Welcome again. And having gone through this first chapter of Ben's book, I really understand that this material is complicated. And so I want to go fairly slowly. And I think the way to do that is just go chapter by chapter, look at the verses one at a time, the way we did Suzuki Roshi's book. We just kind of look at a chapter and think about it, and then move to the next. And at the same time, it's helpful. I'm going to try to give you all a copy of the 30 verses through the chat, if I can do that. But mainly, if you have Ben's book, please take a look at the whole 30 verses, because they work together. They're a set. So even though we're going chapter by chapter, it's within this context of the entire 30 verses.

[01:17]

So as I said in the last couple of weeks, that this mind-only teaching, also known as the Yogacara school, has been called the third turning of the wheel, the third turning of the wheel of the Dharma. And the first turning was the name given to the Buddha's first sermon following his awakening. The second turning of the wheel was the name given to the middle way school that grew from the Buddha's enlightened vision of the non-dual, empty, nominal as in name only, and dependently co-arisen nature of reality. Something that I've been studying for the Tuesday night class in which we're looking at the two truths. Basically the emptiness teachings of the second turning. So I've also reviewed the traps that are built into each of these explanations of a pathway to enlightenment. For the first turning, the trap of reifying an experience of a purified no-self.

[02:21]

That trap is called, in our tradition, the Zen sickness. Like, I'm done. I got it. Sorry about you. But I'm clear. So that's a trap. For the second turning, it's the trap of reifying emptiness by taking Emptiness to mean nothing, nothingness. And that trap is called nihilism. And then for the third turning, it's the trap of reifying the mind itself as some kind of substantial and eternal existence. You know, the trap that we call eternalism. So those are the traps, and we should all be aware of these traps because they're sticky and they're very easy to fall into. So as my teacher Reb Anderson once said that the Buddha's teaching is basically an anti-reification campaign. A campaign against thinking that what we think about things makes them into real things. So Vasubandhu's 30 verses focuses on a two-fold model of practice and understanding.

[03:24]

Number one, the functioning of consciousness is the clockwork, you know, how the mind works, I'm going to show you a picture of our mind in just a minute. And then number two, the nature of phenomena, you know, the appearances that appear within consciousness. So there's consciousness, the clockwork, and then there's what time is it? You know, what is the nature of what's appearing there on the clockwork. And that so this this appearances are what comprise both our experience of ourself and the experience we have of the world, all the pictures we have within our minds of what's going on, how we think and what we think. In the first half of the 30 verses, Vasubandhu is using this eightfold consciousness model, I'm going to show you in a minute, of experience to teach us how to practice with and understand the functioning of consciousness in order to liberate ourselves from the afflictive or pathological emotions. primarily the ones we all know well, of greed, hate, and delusion.

[04:26]

So here's, I'm gonna see if I could do this, share. Here we are. Okay, here's the map of the mind from the Yogacara. Let's see, can you see that? Yeah, okay, good. So, illustration of the eight consciousness model, consciousnesses, hard to say consciousnesses, the eight consciousnesses model of the mind. This is from Vasubanda's 30 verses. So, just gonna point out some features, and we'll be getting more and more into the detail of this map as we go through Ben's book. But just for now, I'll point out some of the major features, which is for instance at this line here, this black line is what separates what we're conscious of our consciousness and what unconscious so above conscious and below unconscious so in terms of conscious but we're conscious of this means the only things we're conscious of the limitations of consciousness there's six ways six kinds of consciousness that we utilize in order to connect to the world or what we think is connecting to the world so familiar

[05:45]

Number one, smell. Number two, taste. Number three, sound. Number four, sight. Number five, touch. So these are our senses that we've all known and learned and used since we were tiny little things. And then there's number six. This one's a little unusual for us. We're not used to thinking of awareness itself, the awareness of concepts as a form of consciousness or a sensory experience. So whereas each of these senses is in relationship to what it experiences, so smell, odors, tastes, the taste is to edibles, things that have taste, sound to hearing, sight to seeing, touch to feeling, and so on. Awareness of concepts is happening within the mind. The mind is aware of words, of language, of signs and symbols, and so on. Okay, this is our consciousness. And down here, is our unconscious. This is pretty resonant with what psychologists are talking about when they meet with their folks.

[06:51]

It's what you're unconscious of that's bringing forth a lot of your trauma, a lot of your responses, a lot of your preferences, your opinions. It's this unconscious holding. It's kind of like a bag of stuff in which is all of your previous the past everything from your past that you've learned that you've been influenced by all of your tendencies all of your habits both from your own parents and their parents and so on all the way back to the beginning of life we are basically the inheritors from the past of all the things that make us what we are the fact i'm speaking english right now is a result of whatever happened in history that brought my parents into a zone or a land where they were speaking english and then From there, over here, and from here, I'm not sure where I'm going next. But that's the process by which each of us has come into being. Our unconscious carrier, this is called the alaya. I think I mentioned last week, alaya has the same resonance as Himalaya.

[07:56]

Himalaya, mountains, means the storehouse of snow. And this alaya is the storehouse of our unconscious materials. It's called the storehouse consciousness. but it's not something we can actually access directly. So we have these first six consciousnesses, and then down here we have three more. We have the alaya, and we have manas, the heart. Manas is the lover, and the lover is what mistakes the storehouse for the self. so this is where the trouble comes in the lover loves the self the lover cares for the self the lover is obsessed with the self and the lover is talking and sending little messages up to the conscious level about self-protection self-care what light what you like what you don't like and so on and so forth that's coming from down here and sprouting up here so this is the this is the the uh the mapping that the yoga charm

[09:00]

teaching has done to help us understand something about how this works how this thing we call me functions both as a conscious entity and through my unconscious conditioning okay and as you may remember from the Dhammapada the famous verses by the Buddha what we are today in the present comes from our thoughts of yesterday our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow our life is a creation of our mind, mind, mind only. Okay. So that's the map. So that's the first, that'll be what we look at in the first half of the 30 verses, this map of the mind. And the second half of the 30 verses, Vasubando uses another system of categorizing called the three natures, or the three characteristics model, which is how to let go of delusions.

