insulted me, even though I think that's really silly. You know, I'm all grown up and everything. It still happens. And it's like, oh, no, I'm not doing that. Am I? Yes, I am. So it's very interesting to try and be able to be in a concert with others around ideas that you're not attaching to it, your creation. That's mine. I want credit. Somebody better tell me that was a good idea. So they like to tease me about, oh, nice idea, food.

[48:58]

That was really good. Then they go on with their conversation. So it's good to be playful with our tendencies. And become more open to this great mystery of that we really don't know. What we know is so tiny. What we create with our little minds are so tiny compared to what we don't know. So what this teaching is trying to help us do is do an inversion from what we know, which is so tiny, small mind, Suzuki Roshi called it small mind, to the big mind. All that we don't know is also us. We have that. as our inheritance too. The don't know mind is huge, spacious, vast, the size of the universe, big mind. So if we don't keep coursing in the tiny mind and get all stuck in there and allow ourselves to look at the night sky, you know, there's a koan I was telling the participants in the Sashin, there's this koan that I really like, it's called count the stars.

[50:01]

That's it, count the stars. So you go out, it's great. You know, you go out, you start counting the stars. And it's like, after a while, you're like, huh, 557. You know, it's just this amazingly pointless. It's just pointless. But there's this guy and there's this amazingly ungraspable thing that you are so, it's so amazing and mysterious. And we're counting it, you know. It's like people count their breaths. Am I doing it right? I counted to 10 or I counted. I said, just keep counting. There's no wrong. There's no first breath, last breath, just breathing, just stars, just counting, just living, you know, without getting caught in the machinery of creation. How clever we are that we've made constellations out of those stars. You know, that's pretty good. But it's also like, not really, you know, not really. It's just something we do.

[51:03]

We tell stories. We try to orient ourselves. So this great mystery, which we don't know, is unproduced, it's unconditioned, and it's freedom. It's perfect freedom. Not knowing is freedom. Nobody teaches that in school. They teach us knowing is getting good grades, and that's what you're supposed to do. You're not supposed to not know. I don't think my teachers would have given me a good grade if I just said, well, not knowing is where it's at. So there really is no attachment. There's no such thing. You will not find a self and you won't find attachment. It's a fantasy. And it's a fantasy that causes great pain. It's our suffering. Buddha said the cause of our suffering is attaching to our ideas of things as if we could. But it's really just like a... You know, it's just a grip, but there's nothing in it. You don't, your mind doesn't have a real grasper.

[52:03]

It just catches things with its feelings. And then we feel bad and then it passes away. And then another one comes and we grab a hold of that and it passes away. And, you know, on and on and on. We're just, it's like open water, open ocean swimming. It's just hands full of water. You just keep swimming. You know, just work on your stroke. That's that we can do. We can work on how we pace ourselves, how we walk, how we speak, how we put our clothes on, how we talk to people. That's something we can do. We can practice being ourselves. But we can't get anything. I'm not going to get anything out of it. What would you do with it anyway? Put it in the closet or I don't know. Where do you put your stuff? Let's just put it somewhere. So there is no attachment, but we think there is. And what's more, we believe in it. We believe in attachments, that we can have stuff, and then that's going to make us happy. So knowing by its very structure is subtle and ungraspable, and Buddha's activity is not switching over to not busy, not anxious, or not frightened, but rather to abide in busy.

[53:20]

It's rather to not abide in being busy or frightened. It's not to live in it. You can't get rid of it. This stuff coming from the aliyah is fear and anxiety. And, you know, I don't know. Maybe I've got, you know, some funny thing on my skin. I don't know what it is. There's all that stuff comes up that we have thoughts about. It's just don't live in them. You know, try not to live in them. No abode, no abiding in those things. So not abiding in any of the eight consciousnesses, not in the six above the water and not in the ones that are below the consciousness. Not living there. And because you don't. You're always moving. It's like a flow. But we just want to try to get a hold of something. We're trying to hold on to something. And there's this frustration. Like, whoa, where'd it go? Where'd it go? When you lay down tonight on your pillow, where'd it all go? Where'd today go? Where'd all that stuff go that you did today? I have no idea. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe something will happen.

[54:22]

that I can remember by the time I go back to bed. Mostly we're just moving along, just swimming along. Dogen says that karmic consciousness is words and phrases, words and phrases, which can be used to liberate karmic consciousness. So these teachings, the Yogacara teachings, are for the purpose of liberating us from the very thing that they're teaching us. So they're saying, look, we're going to use language to help free you from language. It's like using a thorn to take out a thorn. That's one of the Zen sayings. And Vasubandhu, the author, is really well-versed in psychological precision. He studied the early Buddhist approach to psychological theory, and he had practiced with all of his unwholesome tendencies. So by the time he switched to the Mahayana, he had a tremendous training in these baseline teachings. from the early tradition. So he's a wonderful resource. Actually, he's such a great, like Swansong, he's another one of the great names of Buddhist history because he brought such a richness of his own being.

