This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. The last class I talked about the hindrances and then I went on from there to talk about the aggregates, the Skander's. And that's where I'd like to pick up. And I hope as I go through the skandhas and the senses that it will start to seem more relevant to you. That is important. Not just to be fascinated or bored by the intricacies of Buddhist thought, but how they illustrate the path of practice.

[01:11]

In fact, they illustrate what we might call right effort. at the schema of the Satipatthana Sutta. Then you have the hindrances, then you have the aggregates, and then you have the sense doors, and then you have the factors of awakening. It's a very terse document. It doesn't explain itself. It just says, It doesn't attempt to say, well, here's why. But what it does say, when it talks about the hindrances, it's quite exhaustive. It's saying, notice them. Notice how they come to be. Notice what helps stop them from coming to be. Really get in touch with the states of being that come up for you.

[02:23]

And then maybe you could say, this is why we do each morning service. We avow our karma. This kind of simple, direct, matter-of-fact acknowledgement. And then it's also interesting that the hindrances are the main topic here. Then in the skandhas, they're not mentioned and then in the sense doors, guess what, they're back again. Another thing I was saying was that there's what you might call the, I think last time I called it the walking about mind, kind of common state of being where the world is real, where I is real, where other is a separate existence.

[03:30]

And all that arises from that, that this is our walking about consciousness. And we could quibble that, but let's just leave it there for now. And then we can attend to that And then we can attend to the more subtle consciousness of zazen, sometimes flooded over by the agendas and turmoils of more conventional consciousness, and sometimes teased apart by momentary experience. And so similarly with the aggregates, we have the form, rupa, we have the deep feeling, we have the perception, sanna, we have the impulse to formulate and the formulation.

[04:40]

And then we have the consciousness that's conscious of the product of the other four. That's the basic teaching. And we can... You know, often the dilemma for us as we come into awareness and we see some fixed reality that's compelling, that's stimulating emotionally, that's persistent in its attribute, you know? It drops out of mind or you... breathe deeply and let it go and then guess what? It pops right back up. I think we've all experienced that. So in some ways the aggregates, they offer us a way of addressing that.

[05:44]

Can you get in touch with the rupa? Can you get in touch with how it impacts the body, how it expresses itself in the body, or the breath, or even the state of mind. In the scheme of Buddhism, mano is just mind as a sense door, the same way sight or ear is. It's just another sense door. So we can get in touch with the rupa, the arising form of the experience. Sometimes it's helpful to get in touch with the feeling, the deeper feeling that's fueling it. In the first sushin, I quoted this

[06:52]

wonderful little poem by a Japanese poet whose name I can't remember right now. But he says, I listen to not only what you say, but what makes you say it. What is it that makes this topic that keeps arising in mind, what makes it so compelling? Can you literally feel it? Can you get in touch with that? Sometimes acknowledging the perspective. Okay, this is a perspective on reality. This is a perspective on all the things that happened yesterday. This is the perspective that I'm focusing on, that I'm dwelling on. This is the conversation that's replaying in my head. It's a particularity. It's a particular perception. And then what does it bring into being?

[08:01]

It brings in a particular formulation, and then either that formulation stays there or associated formulations develop around it, one way or another, about yourself, about another person, about being at Tassajara, the nature of practice, whatever. So sometimes in our usual karmic consciousness, any one of those can help us make contact. And the power of making contact is that we start to... In the Sandhya Nirmachana Sutra, it says that... There are three dimensions of mind, and one is the imputed mind.

[09:05]

This is where this consciousness is what I like to call adding all the adjectives. This is terrible, this is awful, this is insulting, this should never happen. comes from the term parikalpitta, and Reb says, well, you could translate it as pure fantasy. He was kind of kidding, but what he meant was that those arising terms, those arising descriptors come forth from subjective being. So when the arising descriptors come forth from subjective being, we're held spellbind by, or we can be held spellbind, can be, not always, by that creation.

[10:18]

And as we talked about before, turn the light back. Look at this. Look at this process of creation. So this is another way to do that. Now when we can make contact with it, there's a way in which it can demythologize. It can break the spell. Just the very way in zazen, when you're in the throes of something, and there isn't awareness and then you make contact and there's a palpable shift in experience. Here and now are recreated. So this making contact, last time I was calling it noticing, notice.