[10:09]

We're going to be looking at that as we arrive at the second half of the text. So it's by means of these two models, of the eight consciousnesses model and of the three natures model, that the Yogatara tradition aims to treat what it sees as the two primary barriers or blocks to the cessation of our suffering. The first block is the barrier of our afflictive emotions. greed, hate, and delusion, and what drives us out of being greedy, being hateful, or being deluded. The various behaviors, the various ideas that come from those afflictive emotions. So these are conventional truths about ourselves and our lives. You know, we believe them. We fall for them. I know what that means, the way you're looking at me. You know, I have all kinds of ideas about everything as I walk along. You know, I like that kind of tree, and I'm not so crazy about that one. I mean, constantly dividing the world, our experience, into things we like, things we don't like, and then things we are not quite sure.

[11:12]

These are afflictive emotions. So the second, that's the first barrier, afflictive emotion. The second barrier to our liberation is the barrier of delusions. This has to do with the ultimate truth, in which we think ourselves as separate from the world. That's a delusion. When the Buddha saw that he was not separate from the world, he was not separate from the things around him, you know the beginning with the star that he saw on the horizon is not outside of himself it wasn't inside of himself it was conjoined it was together it was con he was not separate from the objects of his awareness so the delusion is that we are that we're separate i'm over here and the things that i see are somewhere else outside of myself okay so the two barriers basically refer to the barrier of the relative truth thinking things we think and of the ultimate truth, believing that things are outside of ourselves. So this evening, I want to begin looking at Ben Conley's book, starting with a few highlights from his introduction.

[12:20]

I hope you have the book. It's really good. And if you don't, I'll try to work through it so that you know the more important features are. So on page six, this is the introduction. Yeah. Somebody say something. It's okay. Okay. On page six, Ben Conley tells us that Mahayana Buddhism, which arose at the start of the first millennium, put an enormous emphasis on the non-dual nature of the universe, meaning that all things throughout the universe are both empty of some inherent existence, like own being, you've heard that term, they're empty of separation, from everything else. There's no such thing as a separate self or separate things. So that's the non-dual nature of the universe. And at the same time, they are dependently co-arisen. They all appear because they come out of a dependency on everything else that's ever appeared.

[13:21]

Our lives are arisen out of everything else that's ever happened that allows us to be here right now, including the arising of Zoom. You know, that's pretty amazing. So all of these things that are allowing us to be together right now are of the nature of dependently co-arising, dependently co-arising. And I'm not separate. I'm not any way separate from the experience I'm having of you all in these little squares called Zoom. You know, this is what I am right now, and this is what you are right now. We are not separate from these experiences that we're having. Our human problem, therefore, has to do with how everything that we think and believe is rooted in dualistic thought, such as there is or isn't, that's mine and that's yours, or there's darkness and there's light, none of which is ultimately real. And yet, these ideas leave us trapped, you know, like a fly in a web of our own mind's making.

[14:22]

So I want to read from page six what Ben has to say like that. He talks about this, the web of our own minds making. And then he says, we may say that there is day and night, but these are not actually separate phenomena. Think of the earth turning. Where's day? Where's night? How are they separated? They are interdependent. They are empty of separation. They are not two. You can't have day without night. they interdependently are. And absolutely everything that can be conceived or spoken is like this. The Mahayana, the great vehicle, teaches that what you think or believe something to be is conventionally useful but not the absolute truth, not the ultimate truth. So we can think and believe things and that's conventionally helpful. Relative truth is helpful, gets us to the store and we get our milk and we keep it in the fridge and all sorts of things.

[15:27]

Conventionally helpful to think that way, but it's not the ultimate truth. And that seeing connection rather than separation is the ground of compassionate freedom of mind. So we're being invited to make this very subtle yet powerful shift from me going out and meeting the world as something separate from me, and the world coming forward and greeting me as who I am. This is a possibility that we have, a perception. It's very subtle. It doesn't really change what I'm seeing. My eyes don't all of a sudden turn into shiny mirrors or something. I basically see the same thing, but my understanding of it, my emotional relationship to it, is one of connection as opposed to one of separation. So that's one very important part of this teaching, is helping us to see connection. So this newly arisen form of Buddhism, which called itself the Great Vehicle, the Mahayana, was often seen to be in conflict

[16:36]

with the earlier forms that emphasized personal liberation and the attainment of nirvana. This is a good thing. That's not a bad thing. However, as Vasubhanda says, as a founder of the mind-only school of the Mahayana, he wanted to take these differing ideas and harmonize them into one practice we can all do, a way of understanding the Buddha's profound teaching about reality that both finds common ground with both of these approaches to liberation, and at the same time, honors the differences in these two approaches to liberation, the earlier teachings and the Mahayana teachings. So now I'm going to go to page nine for those of you who have the book. So consciousness only, mind only, alludes to the idea that in Buddhist practice we have one principle concern. which is taking care of our consciousness.

[17:36]

This draws us away from the conventional tendency to spend our lives trying to grasp and control apparently external things. I don't know about you, but I've certainly gotten into that on many occasions, with a lot of enthusiasm. The attempt to control or grasp apparently external things. Consciousness is Consciousness only points to the fact that whatever we experience is mediated by consciousness. Or, as the first line of the Dhammapada says, our life is shaped by our mind. Our life is shaped by our mind. Consciousness only presents the view that ultimately we do not know. What is out there? We don't know what's out there. We don't know what, we don't know what this is. I don't know what this is. I really don't know what this is. I mean, I'm pretty handy with it. I know how to use it. I know what it's called, but I don't really know what it is, you know?

