It is rarely in that way, even in a hundred thousands of male Viettelpas. I didn't seem to do it, except I didn't use the jury to target those workers. I gotta say, it's amazing. You know, I just showed up here and there's all people coming and going at this place all the time, but I feel like I'm part of a community. That is cool. That is a cool, magical thing. So, uh, I don't know what everybody is doing, but go. Yes. It feels good. Me. So, um, Let's see. Today, I want to talk in a sustained way.

[01:08]

Basically, just give a lecture and try and not get into a dialoguing thing at the beginning of this talk because I'm going to talk about a body of teaching that's kind of confusing and has to live all in balance with each other. And it's not easy for me to talk about because it's kind of complex. And so if I start getting thrown off, I'm afraid it will get really confusing. So it may be confusing anyway, but I think it will be least confusing if we could just have a sustained period, I'm hoping like a half an hour, to try and let these pieces fall into place together through speaking and listening, me doing the speaking. So, and then hopefully I'll have some time for a more free-flowing thing. So the first thing I want to do, though, is address something. So something has come up, like people outside of the class were asking me about this, and it's clear it's confusing, and I wanted to see if I could clarify. So this comes back to this point of karma, this basic Buddhist dictum that's from the Pali Canon.

[02:14]

Karma is the intention. As one intends, one does acts of body, speech, and mind. So what's confusing about this is the word intention is being used in a very particular technical way that is very different than the way you usually hear it. And so if you think of it in the way you usually think of it, this doesn't make sense at all. So let me just say the technical way is intention here means the things that impel you or move you to act. All of them. And there are millions of them in this yoga chara system or abhidharma or even early buddhist thought certainly thousands of them in any given second things about the way you perceive the way things are and categorize the elements of experience and things about the way you feel that form the way you act so the main distinction is intention here we would usually think of this as like a conscious thing i have this idea about what i'm going to do in this case most of the intention is unconscious

[03:20]

And all that I've been talking about the last two days is about bringing the unconscious, intentional things that motivate our behavior into consciousness. So just to give you an example, because that's a lot of abstract words. Let's just imagine you have a relationship with someone in your family, and I don't want to pick on anyone in a pretty good role. We'll just say your mom. And hopefully some people don't have a relationship with their mom. Let's say you have a relationship with your mom. It's good and it's bad, but there's a thing your mom does, which is she criticizes you, and you find it upsetting. So if this doesn't resonate with you, think of someone else who criticizes you. Anyway, sometimes you get really mad about it. You just feel, oh, it's procrastinating. But you know this. You're like a good Zen student. You're like, I intend to call up my mom tonight and have a conversation with her. And if she is overly critical to be forthright to say, you know, I really love you, But it really hurts my feelings when you talk that way.

[04:21]

Could you not do that? And you're like, this is my intention. So that's a conventional, our usual conventional understanding of intention. Now, we'll move into what Buddha is talking about here. So you call up your mom. And you go, hi, mom. You start talking. And she says something critical. Oh, yeah. I intend to just be forthright. But that was pretty small. I'm not going to say anything. And then she says something else critical, and you're like, God, I really don't want to talk about this. So... And then she says something else. So you have, like, a conventional intention happening here. But what happened in that was all kinds of things that impel your behavior, that are conditioned, came up. You're called the first time. You're like, oh, I don't want to talk about it. So you have all these little emotional things. You don't want to confront people. You don't want to be, eh, right? Right. And then the next time that you were criticized was not the first. You felt like it was like the millionth.

[05:25]

It's already categorized as like a dragon eating your head, right? You can't see that it was one criticism. It's like a vast buildup. That's another intentional mass or a karmic mass. It's conditioning how you view the situation. And so you end up... You know, you're like being really... You're like, geez, my intention was to be forthright and calm and kind and... And instead I was just like really crabby and unpleasant and she just wanted to get off the phone. So we do that. It happens. Things like that happen, right? So I'm just trying to make that distinction of what we're talking about when we talk about intention. And just to make it the most concise... way of putting this all that talk yesterday was was about seeing becoming intimate with that stuff that's motivating our behavior one because then we don't have to just be compelled by we can go oh look that's a feeling now what will i choose to do but more importantly because of the karmic theory presented by the buddha if you can directly see it its power is exhausted and it will not reproduce itself that seed makes its fruit

