It's been a long time since I've been sitting here. And my wife will, every once in a while, give me the hi sign if I'm not talking loud enough. But anybody else, please feel free to do so. I am pretty soft-spoken. It's a pleasure to be here. It's also... honor and it's also scary to be here. On this particular spot in the early 1980s I happened to walk in and my Lama Tara Tilku was sitting here and he was teaching and that's the origin of my connection with Zen Center and Green Gulch Zen Center city center. I'd like to take a minute to explain that.

[01:01]

Because what I'd like to do this evening is I'd like to talk about the philosopher Nagarjuna as somebody to practice with rather than somebody to just read about or to read philosophy or to stretch one's mind in some way. And I'll explain what I mean here as time goes on. But I won't be talking in a straight line either, so that might make things a little bit complicated. It's important to explain why it is that a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner is sitting here talking with you. And that has to do with a little history, so I'll share that with you. And this goes back to Taratulku, who was a very eminent Lama and was invited to speak here at a time that was very difficult. for Green Gulch and for Zen Center. And a number of the older practitioners here met him and became very devoted to him and respected him very highly.

[02:08]

And he believed very strongly that in all traditions, one needs to study as well as practice. And at that time, that was sort of an unusual idea at Zen Center. It was, in fact, a little bit of a radical idea, I believe. Perhaps I'm wrong. Certainly things have changed, and the conversations I've had with old friends have been very scholarly, and Reb has asked me questions that I certainly couldn't answer. They were incredibly sophisticated, and things have certainly changed around here. But one thing that hasn't changed, of course, is practice and a focus on practice. So how does Nagarjuna fit into this? Who is Nagarjuna would perhaps be the best place to start from any of you. In the Buddhist tradition, he's a philosopher who occupies a position that would be analogous to Plato or Aristotle in the Western tradition.

[03:13]

A critical philosopher, somebody of profound impact on all the tradition that came after him. His name appears in the lineage that you recite as, in the Japanese, Nagarjuna... There you go. Thank you. I couldn't remember it anymore. He is in there, and he's very important in all the Buddhist lineages. But typically, the way he... ends up being seen is as a logician. If you happen to pick up a book on Nagarjuna written by a Western scholar, you'll find a lot of material on argumentation and logic and disputation and complicated analyses and stuff that really gives me a headache, quite honestly. It's all there in Nagarjuna, but his own intention, he's made very clear,

[04:19]

that the point of philosophy is to put philosophy into practice and transform the way one experiences one's life, to transform the way in which one experiences reality. And I think that that tends to get lost among a lot of Western scholars. In my own life, I was sort of fortunate in a backwards way which was I completed a doctorate in Tibetan at a time when American higher education didn't think Tibetan studies was anything of value. And in fact didn't think religious studies was particularly anything of value. And I found myself having a career as an administrator and teaching on the side. I taught consistently over the years and wrote books because I was interested, but I was spared the life of a modern American academic who's required to say nasty things about other American academics and sound incredibly intelligent whether they know anything or not and has to be very cerebral and can't take philosophy seriously as something that would be applied to life.

[05:44]

Because if you were to do that, you would certainly be denied tenure. And if you had tenure, you wouldn't get promotion. And you'd probably be ostracized by your colleagues, even in religious studies departments, quite amazingly. So I was lucky. I became an administrator, for lack of anything better to do. And when I got tired of that, I became even luckier because I took up distance education and now I make my living as, to put it briefly, a geek. I support the technology that other people use to teach. So I'm doubly out of the system, which gives me opportunity to practice the things that other people only talk about. And that's why I'm here with you tonight. Now, what brings me to the Bay Area, because I do live in eastern Oregon, is that my own current teacher, his name is Denmalo Cho Rinpoche, happens to be paying a visit, and he's staying in Atherton.

[06:50]

He's actually taking a vacation. He has a lot of duties in Asia. He's quite eminent, actually. He doesn't get any peace and quiet at all. So the only way he can get peace and quiet is to pay a visit to Atherton. where nobody knows him, and he'll be left alone. Well, except, of course, I know him, so Kay and I are visiting him in Atherton, and we drove down to visit him, and he said, well, actually, we drove down to visit him because four years ago, he said, well, when I come back to Atherton, come visit, and I'll give you some teaching. So we waited four years while he was in India. And two weeks ago, we started driving down to Atherton. Ten days ago, we drove down to Atherton, and He greeted us, and we said, hello, Rinpoche, and he said, why are you here? And we said, well, four years ago, you told us to come here. He said, that's very nice. How are you? And we told him how we were, and he said, well, I'm here on vacation. Goodbye. Well, no, that was actually, oh, there's more.

[07:51]

That was okay. I said, Rinpoche, what we would really appreciate if we could is, while you're sitting here in the guest house relaxing, could we sit outside? Would that be okay? Would you mind? and um he said no that'd be okay so for the last 10 days we've been sitting outside the guest house sort of at his feet meditating while he's been inside on vacation which means he's only practicing 24 hours a day but without any students to bother him except those two pesky students who are sitting outside um but he is teaching us in an interesting way and this will loop back to Nagarjuna, eventually. Now I'm going to take a little side trip. In the Tibetan tradition, some water. The Tibetan tradition, the Tibetans say that their own teaching is based on both Sutra and Tantra, that it's a combination of the two.