[18:40]

If I were to analyze it, if I were to break it into pieces and start looking at it, pretty soon this thing I call a glass wouldn't be there. There'd be, you know, shards. There'd be molecules or atoms. I've got no one. Higgs bosons flying around. We really don't know what it is, what reality is, but we can use it. We grew up here. We were born of this not knowing, and we've made good use of it. We figured out how to get along, how to survive. So even though we don't know what's out there in the apparently external world, we only know what we have in this moment of conscious experience. I can't name it, but I know it. I could say I know it. Right now, I could say, yeah, okay, I know this. What it is, I don't know. What I am, not so sure. But I can say I do know right now that there's something going on.

[19:41]

That's as far as I'm willing to go. There is something going on. Okay. Now I'm going to go to page 10 of the introduction. So this school of thought, the mind-only school, puts a great deal of emphasis, more than other Buddhist systems, on the concept that the main source of suffering in our lives is our sense that we are a self experiencing other things. It invites us to realize that this moment of consciousness is instead consciousness only, with no self that's separate from anything else. Consciousness only is occasionally translated as mere consciousness or merely consciousness to remind us that whatever it is about which we've become agitated, irritated, overjoyed, overwhelmed, or aggrieved is just consciousness, not a real thing, but a projection of mental tendencies.

[20:48]

It's not such a big deal. We can take care of what's here with some lightness, with some compassion, and we can be well. Okay, that's the next point Ben is making for us. And then on the next page, on page 11, it's important to note that the idea of consciousness only is not geared toward explaining the nature of reality or the universe, but rather toward explaining experience. You know, the material we have to work with in terms of taking care of human suffering is our experience. I don't have to know the nature of my experience to be able to address my suffering or the suffering of others. In philosophical terms, rather than teaching about some metaphysics, this is a teaching that relates to this word, I hope some of you know, but I'll tell you what it means, epistemology.

[21:50]

Epistemology refers to the nature of how we know things, of knowing things, of what we know. It relates to epistemology and it relates to soteriology, which is one of my favorite old words having to do with liberation. Soteriology is a way to freedom, a way to lightness and a way to wellness. So it means in the direction of being well, in the direction of becoming free. It's like a healing. It's for healing. It's to understand how we know and it's to understand how we heal. That's the point. This tradition does not claim that the universe is made up of consciousness or that there is nothing but consciousness. It simply tells us that we don't know anything that is not mediated by consciousness. Thus, working with the way our consciousness operates is the best way to promote wellness and non-suffering. that's what i wanted to share from the introduction then i'm going to move on to chapter one time is oh good okay chapter one is entitled self and other that number one barrier you know my belief that i'm separate from you i'm separate from all things just me over here and everything else outside okay self and other

[23:19]

So in this chapter, we begin looking at the first of the 30 verses, which he has printed there at the top of the page, for those of you with the book. And it says that everything conceived of self or other occurs in the transformation of consciousness. Number one. So he then starts with this exercise that we could try, and I think I'd suggest we all try right now, which is basically to take a few minutes to experience and investigate just what it is that we are knowing, what we know, what we experience right now. So I'm just going to be quiet for a couple of minutes and just kind of do a little exploration around your body and around your ideas about what's outside of your body and see what you find as experience. And maybe later on when I turn to you, you could share some of what you found. What are you experiencing right now? I don't know about you, but I do know that it's very hard for me not to assume that the sound I'm hearing, there's a hum from the roof up above my apartment, that that sound is not out there, up there, and that I shouldn't call maintenance and have them take care of it, you know?

[26:25]

I can point to it, it's out there. I try to see it as in here, or as a combination of in here and out there, but it's very hard to do that, you know? My usual common sense conclusion is that consciousness is myself, awareness is myself, and that the world around me that I'm aware of is the other. And I think that's what Ben's hoping us to see as well. Now Vasubandhu is pointing out a very different view, and that's kind of the basis for these mind-only teachings. And that is, as it says in the first verse of the 30 verses, that everything conceived as a self or other occurs in the transformation of consciousness. So in this case, consciousness is a continuous and mysterious flow with no fixed element or identity. You know, simply a process of transformation, of change, like a river. You know, you can sit at one place at the bank of the river, but the river just keeps flowing by.

[27:28]

Constant change, continuous change. So here's a... Here's a poem about that from my Tibetan teacher. He says, Ben says, this is from the 37 practices of the Bodhisattva by Tibetan teacher Tokme Zangpo, 14th century. Whatever arises in experience is your own mind. Mind itself is free of any conceptual limitations. Know that and don't generate self-other fixations. This is the practice of the Bodhisattva. Whatever arises in experience is your own mind. Mind itself is free of any conceptual limitations. Know that and don't generate self-other fixations.

[28:29]

This is the practice of the Bodhisattva. So Ben then goes on to share the critique of the early Buddhist practices in which one came to realize that his self didn't actually exist. However, the early tradition still held that the elements that made up the self and the world called dharmas, little d, little d dharmas, did exist. So this understanding of an elaborate system of study, studying these dharmas and putting them into categories and connecting them to one another became a target of the Mahayana Buddhists who began to think that somehow this earlier approach had gotten the monastics stuck, somehow stuck, stuck on their investigation of dharmas and on memorizing the system of dharmas. It's like making a self out of a system. So that was their, they kind of had a hunch that that's what was happening. And of course they were practicing that way. So these Mahayana Buddhists were not living somewhere else. They were living in the same place as their Dharma brothers, not sisters, Dharma brothers in the great monasteries of India.