[55:30]

What he had done with his own body and mind as a young boy and as a young monk, and then his transformation into this larger view, the Mahayana, is this great gift that we got from this mind only. So the Eightfold Path, The fourth of the Four Noble Truths includes cessation. It's the third noble truth. Cessation, which is letting go of the self in these deep states of concentration. As I was mentioning during Sashin, people actually do let go of their self. It just slips away. Just on the wind. Just blows away. Don't even have to do it. It just drops off. And it also includes being and seeing the self. That's appearing right now through this critique of our ethical department and our mindfulness. So it has this two sides. One side's illuminated. There's no self. But then the other side is, well, there actually, there is, and it has to do with my behavior.

[56:32]

The self is the doer of deeds and the recipient of karmic consequences. So there is a self, but it's kind of more like in a behavioral realm. Like I, this flowy thing, this ever moving, event over here has does stuff out there in the ocean and there's consequences to what it does and the the fruit of those consequences come back on me if if i'm unkind if i'm inconsiderate that blows back on me you know that that i that's the fruit of my my behavior and so on So the imagined self can be a very useful tool. So what's really great about the Yogacara that I appreciate so much is that it actually lets you work with it. Even though we know it's empty of inherent existence, we already heard about the Heart Sutra. We already know that there's nothing going to, at the end of this story, it's going to be like a wipeout. We got that already. That's okay.

[57:34]

That's just background. Foreground is, in the meantime, we're going to work with our imagined self. We're going to work with this one who's appearing to be here in this way, with these ways of doing and this way of behaving and that way of managing and all of this stuff that we all live with as beings. We're going to work with that. And so we don't really get rid of it. We just want to treat it like a kindly companion, like a good friend, befriending ourselves. Someone I recently heard, I don't know if it was Suzuki Roshi or somebody said, the real point of practice is for the non-dual relationship between yourself and yourself, that you stop fighting with these parts of yourself. You no longer have this kind of enemy relationship with that voice that tells you that wasn't very good and you forgot that and we're your keys and you're losing your mind. There's this kind of aggressive little noisy beast in there that's making you feel bad.

[58:34]

Well, that's you talking to you. And so when those two get to be friends, they stop having this hostile, conflictual relationship. There's peace. There's peace that comes inside of us. So... So this is why the first half of the 30 verses is all about taking care of working on the transformation of this imaginary self, not just abandoning it or seeing through it or going like, oh, I get the trick, so I'm not being fooled anymore. That's probably not true. You probably are being fooled because we forget. So we want to actually spend the time, as this teaching allows us, to work with ourselves, to transform this process event. And then in the second half, we get to see how it's not there. You know, that's the, you know, the, okay, okay. I'm ready for that now. I've settled this. She's good to go. And when she gets there, she'll be okay. She'll be okay with that.

[59:36]

Right now, I'm not quite ready for that. You know, I need to do this self-love a little longer. In fact, I haven't been doing it well. So we're going to go back to some remedial caring for ourselves. for quite a while, actually. Okay, so I'm just going to finish off here with, so that, yeah, we already know the punchline is going to be emptiness, but we're not there yet. That's later on. And then manas is not found in enlightenment, in meditation, or the bodhisattva path. So that's finishing off manas. We've now done two of the transformations. We've talked about alaya and manas. Okay, the two that are under the waterline, the unconscious aspect. Next week, I'll talk about the third aspect of the transformation of consciousness, which are these six sense consciousnesses. And this is where we come to life, because these are the ones we know are happening.

[60:37]

These are the ones that are experiential for us, that we can be aware of, we can talk about. And we can hear what Vasumanda has to tell us about the six cans. I don't know why they have to use the word consciousnesses, because it's very hard to say. But anyway, it is a word that's used here. There's lots of S's. Okay, that's it. That's it. Now we're up to, we're going to now go on to verses number 8, 9, 10, and so on. We're getting there. Great. Okay. Exciting. So please, please, welcome, welcome. Anything you'd like to say? I know that was a lot, but I don't know. If you have your copies, it really, I think it'd be helpful if you have your copies of the 30 verses, kind of read along as I'm talking.