[09:02]

that the one is the foundation of the other the sutra as you all know sutra is the foundation for tantric practice which is not really part of the zen tradition but is an ancestor to the zen tradition um and that's not something i'll go into there are other teachers here who are more qualified to do so um the tibetans have boiled everything down in the sutra tradition to what they call the three principal aspects of the sutra path just to make things relatively simple and to make it possible to keep everything straight which is actually a little unusual in Tibetan tradition because they usually like to make things really complicated but they've tried to make everything really simple with the three principal aspects of the path a way of organizing all of sutra teaching And this is where Nagarjuna will come in.

[10:05]

Those three principal aspects are, in shorthand, renunciation, altruism, and wisdom. Now, renunciation is kind of a scary word, I think, to Americans. But what it means, excuse me, what it doesn't mean is it doesn't mean renouncing the world and giving up the world. which is what we usually think renunciation means, especially if we're familiar with Indian yoga traditions. Renunciation means renouncing the vain hope that the world will make us happy by itself, which is not to say renouncing the world. It means giving up on the world that in and of itself, it will make us happy. That doesn't mean not living in the world. It doesn't mean that there aren't beautiful things in the world. But it does mean that there is a reason why the world and life in the world itself, in the end and ultimately speaking, won't give us what we want.

[11:17]

The second aspect of the path is called altruism. And altruism, simply put, means as long as you put yourself at the center of concern, you're going to end up being unhappy. If you live for yourself alone, you'll end up being unhappy. But if you live for everything, for everything that lives, then there's a chance of finding some happiness. This is an extremely, in a way, I think, difficult concept. And it's even more difficult to embrace as a way of life. But if you think about the Mahayana vows, and you think about what it is that distinguishes Mahayana from any other kind of Buddhism, it's about everybody working together to get where they need to go. That no one can do it on their own.

[12:21]

No one can do it for themselves. Zen Center and Green Gulch is a collection of people who are moving forward together because you can't move forward on your own. But we can help each other move forward. And in a sense, that's what altruism means. So that's the second principle aspect of the path. Now, these things are not unconnected. Altruism is not unconnected from renunciation. And the reason is... that what's really being renounced in renouncing the world, or renouncing the notion that the world will provide happiness, is renouncing the ordinary way in which we live in the world, not renouncing the world per se. Renouncing, perhaps one might say, the ego-centered way of living in the world, to live in the world in a different way, in an altruistic way. Now the third aspect of the path...

[13:22]

is wisdom and this is where nagarjuna comes in i'm having an interesting experience as an aside i'm staying at a city center and much to my surprise there are mosquitoes in the city center and i've been there dinner and i think one of them has followed me here actually i'm not quite sure how this has happened but so every once in a while i may I may be doing this, and that's what's going on. Back to wisdom and Nagarjuna. Wisdom means seeing things for what they actually are, rather than what they appear to be. Which may not seem like something that's very difficult. But to see things for what they are rather than for what they appear to be is perhaps the ultimate challenge that anybody faces.

[14:30]

Because if we see everything from our own perspective rather than perspective of the larger whole, we have an incredibly narrow view of things. If we see things from the larger whole, from the view of everybody and everything and the needs of everybody and everything, we have a much broader perspective but as we all know that's typically not the way we see things we spend our time being concerned about me and what do I need and what am I getting to eat and why am I cold and why do I have to do this job and why am I digging these potatoes or cleaning this toilet or whatever the thing is that we're doing rather than thinking about things from a broader perspective These three aspects fit together. They're actually like three facets of a dream, if you will. Three sides of a coin. It could be such a thing as a three-sided coin.

[15:34]

In my teaching, I've usually felt that starting with wisdom, a way of understanding the other two, is what's most helpful. And so that's the turn that I'll take this evening. It's backwards for what the Tibetans do. But we're not Tibetans. So my experience has been that with Westerners, backward Tibetan is forward American. And so that's what we'll try to do. So Nagarjuna is known for having written, for sure, five different philosophical treatises. And as I said earlier, they're pretty complicated. They'll split your head if you really try and attack the logic of them. They're very difficult. When I was studying Nagarjuna, it pretty much drove me crazy. In fact, I had the good fortune to study with a lama at the Tibetan library, which is sort of the principal scholarly center for Tibetan studies in Dharamsala, India, followed by some people in his holiness's government.