[29:36]

But they were exploring through meditation various theories about what's going on. Like what is this self and what is the other and so on and so forth. So there was a little bit of a debate happening there in the great universities. Okay, so the systems of teaching, that system of teaching of all of these dharmas and how they connect was called the Abhidharma. And that became known by the Mahayana Buddhists as the Abhidharma problematic. You know, they said, you've got a problem with this. Dharmas are real. There's a little problem there and we want to look at that with you. And they did. It was a great, great, great intensity and with great accomplishment in many ways. The logic of the no dharma as existent by itself was pretty good. In fact, it refers back to the Buddha's awakened insight. Nothing exists outside of ourself as separate, right? No Dharma could exist separately from anything else. So anyway, this is a kind of delicate point that you can look at yourselves and if you can study a little bit about this Abhidharma problematic.

[30:44]

It's not so easy to understand, but I think it's an important point when we begin to see the shift from the early teachings to what came to be called the mahayana or the great vehicle however what the yogachara did as ben is pointing out it sought to reconcile these divisions in buddhist thought you know yogachara was really an effort to bring these two systems together so ben says that this first verse gives us a ground on which to do our practice a ground that has no ground sounds pretty zen, a ground that has no ground. So this groundless ground, he says, is this transformation of consciousness, a transformation that is far beyond any concepts we may have about it, other than just this moment of experience. Just this is it. So in wishing to reconcile these two systems of thought, one with and one without dharmas, Vasubandhu uses the Abhidharma categories in the first half of his 30 verses to help us see which aspects of our minds are beneficial and which are afflicted, you know, to make us aware of these and to show us how to let go of those afflictions, how to let go of greed, hate and delusion and all the things that grow from them.

[32:07]

So in the second half of the book, Vasubandhu uses the emptiness teachings from the Mahayana system of thought to help us let go of the delusions about those afflictions, including the delusion that those afflictions have any reality at all, or ever did. But we work with them first before letting them go. So that's the method of the Yogacara, of the 30 verses. So these two approaches are echoed in the three pure precepts that we take as part of our Bodhisattva precept ceremony. Do good, cultivate wholesomeness, avoid evil, root out the afflictions, and save all beings by helping them to realize the empty nature of all things. Okay, so that's what I wanted to offer this evening. But before I turn it over to you all, I wanted to mention that next week I'm not going to be here online. I will be at Green Gulch where Dr. Grace Daman is going to be ordained.

[33:09]

as a Buddhist priest. A very happy occasion for her and all of us and all of her friends and the community. So I'll be there all afternoon. I won't be back in time to come online. I don't know exactly how you all managed to meet together when I was gone the last time, but if you can, if you want to, that would be great. You're welcome to do that. And I may try. I may try to take my computer with me, and then I can open the room for you all to come in. I just won't be part of that. I won't be able to stay with you. So I might just do that. Actually, I'll do that. So rather than handing you a problem, I'll keep that problem for myself. Is there anything else I wanted to mention? No, that was it. Okay, so we're just about to the end of Chapter 1. And... This is Jerry. Is the ordination a public ceremony?

[34:09]

Yeah. Yeah. So there's a Sunday morning program, of course. Yeah. And what time is this scheduled for, please? Good question. I think it's 2... Let me see. It's... I have 245, so it probably means that the dencho belt begins at 245 and the ceremony's at three. Okay. Yeah. Actually, I'll make that my problem. I'll call them and ask them. Okay. I just realized I could do that. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's three. Okay. And it may be, yeah, you can call Green Gulch and check, but that's when I'm going to be there. So I hope I've got the right time myself. So anyway, so we... pretty much covered what the essential points that I found in chapter one. And so chapter two, which we'll look at the week after next, is called the eight consciousnesses model, which I just showed you. So we'll look at that again in some more detail.

[35:11]

And the verses that go along with the eight consciousnesses model is that this transformation, transformation of consciousness, has three aspects. The ripening of karma, alaya, the consciousness of a self, manas, the lover, and the imagery of sense objects. Those are the six sense consciousnesses. So these three things, these three categories that I showed you on that little map is what this next verse is all about. Okay, so if you get a chance to read chapter two, that would be very good. I'm going to go off of seeing myself. Oh, that's good. Thank you. And I just want to say hi to all of you. Go around the room, around the square, whatever. Whatever this is. Hello, Kathy. Nice to see you. Jifu. Hello. Griffin. And Chris. And Musho. Marianne. And Meredith. Hello, Meredith. And Helen. And Drew.

[36:13]

And Millicent. Hello, Jerry. Jacqueline. Welcome back. Ulrika. Still here. I'm glad to see you. Shozan. Chiezan. Welcome, Chiezan. Senko. Paul and Kate, Kakawan, Caroline, Linda, Adrian, Kosan, Alice, Genshin, Michelle, and Keegan. Keegan, hello, Jerome. Keegan, yes, hello, Jerome. Okay, so what do you think about thinking? or not thinking. I have a quick question. Sure. Is there any chance that you could share that lovely chart with us? I mean that we could download it some way? Yeah, you know that you're you're getting to the limits of my skills.

[37:15]

Yeah, I'd be happy to do that. How about if before I come back, I share the chart with you. And I also shared the 30 verses so you could print that out for yourself if you want. Because I have this stuff on my screen. I'm not exactly sure, and I don't want to waste your time trying to figure it out right now. In the coming sessions, is that right? Yeah, two weeks from now, I'll share both of those with you. Thank you. You're welcome. Hello, Marianne. Hello, hello. Good evening, good morning, Sangha. Good to see everyone. I had a question, and it's about the... the word transformation. I mean, I know it comes from the Sanskrit word of Parinama, and I guess I found it, it's my block, I think. When I think of something like transformation, I'm thinking of the image of something changing, not constantly, but maybe once, like the idea of the

[38:23]

caterpillar becoming a butterfly. That's a complete transformation. No longer after it's in its chrysalis, it becomes not a better caterpillar, but a butterfly. So that's transformation. But I think, I mean, according to the Sanskrit, they're using it in the term of constant changing, evolving. Is that correct? And I think I get... When I think transformation, I get blocked with thinking that it's this one change. And what we're hearing, I think, is this notion that it is constantly changing. Yeah, it's ongoing. Think of a river. Okay. Rather than a butterfly. Okay. You know, or rather than something, you're going to become something different. It's more like you're going to notice how you are. And that noticing, awakening to how you are, is the awakening. Right. The Buddha had an awakening to what was going on there.

