So, uh Yesterday, I was musing back on what it was like right before I left my home in Minnesota and all the ice coming out of the lake. And as I walked in, I was recalling that a peculiar and wonderful thing happens as the ice comes out. It recedes from the shoreline first. And there's all these muskrats. I don't know if you know what muskrats are. They're little cute guys. And they, during the summer, they hide.

[01:02]

So you only ever see their nose and their tail in the water. And then they're, it's kind of amazing. They disappear into the shore. I've never seen one on land or I've never seen one enter wherever it is they live on the shore, even though I've watched them swimming, right? So anyway, they're hiding. But when the ice is out, they jump up on the ice and they just chill. And they're, get close, you know, like as close as maybe I am to a guy out here. Hi. Hi. Yeah, a little furry. And yeah, they just hang out. And they're very content. And that lasts only a few days, maybe a week. And then they don't do anything like that. And today, see, I like to pay attention to animals. So today I walked up on this overlook trail and there's like a platform someone put up there. So I was sitting up there, and I was wearing shorts, and I was practicing sauce. And we don't have lizards, really, where I live.

[02:04]

And a lizard ran across my legs, which kind of startled me. And then the lizard came back and looked at me the second time and said, I don't want to go near that thing again. But I think it's maybe saw as a little jumpy. But, you know, as I watch... animals and their habits and you see these cycles and these things are doing and i i like to remember that if someone else was looking at me with a with a broader mind they'd just be like what on earth are you doing what is all that and why is it so patterned why is it so patterned i'd like to just remember that all although i may think This is all very planful. A huge amount of what I do and the people I know do is happening for the same reason that birds are doing whatever they're doing and dogs are doing whatever they're doing.

[03:09]

So anyway, was anyone not here yesterday? Oh, wow, cool. So yesterday I just talked like forever. But I'm hoping to do a little less talking forever today. I didn't give any time for questions or observations. And you don't have to have any. I know some people are very reticent. But if people came away from that talk and they were thinking, you're like, I'm interested in that. Or that really, what was that? Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking about it. about emotional states where I was sitting since we were black and also just throughout the day checking in what's my emotional state right now and sometimes like you said I wasn't sure I couldn't identify what was happening there was a new sort of agitation that I could live up so I'm just wondering if you could elaborate more on how

[04:19]

what are some ways that we can identify the states of physical sensation and how, yeah, or what are emotional things and, yeah, I was just really curious about that. I was wondering if we could say more on how can we have both filled it with our body and connected just to see what we have in picture. I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to feel it more, so. Yes. Cool. Okay, this is cool. Do you think you're going to be here tomorrow? No. Because I'm hoping, so I'm going to get this feedback, and what I can do is I can work it into the structure of the 30 verses. So that material really would be like tomorrow. So then that helps me to kind of clarify what it is about that part that you want to talk about. But what I can say just very briefly is it's very subtle.

[05:22]

Being mindful of emotions is very strange because the more you look, the more evasive they are. They don't exist in physical space. I mean, certainly we have physical sensations that relate to them. We see how they are reflected in the way we have cognition. But even if there's no cognition, and even separate from that physical state, there's an emotional thing happening. And it's kind of a trip. So that's what in the five skandas is called formation. And we'll look at, we'll specifically do mindfulness of formation tomorrow. How about that? Well, let me make a note. Okay. Other thoughts? Or... Thanks for everything yesterday. It was really very helpful. And just thanks for hearing your thoughts.

[06:25]

I was part of the practice period that said you have a chart in English in spring. And yeah, it's a lot to take in. So I was kind of left with, like, oh, yeah, you studied it. And I still have no idea. There is one line that stuck with me, kind of, I see it as this theme, as I live it, like diving into something, a really rich, dense text, or being in a conversation where it's like, what's untangle I like, okay? Yeah. And then you get like, oh. That's right. And then it comes out like, oh, it's about compassion. Really? That's it? That's it? And you do all these things and talk and lead to sometimes to come up with a simple thing.