[61:41]

You can also just listen. I mean, I'm not attached to anybody really enjoying this quite as much as I do. But if you do, please do whatever you like to engage, however you learn. I'd be happy to participate with you. So anyone have a blue hand or a comment? Yay. Great. Tim. I was curious on your chart. It says that the 30 verses come from the Abhidharma. Yes, yes, yes. My chart. I have the Theravadan Abhidharma. Is that what I find them in there? That you might. You might. Because what I understand from reading Vasubandhu's text, it was Tim's, I mean, Ben Connolly's text, is that that reformulation took place in the Abhidharma work, these, they call them, commentarial tradition, which is your Abhidhamma.

[63:04]

is one of the earlier versions, and then the Abhidharma is more like a Sanskrit in later versions. There are many iterations of that, but they're kind of the same. They have covering the same territory, which is what the Buddha said in his sutras, in the suttas. So the Buddha talked about the five skandhas in the sutta of the no-self characteristic, which was maybe the third lecture he gave, and he names these skandhas. So that's why I put that under the skandhas, that's from the Buddhist teaching, which I know where that is because I read that sutra. This reformulation of them that's in the Yogacara text, I don't know where it's located in the Abhidharma. And if you found it, it'd be great. I'd love to know because it's in there. I'll research that. That'd be great. That'd be great. Thank you. OK, Bill.

[64:05]

It's Kelly. Hi, Kelly. Hi, Kelly. Hi. Thank you so much for these teachings. It's opening my mind a little bit at a time and then I forget and opens it again. So but I just wanted to say there are three things that you've said in different ways over this. time even before these teachings that have helped me to get out of my small mind into my big mind once in a while and one is so just this is it and it makes me that this might not be here later that it you know and it I it's kind of a mantra I say to myself the other one is um If you're not in awe, you're distracted. It's been so powerful for me. And I really do bring that up over and over again. And it, again, gets me looking at the stars and not my little petty stuff.

[65:10]

And the other one is come to your senses. I always thought of as someone saying, oh, stop messing around, come to your senses. But going, oh, what does that really mean? to actually get into my senses. And again, just being present. So I appreciate it. Those things have been really helpful just in terms of my daily mindfulness practices to help me. Great. I actually had thought at some point we should make bumper stickers out of those, you know, like, we could sell them in the bookstore here. Definitely. If you're not in awe. Actually, I put that on my license plate. If you're not in awe, you're distracted. It's on one side of my car. What's on the other side? Oh, just this is it. It's on the front of my car. So if you're following me on the highway, you're going to see if you're not in awe, you're distracted.

[66:14]

I actually had this fantasy once of getting a friend of mine was selling his VW Bug, you know, when they still were making those things, it was black and I really wanted to get it and I wanted to get a license plate that said Zafu. It would be perfect for a Zen person to ride around in a Zafu. Anyway, any way we can play, any way we can find to engage with each other, you know, I think, and ourselves, which is what you're talking about. Whoa, you know, where am I? What was I thinking? That star koan is a really good one. There's a book by a guy named John Terrence. He's a wonderful teacher, Rinzai teacher, called Bring Me the Rhinoceros, which is a koan. It's a really wonderful koan to it. And on the cover of his book is a little bird. And the title says Bring Me the Rhinoceros, and there's a picture of a bird. So right there you know you're into something a little quirky.

[67:14]

But it's a great set of – he does some koans in a really accessible way. So if you ever – would like to look at some koans. That's a very good intro. Bring me the rhinoceros. I don't know if that's where I got that one. What's it? Hey, Finn. I don't know if the star koan would work to all here. We can only count maybe five out there. Really? Uh-oh. I assure you there's more. In fact, they just discovered a couple million more galaxies, apparently. So we won't run out of stars, probably. I'll believe it when I see it. Well, you know, Death Valley. Oh, yeah. You've got to make a trip to the desert before you get too much older. Just lay on your back in the desert and you'll be a believer. That's where I had my big insight was in the desert when this voice said to me, in answer to my question, what is it? Where am I?

[68:15]

Where are we? What's happening? What should I do with my life? I was pummeling the stars with these questions. You know, please help me. And this voice said, you'll never know. It's like, hey, you know, that sounds true. I think that's right. You'll never know. So go to sleep. And I did. And I guess wash your face when you wake up. Yes, there you go. There you go. You're a very good student, Finn. Yeah, get you back here soon. David. Hi, Phuia. Hello, everyone. Hello, David. So I'm getting a little tripped up on some of the vocabulary that you're using, and I wondered if you could comment a little more. Sure. The first is transformation, which I think is becoming a little more clear to me as you talk more, but... In the beginning, as you spoke about transformations, it was sort of, to me, that means something is changing into something.