[16:52]

I worked with a Lama by the name of Geshe Sonam Rinchen to translate the 70 stanzas that Maya mentioned when she introduced me. And we had a very interesting time together. We would meet for about an hour and a half and we'd work on about one stanza a day and we'd translate it from Tibetan into English. And we'd talk about it in some detail and I would collect some comments on what this Lama said and that's what became the book. And at the end of every session he would give me a quiz And I thought, you know, why am I getting quizzes? I have a PhD. That doesn't sound very reasonable. But he would give me a quiz on what we'd been working on. And he asked me some questions. I always got the answers wrong. Not once in two summers did I ever get the answer right. And to make things even more interesting, he thought that was humorous. He actually fell off a stool once. He was laughing so hard at something that I said. And I'm not entirely dumb, and we were studying Nagarjuna pretty closely, but I flunked every quiz, every single one.

[18:04]

One of the things I learned from that, besides a lot of, well, it's odd to say I learned a lot of humility. I mean, that seems to be self-canceling, but it did have some influence. But one of the things I learned is that if you take Nagarjuna through the mind only, there's a definite limit to that, at least a limit if I take Nagarjuna through my own mind. In the end, what I learned was everything that he wrote in the whole philosophical corpus, which serves as the foundation for Buddhist middle-wave philosophy, can be boiled down to three principles, curiously. And those three principles are that every phenomenon is composed, is a compound. And because it's a compound, it's impermanent. And because it's a compound, it lacks selfhood. Selfhood has a specific definition.

[19:07]

Selfhood means something solid, something real, something permanent, something identifiable. So... Everything is a compound, and because it's compounded, it's not whole and therefore lacks selfhood. Everything is dependent. Everything arises in dependence. It's an effect of some set of causes. And because it depends upon something else for its own existence, it is impermanent. It will fade away. It lacks selfhood. It is not solid, and it's not reliable, and it's not what it appears to be. Because everything appears to just be what it is right there all the time. It seems inevitable. We don't seem to be able to get away from it. But if we look at things closely, we find that Nagarjuna is correct. That things exist as long as that which caused them to be exerted power over them.

[20:11]

And things only exist if we don't look really closely at them And we don't see that they're made up of parts. They only seem to be a whole when we don't look really closely at them. The third thing in Nagarjuna's teaching is that everything exists because of the name that we give it. Because of the way we designate it. That we recognize one thing from another because we give it a certain name. And if we were to stop giving it that name, or to give it a different name, it would appear to be something else. So if you put those three things together... More water, excuse me. If you put those three things together, all of Nagarjuna's philosophy, and therefore all of Buddha's philosophy, can be boiled down to the following...

[21:14]

That there is nothing that exists whatsoever that is not dependent on something else, that is not made up of parts, and is not identified merely because your mind designates a name upon it. So think about this for a minute. Think about anything. Actually, think about the back of the head. that's directly in front of you. Or if you're in the front row, the face that's directly in front of you. No, I take it seriously. When you first look at it, it appears to just be what it is, the back of someone's head. Isn't this obvious? But if you look closely, what you see is you see some hair, you see some skin. And if you think about it, if you get analytic about it, Underneath that skin, there are veins, there's blood, bone, brain.

[22:21]

That's all quite there. But you don't see it. If I suggest that you look at it, as you look at the back of the head that's in front of you, in your imagination you'll see all those things. But if I don't say that to you, you just see that solid whole something, the back of someone's head. which is maybe between you and me, so you can't see me, and maybe that's irritating, or maybe it's not, maybe it's a good thing. But be that as it may, there's just that one thing there. When you first look at it, there's just that one thing there, until I ask you to analyze it and look at it more closely. And then it begins to break into parts which you didn't notice before. And you can perform this experiment, which is, you can look away, and you can look back, And the head is whole. And then you can think about it and it breaks into parts. And you can look away and you can look back and the head is whole again.

[23:22]

The whole way in which we experience everything is to see it as that one thing. And one of the reasons we see it as that one thing also is because we have this idea head. Because when I said the head in front of you, you probably weren't looking at the shoulders. You probably weren't looking at the back. You separated in your own mind. You separated the head from the rest of the body, which is obviously quite artificial and impossible. But the way you think about it creates the whole that you look at. So the designation is what holds the parts together. I also said that things are what they, excuse me, I said, but Nagarjuna says, things are what they are because they're dependent on something else. Why is that person there in front of you? They're there because certain circumstances brought everyone together.

[24:26]

On Wednesday nights, there's a lecture. There's this place, Green Gulch. There are these causes and conditions that are the basis for us all being together in this one room. But typically, as Nagarjuna would say, as we go through our existence moment by moment, day by day, these are not things that we look at. We just see things as they are. We take them as they are. We don't see where they came from. We don't see what they're connected to. We don't see the way in which we participate in creating them with our own minds. And so then this has certain problematic consequences. But the main consequence is we live on the basis of appearance. We don't live on the basis of the truth of what brings things about. Now, I said that the orientation that had interested me and that was strong in the Tibetan tradition was to practice with this way of thinking about things.

[25:32]

So I'm going to take a little bit of an un-Zen turn a moment and pardon me for doing so because in the Tibetan tradition they say first you study things then you think about things and then you contemplate things so what we're doing now in this conversation well I hope we'll have a conversation because in a little bit I'm gonna shut up and we'll talk In this tradition, first you study the philosophy. You might even debate it with your classmates. But then you actually go and you sit and you think about what it means that phenomena are dependent, that they're made of parts, that they're full of our own concepts rather than free of our mental constraints upon them.