[39:24]

It wasn't just his idea. He was he was afraid he ran away from home because he was afraid of his ideas about old age, sickness and death. As a beautiful young man is going to get old and sick and die is intolerable, the facts of life. So he ran away like that would help. It won't help. We're going to have to face this transformation of consciousness. and realize that that's what we are. We're always changing. More like the ocean, the waves in the ocean. It doesn't hold still, but it's still just the water. It's still just the ocean. If there's anything that perhaps is that significant change, like a caterpillar to a butterfly, It's the idea of realizing that we're substantial selves over and against everything else. Yeah, then when you give that up, when you go like, oh my goodness, that's a big shift. That's a big shift.

[40:25]

You can have many of those. The teachers of old used to talk about various times that they woke up to something they hadn't seen before. Oh, I never saw that before. I remember thinking after I set my first long sashim, a week-long sitting i went outside and i thought that grass is so green you know like i never saw that before you know so it really is i think the opening to and the expansion of your your usual way of thinking about the world and yourself which may be blocked by you know all the all the noise that goes on in our in our in our minds throughout the day i mean we all know that so quieting the mind You know, calm the mind. So there's two steps of meditation. Step one, calm your mind. Step two, discern what's real. So the Buddha was very calm. He'd been sitting there for a whole week. And like we do sashim, we get pretty calm.

[41:26]

You know, we kind of get like, not quite sure about time or time of day or, you know, what's happening. I remember sitting there with my oreoki bowls. We eat with our oreoki bowls. I think I told you. I was eating. have my Orioki bowls in front of me during one session down at Tassahara. And I remember thinking, have I just eaten or are we about to eat? Kind of like that. That's a transformation. It's not a healthy one. It could get you, you know, a little, it might get you, you know, concern from your friends. But that kind of thing where the mind really has some new, some newness, some freshness. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I got a little chat from Helen saying, afflictive emotions help us survive. No, yeah, they do. They do help us survive, but we get a little carried away.

[42:29]

We are making up stories all the time that are not necessarily for survival, but opinions and judgments and liking and not liking and, you know, That sort of thing is called carried away. You get carried away with your afflictive emotions. You get carried away with greed and hate and delusion. So we're trying to come back to kind of baseline where we can discern whether something is worthy of our attention or worthy of our holding and just how much. So does that help, Helen? Yeah? Okay, great. Hi, Chris. Have you got it all worked out now? I'm working on it. Okay, good. Returning to that baseline, I think that's really beautiful. I've been looking at reflecting on self and others, as well as the Sanskrit of the Atman, which is the very first name that's mentioned, Atman Dharma.

[43:40]

like what is the nature of the self, right? What is the unfolding of it and connection? Like there is no separation that the he that combines the two of self and other, the and basically in the first statement, that's been really powerful to me. I'm wondering when it's referring to self and the unfolding of the self, this is, So self, Atman, is this... I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit more about that relationship between self, Atman, and is that synonymous with, in the context of this school, what would be called the Buddha, or this seems to be going into the Tathagata texts and tradition. Is that... Can you talk a little bit about that word, perhaps?

[44:44]

Atman? Well, Buddha taught on Atman, no self. On Atman, no self. So, you know, that may be where you want to be trying to understand. What is that shift from the Atman, the soul, a person, something that goes on that... is in union with Brahma. I mean, I think that's the great wish of many religious traditions is that there is an eternal being and I'm not gonna die and I'm gonna live forever and I'm gonna live in heaven. My family's gonna be there, my friends are gonna be there, they're waiting for me. I mean, we talk like that and we wish that for people. My mom was so happy when she was dying thinking she's gonna be with my dad. Would I say to her? I don't think so. No, of course not. So out of compassion for suffering beings, we basically support what it is that's comforting to each other, to our friends. You know, as a Buddhist, I'm kind of interested in not so much comforting myself as understanding myself. And that that self is just a construct is a really interesting idea.

[45:47]

I am still trying to grapple with that one, you know. I'm just a construct. Which is what the Vignabtis and that Eightfold Path or Eightfold Model of Consciousness is referring to, right? The senses of what's underlying it and that's the manifestation that we think is the outward world but is no other than our interaction with it. It's a projection. Yeah, projection only, mind only, image only, imagination only. So as we get further on, so you hang in there, because as we get further on to the second half of the 30 verses, first of all, we're going to look at afflictions for a while, you know, positive, negative, and neutral things that are going on in our minds. We're going to do the Abhidharma exercises, which is something that Vasubandhu, the mind only, is offering us, is don't dismiss that early

[46:51]

approach to understanding and healing. It's important. We need to actually use those things. But once you've gotten somewhat settled and you've actually come to some realization about what is and isn't so, then you're ready to take the risk of jumping off the 100-foot pole. That helps. Thank you, Phil. Oh, okay. Thank you, Chris. Musho, welcome. Hi, Fu. Hi, everyone. I'm sorry I missed you last week. I'm working on a Dharma talk that I'm giving on Thursday for the village Zendo about delusion. Oh, yummy. And it seems to me that our entire US government is like just complete delusion. And I wonder why

[47:53]

Delusion is so incredibly attractive to people. Why? Why live in a, you know, in a world that is demonstratively the opposite of what these delusions are? But they all want to do that. So many people, more than half the people of the United States are interested in living in a delusion. Well, I wouldn't say the other half are not. I mean, that's kind of a big assertion that I'm not going to make. I think everybody is in delusion one way or another, and that awakening is about seeing through the delusional patterns. For, as the Buddha said, hold no views for or against anything. Who's doing that? No one. Nobody I know, including me. So I think we have to keep looking at the nature of the human and its tendencies toward the very thing you're saying. We all do it. Right.