[06:44]

And it doesn't just unconsciously plant another seed while you're not looking. It bears its fruit in the light of awareness, and you plant seeds of awareness. Okay. So, anyway. Having said that, then someone else asked me, does Vasibadu ever talk about enlightenment? Which, for some reason, just struck me as really funny. Ha ha ha! Because yes, he does. So what he pointed out was there's a whole major piece of what he's doing that I haven't even mentioned. So let's move into that. Enlightenment, that sounds fun. Are we hungry for it yet? So he talks about this. So with each of the three basic types of consciousness, the storehouse, the manis, the sense of eye, and the perceptual... a perceptual experience. With each one, he talks about what it's like and what factors there are there, like what kind of experience are within that.

[07:44]

And then at the end of each section, he talks about when it exists and doesn't exist. So at the end of the section on the storehouse consciousness, in the fourth verse, he says, it is not found. No, I'm sorry. At the end of the storehouse consciousness, he says, in enlightenment, it is overturned at its root. In Enlightenment, the storehouse consciousness is overturned at its root. If anybody's ever seen, there's a very famous Thich Nhat Hanh book called Transformation at the Base. That's a translation of the same thing we translate as overturned at the root. So what's interesting about that to me is he doesn't say that you eradicate the storehouse. It's transformed at its base. And it's one of the least clearly articulated, what that means, at least, that was very precise usually. And it's kind of evocative. But what I can say is, in later Yogachari texts, what people say is, after transformation at the base, what you have is luminous mirror wisdom.

[08:46]

Does that sound familiar to anyone? I've heard it chanted in the Zendo every day that I've been here. Luminous mirror wisdom. So, I don't know exactly what the chant is, but interesting, it says, may our luminous mirror wisdom do something. Cool. So when we chant it here, we're not talking about like when you're enlightened later on. It's saying we have this luminous mirror with the root now. And that we'll get to in a little bit. So then with the manas, he says the manas is not found in enlightenment, the meditation of cessation, nor the super mundane path. So there's some real tactical terms there. But let me just be brief. Like in enlightenment... The sense, basically, Mahayana or Yogacara defines enlightenment almost principally as the non-sense, not having the sense that there's an actual self perceiving external objects. So within this experience, everything's happening because, as we go, everything's happening except the sense that there's alienation.

[09:57]

There's only intimacy. So then it goes on with the five senses, It doesn't say that they come and go in enlightenment. It says the five senses arise on the store consciousness like waves arise on water depending on conditions. So this is just describing, I mean, it doesn't make sense that people in enlightenment don't have sensory experience. Because otherwise, like when people came to the Buddha to ask him a question, he's like, I'm just sitting here in blindness, right? So it's all people. It makes sense. You know, the senses come and go. And likewise, it says thought consciousness, when it's closing out that section, manifests at all times except in the realm of no thought. The two thought-free meditation states unconsciousness and thought-free sleep. So there, they're saying thought consciousness manifests in enlightenment. So, like, people can actually have words in their mind and be enlightened, according to Yogicara teachings. But your mind isn't working like when you're, you know, blacked out on drugs or have a concussion or whatever. So anyway, he first introduces what enlightenment looks like in terms of the Eighth Consciousness Model.

[11:07]

It looks like all that karmic process that drives your behavior to suffer and cause suffering, it's overturned at its root, and instead, just to use the later language, he doesn't say this, you have a luminous mirrorism that just reflects things without obscuration. The sense of alienation is evaporated, and there's only intimacy. Monist is not active. And then the senses and the mind are doing their thing. Doing their thing, but not found. So anyway, he gives us this model of consciousness. I think it's very helpful. That's why I talk about it. And then he makes a pivot in verse 17 where he says, this... I've got to read this one. This... Okay, hold on. This transformation of consciousness is conceptualization. What is conceptualized does not exist.

[12:08]

Thus, everything is projection only. So he says, I explained this nice model of consciousness. It's all just a bunch of ideas. It's not real. It's projection only. Not only is the model that I have presented, me and Vasubandhu, but all the other models that our mind is presenting to us. This whole experience you're having right now is a model. It's projection only. It's projection of the tendencies of your mind. Okay, that's bizarre because it just seems so, you know... I know. I know. But someone else here was talking about, like, neuroscience. And this is... Neuroscientists will present a very similar thing that bases their argument on a completely different way of investigating. But they're just like... A bunch of stuff happens and the way our brain works processes and makes a picture... We think that picture is real, but it's not ultimately real. It's a representation that is governed by the way our brain works. So Vasuban is not going to talk about a brain because he's not a materialist.