[07:27]

So there's one line in the book that I can't remember from Adam. Something like, I think you were kind of addressing this. Yeah, I understand this is a lot to take in. And the line was, committing to cultivating mind of well-being, something like that. And I wondered if you could just talk about everything that you do that boils down. Yeah, well... Let me take a broad view of talking about that, and I think this contextualizes what I'm doing here. So, you know, yesterday I'm talking, for those of you who weren't here, I'm talking about the 30 verses of Consciousness Only by Vasubandhu, who's a real influential Buddhist person, personage. And one thing I can say is, you know, the work that I do with this is rooted in a lot of intellectual study as well as very non-intellectual practice, which are

[08:36]

hopefully operating somewhat harmoniously although sometimes it feels like they're they're not um so in terms of doing that like you go to the thing and you study and you study you're like i'm just getting more confused um buddhism is a very deep and complex intellectual tradition among many other things but one thing that it is is a staggeringly deep and complex intellectual tradition which has been populated by people with amazing philosophical capacities who have come up with all kinds of theories, some of which were quite different than the others and approaches. So you think, I'm just going to go to this place and listen to the creek, and then you're presented with this other side. So as Westerners, we inherit this tradition in many ways. But one way that I think it is really important that as a community you uphold the tradition is by maintaining some practice with the intellectual part of it.

[09:41]

Now, I wouldn't want that to be the main thing. But if it's not a part of it, we're not honoring 2,500 years of people in other cultures who work to pass this on to us. So the thing is, you don't have to be the person who does it. So there could be people in this room who are like, I just don't get into the intellectual thing. It's fine. Really. You can just practice Zazen. We have people in our community, all they ever do is they come and arrange flowers and they leave. Bows to you. Everyone's going to have to find their own way to express this practice. Having said that, someone, I really think someone should be doing this work. I don't like to get into shoulds, but as a community, we want to have people doing this work. And if you're really, really committed to it, I do invite you to challenge yourself to go for it. So having said that, what, can I boil this all down to something?

[10:45]

That sounds, well, I mean, to me, I'm kind of a Four Noble Truths type of a orientation, there's suffering in the world and you can do something about it. Now, so I'll add now, if that was apparent, there's suffering in the world and you can do something about it. And that doing something doesn't have to be frantic and it doesn't have to be fixing or changing something. It involves the way you act and the way you work with your mind. So, hopefully that was helpful. Other Thoughts, inquiries, themes. I had this question about, like, planting wholesome seeds and the unwholesome seeds. For a period of time, it was a really resonant idea, and I was kind of like, I should just be very diligent in every act and be saying, like, is this a wholesome thing? And then it ended up feeling like it just became a very sophisticated quote of doers, and it felt like, well,

[11:49]

But the root of my practice was actually accepting everything in the world and having a space where they were appreciating it. And I felt these kind of tensions. It felt like it was a useful thing, but then somehow the conceptual framework that was currently inhabiting was still just as tight and really just took a new form. So it sounded like that was kind of what you were addressing yesterday, realizing all the Buddhist practices, but in a non-dual way. So how do you do it? Well, I mean, you really put your finger upon the spot. So these teachings are going to say, like, in a minute I'll kind of segue to moving into talking about the 30 verses. They're going to say, they give you a model in the first half, which is about using mindfulness to essentially plant beneficial seeds, to shed afflictive menace states, particularly emotional states. But Mahayana, like, that's mostly about mindfulness as a tool. Mindfulness is inherently bifurcating. By definition, you pick an object.

[12:52]

Once there's an object, you've made duality. So that's why you... I don't... Has anyone found the word mindfulness in a text by Dogen? Is it in the Heart Sutra? Is it in this harmony of difference and sameness? It's almost abandoned. If you look at the six paramitas, kind of the Mahayana's model for shifting from the Eightfold Path, mindfulness isn't in it. Because... the argument is this is just a very sophisticated form of duality so yes however this is what I've noticed my experience is very dualistic so the prospect of just leaping out of it is cool and I do practices that are conducive to that and that's more like what I'll be talking about on the 4th and 5th days but But I really have a lot of conviction in the Yogacara idea that when Mahayana Buddhism jettisoned the power of mindfulness, it lost something.