[48:54]

We all do it. Some of us write better, you know, propaganda than others and have better following than others. And some of us are more inspired by anger and frustration and jealousy and, you know, the hate side. And some of us are lovers and we want everyone to be nice and all the kids to be fed. So we have these two sides, you know, I'm more of the lover's school. So I got to be a Buddhist. And, you know, and, you know, I'm very aware of people and who are inspired by disappointment, and anger, and complaint, you know, it's like not uncommon to have these people, very nice people having these tendencies. Right? Right? Don't you think that I mean, our practice is to take a look at our own minds? and see how they're connected to everything. And that's what all the people in our sanghas are doing there in the meditation hall. They're taking a look at themselves.

[49:54]

And it doesn't seem to me to be that hard. I mean, I've been doing it for years, I know, but people won't do that or don't want to. It's very scary. You know, my dear mother, who I love dearly, was a talker. She talked almost all the time, as I recall, from my childhood. She talked all the time. And one time, I asked her, I was driving her somewhere, I said, would you be willing to experiment not talking for just about a few minutes, five minutes? And I was a little nervous asking her that. She said, oh, fine, I can do that. You know, it was great. So I said, great. So I said, about two minutes later, she said, is the time up? I said, no, not quite. Three more minutes. And so then after five minutes, I asked her, well, how was that? Yeah. And she said the most wonderful thing. She said, I get really scared when it's quiet. Yeah. I get really scared.

[50:56]

And I thought, that helped me understand her so much compassion. Oh, you sweet thing. Right. You know? right okay talk away you know whatever helps you so you know i think that's part of the deal i've i've watched these young ones come into zen center for almost 50 years now including myself arriving and being uncomfortable and squiggling around and oh my god when's this period over and you know watching a mind that is totally disturbed yeah yeah yeah it takes a while to settle And it's easy to forget that when we're in communities where we do this all the time and when we're speaking this language. I once gave a teaching to some middle schoolers. I was asked to come and teach a class of meditation at a middle school. It was a private school. And I had them sit for two minutes. And I said, how was that? And the boy, I guess, I don't know how old they are, nine or something. He said, it was the worst two minutes of my life.

[51:59]

wow, he's got some way to go. But I was so, you know, I was surprised. Of course, I laughed. But yeah, being quiet and looking at your mind is apparently incredibly difficult. It's difficult. You know, I had the same experience with a young kid sitting in this end of two minutes That was my assignment as well. It seems to be what we expect of them. And when I asked them how it was, I think most of them were just squirming. But one boy who was still the whole time said to me, he said, I really liked it. No one has ever asked me not to do anything before. Right. You know, this kid going to private school, the race to nowhere, he's got a lot of pressure on him. And the idea that you can actually just sit there. and be peaceful was so nourishing. I think it's hard for, not everyone has that initial response to sitting quietly, you know? Oh, I wish I had had someone come to me and tell me that when I was a kid.

[53:05]

I know, I know. Yeah, I'm with you. Well, have good luck with your talk. No, thank you. Yeah. Michelle. Hi, Fu. Hi, Sangha. Hi. Thank you, Fu, for your offering. I'm currently going through some physical changes for health reasons. And so your offering was very pertinent to the idea of who am I in this kind of experience just because I'm constantly changing one day. I don't feel good. The next day I'm feeling a little bit better. And I'm trying to have like a sense of who I am in this time because it's not similar to what I've always known. And yeah, I guess one of the kind of what you guys were talking about earlier, the idea of it being kind of scary. It's so upfront for me right now, the idea of like this body that's constantly changing and I have no control over it and just kind of letting it unfold.

[54:17]

there is an element of that being really scary. Like letting go, it feels liberating, but then there's this big part of me that just wants to hold on to whatever, like a life raft or just anything to have some semblance of like, this is what is happening or just information. And my body's just doing things that it needs to do. And I just have to let it change, like you're kind of saying, but... I think it's a really scary process. So how do I kind of go through that without feeling the despair of that change and not having the control? Yeah, thank you for telling us that. I think that's something we're all going to be going through if we aren't already. I know a lot of folks on this call are having similar kind of issues around their health or transformation of their bodies from young to old, which I certainly am amazed by. That happened to me.

[55:18]

How's that happening? We're all going through it. And it's not going to all be physically pleasant. And I think the thing that comes to mind for me is that when the Buddha describes suffering, You know, the first noble truth, suffering. He said, you know, suffering is things like, you know, breaking a leg or being sick or losing someone you love or not having time with someone, you know, not having time with, not being forced to be with someone you don't love, that kind of stuff. That's the kind of suffering. But that's not the suffering that he really could teach anything about. You know, if you break your leg, that's pain. If you have an illness, that's pain. You know, that sort of thing is the kind of stuff we go to the doctor for, we take medicine for. The suffering he was talking about is the mental suffering that we impose on the condition of our body, like, why me? You know, why am I having this? Why am I growing old? You know, and fighting. whatever it is is happening. That's the suffering the Buddha was teaching us about, like how to hold what's happening gently, kindly, get your people you love nearby, you know, let them join with you.

[56:32]

I think we're really drawn to be supportive to each other when we're going through painful situations. So part of what we come here to learn is how to meet exactly what you're talking about. How can I meet this? my best possible way knowing that i can't change it you know i'm not my disease and yet i have a disease so those two things are both part of what this process of of of uh the path or the path for for awakening you know is trying to help us so i i'm i'm really appreciating your your question and your situation and if there's anything any of us can do i i'm sure we'd be more than happy to Thank you. It's okay. I just, yeah, I wanted to share just because it feels like sometimes just kind of the desperation kind of can kick in sometimes with like not having that, like certain answers or so then that's when I start to, but yeah, thank you.