[13:13]

He's talking about experience. So he's going to be like, you can dissolve these preconceptions and see that they're not ultimately real. So this is where it's going to get freaky. Don't worry. The only reason for all this, I really believe this, is that it has the potential for liberation. So we have to kind of stay with this. So by making that pivot, and I'll just say, like, there's a very important term that we translate as projection only, which is Vijnapti Matra. Vijnapti Matra. Matra means only. And I just want to say this has two... Totally opposite connotations. One is projection only. So come on. When you're just like, when is the sun going to go down? It's too hot. Be like, you're making hot. Ask Dongshan. Go where there is no colder heat. On the other hand.

[14:14]

That's hot. On the other hand, it's hot. But on the other hand, it's projection only. You only have projection. It's as real as it gets. As real as it gets. You don't have some reality outside of this moment of experience where you're going to figure it out. This experience of projection only is your ground of liberation. So they kind of mean like the opposite thing. One is like, go! Just let go! dialectic okay so we'll come back to this term vision upti mantra in a minute but at this point there's kind of a pivot um he talks a little bit about karma and then he moves into the the teaching on the three natures so for those of you who are in the first day you have some inkling where we're going with this so three natures is uh shifts the attention from the nature of consciousness

[15:25]

To the nature of phenomena. So like phenomena. Like brownness. Brownness. Soundness. Or like meanness. Those are phenomena. Or like phenomena. Like joy. You just feel it. Wow. So this is going to be a way of thinking about. Or looking at phenomena. The particulate matter of experience. All of it. Everything fits under these categories in this system. So the three natures are the imaginary nature, the other-dependent nature, and the complete realized nature. The harakalpata, paratantra, and parnaspanas, but I'm not going to play Sanskrit because I don't really know it. Imaginary nature, other-dependent nature, and complete realized nature. These things are all inherent in every phenomenon. So, I just should go back and be clear.

[16:30]

When I was talking about enlightenment and the eight consciousness model, it sounds linear, right? You go to enlightenment at that point, the storehouse is overturned. So that sounds like early Buddhist teachings. You go from samsara to nirvana, somewhere else. There is a path. Anyway, so we have the imaginary nature... The underdependent nature and the complete realized nature. So, first I'm going to talk about these using a very famous metaphor, like the most common metaphor to describe it. It's called the metaphor of the water. So, I'm going to elaborate just a little bit. So, let's imagine you're in a desert and it's really hot. It's just hot. Like, not hot like this. You've been to Tucson and in January you walk outside and you're like, it's really hot. And I'm just going to elaborate on this and say, you know where you're going. You know if you follow, like the sun is moving this way, and you know if you go that way, the north, you're going to reach somewhere where there's water, there's people, and you have medicine with you.

[17:42]

Medicine. So you're like, I want to go over there. I can bring this medicine to people. I won't die because there will be water. Also, it will be more pleasant because I get in the water. So you're going across the desert and you look over to your left and you see shimmering on the horizon a clear, cool pool of water. And you're just like, oh yeah, let's go over there. That's going to be great. We're going to go over there and have a big drink because I'm really thirsty because it's so hot. I'm going to get in the water. It's going to feel good. I will be satisfied. All my pain will go away. It's going to be cool. And you go over there. And that water never gets any closer. Every step you take, it gets farther away. And you spend your whole life chasing after something that you never get. And it's pretty painful.

[18:43]

So I don't know if you know about this, but when it's really hot, sometimes the heat rises off things and it looks like water. So in the Three natures model, the water is an imaginary nature. It's not actually water. Now, we could say it's a mirage, but actually I want to stay away from calling it a mirage for a minute and just say the fact that it's water is imaginary. But we believe it and we think that imaginary thing is going to help us. It doesn't. So then it has other dependent nature. All kinds of things come together to make that appearance be there. There's the heat. There's the sand. There's the way your mind works. There's not only the fact that you have a visual faculty that can see a shimmering thing, but a mental factor and desire that turns it into water. Right? So those are just a few of the conditions are infinite kajillions of conditions.