[11:25]

And so the skandars are saying, and here's the different ways, here's different things you can notice. And sometimes these can be used as an antidote. As I say, when the imputed reality, I mean, what prompts us to impute? Well, the urgency of the world according to me. And that urgency often has within it, you know, a power. compelling power. If we want to get dramatic, we can say it has a life and death compelling power. When you feel those intense visceral feelings, when you watch the utter persistence of a particular topic in your mind, So it can be an antidote, but more particularly, and especially within the nature of Satipatthana.

[12:43]

You know, the nature of Satipatthana is that attending to mind, attending to feeling, attending to the state of mind sets the stage for this process. As we attend in this way, making contact, something starts to crack open and then starting to see it for what it is. This is the challenge, the opportunity of the skandhas. I think it's helpful. It's notable to remember that this is the key of the Heart Sutra. Perceived that all five skandhas were empty.

[13:49]

Then it goes through the negations and then it says, and the mind is no hindrance. When there's no hindrance, there's no fear. When there's no hindrance and no fear, Guess what? Practice just unfolds. Awareness is abundant. Yes? Thank you. That's what I'm getting to. You know, emptiness, shanyata, essentially says there's three characteristics to existence. And the first one is that every phenomena, every arising experience is impermanent.

[15:06]

Nothing lasts forever. The second one is that each experience is interdependent. There's a play of causal features. And then the recognition, the establishment of any particularity is contextual. And this is something we can, all of these we can see. When we go into the context of our karmic formulations, well then guess what? The imputation is what's imputed, what's brought into being is a replay of our karmic life.

[16:10]

When the context is Dharma, then guess what? There's a different formulation brought into being. We can tutor our mind to make available these karmic formulations, Dharma formulations. Well, we can tutor our mind to see what... Sometimes it's very instructive, as many of us who've done lots of therapy know. It is kind of helpful to see what goes on. But we can have the Dharma formulation. And in some ways, as I mentioned last time, the early sutras put significant weight on this. They do say, contemplate this. Cognize this.

[17:14]

And realize. There's no self to protect. And there's no... There's no object to attack the no-self. So the whole thing is just a dream. You know that story in the early Sutta where a person stands on what they think is a snake and they're filled with fear. Then they turn on the light and they see it's a rope. It's like, oh. Just misperception. nothing to protect and nothing to protect it from. Just a misperception. So that's what it's saying.

[18:21]

When things come to this part of the conversation and I start thinking and really like I can't even be attached to life. Life goes on. I'm just an expression of life. And life goes on whether this particular expression continues or not. If it doesn't go all the way to that, then I feel like I'm not there yet. If it doesn't go all the way to... not even holding on to the idea that this particular expression of life has to continue. And I always think of... Does that make sense? Yes. Am I expressing myself? You are expressing yourself. Thank you. You are. And I do always think of Martin Luther King, you know, often would say things like, and I'm paraphrasing, like, if we are not afraid of death, then we're not afraid.

[19:37]

then we have nothing to fear. Yeah. And as often as said in Zen, the great matter of life and death or birth and death. And this is the intrigue of practice. And what is it to give up the strong sense of self, not as annihilation, but as becoming more fully alive. Hopefully we'll get to that. I was just thinking that we have a life and we can't just dismiss it either. I have a life.

[20:42]

I would suggest that life constructs a me. This is like tutoring ourselves in the language of Dharma. As if I, an independent continuing entity, can have something. I have something called a life. It's an object that I can put in my suitcase and take with me when I go from here to there, or put it on like a jacket. And this is what I'm going to get at. In the skandhas, they're saying there's this dynamic interplay. And when you start to watch it, anything that you attribute permanence to, you will see isn't anything that you attribute independent existence to isn't and the important thing to remember is that so in in in examining carefully experience in the context

[22:08]

of the aggregates, what we discover is there's this vital dynamic being going on and that when we look at it, the attributes of shunyata, the attributes of, you know, which is sometimes translated as emptiness, Thich Nhat Hanh likes to translate it as interbeing, which in some ways is, I think, a more informative and accurate way to translate it because all it's saying is there's a constant interplay of existence going on. And from the parikalpitta, that impulse to impose self upon it, And then the challenge for us is can we not be lost in that what's imputed?

[23:17]

Can we start to see it and rather than get snared in it and become anxious and afraid and filled with desire and aversion around its constructs, how can we see it as the dance of life and how can we dance with that life, rather than constantly be frustrated because it isn't conforming to what we think would make us most happy. Which it may do for moments, but even in those moments, often we remember the many moments when it didn't. It refers to that imputed process, that imputed consciousness where the Self goes forth and describes reality.