[26:35]

You think about this, what this actually means. And then finally you sit in meditation and you try and see in your experience what would that mean. Now, as I said earlier, I was fortunate to not go the traditional academic route. So I was free to take that step which moved away from thinking about things only, which is what academics do, to actually practicing with Nagarjuna. And what I found was that what's revealed through this intellectual analysis is also the direct experience that seems to be spoken of, as far as I can understand, by all the great Buddhist teachers. including teachers such as Dogen, that where the logical analysis takes you is to the place where as you sit, you can actually see things after you've practiced this way of thinking.

[27:51]

You can actually see things in one moment in the conventional way of whole, independent, and seeming to be what they are, ahead for example and in the next instant you can sort of turn your mind and they dissolve they become connected in a great flow of time they become connected with the environment around them and you can see your own thoughts floating in them and withdrawing from them that this is actually possible and this becomes a profound meditation And as I discovered recently, this is actually, as it turns out, a traditional meditation among Tibetans. And I wish somebody had told me that some time ago, because I'd been doing it for a while, and it wasn't until yesterday that I was talking with my lama, and he said, yeah, that's right, that's what you're supposed to be doing, that's okay.

[28:57]

For some reason, Nagarjuna, in all these traditions, has become this abstract philosopher, rather than this person whose goal with philosophy is to cut through, to use the mind to cut through to the direct experience of what's their underlying mind and underlying constructions. So, if anybody wants to take up the study of Nagarjuna, then this is the route. to go from abstraction to concreteness, and to go from mere intellectual wordplay to something that can be transformative of the moment-by-moment experience. Now, I think I said at one point I was going to loop back to something, but I can't remember what it was. One of the... What was that? Oh, how my teacher... Did I really say that?

[29:59]

Did I say that? Oh. Okay. Yeah. When, yeah, okay. I guess I'll have to do that since I said I was going to do that. When you, yeah, I will. When you practice in this way, when you practice in this way, your mind clears. I mean, your mind can actually clear of a logical chatter. It can clear of the way in which your mind, your mind can clear of the way in which it holds on to the appearance of things. It can sort of soften and open. I don't exactly know how to describe this experience. It's sort of like the experience, I think, the experience of sitting in zazen for very long periods of time when the mind actually quiets. And you can sort of feel the minds of the people around you. Sometimes you can feel the atmosphere of what's happening in the zendo. So what's happened for me and my relationship with my Lama is that as my mind in this way has softened and opened and cleared, and his has been that way for a long time, he's now teaching me from his mind to my mind that

[31:21]

Because my mind has no longer set up barriers to his mind. So even though I'm sitting outside the guest house, when I slide into this space, he has a lot to say to me. Not in words. He just shows me things. Because our minds are touching each other. Because the barriers are gone between them. So that's, well, that's someplace else that Nagarjuna can take you. Let me leave it at that. And let me, if I could, disconnect these things for a minute, because I'm getting cooked with this jacket on. And, yeah, questions? So, I'm not quite sure about this, but I'll start off by saying that I have a... It's totally ridiculous. Someone in my life is a friend of mine, really a friend of mine, is obsessed with the texts of Nagarjuna.

[32:30]

And the more he just came upset, the more we would argue. And basically I'm wondering what the, it seemed like this, You're talking about a theme who are open and available. The opposite kind of happened. And I was given a lot of reason through the text and why the world is an illusion and emptiness prevails and why, oh, the emotions you're experiencing are just nonsense. I mean, it got like, I mean, it got scary. And so I'm kind of like. It sounds great. Do you like to translate? It sounds scary. Is there an emotional or physical body aspect of relating it? Because what it sounds like is the way that you contemplate it and think about it is sort of the mind trying to cut through the mind with the mind.

[33:41]

And I, yeah, I wonder about that. But it sounds like what your friend is doing is using the mind to, or at least using his mind to reinforce itself. How do you not make that mistake when studying a text that's so... Who is his teacher? Who is his living teacher? Well, this may not solve the problem because it's very dangerous for me to speak to the situation that you're describing when I'm on the outside of it and I haven't met him and I don't really know what's going on.

[34:43]

But from what you're telling me, There is a fault in believing that one can carry oneself forward into a deep philosophical tradition on one's own. It's dangerous to think that one's mind has the capacity to incorporate this. This can incorporate one's mind. but not the reverse. And so it seems to me that a solution to the problem is a relationship with a qualified teacher. But I'm afraid I would be guessing that that's not highly likely to happen from what you're telling me. I don't know. I'm just wondering if when studying the test, if there's...