[19:45]

So that's other dependent nature. Finally, the complete realized nature is principally that is not water. Now, you could very provisionally say that it's a mirage, but that's just another idea. Mostly the complete realized nature is that it's not water. It's empty of waterness. So the thing is, you can go, that's of an imaginary nature. Dependent conditions created is not going to satisfy me. I'm not going over there. I'm going to go in the direction which I know can help people and help me, which is over there, where there are people who need the medicine that I am carrying. And you can drag your butt sweating across the desert and do it. Usually, drag your butt isn't enough.

[20:47]

Sanskrit version of the butt. Okay. So this gives you a way of kind of entering the idea of the three natures without it being hyper-intellectual. Vasuban is sort of hyper-intellectual, so I'm going to play with that side of it. So he introduces these. I'm going to do the whole passage, and you may just be like, oh, well. I'm going to do it anyway. Whatever thing is conceptualized by whatever conceptualization, is of an imaginary nature. The other-dependent nature is a conceptualization arising from conditions. The complete realized nature is the other-dependent nature being devoid of the imaginary. Thus, it is neither the same nor different from the other-dependent, like impermanence, etc., when one isn't seen, the other also is not seen. With the threefold nature, there is a threefold absence of self-nature.

[21:52]

The imaginary is without self by definition. The other dependent doesn't exist by itself. The third nature, the third is no self-nature. That is to say, the complete realized nature of all phenomena, which is thusness, since it is always already thus, projection only. Boy, have I spent some time trying to figure out what's going on there. So first, let me just say, we'll get there. Complete realized nature is like... I actually... I keep having trouble talking about this lucidly. I'm going to read. The Sanskrit word carries three principal connotations. Wholeness, the way things really are, and what one sees in enlightenment. Complete realized nature. So... That nature is what one sees in enlightenment. It's complete. It's whole. And it's what's real. Well, we'll get there in a minute.

[22:55]

Because I want to hang out with the imaginary nature. So, when everything is conceptualized by whatever conceptualization is of an imaginary nature. So, within this system, everything we're experiencing comes through the lens of conceptualization. We don't see raw data of what this is. It's already coming in, and we're like, that's a table, that's wood, that's brown. Those are all categories that we were taught that affect how we perceive the thing. So, and of course, then the emotional valences have a lot of weight when they come up, too. So, basically, whatever thing is conceptualized by whatever conceptualization is imaginary nature, that means all of it. Now, this is where, you know, people go, oh, that's awful. Is that going to be helpful? A very reasonable question. Now, one, let's remember that it sits in balance with the other dependent and the complete realized nature. It never lives alone as a concept or as a kind of a truth.

[23:57]

Kind of a truth. Because it's just a concept. The imaginary nature. So, first off, generally speaking in Mahaya literature, we see Allah's talk about how everything is like a bubble or a dream, like a phantom. That's what it says in the Diamond Sutra. This is usually just used to try and disarm the intensity with which we suffer because of the constructions of our mind. And it can really help. You know, when you're just, you know, in that conversation with your mom, you're just like... I'm not really seeing what this is. Sometimes you can just remember that and it will click and help you cut through all that blame and shame and just be like, wow, I'm feeling this. She's saying that. I'm about to say this. Or maybe not. However, I think the biggest genius of yoga chart, actually I probably think 18 things are, but one of the greatest ones is...

[25:03]

how they use the idea of things being imaginary or dreamlike to put it into the realm of empowerment. So we're going to say because it's imaginary, you have agency in how the imagination is constructed because we participate in the karmic process in every moment. Power, real power, not power to try and manipulate external objects, which is very frustrating and often doesn't work. but power which is to act. The power to act. So let me just frame this in a way that makes sense. So why is it helpful to see something as imaginary to remind you to act? So some of you may have had some experience receiving anti-racism training lately. One of the things people like to do is bring in whiteness theory or, yeah, whiteness theory is what you call it. So what this usually begins with is you sit down and you investigate the fact that the idea of race that we have, where there are white people and black people and Asian people, and sometimes a couple other categories, but in different systems, this idea that we have was constructed only within the last few hundred years.