[24:25]

Like that, yeah. And then there's its partner, the other arising. But not quite as far as Dogen goes in that phrase because it's just that then there is something other than just what I'm creating. There is another sense base to what's happening. It's like saying there's I and there's I object and that's how seeing occurs. Tantra that one's called yes yes yes yes nothing whatever name or attribute you attribute

[25:46]

an experience, it's contextual. This is the best. Well, best in relationship, in comparison to what? If you have a best, there's some worse that allows it to be the best. The second one is the nature of it. The third one is more about perception and cognition. In our usual involvement in the skandhas, we name, and in that name, what we're attributing to it, we usually attribute with a sense of permanence and separateness.

[26:48]

This is the tree. That's independent. It's self-existent. It's separate. It's not part of a dependent co-arising. So the power of name. As it comes up in Genesis and God gave name to the chaos and life came into existence. interesting statement. It's like our practice almost says, and then we tossed away the name and experienced existence in a radically different way. That's why sometimes in Zazen the experience can seem

[27:51]

Murky. When we get to the sense doors, you see, oh, well, there's a different way to connect. There's a different way to make contact that doesn't require reformulating. Or as in Zen, we say, not knowing is most intimate. In simple terms, it depends how you want to define chaos. I think the answer would be, if you say chaos has no causal sequence, then Buddhist teachings would differ.

[29:03]

If you say chaos is a complex interaction, that's not necessarily singular and linear, then I would say it sort of matches well with Buddhist teachings. My understanding, in the schema of the Satipatthana Sutta, is that first we're asked to look at the more significant, the ways in which the hindrances influence our experience, and to pay attention to that directly. If you're obsessing about something or fantasizing about something, notice that.

[30:06]

Attend to it. If you're sleeping through Zazen all the time, your body's heavy and drowsy, attend to that. Because these more subtle ways of making contact are not going to become available until that's to some degree loosened up, lightened up. Then the mind is more available. Attentiveness is more. available. Contact is more available. And then we can start to we can start to make contact and we can start to attend to what that contact is teaching. And so in a way the teaching of the skandhas is okay you have all your usual stories about existence

[31:09]

Set them over there. Not an easy thing to do, but as we settle in Zazen, as we have attended to the urgencies of our hindrances, then as we settle, it becomes more doable. And then we can watch. As I say, even if you're just watching a mind state and exploring how to crack it open, here's this solid story. There's the story, there's the feelings it brings up. Where can you make contact rather than just have it roll along with sort of like beyond your control. You can notice the rupa, often in the body.

[32:23]

You can notice the vedana. Is there some deep feeling? Even emotion will be instructive. You can notice the mindset, the perception. You can notice the formulation. Oh, the story that keeps playing is this. Even as I was saying last time, even noticing that on a cognitive level. Just being able to say to yourself, this phrase, this story keeps repeating. Okay, notice that. And then... noticing the state of consciousness conjured up. That one's a little trickier. Usually the other four are better places. And then as you make the contact and the contact has some continuity, that's when you start to notice impermanence.

[33:36]

It doesn't even have to be, you know, I was describing samādhi as continuous contact. It doesn't have to be continuous contact. It can be reasonably continuous. Let's say more present than utterly absent. Can you stay in the territory? There's a term in early Buddhism, it's called neighborhood concentration. It means, can you stay in the neighborhood? It's a beautiful term. You're contacting your breath, but in between, as you go through the inhale, this pops up, that pops up, but you haven't totally lost your breath.

[34:42]

But then you're on pause and then you let, and then you're into exhale. In that level of contact, then we can start to notice the rising and falling of the Vedana, of the feeling of it. You can start to notice that sometimes it just dissipates. You go into following your breath and then here it is again. Something in your being says, no, no, we're not done with that. Let's do that one again. Or not. Or somehow it's met It's experienced, and in that experience something is completed.

[35:48]

And you think, oh, the extinguishing of a mindset, the extinguishing of a collection of the aggregates just falls away. So this is about realizing emptiness. This is about seeing whatever arises is just the product of the factors present and there isn't anything to grasp and there isn't anything to push against. Well, earlier I said the skandhas, the aggregates, apharas, you can make contact with the rupa, the form of it, whether it comes as sight, sign, smell, taste, touch, or even mind.