[35:46]

I mean, that actually makes perfect sense to me. But in relating to the text, like, to bring it into your body or to bring it into, like, you know, I don't know. Maybe I'm not answering your question well. I think Einstein said that the problems that are created at a certain level cannot be resolved at the same level. They have to be resolved at a different level. So I'm not quite sure what the problem is that was created at the level at which he's operating, but it needs to be resolved at a different level. Like Geshe Sonam Rinchen giving me a quiz every day so that I could fail it, and that was really good for my not getting arrogant about my knowing a lot about Nagarjuna. It permanently solved that problem. He was very effective. I mean, because, you know, Buddhism's a living tradition, and we take the texts outside of the tradition often, and we work on them on our own as if we can.

[36:55]

Sometimes we don't have any choice, but they really are part of a living tradition, and they have a life in that tradition and a place in that tradition. And it's like anything else, disconnected from the larger whole. It can't even become toxic. And I'm afraid that's what I'm hearing. Does that help? Very much, yes. Okay. I'm glad. If there are other questions, that's great. If not, we can all go home. I have a question. It's not so much about Nagarji, but about Tarakuku. Yes. A friend of mine's teacher was Kala Rinpoche at... I can't remember when she told me that his... the new Kalorupashe had been discovered, and she was just sort of overjoyed that in her tradition this could actually happen, and she would probably study it when he grew up. Anyway, I was wondering if there was anything in your relationship with Orin Tartukwu's lineage if that's come to be for you.

[38:09]

Yes, actually, that's true. It has happened, though. I'll tell a little story if I could. When Taratoku died, which was, I think, 1991, was that it? 1991. The Tibetans began a search for his incarnation. And they did find his incarnation after about, I think, about 18 months, something like that. He was identified. And Yvonne Rand, who used to live... down here at Goat in the Road near Beach, brought him over here when he was younger. So now he's about, I think, 15, and he's studying in a monastery. He's studying in the Jikno Monastery in the southern part of India. So we had time to spend with him, and it was quite wonderful. It was actually wonderful to spend it in this context. One of my enduring memories is when he was very small,

[39:11]

He was maybe one or two years old. Walking down to the beach from Yvonne's, and we came, as you do in many cases, to a huge mud puddle. We kind of looked at it like... So I picked him up, and I put him on my shoulders, and we kind of negotiated around the mud puddle and headed for the beach, and then all of a sudden hit me. I thought, oh, my Lord, my llama is sitting on my shoulder. Oh! Because it had become clear to me, spending time with him, that this really was the incarnation of my Lama. I had been pretty dubious about that kind of notion that that would be possible. But being with him, I could see that it was the same person, even though a child. So then all of a sudden it was really startling to have him on my shirt. It was kind of cute, too. We used to take him to the playground and stuff like that. In San Francisco. So when he's older, we'll study with him again.

[40:16]

And meanwhile, what's happened is that... I mean, that introduction is interesting. What happened is that before he died, he kind of... He said... We'll make arrangements for you to have another teacher. And he didn't exactly explain that, but that's what happened. And so this Lama that I'm studying with adopted us. And he's been our teacher for about 15 years, and he's pretty elderly. And he's 80 now, and he said that he'll live another four years. So I figure, so Tarotsuku is about 15 now, so he'll be about 19. So they're going to almost trade off You know, who's going to be our teacher? One will be, and then the other, there's this gap. But they've solved that problem, too, because they have a buddy from Drapun Monastery who just turned 40. And so he's sort of stepping into the gap. So the three of them that are handing us, and I say us because it includes my wife, the three of us that are sort of handing us off to each other as time goes along.

[41:18]

And I never would have guessed that that would have been possible, but that doesn't be what's happened. And I suspect that that's what happened in Tibet, in Tibetan tradition, that that was the way. In the back, there's a question. Did that... Yes, I'm more curious about things, but we can... What? Please. Just when you said you knew, you know... How did I know? I don't know if that's possible to answer my question, but if there's something you could say about how you did it. Let me try and remember. Because it was, at the time, it was a very distinctive experience. When he flew into the United States, I went to Goat in the Road, and he was very small. I mean, they wanted to go see him, but I had the flu. So I couldn't. I thought, well, this would be a great way to greet Yolanda's incarnation, give him the flu. So I thought, okay, I'll stay home until I get better. And I had a series of dreams at that time about him.

[42:23]

And I could feel him very strongly on kind of an emotional level. And just everything came together. It was sort of like, gee, is this possible? When I finally did see him, he had a sense of presence that was so similar, even though he was one or two years old at the time, that was so similar to the presence of my teacher that I just, it just felt right. It just felt right. But... I mean, you know, this is being said to you by somebody who says, you know, I'm sitting outside my current mama's guest house and he's teaching me by mental telepathy. So you might want to, you know. And believe it or not, I mean, you know, this is the kind of person that would say such things. You know, that's how it was for me. That's how it was for me. There's a question in the back. I was just making the same mind. Could we just extend it? heart connection that you're finding with your teacher, and what place does that connection with the teacher have in your studies?

[43:31]

On one side, you're saying that this academic workshop, and there is the medicine of the teacher helping you put that into experience, so it seems to be very important to understand each other's experience, and this person has a cultural difference from you, How does that work, especially since we don't speak the same language? You know, I really think that the redwood trees look pretty similar to him as they do to me. That on sort of the level of the way the mind operates, that there are deep similarities. among all beings. And more importantly, the way in which raw awareness creates our experience, or no, underlies our experience, the way in which raw awareness or consciousness underlies our experience, in its essential nature, I think is similar for all beings.