[69:24]

But as you talk more, I'm starting to wonder if you're just talking about the machinations of the mind. Yes, yes. That's my first question. And the other one is about you're talking about manas as a lover, which I associate with things that are not... can be destructive, but not always or entirely destructive, perhaps even positive. And so I wonder why we're choosing that word. And if you could say a little bit more about that, too. Yeah, I think it's intended to be slightly derogatory. You know, it's not your beloved wife or your partner. It's your lover, you know, the one you kind of go and visit. So the lover is an infatuation. You know, and I associate that with infatuation, you know, with a kind of a dream life. And it is a dream. I mean, this manas, quality of our mind, that believes that it's actually here and is loving itself, it's self-love, is unhealthy to a good percentage of its performance or its function.

[70:37]

There's a, like I was saying toward the end there, some of it is very wholesome. You need to have a healthy sense of self before you get rid of it. I mean, that's one of the things we made a big mistake in the early years of Zen practice in this country, not having the hundreds of years that they have in monasteries and other countries, not that they don't make mistakes, but we made some classic mistakes of thinking we could just get rid of the self because we don't like it. I don't like who I am, so I'm going to dump it and just go live in an emptiness somehow. I'll just be in this trance of indifference and of separation called the Zen sickness. So trying to dump yourself because you don't like yourself is not recommended. And there's been some really good books by psychotherapists and psychiatrists who are Zen practitioners saying, first, you have to have a healthy one. You have to really become healthy and actually have a genuine understanding of your limitations and your value and yada, yada, before you work toward this emptiness of self, emptying the self out.

[71:44]

Someone else said recently, Zen is for people who are basically mentally stable. If you're wobbling a lot, it can really throw you off. We've been much more careful in the last 20 years than we were in the first 20 to not let people sit in that dark room over there if they were having a lot of depressive anxiety or things that really needed to have some serious treatment first before doing this kind of deep work would be safe. So I don't know if that helps with the word lover, but it is complex. that relationship to the self and it's part of it is wholesome and part of it is not wholesome so we're trying to discern which to keep how do we keep the part that's good and your friends will help you you know that's there's one of the i can't remember his name that wrote something like um i forget in book therapist b said

[72:47]

If you're a really good therapist, your clients will never tell you the truth. And your fellow therapists aren't going to tell you the truth. The only people who are going to tell you the truth about yourself are like your family. You're like your wife. You better listen to your wife. Otherwise, you're going to get really off in your inflated self. That's not good. That's not a healthy way. So it's good to have people who critique you, who love you, and will help you to see your blind spots. So it's just, you know, it's lifelong. It's not a one-off. So it's, you know, we're learners. And this is some of the most interesting things we need to learn are how to be in this world. Is that getting close to your... You're muted, David.

[73:48]

You're still muted. Let me see if I can. Maybe that works. Yeah, there you go. I don't know that I was particularly looking for an answer, just a little more conversation and more firewood for them. Good, good. OK, well, we'll keep putting it on there. This is good stuff. It's good fuel, I think. Thanks for your question. Hi, Lisa. Hey. Hello, Fu. So, you know, I have a painfully systematic brain, and I'm finally... It insists on order. It's got to be straight. But I've always had trouble with the idea of a sixth sense. And I'm...

[74:50]

wondering if finally tonight I've gotten something because I've seen, you know, you have light, you have an eye, you have vision, you know, I can do five of them. It's at sixth. Yeah. And maybe is it that finally, you know, the idea of Manus putting this, putting the, it's almost a sensory input. It, you know, it's almost the light. Yeah. Hitting. Okay. Yes. Finally. Yes. Thank you. Yes. The light of words is hitting your awareness and you hear the words and you're going to like, oh, I just heard myself think. Okay. It's like, I just heard a sound. I just heard a word. Okay. So yeah, it's the one that picks up on language. It's the capture for words. Okay. This is the catcher for sound. This is the catcher for light. Excellent.

[75:51]

For food. Okay. So it's not a sixth sense in that, you know. Yeah. Right. No, but it's got a, it has a certain. It's not like that. Okay. It's not like bending spoons with your mind or anything like that. No, no. You don't get to do that. It's not in our religion, unfortunately. No, but yeah, it's just the catcher for words. Okay, cool. See, that logical mind works really well for you. Yeah, the right input. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Okay, Heather, and then maybe that's our night. Hi, Heather. Hi. I'm well, thank you. I think I just want to ask for your advice about how to study this. I really, I'm I thank you so much for bringing this up. I think I would like to work on it. Good, good.