[37:13]

The others are less tricky, but you can also just contact mind object too or you can contact the feeling of it or you can contact the perspective the how it's being viewed or you can contact the formulation to make contact no and I'm distinguishing between making contact and experiencing fully what I was just saying right there when it's experienced fully something is finished when it's completely itself there's no more commentary about it there's no unfinished business it's just completely itself and not to say it won't reappear but in that

[38:17]

sequence, it's over. Okay, Rich, just a second then. You said we should notice rising and falling and being skandhas, but last week you said that salsang was not cognitive. Yes. Noticing as God knows at a certain point that cognitive process falls away from the two different things. What I was saying, I was using the phrase, our walk around consciousness, where the world is more formulated, where the cognitive faculty is created. participating more in defining and creating reality. Contrasting that with Zazen.

[39:24]

Although very occasionally we think in Zazen. Some people. Some people who aren't coursing in samadhi actually do think. But in Zazen, we're inclined more towards direct experience. And the request of Zazen is direct experiencing. It's not about figuring something out. It's not about... Now, we could get into, well, when is it skillful to attend to something that's persistently being formulated. But to answer your question, contrasting usual consciousness with attending to experience. And there, the skandhas can also be perceived. And there, there can be an experience of the characteristics of emptiness.

[40:29]

And then I was saying, and part of that is framing it, is referencing it, from the Dharma, rather than just how the karmic formulation that brought it into being comes into play. The mind needs to be more settled for the karmic formulation not to be so adamant. Does that make sense? It's not quite what I said. I sort of avoided this sticky question, which would be, are cognitive processes ever applicable during Zazen? I avoided that one.

[41:41]

is a dirty business. We like to think we're just frolicking in the pure land. But actually, all sorts of stuff comes up for us. All sorts of mind states. In some ways, the very fact that we're settling down and letting down Our usual editing, suppressing, avoiding, defending against is encouraging it to come up. As long as it can be phenomena, as long as it can be direct experiencing, that's how it is. If it becomes persistent and adamant and unshakable, then we can come at it in other ways.

[42:49]

And so I would say even in Zazen, if that's the mind state you're in, then can you contact it with the body? Can you contact the deep feeling? And maybe even can you acknowledge it as a formulated statement? I just can't let go of that interaction that happened today. Can you refine it to the feeling mistreated? Can that bring you over to the feeling? Where's the feeling in the body? When the mind is in the grips of something that just attending to body, attending to breath, noticing mindset cannot shake, then I would say we do what we need to do in order to not just be so adamantly clinging.

[44:04]

Is it form, feelings, perception? Perception? It covers a range. from a formulated cognitive process to a momentary attribute of experience. Like when you see a cup, the perception happens before the word. It's momentary. So as we settle into Zazen, we move more towards the momentary. And so this whole thing of the skandhas can happen in a second.

[45:33]

Does that help? A pain in the knee? Well, it depends on us, right? My knee is hurting and if I don't move I'm going to cause permanent damage. And why are these people trying to tell me to cause myself permanent damage? This must really not be a good practice. This place is not a good place. But what I'm saying there, Yoshi, is that we can take an experience, right? When we turn that way, we're turning towards the sense gates.

[47:01]

Sort of like the answer to that question would be, it's a physical phenomenon. The pain in the knee. When you drop knee. Exactly. Phenomena. You know, it's arising through the sense gate of touch, through experience. Right. And so, just to shift over... Well, let's see, is there any other questions about the aggregates? Can I just... Yeah. So, I mean, here is my misunderstanding. Mm-hmm. So there was... Mm-hmm. So it feels like I did something wrong, but I didn't take any of the thoughts.

[48:21]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Great. That's a wonderful, tangible example. I think practicing with pain, the challenge for us is, can there be contact? Can there be noticing agitation, resistance, contraction around the experience? And that, as we contract like that... Well... See, and I would say more like this, that the physiology of our body, in many ways, is the contraction is to pull away from...

[49:36]

or diminish the pain. When we don't attend to that, then it has its effect. And sometimes when we don't attend to it, we just persist in that state. The request of awareness is to notice it, stay aware, and not contract. Now that doesn't mean that if you don't contract, if you just stay in a state of ease, nothing will harm you. But I would say this, that if we stay in a state of ease, it moves us in that direction. As I say, it's not a guarantee that it won't harm, but it moves us. And also, if we stay in a state of awareness, Our body can give us clearer signals and hopefully help us skillfully discern the difference between, okay, just breathe into this discomfort, versus, okay, this is a time to move.

[50:57]

And the thing about awareness, it's not setting up some magic formula about If you never move, that's the way to do it. It's more like seeing appropriate response. So can you stay aware enough to know what's appropriate? Did you think I was saying something other than that? I would say keep paying attention and if everything's staying released and relaxed, the resilience of the body is enhanced.