[26:23]

And it's very clear it was constructed for one reason, to justify one of the most massive systems of oppression and exploitation ever enacted. Both the transatlantic slave trade, Indian United States from West Africa, and colonialism in general. That construct was made up for a purpose. And so you sit down and you really look at how the construct came to be. And then, when you're at Reverend Angel Kyoto's training, like I was a few months ago, and she gets done with that, she says, so... Race is just a construct. It doesn't matter. Just forget about it. No! No, she does not. Then we realize that it's really important. We realize that the illusion that lives in us, that manifests how we see other individuals and ourselves, and lives in all the systems we're part of, is that...

[27:27]

destructive energy that made it is still living, and that you can do something about it, and that it really matters. So this basic model for looking at how to do anti-racism training, it looked like that's what the imaginary nature in this system is exactly intended to do. The biggest distinction is that when you go to that training, they're going to talk about the concept of race. And when you go to the Yogacara training, we're going to see every single concept, including everything you conceptualize in this moment, falls in this category of being not absolutely real, constructed as part of a system of what we call samsara in Buddhism, and a ground for liberative activity. that will evolve, seeing what are the pieces that construct that, seeing how they show up in our emotional lives, in our bodies, in our preconceptions.

[28:29]

So, imaginary nature. The other dependent nature, I may talk about this a little less today. My guess is it's much more familiar to everybody here, the idea that everything comes to be because of infinite conditions. Now, I actually think this is really good to not stop thinking about. In fact, I argue in this book that one of the four main practices you should do is just keep thinking about interdependence. So just like, you know, when I take the filter and the coffee out of my thing, just be like, where is that going? Where did this piece of paper come from? How much effort? How many people? Wow! Just pause and do that. Continually keep doing it. And you can do this with a positive valence when you need it, and you can do it with things that are hard. So you can just be like, just beat down.

[29:35]

Just be like, I am part of this environment. This creek is part of me. I'm water, it's water. We co-live together. I breathe the air with these trees to take time to feel that support and connection. On the other hand, it's also very good to stop and look at the way other dependence includes a lot of suffering and violence. Say, we're sitting here in a region that was populated by people for thousands of years who've been eradicated for the most part. Wow. And that's part of how we're here. You cannot not be part of that. The complete realized nature is where things really do get, this is where things get weird, because then you're really emphasizing the non-dual at this point.

[30:37]

So, I'll do my best. So, as I said before, the complete realized nature, the term parnus ponus, has a number, I'm actually going to read this whole section. How about that? Whoever wrote this is better at explaining this than I am. The complete realized nature is a translation of Paranaspana. It is a difficult term. Various other translators have called it the really real nature, the perfectly accomplished nature, the absolute, and the fulfilled own being. The Sanskrit word carries three principal connotations. wholeness, wholeness, the way things really are, and what one sees in enlightenment. Our translation of the 30 verses tries to convey these three meanings using complete to express wholeness and realize to convey both how things are made real by infinite conditions and also what is seen in realization.

[31:43]

Vasubandhu's definition of the complete realized nature in this line of verse is quite challenging. We are entering the realm of the non-dual. The logic of non-duality breaks down every possible dualism as it arises, and as a result makes for some very confusing statements. Zen, anyone? Please trust that ultimately it is here to help us free our minds. Free our minds. So, uh... Towards the end of the section on these three natures, Vasubhani presents them as kind of having what their qualities are, what their nature is, and then he says, with this threefold nature is a threefold absence of self-nature. Thus it had been taught that all things have no self. So he wants to make sure he doesn't violate the genius of Nagarjuna at looking at how emptiness works. So he wants to make sure we don't think any of these things is like an actual, really existing thing.

[32:46]

Weirdly, he's going to say one of them is. Back to the milker. So, he says the imaginary is all self by definition. So, right, that makes sense. It's not an actual real thing. It's an imagination. The other dependent does not exist by itself. The thing that you think is a thing is actually just infinite conditions. That's what it is. Infinite conditions. It's not the thing. The third... Now we're on to the complete real nature. The third is... No self nature. That is the complete realized nature of all phenomena, which is thusness. Since it is all was already thus. Projection only. So this is a series of statements. Each one contradicts the other. And they're all like supposed to be living together as true definitions of this thing. he's saying so in this moment there's this okay it's imaginary we're participating in the imagination it comes together it's complete realized nature it's no self that means it's not anything you could think of what it is whatever thing you think it is that can't be it this is what in some zen we call move no thing