[44:45]

I mean, that is a Buddhist principle, actually. that all sentient beings share something fundamental, that that's what it is. So at that level, I think that's the place that we're touching. The problem with this kind of experience is as soon as you try and talk about it, you start applying language to something that underlies language, and it distorts it. And there's nothing to do about it. We need to talk about it, but it's... It's a problem. In the Zen tradition, there is this description of the direct transmission of mind. I don't remember what the exact language for this is between the patriarchs or the ancestors. Mind to mind transmission. I mean, have you ever wondered? I mean, I'm not going to say what it means.

[45:46]

But have you ever wondered, what does that mean, direct mind-to-mind transmission? What did they mean when they said that? I mean, so for me, I think I know what it means, but I wouldn't claim to say that that's what it means for sure in your tradition. But it's a way of thinking about that possibility, is that the mind directly communicates with the mind and something is transmitted. I know that's a really radical idea. Um, maybe it's not as radical as some people might think. I mean, my wife and I are all the time, I'll be thinking something and she'll say it. I don't know if that happens to other couples. You know, one person's thinking something and the other person says it. It's kind of like, yeah, I really wanted Mexican food for dinner tonight. Forget about cooking. Let's go. Oh, yeah, I was, yeah, I didn't want to cook dinner and I was really wanting some tacos. Great. Let's go. Yeah. I mean, it happens to us all the time.

[46:46]

It seems pretty simplistic, but what is that? OK. Maybe it's the same thing. In discussing, you talked about how all phenomena are dependent, et cetera, et cetera, and exist because of name. They're designated. And does that apply to space and time as well? It does. So if that's the case, I wonder why it would be important to be in proximity to your teacher if the transmission's mind to mind, if space and time are like any phenomenon that they don't inherently exist? That's a good question. Most of the time I practice with him being on the other side of the world, and I can usually feel him. But I feel him better when I'm near him. He does have a body, just as I have a body. And... Let me do a digression to answer your question, because it's worthy of answer. In the, perhaps we call it the psychology, tantric psychology, that explains what is the relationship of mind and body, there is a teaching that there are subtle energies in the body, that mind and subtle energies have a relationship to each other.

[48:09]

if you will, that energy and mind are two aspects of the same thing. I don't know if this is something people have experienced when they're doing very deep meditation or not, that you have a sense of the way in which your mind has pulses in relationship to kind of an inner physiological dimension. I don't know a better way to describe it than this. In the Tibetan tradition, they say that mind and energy are two aspects, probably the same thing. Well, energy is localized as well as dispersed. And it's stronger at the point of origin, and it's weaker as it's dispersed. So, as far as I can tell, what's actually going on between us is that my energy field and his energy field are interpenetrating. So the closer we are to each other, the better they interpenetrate, and the stronger the relationship is. But they're there at a distance. And I can practice that with him at a distance also.

[49:11]

Best answer. It does seem to make a difference, but ultimately not. As a matter of fact, after Taratoku died, we had an interview with the Dalai Lama. Actually, what had happened was before Taratoku died, he said, go see the Dalai Lama. I can tell you what to do next in your practice. So he did. And we were just, ooh! I told him to die. What are we going to do? We're in tears. And he kind of looked at us and he said, Lama's dead. Lama's alive. It doesn't make any difference. Oh, from his point of view, it didn't make any difference. From our point of view, it was, oh, you know, what are we going to do? He's gone. We missed him. So, yeah, it doesn't make a difference. But if you're a neophyte like me, I guess it makes a difference. you described of seeing the thing as it is and as it appears and through our concept in the name and then turning it so that it can you come into that a little more sure yeah I'd be glad to if I can um well I was sort of giving you a thought experiment about the back of the head business but I

[50:37]

I did it as a way of sort of exemplifying the point. You can actually look at anything and begin to do a mental analysis of it, like a table. And if you do it often enough, you can kind of... do this kind of look away, look at it, look away, look at it, kind of mental phenomenon, or mental activity, which is, when you just look at it, it's whole, it's what it is, and then you can kind of do the analysis, and you begin seeing the wood, and you can imagine, you know, the fibers in the wood, and you can imagine the nails, and all of it together, or as Thich Nhat Hanh says, you can see the rain in the paper, you can see the sunshine, in the paper of the book that you're reading, same kind of thing. It starts out as a mental process, but as you do it frequently enough, you actually begin to see, beyond merely the analysis, you actually begin to see that it's a construction.