[52:44]

But it does not mean... does not mean that you never have to move. And when there is awareness, we will get a clearer signal. When the mind takes over, well then, who knows what the mind will dictate. But when we're paying close attention, we'll get a clearer signal and then appropriate response. doesn't mean we always get it right. Maybe you find out, oh, I didn't move soon enough. Or whatever. There's a variety of responses. Yes. They're the object of the consciousness in that scheme.

[53:49]

Yes. Yes. Well, in a way you've shifted a little bit more towards that other schema I referenced a little bit saying, you know, parikalpita is imputed consciousness. Like there's an experience and inference and imputation, you know. And in fact, there's a whole bunch of them. that accumulate body, human being. In this schema, just that. The sense stores.

[55:14]

In some ways you can think about it Preoccupied mind, lots of hindrances, work with hindrances. Mind's starting to settle down. It's more perceptive and it's more capable of attending to its experience and making contact with it. Exploring this play of momentary existence, starting to experience its nature, its characteristics directly. the elements of momentary existence. What arises at the sense doors? And here, as we start to notice in this more elemental way, then we start to notice what's imputed, what's projected onto the experience. we start to notice this interplay.

[56:17]

And it's interesting because in the Sadi Bhattana, then it starts to talk about the fetters at this level, or the hindrances. So these hindrances are more dominant, more they're like dictating to a significant degree the whole experience. Over here, they're biases. It's like watching the, as we were just talking about, the sensation, the unpleasant sensation in your knee. You watch the bias. And when there's close attention, the bias, the contract, the bias to pull away from unpleasant. can be moderated. Sometimes it can be let go, and then sometimes it can't.

[57:22]

That whole process is very instructive. And we can watch pleasant and unpleasant at all the scent stores. We can watch how, you know, When we stay at the level of sensation, experience of the moment has a way of undoing the world according to me. Let me offer you two little experiments. So if you could just stand up for a moment. Now here's the exercise. You're going to sit down, but you're not going to assume the chair can support your weight. Okay? So get your imagination to work, right? You're not going to assume, you just don't plop yourself in the chair.

[58:26]

You don't know the chair can support your weight. You sit down not knowing exactly how this is going to turn out. Okay? And just for the sake of helping you, attend to it if you could close your eyes. And then just sit down. Did you notice how something at the sense doors, particularly touch, came more alive? Yeah. So usually the mind is constructing the world according to me, and okay, I know this, and... But what comes along with that is all sorts of formulations.

[59:33]

And interestingly, certain things become invisible. So attending to the sense doors is like bringing into awareness a more fundamental strata of experience. Not knowing is most intimate. Here's another not knowing. Close your eyes again and don't know what it feels like to have a body. Just be available for the tactile experience of body. How was that one?

[61:10]

Harder? Other senses interrupt? Thoughts interrupt? When you get down to the sense gates, the challenge of being that simple makes evident the way naming and formulating is so prominent, so dominant, so adamant. And so you start to see that kind of interruption. So practicing with the sense gates in a way is starting to practice with a subtler version of our habituated preoccupations. And in one way you could say, well, here we have a progression. Hindrances, skandhas, sense gates.

[62:18]

But then in another way, sense gates are wonderfully available. And sometimes they're a wonderful antidote. You're in the middle of Zazen and you're all busy getting it right and getting rid of the bad thing and getting more of the good thing. And you're pretty much driving yourself crazy. To go back to the sense gates. Let's rewind and go back to a simple being. the sense gate of feeling the breath, or the sense of feeling the body, or even feeling the mind.

[63:22]

Because in the schema of Buddhism, just another sense. Feeling the sun on your skin as you stand in the work circle. feeling the hot water as you lower your body into the plunge and you notice that pleasant physiology of how something releases into that warmth. So the sense gates can be a wonderful availability to simply experiencing. And then whether or not they're interrupted, whether or not within, in that contact, we can start to see that too.

[64:27]

And let me offer you another Buddhist schema about mind. Six senses, five senses including mind, six. And then what's sometimes called storehouse consciousness. And then eight, that's eight. And then number seven is the messenger. Number seven takes the sense and goes over the eight and says, what have you got with regards to... It's like storehouse consciousness in that it stores the seed of previous experiences. You lower your body into the hot tub and that sensation links to immersion in the hot tub.