[14:01]

It lost psychological acuity, in particular a kind that's really good at dealing with emotional states. Because the other thing you see in Mahayana texts is they don't talk about emotional states very much. They talk about wisdom and jumping out of duality. And the thing is, I have a lot of them. I don't know about you guys. Maybe you guys are like beyond this, but shoot. You know, I sat down in that tree and I'm like, oh, God, am I going to go home and it's going to be a horrible pit again? And then I just, I can see all this. I got something to take care of. And mindfulness helps me take care of that. So, okay. Well, this is cool. I think I want to... Move along and just talk some here. I'm already talking. But move into the text. So I think I maybe forgot to mention yesterday that in Yogacara texts and actually in many other non-Yogacara Buddhist texts, you'll see a term that comes up which is called the two barriers.

[15:05]

I can't remember actually the Sanskrit. So that's the way it's most commonly translated. And what they're referring to is the barrier of afflictive emotion and the barrier of delusion. So, as I've been saying, the idea of this tradition and this text is that mindfulness practice is particularly effective at helping alleviate afflictive emotions. And that Mahayana practice, particularly non-dual meditation, non-dual awareness, is a way to cut through delusion. And each one is better than the other at that particular thing. And in concert, they're more effective than if you just do one or the other. So, and the thing is, like, I was just reading, like, Peter Mathiason's book. I'm on doing, like, all this Rinzai practice. And it was like, I was just imagining him talking to these Rinzai masters about, like, mindfulness and emotional states. I mean, it's not there.

[16:07]

So the thing is, you may already be like, well, of course you practice mindfulness and emotions. But actually, this is because this way of thinking has seeped into American Buddhism so thoroughly. So in a way, I'm elevating something that's already happening culturally. All right. So the first verse is the 30 verses. is everything conceived as self or other occurs in the transformation of consciousness. So I talked about that a little bit yesterday. So basically this says what we're going to be talking about is consciousness. That is to say experience, the process of experience. So look around. This is what we're doing. And then it's going to segue. The second verse says this transformation has three aspects. The ripening of karma, the consciousness of a self, and the imagery of sense objects. This transformation has three aspects.

[17:10]

The ripening of karma, the consciousness of a self, and the imagery of sense objects. This is my and Wei Zhen Tang's translation. You can find lots of different ones. It's pretty easy to translate this stuff quite a few ways. Not as bad as Dogen. Anyway... So I just got to say, I actually remember the first time I saw the 30 verses. I was doing a morning study group, which is my principal way of learning about Dharma, a morning study group at the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center. And my teacher, Tim, passed around the 30 verses. And it was like maybe 12, 15 years ago. I looked at it, and I was just like, I don't know a single referent to what this could be talking about. Like it was completely impenetrable. And I just hung out with people, and we talked about it, and something, some understanding arose. And over time, that process of being with people, talking about it and exploring, allowed it to come alive in my experience.

[18:13]

So anyway, this transformation has three aspects. So he's saying we have a unitary thing, which is like this moment of experience. Transformation of consciousness. And then we're going to divide it up and look at it in three ways. So the ripening of karma. So we're going to be talking about karma. That'll be fun. Conscience of the self. Imagery of sense objects. So there are other names for these. So I will just go on. The next verse says, the first of these is also called alaya, the store consciousness, which contains all karmic seeds. And then later on, he'll go, the second transformation is called manas, the consciousness of the self. And later on, he'll say that the imagery of sense objects is the perception of the six senses. Okay, so we have this thing called the storehouse, or the alaya, it's in Sanskrit, which is the ripening of karma. That's where karma is happening. And then we're going to have a thing called the consciousness of the self. That's like the feeling that you may have right now, that you're you looking at me.