[34:08]

It's not a thing. It's not an object. So then, it says, the third is no self-nature. That is to say the complete realized nature of all phenomena. Since all phenomena are inherently empty of whatever concepts we have, they're all already complete. They're already whatever they are. Whatever they are. But they're not something else. And that's complete. So... The thing is, there's a wholeness there. There's a wholeness there, because the divisiveness of our concepts can't reach it. The complete realized nature of all phenomena, which is dustness, or sometimes we hear the term suchness. So suchness and dustness is a It's a term that people use to talk about emptiness as it pertains to a thing in its emptiness.

[35:17]

So, like, there's thusness here. So whatever you think this is, you could wave your hands around to point at it, too. But just imagine these were your hands. Maybe they are. Waving around, pointing at this, all this... is thusness. It can't be something else than what it is. The universe arrived like this. It didn't arrive some other way. This is complete. The universe didn't say, let's make it crappy for you. It showed up like this. Realization is here. but it's not what you think it is, but the thing is, it can't be separate from all your concepts, then it wouldn't be complete. It would be cut up. The third is no self-nature that is the complete realized nature of all phenomena, which is thusness, since it is always already thus.

[36:21]

It's never like this particular moment is coming later, or this particular moment happened a while ago. That doesn't happen. This particular moment Happens now. It's always already that way. The third is no self-nature. That is the complete realized nature of all phenomena, which is thus. It is always already thus. And then he just... Projection only. Completely circular. You're not going to get out of this world of projection. This isn't about escape. This is about intimacy. This is about entrance. This is about engagement. So it's not the projections aren't real, but they're what we've got. It's as real as it gets.

[37:23]

So who knows what your mind is doing with that? What is this about? What is this about? Complete realized nature. This is what the enlightened see. This. They don't see something else in this teaching. This is Mahayana teaching. Enlightenment is not somewhere else. And, you know, that's like... This is where... It doesn't start to sound like a religion to me. It's faith. When I'm chanting the Prajna Paramita, I'm like, I don't know. It seems like there's eyes. It seems like there are. But you're saying they're empty. And that's Prajna Paramita. See, it's empty. Prajna Paramita is going to just do everything awesome for everybody? Wow. That sounds pretty religious. I'm just sorry.

[38:30]

Wow. Faith. In the moment. Trust. Trust and heart-mind. If we just sit with just the teaching of the other dependent and the imaginary nature, it's hard. All was just like, I gotta do this work. I gotta liberate everybody. We don't have enough energy to do it all. We need something that can help us trust that we're complete. that the people were with, that this relationship is whole. That it's enough to just sit in the Zendo and be like, I don't know what the hell is happening. Can it be enough? And it really, you know, I was talking to this, I was at this entrepreneurship conference, guess it, enough. I don't want to talk about enough. I want to talk about bounty. So, okay, bounty. It's the whole universe. It's Buddha.

[39:31]

Is that bountiful? Is that bountiful enough? We can feel our way into this. To trusting that all our ideas about it, it's not what it is. But we can be safe here. And make a place of safety so we can begin to feel this in our hearts. All right. Well, I made the package that I hoped to make of these three concepts. And now, let's see what happens. I'm hoping people have observations, queries, or anything. I just want to put first right page three here.

[40:32]

I'm sorry, the creek is not. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thanks here. And I wanted to um, connect, um, ask about that safety that we're creating in this, um, in this community, for example, and, um, and the communities were planned, and, um, when it gets to, um, race, um, try to be touching the base on, um, I don't feel safe talking about release in this community, um, because it's usually because it's an attack And it's really painful, it's extremely, um... Yeah, there's a lot of heartache, you know.

[41:45]

Which, which doesn't make it safe for me, um, or doesn't feel super safe to carry out that part of it. Or, you know, my part of it is smooth all the time, so I was wondering, oh, What can you say about that? And what can you see of our reclensing? What's my role as a lesbian woman? Because I've noticed that if you're really here at the center for eight months, I'm taking the position of retrieving one and speaking lips. It's just so painful to be safe at all. So, could you elaborate on safety at rates and putting on seats? Well, I just really appreciate you sharing that. And the truth is, I feel like this is an area where I should not be an authority because I am in white male. So what I can say is I can speak from that position, which is that the work for me of trying to make safety for everyone has to involve looking at my reactivity when people of color approach me around issues of race.