[65:41]

And so seven is merely the messenger. Take the information over here, get the message, take it back. But then, I heard the Dalai Lama describe it this way, so it must be true. There's variations on this, but this is how he said it. He said, then seven starts to get confused and it's thinking, I'm not just a messenger. I'm the story. I'm not only writing the commentary, I'm making this all up. It's me. And so this simple factual noting becomes about me. And now it starts to come with the commentary. a commentary about me, a commentary about how this is relevant to me.

[66:47]

And so in some ways, attending to the sense gates starts to loosen up that persistent me, you know, starts to loosen up this process that mind and consciousness is going through. We get a chance to reset back to simple being. Yes? It has a neurological correlate, which Krista could describe, I think, better than I can.

[67:50]

I've heard it, but at this moment I can't actually remember. But apparently there's something in our brain that behaves a certain way and gives rise to the impression this is a repeat of a previous experience. On neurology? Well, in neurological testing, there seems to be an identifiable neurological phenomena linked to that. Now, your question's a good one. Is that an exhaustive definition of its cause? That's a good question. I don't know if that's an exhaustive definition.

[68:51]

In terms of storehouse consciousness, what I've read is that this notion of storehouse consciousness came up in Buddhist thought to answer the question, well, if everything's changing, How come I wake up and I have all the same habits that I had yesterday? Why am I not an entirely different person? There must be some kind of continuity, so this is how it was formulated. That formulation developed Eightfold Consciousness. is how it's named, what I just described. I've never read a deja vu in relationship to Alaya Vijnana.

[69:57]

That doesn't mean there hasn't been some exploration of that phenomenon. Really, I was just presenting it to more focus on, not so much to focus on the functioning and the mechanics of the eighth consciousness, but on the seventh. Because in this schema, this is where me becomes so elaborate. And then I just wanted to contrast it to when we drop back to the senses, We can release me, you know? And then I was saying, in Zazen, this can be very helpful, but it also can be helpful to punctuate our day, punctuate it. And there, Dogen Zenji's, when the experience comes forth, when what's arising in the sense that it comes forth, and it creates the experience of being, that's awakening.

[71:11]

I've heard that the problem or challenge of Manas, the messenger, one way to describe it is it takes a part of the light of his jnana. It takes a part? It takes a piece of the light of his jnana and calls that a self, but not the whole story. There's at least three schemas embedded in this notion. That's one. Another one is to call citta, self-referencing. When you look at it and you look at the evolution of Buddhist thoughts and you look at the evolution of manas, citta, and Vijnana, their meaning seems to evolve.

[72:23]

That's why sometimes you read one thing and it makes sense in a way and then you read another one and it seems different. They're actually giving different definition to those three terms. So it varies some depending upon the time in Buddhist thought that you're talking about. I'm a little leery of it because it makes it sound like vijinana is like a big piece of tofu and then you take a piece of it, call it the self. It gets a little too... Sorry, that's what came into my mind. Makes it sound a little too concrete or something. obviously consciousness as there is activity consciousness is involved obviously and co-opted into so in that sense maybe obviously takes a part of it made it sound a little substantial but I do think to my mind it sounds like

[73:49]

an accurate description. I experience the self as time to time. I experience the self as something substantial. Yes. Yeah, it resonates. Yeah, and we do. Sometimes we think about me. But you know, often we don't. Often we're acting as if there is a me. But we're not pondering the me as much as we're living the world of me and having responses and reactions about how the world of me is engaging everything else. You have a question. I was wondering about if there's an overlap between consciousness Yes.

[74:58]

Well there's all sorts of wonderful writings, all sorts of wonderful writings about the collective unconscious and various Jungian analysts writing scholarly papers on that, and scholarly papers on Jungian's words with regards to store his consciousness. I would say this, you know, separate consciousness is a construct, albeit a useful one, and then also sometimes overdone. We are quite capable, you know, of letting it drop down and experiencing a more collective experience.

[75:58]

I remember discussing this once in a class and someone educated me on a term called a mosh pit. Do you know what a mosh pit is? I did until I was educated. And they were saying, yes, we experience collective consciousness. And they did tell me I needed to go to a performance to experience the marsh pit. But I think, you know, sports events, all sorts of things have a kin in? What do you mean? Is everybody rushes to the exit? LAUGHTER But it's true. In sitting zazen, there's something in that territory happening for us. I think as we settle into practice period, there's a sense of collective being.