[76:51]

But to echo, I think David said it's a little, it's a lot. It's a lot. I guess I've seen you bring up pictures that you drew. That seems like maybe it would be helpful. Is that how you studied it? I do. I draw pictures. That's what I do. See, that's how I understand. Yeah. That's Aliyah. Do you want to share those? Yes, of course. I would love to have them. I'd be happy to. In fact, I did do one digitally. Yeah, yeah. My person behind the curtain is Sydney Sashin right now, so I'm going to get her back next week. I don't know how to do this. I'm here. I'm here. Oh, you're here? I am. Sydney. Okay, well, I don't have it set up, though, to pass that drawing on. I don't know if I know where it is. There's no hurry. I just kind of need to know if you can be available at some point. I would love to. I'd be happy to. And I think drawing, for me, I'm very visual.

[77:53]

Yeah. I doodle all over the margins of my study books. I mean, I just draw. If I can make an image for it, like non-duality, I have a seesaw. Yeah. You know, so a plus and a minus. Oh, non-dual. Okay. So I think it really helps to doodle. And then go over it and go over it, which I do. Right. Yeah. I go over it. That's what I'm asking for is kind of advice about how to go over it. And I can, this is not going to sink in. No, it's not. It's not, but it will, but it becomes familiar. That's the first step. Right. The first step in learning is listening. Shrutamaya Prajna. The wisdom of hearing. It came in your ears. You went like, that's interesting. But then it went out the other ear. Yes. So that's hearing. But, you know, the Chintamai Prajna is the next kind of learning. The Buddha talks about that. And that's study. So you get the book. You put all these things in it. And you read the book.

[78:55]

And you put pictures in. I draw. And I have pencils. And I draw on every page. I write some notes to myself. And then I... read it again. So like, if you're going to, you know, you're in this class and we're doing right now. So if you've got the book, like we're next week, we're going to be doing the verses on, on the sixth sense consciousnesses. So read up till there, just like you did back in high school, you know, read up till there. And then you think about questions you might want to ask about what you read. Cause then when I hit on these points, you're going to go, well, I read that. And I actually had a question right there. So I'm just going through what Ben has done. I'm just kind of reading kind of, you know, I'm kind of reading you guys this book and take a shorthand of what he's done very well. He's done a very good job explaining this. And so if you really want to understand the Yogacara, this book will do it for you. You don't really need to do the Sandhya Nirmachana Sutra, even though it's also fascinating.

[79:59]

But that took us two years sitting together week after week. with a group of us and our teacher going through each line going like, what, you know, and then a little by little begins to, the familiarity begins to come in. But I don't think you need to have that big elaborate scholastic thing. I think this basics, just the basics of these 30 verses, I think are sufficient to give you the virtues of the mind only teaching to, to, to comp, to balance out the Prajnaparamita. It really, really is important. And then we look at Zen. When we're going to start looking at Zen teaching pretty soon, both of those things, you can see how they need each other. And so that's what makes it worthwhile in my sense of it. I might be able to handle the basics. That's comforting. I also really liked what you said about emptiness being the punchline. I'm going to hang on to that for a little while if you'll forget.

[81:00]

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great relief. You mean all of that was just a dream? Uh-huh. I don't know if you can see this, but you mentioned my favorite koan, and this is really obnoxious, but as soon as I thought of it, I couldn't resist. That's great. That is a great koan. That is a great koan. My favorite, if anybody's interested in the rhinoceros fan, Norman Fisher has a nice commentary on it on Every Day's End. Bring me the rhinoceros fan. It's broken. Well, then bring me the rhinoceros. The kid runs away. I think I like that koan because it was the first one that I understood a little bit when I read it. Yeah. I have a soft spot for it. Yeah. And then the other guy draws a circle with the character for rhino in it. Well, there's mind only. Yeah. You can see the play of these teachings in these little Zen quips.

[82:03]

which is really sweet when you start to make those connections. It's not that hard to understand. It's just hard to understand. Way out there. It's just a little out there. All right. Thank you for the encouragement. Yeah, yeah. Good. Nice to see you. Okay, everybody. Please have a nice evening and I will be back on Sunday. I'll be on vacation too. Wow. Say goodbye. You can please unmute and like. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye all of you. Thank you, Fu. Thank you, Fu. You're welcome. So welcome. Thank you, Fu. Great. Thank you, Fu. Thank you, Fu. Next week.

[83:04]

Okay. I'll be here if you're here. It's a deal. Lifelong. Okay. Yeah. Since we're going to be across the hall, we better kind of get used to it. Get used to it. That's right. Oh, it's you. Mind only. Good night, Fu. Good night, Lisa. You get to bed. Yes, ma'am. She's three hours ahead of us.

[83:38]

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