[57:37]

Yeah. Well, that's a good time if you can't to find a comfortable spot. where you can be with yourself and, you know, like a warm bath or a chair that's comfortable or a view of nature. Those are the sorts of things that help us when we're not having, you know, an easy time. Thank you. You're welcome. Hello, Fu-sensei. Hello, Sangha. I wanted to say thank you for just a particular turn of phrase today in your teaching. I think you described Manas as mistaking the Alaya for a self. And maybe you spoke this way in the last time you taught Manas.

[58:39]

this wonderful teaching, the Yogacara, but I don't know. It struck me today as being particularly poignant. I think I'm in a phase now where I am maybe romanticizing the self in a sense of, you know, in the aftermath of ending a significant relationship. one of the things that I'm grieving is I'm never going to be known that way again, or maybe not known period in this life. And there is this sense of like coalescing, yes, around these stories I tell myself about myself and that those stories will not be known by another person. And then I think, as you said, you know, it's the manas that mistakes the alaya for the self.

[59:43]

I'm like, oh, that's what I'm doing there. I'm just romanticizing these narratives that I have as though it's something that still exists. Because I am so different now from all of those different prior incarnations of myself. And really, what is there to know? You know, like the Bodhidharma said, I don't know, to Emperor Wu. And so I just wanted to say thank you for that particular turn of phrase. And thank you to the Sangha for allowing me to put those links together. They feel very significant. Good. Well, thank you. Thank you, Kosan, for sharing that. My old tea teacher, who I love dearly, she's now in her 90s. When I used to go to her tea house, In El Cerrito, she had in her changing room where we would change into our teaware, tea clothing, a whole volumes and volumes of photographs of her family and their life together.

[60:46]

Every year was full of photographs. And, you know, I just thought of that when you were saying that. And I thought, who's going to take those? I mean, who's going to keep those volumes? I have boxes of my own. You know, who wants these? My daughter doesn't want them, you know. Zen Center doesn't want them. I just feel like what you're saying is like, but I love those pictures. Those are my pictures. So maybe I'll just go through them again, which I think some of us do as we get older, and just kind of remember ourself and the various ways, the journey that we've taken. So I think that's kind of a sweet thing to do. But it's not like you said somebody else is going to kind of like, oh, you know, let me hold that for you. They got their own. Yeah. Thank you for that. Drew. Hi, everyone. It was my first day of kindergarten at St.

[61:48]

Thomas in Long Island, about 90 degrees. We were all paraded in, shirt and tie, and the whole deal. And it was my first experience talking about childhood and not talking or talking. And I learned not to talk. I mean, that was a big part of my upbringing, sitting there that one day, upright, face forward, back straight, hands in your lap, and the nuns had a clicker. We'd stand, click, click, sit. And I'm saying, well, that's another aspects of meditation. Wow. And, you know, becoming an altar boy. And there was long periods of time of kneeling and doing call and response and Latin mass and incense. And you just got pitched out. And I think that was a precursor conditioning to...

[62:50]

taking to Buddhism later on in life, enjoying the Zen rituals, and it just kind of was a natural kind of progression. And at home, my father did all the talking. So there was a lot of getting used to silence. I used to, when I was working, I did a group at the local jail, just basic quiet meditation. And boy, they took to it like you would not believe. So it was going to be difficult, but they're used to sitting there doing nothing all day long. And especially if you're in isolation, you're just, what do you do with the mind? How do you cope with that? Some people really learn a lot. Some people go a little crazy, but some people kind of can come out of it with a certain sense of quiet and comfortableness. It's not doing anything.

[63:51]

Yeah. There's a film that was done, I don't know, Thailand or Burma, called Doing Time, Doing Vipassana. Yeah, I saw that. Did you see that? Yeah. They had all those guys, all those men, doing Vipassana meditation. And it was so, like you said, it was such a relief. Yeah. You know, what a gift. I was thinking San Quentin should become a monastery. You know, just what better way to use that time? than doing that. That's a whole other story. Let me tell you, they do nothing all day long. I know. I remember reflecting because my daughter went to Northfield, Mount Hermon. She was working from the minute she got up to the minute she went to bed. And I'm going over to the jail and they're doing absolutely nothing. Yeah. What a time for education or sitting practice or... Yeah. Yogi Jara. Bring them the... 30 verses. It's a little light reading material.

[64:55]

Yeah. That would be so kind if that were possible. I think it's happening. There's a really good sitting group, size sitting group at San Quentin. I visited a few times and they're very sincere and they've taken precepts and they're there for life. Yeah, that's true. And I think there's something lovely about their devotion. And as one of them said, I can help the young prisoners coming in. You know, that's what I can do. Help them adjust to this. Well, thank you, Drew. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thank you for that. Hello, Millicent. Hello, Fu. Hello, everyone. Fu, this might be a question that you're going to address as the chapters unfold, and I'm quite happy to wait until that time if that's appropriate but from your description of the alaya it seems to what I'm gathering maybe not correctly is that the alaya is the storehouse of my consciousness my ancient

[66:14]

journey to get to this manifestation of a human being, generation after generation. All of my experiences that I can't remember, I get that. But my question is, is the Aliyah our personal unconscious? I'm not a psychologist, so I'm really speaking out of just layperson's ignorance. But I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about what, as old people living in the country, we can possibly do in the way of being helpful because that's our primary commitment. Mm-hmm. And we were talking about she's very well-versed in the works of Jung, and she was talking about the collective unconscious, which is, as far as I understand, a kind of zeitgeist of the culture and values that we swim around in that's bigger than me.