[19:20]

that you're not me looking at you. Maybe you don't have that experience. Cool. Congratulations on your current nominal awareness. Enjoy it. It'll probably go away. Okay. So then, at the end, we have this imagery of sense objects, or the six senses. So I'm going to relate this. I'm going to kind of build it up. So I'm going to start with the last piece, the imagery of... The imagery of the senses. So, basically, this first half of this thing is going to be a very brief summation of early Buddhist categorizations of what experience is. So, I don't know how much study of early Buddhist texts you have done, but over and over again, the Buddha says there are six senses. Eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. So mind is included as a sense because the Buddha says this is called the all.

[20:24]

It's one of the coolest sutras you can find. He says, I'm going to teach you the all. Sounds cool. And he says, the all is sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and mind. That is to say, the Buddha says, all I'm teaching you about is what's right here. I'm not theorizing about something outside of your experience. And I'm not suggesting you do either. So the mind, the category of mind includes everything, like all the thinky, blah, blah, blah stuff, like you're thinking about, like, how soon am I going to go back to work? Or all the feelings, emotional states, all the volitional impulses, stuff like that is all within the category of mind. So the weird thing about this, he says, this is the all. You're like, cool. And then the yoga chart says, Yeah, but we're going to throw a couple more in. So that may seem a little strange. Well, let me just say this about this all.

[21:27]

This is an invitation to pay attention in case this isn't apparent. So that imagery of sense objects in the 30 verses is about how we practice Zen, about how we hear the stream. We see the wall. We feel the leg. We feel the carrot. You smell the soup. This is what this is about. So the language is very technical, but he's referring to very simple, visceral element of experience and calling us back to it. So we have this thing. That kind of makes sense because we're like, I think I know I've experienced all those things. All six things. Then, working backwards, he says there's this consciousness of the self. So this is called the manas, which is a word that just kind of means mind in its most general word, meaning what in yoga chart text is very specifically in, which is the sense that we have that there's a self looking out at other things.

[22:34]

Right? So anytime that you feel like there's a self here looking at stuff, that's manas. Now... One of the weirdest things about all the categorizations of consciousness in early Buddhism is they never came up with this before that. Well, actually they did. If you dig deep enough, there's some references to this thing called the residual conceit I am. The residual conceit that I am. But generally speaking, they have the five aggregates, they have the six of these, all these things that are describing what experience is, but they never just put their finger on it and go like, hey, part of your experience is it feels like you're looking out at other things. And one of the reasons Yogacara comes up with this is one, it's so readily apparent that it's here. It doesn't mean it's real, by the way. It just feels like it's here.

[23:35]

But also, there's a whole bunch of complex stuff that Yogacara does that is trying to reconcile parts of early Buddhist teachings that didn't agree with each other. I'm not going to get into that at all during this talk, because it's ridiculously intellectually complex and kind of tiresome. So anyway, we have these six senses, and then we have the sense that there's a self looking out, an I, the conceit that I am. And then the first thing is this alaya, a storehouse, or when he first introduces it, he says, it's the ripening of karma. So maybe some of you have heard like storehouse consciousness is kind of a popular term, and it means different things in different schools of Buddhism. I'm going to talk about it very much just the way Vasubandhu talks about it. So... This is an unconscious element of experience. So specifically throughout many Buddhist sects, you can't see the storehouse consciousness, and you can't see what's there.