[77:11]

And it's interesting because particularly in Japan, but also in China, this sitting together... is really emphasized, you know, we sit together. It doesn't say just sit wherever you like, it's not, sit together. And then in Japan that formulation is quite adamant. It's like we're sitting together to be part of one body, sitting. And I think it's in the service of that. And then for light reading, do you know the book The General Theory of Love? it's an interesting play on this way in which we can feel deeply connected. It's a slight shift. He's talking about the limbic system, but it also addresses this sense of connection that seems to come up for us.

[78:20]

Going back to the question about Deja Vu and your answer to it, this is broader question about how we relate to neurological research and studies of that kind of thing. Like in Buddhism, we have a certain way of discovering and knowing and all these formulations come from it. And science also has a certain way of discovering and knowing. My fear is, and I think I do have a fear around this, is that that we don't have full confidence in the Buddhist way of knowing sometimes and we look to the scientific way of knowing for confirmation that somehow in New York is other working. Juicy. We don't have confidence in the Buddhist, we look to the scientific.

[79:28]

I would say the very nature of the Buddhist perspective is that there are all sorts of formulations and they're all contextual. There isn't a Buddhist way of looking at it. There's just a variety of ways of looking at it and each one is contextual. Just the same way I said, from neurological testing, there's a correlate between that observed phenomena and neurological activity. Is that an exhaustive causal relationship? Is that the single cause of that? No, it just means that's a way... But I would say epistemologically, you know, in the theory of knowing that...

[80:35]

Buddhism doesn't have a singularity to its epistemology. And I look to the Dalai Lama as a wonderful example of that, you know, that he delights in other forms of knowing, in particular the scientific. And I don't know if you've ever read the kind of narratives that have been reading about the Mind Life series. His, as he would say, uninformed, but actually by now he's quite well informed, he was speaking to one of the world's leading quantum physicists and he said, they were having this intense discussion, and he said, you know, I have to confess, I don't thoroughly understand quantum physics. And this world-renowned scholar on quantum physics says, I don't think anybody does.

[81:38]

It's just, you know, a system of thought. And as long as we hold it as a system of thought, it's a tool or can be a tool. Once we turn it into an absolute reality, then we're grasping. Or some seem more in accord with aware experience. I mean, it would be nonsense to say, well then, every system of thought has parity. What if some schizophrenic mind creates a system of thought? Well then, what is it when you match it over what's experienced?

[82:49]

And in some ways, I would say that in Buddhism, our fundamental basis is realization. But realization cannot be grasped. Realization is beyond formulation. And so any formulation that arises, and many do, we have lots in Buddhist thought, but they're asking us, they're offered as an agent in the process of experiencing directly. So I could see it as a way to validate your point. I could see it as a way of diminishing or not trusting Buddhist thought. But to me, especially the kind of Buddhism we're practicing, is about process.

[83:50]

It's like we're coming back to a process. We're not saying, well, now we've got that idea. That's it, we're done. It's more like, no, now take that idea and actualize it. Yes. Over your self-preservation? Maybe I'll just be sitting there and experiencing the sensory awareness. And I'll get the sensation that this little watchdog thing is complaining about my doing that, you know, saying, wait, wait, wait, you're becoming a Buddhist or something. You know, is that a great sense of what the mind has done?

[84:58]

Well, I think it's, you know, if we start to attribute an abiding self, albeit just a little watchdog, we're reifying something that's a dynamic expression. This is an interplay of conditions. This is the very nature of the skandhas, is to say, this is dynamic. And the very nature of it being dynamic that we have nothing to be afraid of because there is no permanent thing. Now there is a challenge to be skillful and awake and respond appropriately but can we cultivate

[86:06]

Or do we have persistent thoughts and feelings around self-preservation? Not that are constantly abiding. Is it a persistent reference for us? Yes, it is. We will be inclined towards coming back to that reference, that context of being. and then we can watch. Sometimes it's very subtle, and sometimes it's very well-established. You know, in the Sati Bhattana it's saying, notice when it's there strongly, and notice when it's not there. You know, notice those moments of simplicity where you're just doing And that's all there is. And there isn't even that much agenda of accomplishing.

[87:13]

Or there isn't, how is this for me? Or does anybody else notice how well I'm doing this? You know, they've all fallen away. There's just the doing. And I think it's helpful to notice both. Because it helps us have a direct experience of impermanence. I was getting away from bed and I was thinking back on something I'd done. How could I have done something so stupid? And I realized it was because back when I did it, I didn't know that it was going to go wrong. So that's why I did it, because I didn't realize it was a stupid thing until it blew up.