[51:49]

I mean, you can actually more clearly see the parts of the table. You can more clearly see the varnish on the table as standing out of separate from just a sort of blob of experience. And you can more clearly see that it's constructed. I mean, you can almost see the carpenters who are putting it together. And you can hear your mind thinking table, table, table, table as you look at it. So if you do that often enough, then what happens is the kind of imagined quality that you develop with the analysis, you begin to see. You just see things more clearly in that way. And then you can kind of do the look away, look at it, look away, look at it, I mean in your own mind, where you see it as whole parts, whole parts, whole parts. And if you do that long enough, then you can do it very quickly, and you can do it with anything. So where it becomes useful is if you're sitting in meditation, and you're sitting and your mind is doing whatever it's doing and so on and so forth,

[52:55]

You know, you're sitting in, if you have a meditation room, you're sitting in the Zen doing whatnot, and here's this whole constructed environment that's around you. You begin to see the whole constructed environment as this kind of transitory, pulsing, temporary concatenation of energy, which just disperses. I don't know how else to describe this to you. It just disperses as a whole into this flux of energy. which is very dynamic, and at the same time, you can see the underlying solidity to it. It's like you can focus in, focus out, focus in, focus out. And when you focus out, and it just breaks apart into this kind of mass, it's pretty cool. I don't know what else to say. It's kind of like, it's sort of like This one... Yeah, I didn't know words.

[54:03]

I mean, there's just like this place, this space. That's it. You enter into this space in which everything exists, but nothing is separate from anything. And everything just moves and pulses together. I'm afraid I can't explain it. I don't know that. But the thing is that it's a matter of practice. It's a matter of the practice of first thinking about it and understanding it, and then working the experience over a long period of time, and then you can just do it. Yes, Linda? So when you start out with those three things, that renunciation, altruism, and wisdom, and you said you're going to start backwards... So starting with, I hear this is starting with kind of wisdom, and how does that flow into the altruism and the enunciation just from that far out? Yeah, thank you. Because it's good to look back and I've forgotten to do it.

[55:06]

So I appreciate that. If everything is immersed in this one pulsing energy field, then... everything that happens in this field, all the consequences of everything that happens in this field, can either be designated as I and selfish, or they can become something that flows into the larger hole that impacts everybody. Because you begin to see that everything that happens has consequences in that pattern. And you can recognize that different things will flow out of that depending upon how you relate to it. And if you relate to it with ego and with selfishness and me, me, me, then what comes out of it is in relationship to that. And if you do that, what it tends to do is get really rigid and it tends to get really tight. And if you relate to it as the more altruistic hole, it tends to soften and open up and stay fluid because it includes everything.

[56:13]

Now, I don't think that makes any sense, but I don't know how better to explain it than that actually is what I've seen happen. And the thing about the renunciation side is what you see is that satisfaction doesn't come out of that. Satisfaction comes out of the way you relate to it as the whole rather than relating to it as the individual parts. I mean, if you think about what it is that we grasp for, we never grasp at the whole. When we grasp at something in the world, we grasp at that. We grasp at the watch. We grasp at the person. We grasp at the solution to a particular desire that we have. We don't relate to the larger whole. But from this point of view of wisdom, what we're relating to is that larger whole. And so we've essentially renounced the selfishness of the individual part. Does that make sense? Thank you. I'm having a very hard time bringing words to this kind of experience because I frankly basically almost never talk about this.

[57:20]

I mean, you don't talk about this at Eastern Oregon University. Keep your job. Even if you're a geek and they need you, they think it's strange. Yes. You mentioned a very physical example of deconstructing a table or changing. Could you describe how you'd approach a thought, a simple mind that maybe is just a shirking you like, Maybe I'm worried about my friend who's sick. How does this process, in whatever words you can use, how it works? Well, of course, there's nothing wrong with worrying about your friend that's sick. But just taking that as an example, when a thought arises, like friend, just make it simpler, forget about friend that's sick, we'll just say friend. When a thought arises friend, It arises in relationship to an external something. So it depends upon that external something. It can't arise without that external something. In fact, your awareness can't arise without something to be aware of.

[58:23]

The notion of awareness without something that you're aware of, at least in the Tibetan tradition, is rejected. The notion that you can have awareness without an object is you can't, because you have to be aware of something. The only time you have awareness without an object is when you're in dreamless sleep, which from their point of view is awareness of nothing rather than complete unconsciousness. So typically awareness is awareness of something. So you have thought and it arises in relationship to your friend. So they depend on each other. Thought and friend depend on each other. And if you contemplate that idea at first, that awareness of the thought, friend, and the referent, the external object, the friend, all depend on each other. And you can actually, as you sit, watch these things in relationship to each other.

[59:26]

And the tight connection between them when you do that will break. It'll come back again. You can see that, and the tight connection will break again. There's more, isn't there? Is there more to your question? I'm trying to... I'm still missing the part about decomposing into various... What you're saying, for instance, you think of friendly, what that means to you, and these different plays, and go into the analysis a bit, and then you come back. Well, okay... In this case, what I'm saying is not so much that your friend is composed of parts, or that the idea of friend is composed of parts, or that your mind is composed of parts, but those three things are parts of a whole experience. Because in your awareness, which is one thing, there is the idea of friend, which is a second thing, and then there's the external referent.