[24:39]

So this is really weird. I'll admit it, because the Buddha says, I'm only going to talk about what you can directly see in this moment of experience. And then Yoga Char gives you this hidden layer. But the thing is, without some understanding that there's something going on that we don't know about, it's pretty hard to understand why we have memories, why we have habits, why we don't all just go, you know what? I'm going to be super happy now and love everybody and always do the right thing. Wouldn't that be cool? Well, we can't do that. Something impedes our ability to do that. So the idea of a storehouse consciousness is merely a way... to frame or think about why we have habits why we have the possibility for liberation so the thing is like if you say storehouse consciousness it's all kind of like you know there's like a little house with a bunch of you know you put things in and take them out so that could be a helpful way to look at it but Vasubandhu wants us not to get too stuck so when he first introduces it he says the ripening of karma so he used to

[25:55]

There's part of consciousness that is some process where habituation is occurring. And then you're going to go, oh, we'll call that the storehouse consciousness. Because that'll be a way to talk about it that will kind of appeal to our rational minds and give us some tools. The idea isn't like there is ultimately actually some location where everything that you are is stored away. So... He's introduced, this is called the Eight Consciousness Model, because we have eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind, plus manas, plus yaliah, the Storos Consciousness. So now, we have a way of looking at experience that is hopefully going to be liberative. So he's going to move on now, you know... Indian texts like to work along, it's actually closely related to Western thought where you have like a, what do you call it?

[26:59]

An outline where it's like heading A, then there's B, C, and D, each one have subheadings. So they like to organize things that way just like we do. Have you guys read any Chinese texts? Not into this at all. You know what I mean? So comparing this text to like the song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi that we chanted this morning, very different. Anyway, so he's just going to start moving through sempetis. He introduced one thing, he divided it into three, and now he's going to start dividing, or he's going to start explaining the first element. So the third verse of this says, The first of these is called the alaya, the store consciousness, which contains all karmic seeds. What it holds and its perception of location are unknown. So there's parts of these I'm just going to skip over because they're super technical and not that helpful. The main thing here is, okay, karmic seeds... This idea has been introduced. That's where they are. That's how we're going to talk about this. And it's unknown. So we're not going to... So this is why... Okay, so let me just segue here.

[28:04]

What is the purpose of having this? So if we realize they're karmic seeds, we have this model which says, in any given moment, our consciousness is planting seeds. So at this moment, maybe you're being very mindful, you're attentive... You're pretty alert. So seeds of alertness and attentiveness and mindfulness are being planted. Or maybe you're kind of like spacing out and irritable, and seeds of spacing out and irritable are being planted. So whatever it is, whatever the flavor of consciousness that you have, particularly the affective and cognitive ones, are planting seeds that will make similar seeds in the future. This is a basic idea of how karmic works. in Buddhist thought. And karma is, you know, Buddha designs it very simply. He says karma is intention. So that's very confusing because when I think intention, I think, I'm going to get up in the morning and really be dutiful. That's not actually what's being talked about here.

[29:06]

When Buddha says karma is intention, the word he's using, satana maybe, it doesn't mean what we mean when we say intention. It means the very subtle... unconscious, motivational energy that drives our behavior. So the thoughts that we have that divide and categorize the world are intentional acts. They're karmic acts. And the feelings that we have that impel our behavior, whether we know it or not, are intentional acts within the system. So the storehouse is containing these seeds. Now, if you think... In any given moment, like if you get into the Abhidharma, they're like, they'll identify like in any Lakshana, which is, you guys read this Dogen thing, Guji, where he talks about like how there are 84,000 Lakshanas in a second. That's actually from the Abhidharma stuff. So that's, this is Yogachara's origin or this part of the teaching comes out of that.

[30:09]

So with any of those 84,000s of a second, there's like 13 mental events that all of which with an intentional flavor. Wow. So let's do the math. Okay, let's not. But anyway, the seeds are being planted really fast. It's not like, oh, I got up this morning and planted, you know, for an hour. So that's why later on in the 30 verses it says, it describes the Aliyah like a waterfall or like a river flowing. All right, so what molecules just happened behind me since I've been saying this sentence? Millions. So one of the purposes of this is to get us a sense of the scale of what we're dealing with. The karma is unknown. Buddha said repeatedly in the Pali Canon, he says, your karma is without discoverable beginnings. or your suffering is without discoverable beginning.