[67:34]

And we concluded that... if we could do nothing else we could at least assume that any small act of kindness we might do in our small lives might be a minute contribution to collective unconscious away from away from a kind of culture of a fence that seems to be so strong at the moment. People are very quick to take a fence. So any kind of little tiny thing of kindness we could do would kind of ameliorate that. But is that, I mean, is that pure fantasy? See, I tend to think that when we offer merit, you know, we offer the merit of our practice and all that, I think, yeah, yeah, that's just,

[68:38]

That's not actually going to make a difference. That's just to remind me not to feel like a goody two-shoes. Sorry, this is pretty confused, but you can sort it out. I don't think it's confused. I think there is a... There is a collective unconscious in Buddhism, in my understanding. And then there's also the stream of personal consciousness. So there's that consciousness, the unconsciousness or the unconscious conditioning that we all share. I'm conditioned by living in California under the laws of the state of California and of the United States of America. And, you know, I am layers of outside conscious consciousness. constructions that have been made by millennia of people wandering around on the planet, doing their thing, and building their buildings and so on. So there is this collective reality, or not real, but anyway, collective manifestation that we share the day, the time of day, or the sun is up, I'm in the daylight, you guys might be in the dark, and so on.

[69:43]

So we do have a shared aspect. And then we have our personal stream. which the only way you know about my personal stream is if I tell you, because it's mine, it's private. And you know, there, I think I said to you that there's this interesting article I read recently about the idea that language is a kind of telepathy so that I can tell you what's going on in here. Otherwise you have no idea. So by language allows me to, to go out from my individual stream and join the collective stream. I can give a speech. You know, I can talk while I'm kind of talking right now to a whole bunch of people who are receiving those words. And it may or may not have an impact, but at least it's making their ears jiggle, you know. So there's ways in which we influence each other in small ways. And there's big ways that we influence each other by our behavior. And I think it never hurt. We don't know exactly, you know, the result of the nice thing we just did.

[70:46]

You give somebody $20. You don't know exactly what happened there. It felt good. I gave them $20. But we don't know if that was helpful or not helpful. But we keep trying to be helpful. I think that's our vow. Just keep trying to do your best to be helpful to those around you. To be kind, as you said. That's pretty good. That makes a big change. When you walk in a room and you're feeling kind and you're feeling friendly and you're acting that way, I think it changes the room. I don't know if I told you all, but I was on a train. I decided to come from New York back home to California by train, which was a fabulous thing to do when I was a bit younger. And I didn't have a sleeping car, just slept on my seat. And when we got to Pennsylvania from New York, this family of Amish, got into my car, came into my car. And it had been kind of noisy, blah, blah, blah. People were blobbing. And all of a sudden, everyone got really quiet.

[71:46]

And the Amish, you know, were helping each other put their suitcase, their straw suitcases up on a rack. And they were very peaceful and quiet. And the children were, you know, and I thought we were all kind of in awe of their deportment. And it had an impact. You know, I still remember it. so yeah i would say yeah your your actions have a big impact whether you know it or not thank you yes thank you for and i absolutely agree that um If the act of kindness is so little, because you actually often talk about the helpfulness of sangha and the connection that happens in sangha and that sort of thing, I quite often feel a bit sad when I hear you talk about that because as far as

[73:07]

As far as formal practice goes, I'm a hermit. But I transfer what you say about sangha to, in a funny sort of way, just even things like taking care of the plants and they respond and I respond to them and that sort of thing. And I think, yeah, there's different kinds of sangha. Yeah. If I take care of a plant in my back garden in the bottom of the world, in Australia, Pacific Ocean, the Earth, does that make any difference other than to the plant? Well, I say yes. How many of you say yes? Raise your hand. I think it's unanimous. So your sangha, who thinks it makes a difference for all of us?

[74:11]

Oh, yes, this is a sangha. Yes. Sort of, because we don't irritate each other. Yet. There's still time. Thank you so much, Fu. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Hi, Jerry. Good evening. I just wanted to add to that that Jung talked a lot about the collective unconscious. And a number of your illustrations, and they were very powerful, particularly the family on the train, that's conscious. We see it, we heard it. But that also echoes in my mind as I understand Jung, what is unconscious inside of us that we hold in common?

[75:15]

I personally think that there's a well of kindness and compassion that's in us that isn't necessarily planted by something external. I think as human beings we're wired And then that either blossoms as we grow, or it gets cut short by how we're treated. That's external treatment of an unconscious situation that's there. So I don't know if I'm making any sense, but I'm trying to expand what you were saying. I would go back to the train and the Amish because I would say, yes, those are visible, conscious, That was a conscious experience. But the result of that visible experience was a feeling, an internal feeling that connected me and the other people in the train to something that we couldn't quite, I couldn't have said what it was.

[76:22]

I had no concept for what that feeling was or why I was so moved in a good way by those people behaving the way they did. They weren't doing it for me. That's just how they lived. And there was something so touching. I guess that's the place where I'd say it resonated with other values or other things I'd learned as a child or whatever the inspirations that were in me, somehow that got touched. So I guess it's an interesting conversation. What is the conscious? What's the unconscious? It's certainly the subject matter of this teaching that we're looking at so maybe at least from the buddhist definitions we can find something that we can work with but i'd be interested to hear more about the jungian from any of you who have but maybe not now because you're saying you're actually saying better what i was trying to say okay it does there's a resonance within yeah it may not even be able to be voiced or identified with a word or a concept exactly but it's there it's there and it's shared

[77:33]

It's lived. It's my lived experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you. All right, everyone, you're welcome to unmute, if you like, and say good evening or good night or good morning, whichever is true for you. Good evening. Thank you for having me. I'm going back to Germany now. Thank you. Thank you. We'll stay in touch. Thank you. Happy birthday. Thank you. Happy birthday, everyone. Happy birthday. Safe travels to Germany. Thank you. Good to see you all again. Good. We look forward to it. Bye, everybody. Good morning. Good morning. Bye. Bye. Thank you, Fu. You're welcome. Yes, thank you, Fu. Jacqueline, you're welcome.

[78:34]

Dear friends, dear, dear friends. Yeah, bye. What a gift. Bye. Okay, Karina.

[78:45]

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