[42:59]

First, there has to be a lot of looking within, so I would recommend that kind of work to any person who is of European heritage, white European heritage. And then, yeah, I challenge everybody to really see that this is a big wound. not only in our culture, but distinctly I'm hearing this from a lot of people within Buddhist communities. And it is not going to be easy to figure out, and it's confusing, and we want to do it right, but we don't know how. So I encourage you to work out your liberation together. Audre Lorde once said, without community there is no liberation. Without community there is no liberation. But community cannot meet a shedding of our differences in order to pathetic pretense that those differences do not exist. So I think as someone outside the community, as a white person, I want to leave it at that.

[44:08]

But I really appreciate you bringing that forth. This creak is super loud. I hate to do it, but... Real Texas 50s. Yeah. Racism and sexism and extreme politics just ran into my blood. And that's just what I'm going to get. And... I finally got to the point where I realized that rather than to try to eradicate any ill will that I have towards other people, my best bet is probably to admit that no, I am not a racist.

[45:10]

I have racism in me because it was put there a long time ago when I had no barriers against it. And that can't be abolished for me. And if I recognize a certain thing, football doesn't make the oasis or if there's to go to see if there's feeling that do you know what i mean it almost you know i don't know if this is identifying the oasis over there or if it's but it seems to be moved me to to acknowledge that that something does exist and that if i And I don't belong the nicest person, and I don't have any problems with anybody, except when sometimes I do. Now, I'm not going to turn on myself for that. I'm going to see it for what it is, and just go, okay, there that thing is. It was put there so long ago in another circle.

[46:11]

And as her, like, the thing about talking with your mother or talking with your people. It's relations with other people. About three or four years ago, I had spent years, after 30 years of drug addiction, finally coming out of that and reestablishing a relationship with what's left of my family. And people zeroed over the political conversation of folks. And what I realized over the next three years up until this present moment is that I wanted to be right. And she wanted to be right. Our egos clashed and destroyed what little relationship we got. And I kind of need, like, I'm sitting back here and I'm just sort of a guy and I love listening to you. Oh my God, I don't know what you're talking about.

[47:13]

I just really don't. I need some really real, concrete ways to navigate through this world of interdependence of people, interdependence of my own feelings, and those of other people. And I want to create less friction than I've had before. And what I have learned Um, it is Gabriel's good ol' AA. It's nice to talk to my mother, or any other people that you might disagree with. Do you want to be white? I'll be here with the cat. Because, really, it comes down to my vehicle, and my drive, and trails. And my relationship is, I think, is far more important than proven to anybody that I've got something worth life to you with. Well, thank you. You know, I would just like to say, you know, from a sort of perspective, I'm generally disinclined to reify something someone has in their consciousness as like an ism or a state because we're flow.

[48:27]

That's a Buddhist mindset. But having said that, I hear a lot of people of color who want me to say, I am racist. Because I live within racists. It conditions how I am. And if that is a part of the process that needs to happen, I'll do it. I can take it. Why can I take it? Because I'm doing the work of trying to deal with what it feels like to say that. Well, I just want to really clarify. That's not what I said. It's good. I'm talking for me. You're good. You're good, Jim. You are. You are. I wonder if other people have... Oh, sorry. I'll come back to you. Sorry. Yeah. Can you explain again about Manos and Elias? And so I'm wondering, how do you think Hashibangu found those consciousness?

[49:29]

Do you think he found them by people's experience or experience? Yeah, this is a good question. So the manas, well, first off, there's total disagreement on the degree to which the Yogacara view of consciousness comes from. More like a scholarly, people were like digging through the texts and analyzing them and, you know, kind of being like, oh, this works and that doesn't and let's make it all work. And to what extent it was like, wow, we're just experiencing this. To me, I'll just say, I'll take the middle away. It does sort of look like a combination. So one thing Vasubana wanted to do is he didn't want to disagree with any canonical Buddhist texts, which actually limits the strength of his arguments, right? It's a very religious mindset of like, this is the real thing, so we can't. So at the same time, the teaching was pretty good. He did a great job. It's cool. But that is kind of limiting. So he's trying to work only within that frame.