[31:13]

So that's, people go, ah, man, what a downer. But the purpose of this is to explode the scale. So kind of like the bodhisattva vows, explode the scale of what we can do to be liberative, by seeing our suffering as being part of this billions and billions and billions of intentional moments that are going unknowably far back in time, it's gonna disarm our tendency to be like, the reason I'm pissed is that you suck. That's the way we think. We're always, or that's what human beings are always trying to make the conditions, figure out what they are in a very small frame. And this has utility, of course, you know what I mean? Like I cut my finger, it's painful, I should put it under the sink and get some water and bandage it. That's cool. There's, you know, there's a reasoning and a process. At the same time, you know, once you've done that, the reasons you cut your finger, this is Freud's insight.

[32:22]

You familiar with the term of a Freudian slip? So Freud invented the unconscious. Oh, wait, Yogacharya did that 1,500 years before. But anyway, the Freudian slip wasn't a speech act. The Freudian slip was the idea that when you make a mistake, your unconscious impelled you to make a mistake. What's that? Moved you to do. It caused you to do. Those are like the muskrats. It's like us muskrats. Us lizards, you run over somebody and then be like, what was that thing? We don't know. We don't know. So you can make the scale bigger. Look beyond that narrow, instrumentalized view of the world and realize that the suffering that's arriving here is part of something really vast. So, let's see.

[33:27]

What am I trying to get through today? Well, let's just keep working through these verses. Let me... Yes. So, the storehouse consciousness, the aliyah, is the storehouse consciousness which contains all karmic seeds, what it holds, and its perception of location are unknown. It is always associated with sense contact, attention, sensation, perception, and volition. Oh, lists within lists. Good times. You guys can go back to your poetry later. So, what we'll see is that every element of consciousness is associated with these five things, which are called, later on, they'll be introduced again as the five universal factors. Five universal factors. Sense contact, attention, sensation, perception, and volition. So, I don't want to get super technical here, but here's the simple thing.

[34:31]

Have you guys... How many people have heard of the five aggregates? How many people have said no form, no sensation, no perception, no formation, no consciousness? I don't know if you can hear, there's some similar terms in there. So the five universal factors are basically a subtle reworking of the five aggregates. Why they got reworked is complex. But basically it has to do with the fact that some of the elements within the five aggregates have multiple meanings in different contexts. And Abhi Dharmas didn't like that. They said, I want to have one term for one thing and one term for one thing. So they narrowed the range of the meaning of a couple of things. Sense contact. That is form. In case you didn't know what form is, is raw sensory data. Sense contact. Attention. So they remove consciousness from the... That's in the aggregates. It's not in the five universal factors. That's because the whole thing is consciousness. So it would be weird to be like, everything is consciousness elements, this whole thing down here. So they point out that in any given moment, there's sense data.

[35:35]

There's attention. Consciousness tends to focus on some elements more than others. Sensation is that Vedna, the valence, positive-negative valence. That's kind of subtle, I don't want to talk about it too much, but basically the idea is in any given moment, actually in any given Lakshana, 84 thousandths of a second, your consciousness is going, I like it, I don't, I like it, I don't. Perception is the same as in the aggregates, which is the ascribing of conceptual data to experience. So, in this moment, your consciousness and mind are ascribing hundreds of thousands of of conceptual data to what's happening right we all know which shapes in this room are individual human beings which thing is a vertical line which thing is a sound which thing is a blade and we could go on and on and ant isn't doing all that we don't think right so wow what our mind is doing is a total trip if you think this system is complicated it's because what it's talking about is crazy astonishing

[36:50]

Wow! Sense, contact, attention, sensation, perception, and volition. Volition. So this is, if you had really good memory, you might be going, oh, that would be formation in the aggregates. So this is why they're going to be divided, and this goes back to Gaia's question. Formation is a very important concept in the aggregates. This is why. And it's not talked about as being important enough. So, this is why. Formation is all the emotional energy of your life. So you read all these polycanic texts, and you're like, no ideas, and then you read the Art Sutra, no form, no sensation, no perception, no formation. We just, like, said the entire emotional reality of your life is empty. Cool. And just keep going. We'll talk about something else. If the whole function of Buddhism is to alleviate suffering... Doesn't it seem like we should spend some time paying attention to this part of it?