[88:17]

And then my remembering self put itself in the past and said, I should have known that I was going to go wrong, because thinking back on it now, obviously it did. And I just... Even though I can see that's a projection, I still have this idea that my life is going from age 15 to 20 to 35 like a train going from Boston to New York City. On your next break, you can deconstruct it all with the five skandhas. What was the perception? What was the Vedana? What was the initiating experience? Did it arise through one of the five sense doors or did it arise internally from mind? It's kind of like turning on the light and seeing, oh, that was a rope.

[89:23]

I must have known from the beginning it was a rope. Obviously, there could never have been a snake, therefore... How could I have been so stupid? And then can we just see that formulation? Oh, the idea, how could I have been so stupid? Let's see what comes with it. Is there any noticeable emotions? Is there any noticeable physical sensations? How does it influence the state of mind? How long does it persist? Just the five skandhas. But giving us ways to make contact and not just be spellbind with the construct that arose in mind.

[90:29]

It's not for nothing that the Heart Sutra became the primary text, because we cling to constructs. So the deconstructing is something we need to continually remind ourselves of. This is just a mere construct. I have the ability to remember the past. other mere constructs. Here's a wonderful thing to do about your past. Take this construct. Your past is like a scrapbook. You open up the scrapbook and you look at a photo. Oh, I remember that. And then in the conditioned nature of our so-called past, we have chosen memories.

[91:44]

We have chosen emotions. We have chosen formulations of being, senses of self. And how interestingly, what we've put in our scrapbook and what we didn't put in our scrapbook, And that we open up and bring forth... Our past is not objective notion. When we give our way-seeking mind talk, that's today's version. Maybe we should have double-headers. Come back next week and say nothing about what you said last week. and give away Siggy MindTalk. That would be interesting, wouldn't it? Here's who I am. Okay, here's who I usually don't say I am, but...

[92:49]

So the radical teaching of the Skanda says, everything's conditioned. And the fact that we have strong feelings about it doesn't refute that. It just means we have strong feelings about it. Our own constructs are very important to us. So the skandhas offer a certain kind of shift. Oh, look how intense this feeling is about this construct. This is a big deal for me. This is a really important construct. Oh, look at this construct. Look how often I bring it in. Wow, it's so multi-purpose. You know?

[94:08]

It's like my Swiss Army knife. I can use it in all sorts of locations. I can use it by myself. I can use it when I make a mistake as dawn. I can use it when I'm talking to my friend. And then it's like life becomes more of this amazing thing. For a long time, it has been a source of appreciation for me that in the Zen heritage, you know, when you would study a con, rather than go in and offer some well-thought-out explanation, you offer a poem. You know?

[95:10]

It's like What well-thought-out explanation can really hold this amazing life? But in the moment, we can just appreciate it. Look at this pattern of mind. How amazing. And sometimes... When we see that there's a lot of pain that comes with it, it's like, hmm. It's a very tender moment. And sometimes then you feel something and you loosen and then it's like, hmm. And how close liberation is. And then sometimes how utterly impossible it is. How far away. You really need to know.

[96:32]

Well, see, this is interesting because I thought I did. It's this, you know, that in the array of how a moment is formulated, the array being the skandhas, making contact in any one of those modalities, how that starts to break the spell, demythologize the construct, crack open its insular definition of reality. It's like the perpetuation of suffering is the adamant clinging to the story. And the aggregates are not saying, something needs to be really different about this moment.

[97:52]

The aggregates are just saying, experience it, meet contact, any way and every way you can. This moment is the source of contact, is the source of the play of the dharmas. is the source of the path of liberation. And maybe the challenge is that can we trust that shift? And I would say we earn that trust. It's like the same way How do you know how to do it? You learn how to do it by doing it. It's experiential learning.

[98:53]

And I would say you learn how to trust it by having the experience and letting it register. Because there's something in us that wants to return to our habituated well-being. And it's almost like, put it down, put it down, put it down. And experience, you know, like this sutra saying, experience what it is to put it down. Experience how it is when you put it down. Experience what inclines you to pick it up. Experience what helps you to not pick it up. It's a formidable study. But really, it's enormously helpful to the human condition.

[99:59]

Now in how to approach any of those modalities, well then, I touched on some of that. But maybe now, just to say, It's the basics of practice. Careful attention to the physical sensations of body. I would say careful attention to the physical sensations of breath. Attending to the state of mind and attending to this way of relating to the content of mind. And just with enormous patience doing that period after period. Okay, thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[101:03]

Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit SSCC.org and click Giving.

[101:19]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_92.36