[60:31]

of your friend which is the third thing so in that moment three things have come together which are the subjective awareness the objective reference and the mental phenomenon or idea of the word or notion or image friend those three things arise together if you see those three things arise together and you actually see that those three things have arisen together then you've instantaneously deconstructed them So where that's useful, for example, is in a perhaps more complex case, like, well, if you're an addict, for example, and you want something that you're addicted to, whether it's a cigarette or a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, whatever the case may be, When the feeling of that thing comes up, the same process is going on.

[61:36]

And the way that you break the craving cycle in that is you see that those things are together. And as you see that, in that moment it breaks. Of course it comes back again because it's an ingrained habit. But you just do it over and over and over again. And that's actually how the addiction breaks. I mean, I know that works because I used to smoke cigarettes. And it was, cigarettes are a horrible habit. very difficult to break. Addiction is difficult to break. And that's the way I did it. It was one moment at a time. You know, out of a hundred moments, I'd fail 80% of the time, and I'd have a cigarette. And then I'd only fail 70%, and then I'd fail 60%, 50%, 40%, and then pretty soon it was... You mentioned it at the beginning about not teaching when you're teaching the same need. Yeah. And you'd like to say something about that? I'm not entirely sure what the Tibetan tradition means when it says that, but I know what my own experience is.

[62:41]

Because he's so absolutely real, that if I open my mouth, I feel like a phony. That's just to put it bluntly and straightforward, like... is that he has such accomplishment and such realization that for me to talk about the things that I'm talking about in the context of knowing who he is and having him around is embarrassing. But I foolishly said I would do this mostly because I wanted to come here and hang out with old friends. So that's not a mistake I'll make again in the future. It's difficult. Presume to do a Dharma talk when my teacher is in town. What was it? I was just joking. I think you're teaching wonderfully. My experience is when my teacher is present, I think better, I teach better, I talk better, I improvise better, and I feel better.

[63:53]

That's great. when my teacher is present I feel like adult he doesn't make me feel that way I mean I just I just really respect him so much that he's so he's so real he's what all the scriptures talk about that kind I don't remember. Did we finish? Well, what about when he's not in the vicinity? Or is it just that the vicinity reminds you of your limitation? That's good. Yeah. When he's not in the vicinity, then I teach online and there's things like delete buttons and edits. It makes it a lot easier. I like teaching online. I like teaching online because you can be very thoughtful about what you're doing.

[64:54]

and you can modify things, and you can save things, and then go back and edit them, and then you can post them. You say, okay, that one was okay. That one was pretty good. You can't do that. I mean, there's no delete button. I'm like, oops, I didn't mean to say that. Let's wind this thing backwards. How does that relate to the mind-to-mind? How does that relate to the mind-to-mind? The edit button. there's no edit button for mind to mind either. But, you know, I mean, he's been nice to me, so it's been okay, at least lately. There's a Tibetan tradition also that if the teacher really likes you, he's really tough on you. And he really kicked our ass at one point. It took us years to recover. But as our friend said, he must like you a lot that he did that. So, Maybe you're referring to something that occurred to me, which I think the last time I saw you, David, you were living in New Mexico and having a hard time.

[66:02]

Yeah, that was after he kicked my ass. And you told me your teacher, you basically suggested you guys move there, and then you kind of had no idea what you were doing there. So I wonder if this thing seemed to have turned out okay. Well, okay, that's sort of interesting. And since I told you that, I'll clarify something. What actually happened was Kay and I said, we can't stand living in San Francisco anymore. We have to get out of here. It's just too crowded and all that kind of stuff. But I can't seem to find a job to get out of here. And he said, well, okay, then move to where you want to be and then find a job. Which seemed like, okay. And I somehow had this notion that, magically speaking, because he said it was going to be okay, if I just moved to where we wanted to be, I'd find a job and everything would be okay. Well, it wasn't, because he's not into magical consciousness. You know, I mean, it was like, okay, yeah, you know, you can find another job and you can make a living.

[67:04]

I mean, I didn't say, well, will I find another job doing what I want to do? Not to find another job. I just couldn't find a job doing what I want. Like, okay, I forgot to ask about the details. Well, so I learned my lesson. You ask about the details. When he says, do this, you say, well, if I do that, what are the other elements that are going to come out of doing that? If you said, yeah, no problem, you'll find another job, but it's not necessarily going to be what you want to do, then I would have thought differently about it. I mean, the llamas see things in a different context than I do. So that's what's going on. But yeah, you're right, it did work out. It actually worked out very well. It was a difficult transition. Now I live in a place where I can walk to work. It takes me 20 minutes to get there. Three cars drive by. It's true. I think that's pretty good.

[68:07]

That's pretty good. No one's in a hurry. And people take care of their horses, and that's important to them, and stuff like that. So it did work out. It just took a while to get there. So more questions? Apart from that sort of aside. Oh, 8.30. We're done. So it would be good to dedicate any merit that may have accumulated in this process to the enlightenment of all beings. So can we take a minute to do that? We will be able to [...] be able

[69:31]

Thank you.

[69:43]

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