[37:53]

I think so. I think so. And we'll see later on that formation gets unpacked at length. That's one of the meatiest parts of this text. You say, oh, we should really pay attention to this. There's a lot of power here. So volition, which replaces the aggregates in this system. What does volition mean? That's like the will to do something. The will to do something. So, uh... This is all that's going on. You know what I mean? You're like, will to not move. You will to move. You will to listen to this and not to that. We don't even know we're doing it. I'll be honest. I really try and pay attention. I didn't even notice I picked this couple. What is that? What's happening? What? Am I just a muskrat? I would be a lot cuter if I was a muskrat.

[39:01]

So I think it would be fun to do this. I think it would be fun to practice mindfulness of volition. And so the idea with the aggregates, they get talked about in many ways. Well, one of the key things to do with the aggregates, if you look at the earliest Buddhist teachings, is in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness Sutra, under the heading of mindfulness of phenomena, is mindfulness of the aggregates. So what does that mean? That means sitting there and being like, sense data, perception, actually seeing them. You could label them, that's a common practice, but you don't have to. Just knowing that those phenomena are there is the practice. So my guess is you all came to practice Zen so you wouldn't have to memorize 87,000 lists of things and then carefully identify them one after the other and get good at identifying one and then move on. Maybe not. But it's fun to play.

[40:05]

So I'm going to give a brief meditational instruction and just give you guys a few minutes to to just try and orient your awareness to a very specific element of experience, which is volition. So for practicing mindfulness of these subtle internal states, eyes closed is generally helpful. Actually using a little bit of what in yoga we call pratyahara, sense withdrawal or what in the language of Shurto Shichen you might call turn around the light to shine within. All mindfulness practice is rooted in the body. The foundation of the foundation of mindfulness is awareness of the breath in the body.

[41:12]

So let's just begin there. Settling awareness and the physical sensations of reading. So as we move into cultivating mindfulness of volition, see if you can allow the breath, the awareness of the breath in the body to be the grounding, the foundation of this further mindfulness. Because you may find that

[42:21]

It's very difficult to sustain attention on volition. It appears to be something that comes and goes or can't quite be detected. So allow the breath to be an ongoing basis of mindfulness within which awareness of volition may arise. Volition is the impulse of to do something. This includes the impulse to move the body. It includes the impulse to direct the attention in a certain way. The moment of thinking, there is an impulse to think.

[43:42]

It's subtle. cannot detect it see if there's an impulse around your desire to detect Do not be disturbed if you can't figure out what's happening.

[45:26]

See if you can soften in to a curious investigation of your experience. Noticing motivations, impulses, the will to do things. invite you to let go of the volition, to practice mindfulness of volition.

[47:06]

Just let the awareness rest in the breathing. Allow the eyes to open. And... Here we are. Alright. Well, I have no idea what just happened. Everyone's mind is unique in every moment. So we've just got a few minutes here.

[48:11]

I'm interested to hear other voices in the form of observations or questions, poems. How would you describe, you know, differentiate omission from intention? Right. The truth is, it's pretty hard to know. Or maybe there's, this is why I put it, it's arbitrary. So this is why I like Zen. Because these distinctions ultimately are somewhat arbitrary. So with this experiment, how Vasubandhu would have taught it, I don't know. He doesn't dig into that level of detail. I like to start talking about volition before tomorrow we move into the more meaty realm of formation. Because when talking about formation, it tends to have more of an... We're talking more about the emotional tone of experience.