[50:31]

At the same time, everything that's described in the eight consciousness model, except the aliyah, can be directly experienced and seen and experienced. They're descriptions of experience. The monist describes the fact that it seems like there's an eye looking out at things. I mean, does that make sense to you? Does it feel like you're an eye looking at me? Yeah, okay. So that one is very experiential. The alaya, though, is kind of funny because the six consciousness model, the Buddha said this is the all, and then they added some. But the thing is, the idea of the alaya was they were like, how does it make sense that there's continuity of experience? If they're just momentary sensory experiences, why do you have memories? Why do you go to sleep and wake up and you still feel like you're the same person? So one thing they were trying to figure out, how does that happen? They also, and that's the way almost everyone describes it.

[51:34]

But my feeling is they wanted to show why we have habits and why we can do liberation. So the alaya gives you a model of this locus, that is to say a place or a process in which conditioning is occurring with which you can practice. Does that make sense? yeah oh a lie is you can't see it it's uh inferred you know what inferred means uh inferred is like you um you go i hear that sound so i infer that there's a creek back there i can't actually see it but i i'm gonna based on everything else i know i'll bet there's a creek Are there some squeaky sound up there? I'm going to infer that it's a bird. So, what's that?

[52:35]

I said draw a conclusion. Draw, yeah, you draw, make a conclusion based on other information. So they're like, well, it looks like people keep doing the same stupid things over and over again. There must be some reason that they have those habits. And some people are like, I'm not going to make that same mistake over again. And they learn how not to. And then actually some of them attain these amazing realizations. So what's happening? There must be some process underneath by which those habits occur. So the idea of seeds being planted and coming to fruition, it's like, why do you not get angry about something, but then you do it a year later? Where was that stored? Right? The tendency... Have you ever had that? You're sitting in Zazen, and you're like, you get pissed about something that happened like five years ago. You're like, what the hell? Why? The storehouse explained that there's stored seats.

[53:37]

Does that make me do a little better? Okay. Cool. Got a few more minutes. I feel like race is really difficult to talk about. And yet it feels like it's so necessary to talk about it. And one of the things that comes to mind in discussing it is, I mean, for Gaia to say that she doesn't feel safe here at all with her words. And... And I just wonder these feelings that we have about seeking safety and security and having fear and being taught to be afraid and all these

[54:49]

I guess that I feel like one of the things that's difficult about talking about race is the fear involved, the insecurity of exposing myself as biased or ignorant or inconsiderate or unsensitive to another person's circumstance and yet at the same time it's outrageous every time the more I learn about the systematic in position of racism around I mean there's really it's really upsetting and yet at the same time I'm going to kind of throw this out there there's As a person of not my majority in any kind of category, there will be this feeling of unsafety, of feeling like people would say, if you're not paranoid and you're black, you don't get it.

[56:15]

If we are trying to talk about something, there's It's very difficult to have an exchange with all that sensitivity. Yes. Yes, it is. So I'll say I brought up very difficult material, I think. It's material that was already here that we live with. And You know, maybe it's hard to know when you sit in this seat, what are you supposed to do? You want to inspire people to practice first, to work out their liberation. But we have to challenge people to see what we're not seeing. And this work is ongoing, ongoing.

[57:18]

And yes, conversations are very difficult to have. And so we should try and do it with love. I want to wrap this up. I know you want to say something, but I kind of feel like I'm trying to, you know, I just want to be respectful of time. Maybe we can talk afterwards or say something tomorrow. Anyway, it's real. Dr. King once said, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface tension which is alive. I hope I'm not creating tension. I hope what I'm doing is helping. If we believe in this practice, we believe in seeing something real. We're brave. And we walk into the fire. That was one of the most inspiring things I've ever heard from a Zen teacher. Someone said, do you think you'll be reborn because of your karma in hell? And he said, I hope so.

[58:19]

They need me there. So I appreciate you walking this far with me. And I hope that some of you will come back and we can walk together tomorrow. And I thank you all very much. We, uh, [...] It's so great, it's nice, it's so nice for the two big efforts.

[59:31]

I'm going to get back to the end of it, and I'm going to get to the side of the board. I'm going to miss tomorrow. Taylor, you want to turn this off?

[60:03]

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