[49:18]

So with volition, it's like there's not necessarily... You can see that there's a distinction between, like, I'm angry and I want to... You could start to actually make those fine distinctions. They're not real, but they help you to kind of parse out what's happening in your experience. That helps us not to just kind of act habitually. So it's pretty subtle, and I can't be precise. But basically, what I wanted to do was take away the emotional tone of it, which will be more the material for tomorrow, if that makes any sense. And I kind of like wondered, you know, if I really try to direct my life or my actions, intention, practice. I think that intention is kind of like an overriding goal or an overriding motivation.

[50:26]

But when you said intentions of emotional information, Yeah, so what we have here is a semantic distinction, which doesn't mean it's not important. Some people are like, oh, you said semantic, so that means, oh, it's really important. Words are very powerful. So I was talking about the technical definition of karma by the Buddha. When he says karma is intention, he's talking about this waterfall of moments that impel our behavior. But intention also has another meaning, which is a more broad, like, what is your... calling yeah what what do you want to do with your life and that's that's a meaningful and important thing and when you um and they relate so like when you're like i really feel my intention to just pour my life into the wellness of everyone in the world you can see that other meaning of intention all the feelings that come with it the joy and also kind of the sorrow so both meanings are real

[51:29]

And they're actually different. Does that make sense? I was surprised, actually, at how blatantly my intention was. Like, I can have an intention for every breath. And how there was a kind of conjuring that became involved in my intention. So it felt very creative and very gentle. I'm surprised that a bit of attention has been so scary for the rest. And it may appear to see stimulating with each conjuring, but the disease of making an apple is how much this plant will spread. Yeah, that's very interesting. Yeah, and that's why, you know, like I say, I'm more of a Zen guy, so I don't spend the bulk of my practice doing this kind of investigation because it feels jumpy.

[52:38]

I mean, in a way, you're seeing that it's jumpy. That's probably there. But it also, it does create a little jumpiness, I think. So I like to do this in moderation. It kind of undoes the finding of self to see how it's doing it. Exactly. That's why it's early Buddhist practice. They love, they're going to unbind the self by cutting up the parts we think are the self. Whereas like Doga just like jump in. Don't cut anything up. Jump in. Yeah. So true. Yeah. Anyone else? This question is like, well, is this attention or is it intervention?

[53:44]

Because there is this sense of, like, there's the creep, there's this thought, there's this healing, and then there's this kind of, like, fuzzy image coming up, and I'm not sure why it ends. And then I was trying to just see, like, with this energy, it kind of came away. I don't know why that's in my youth. So in that way, I didn't quite put this, you know, but it still, we see a total feeling, like, what I was, I guess I felt a little bit more energy when I was, like, you know, I feel this, you know, she was doing this. But it, it, Well, here's what I'll say. When I say volition, I think that's like me doing it. So what's weird about this is you go, that's just something that's happening. So you start to see my mind went to the image. It went to the creek. Something is making that choice.

[54:46]

But it's not like, you know, as we all know, if we're sitting in the closet, it's like, now I'm going to, this stuff just happens. stuff just happens so uh yeah this although this language seems so technical really to me the practice of engaging with it is always one of unpacking a deeper and deeper mystery of like what is even happening here whoa wow uh so my goodness i think we're we're probably supposed to wrap up here You all have to do all this amazing stuff that makes it so that I can just magically be super comfortable. I just like to say, like, gee whiz, thank you all. Like, I know you're working. I see sometimes people working, but mostly it just seems like something beautiful is here. It's like when I look at that cause calligraphy over there, there's just something beautiful. I don't see all the care.

[55:50]

So thank you for your ENSO, and hopefully I'll see you tomorrow. Thank you. He came to me and he saw all the fact of the greatest. And I had a great deal for the fact that he was with me. He came to me and he saw all the family that stopped so long. But I had a great deal for the fact that he was with me. And I had a great deal for the fact that he was with me. And I had a great deal for the fact that he was with me. And I had a great deal for the fact that he was with me. Thank you.

[56:59]

Thank you. Here, let's see about 8.40, right? 8.40, yeah, probably 8.40. 8.15, check it.

[57:37]

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