Hello! This group always changes. It's like nothing is ever exactly the same or something. Well, if you haven't been here, welcome. And if you have, welcome. This will be my last talk while I'm here. This has been just a wonderful opportunity to feel supported by you in... doing this part of what our tradition is, which is talking and listening and conversing about Dharma.

[01:06]

So today I would like to talk about, I've been talking about Vasubandhu's 30 verses, and I want to talk about four practices which are implied by the 30 verses. remembering the awesome power of the storehouse consciousness, or we could say remembering the awesome power of karma. Two, being mindful of the five senses and emotional states. Three, thinking about interdependence. And four, objectless meditation. So that's my plan. What I'm hoping to do is talk about these all in sequence for about a half an hour, and then have lots of room for dialogue or questions regarding either the material for today or anything else I've been talking about, because for those of you who were here yesterday, you may know the material was confusing.

[02:12]

So, the other thing I want to say before I move on is that yesterday, and actually in some of my other talks, I have been using frequently... as examples of suffering or patterns of suffering or systems of suffering, racism and racist oppression. And I'm not planning to do that today so much, or it could come up. But this brings up very strong, painful feelings for people. It's a really big deal. You know, it's like, I don't want to talk about that. Ha! But, you know, if we talk about it, we can open it up and we can see something. And we can maybe move towards some kind of real liberation. So, it's not easy work. But if you care about people, if you love people, I implore that you do the work. And that is a huge field. But I'll just say a couple simple things you can do.

[03:15]

One, just... Listen to people of color, which is kind of funny because I'm just like this white guy up here. You can listen to me for today. But I will say, just listen to people of color. Hear their voices. Go to where they are. If they're teaching, sit at their feet. My understanding, I think Xenru Earthling Manuel is coming here in a little bit. And I can't remember her name, but there's a Vietnamese nun who's going to be coming here. So... You know, seek these teachers out. And also, I gather that there is a reading group, a book study group here. I'm just talking for people who are here, where the book is Larry Yang's Awakening Together, which is a beautiful book, which is really about race in the Buddhist Sangha, and it's powerful. So, you can do it. We can do this. It's hard. How many times have we thought that?

[04:16]

about something. All right. So, again, four practices. One, remembering the awesome power of the storehouse consciousness, or we could say remembering the awesome power of karma. Two, being mindful of the five senses and emotional states. Three, thinking about interdependence. And four, objectless meditation. So, one, remembering the awesome power of the storehouse consciousness. So for those of you who haven't been here, I can't unpack this all, but storehouse consciousness is just a way of describing the process by which our past conditioning produces our present moment. It's a way of describing how all our past conditioning, which in the Buddhist terms is without discoverable beginning, produces our impression of this present moment. We tend to feel like we're perceiving an exact true reality and that is just not borne out by investigation.

[05:19]

We're perceiving a set of things that are fabricated by a massive array of preconceptions, and the emotional reality we bring to it is likewise brought in by this huge amount of conditioning. If we don't remember this, we get very confused, and we're always blaming the wrong things and trying to fix the wrong things. It's very frustrating. That's called samsara. Or life. So remembering this. So actually actively bringing it to mind. So I'm a Zen teacher. I'm going to tell you, use the thinky part of your mind to do something. So your thinky part is doing stuff all the time. Don't worry about it. It's not like you're going to do too much. You're already doing too much. It's too late. So it's going to happen. So what are you going to direct your mind towards? Direct it towards... all this past conditioning produces this thing that you believe to be reality, but is not.

[06:20]

But is not. And, you know, if you're here, you're lucky, because you get up in the morning, the first thing that has come out of my mouth every day since I've been here is all my ancient, twisted karma I now fully have up. So, at this practice center, the first thing you are intended to do with your mouth every day is is this first practice implied by the 30 verses. This is central to all different schools of Buddhism in Tibet, and they call it one of the preliminaries. It's the first of the four preliminaries to all practice. Start there. Realize that this isn't something we just like, ah, you know, if I just figure out how to get my posture a little better, everything will be fine. It's big. It's big. So we expand the scale using this practice. But, more importantly, by far, than just that we don't really know what this is, it's here, we think we do, but it's actually just this huge array of preconceptions showing up.

[07:27]

But, the real point of this, of having a storehouse consciousness, as a model for understanding, is it shows that we have power. It shows that we can do something liberative. Because... The way we conceive of things and feel about things in every moment conditions the way we will think and feel about them later. Every single moment is an opportunity to participate in how our consciousness constructs life. Every moment. But we usually don't think about it that way. So we're not looking at the right thing. We think we're going to solve the suffering by... Identifying some external object and successfully manipulating it. That's frustrating. But if we focus on the activity, that's power. It's power. So this is just like this goes back as a concept in Indian thought.

[08:33]

I think it easily relates to from the Bhagavad Gita where it says, make your effort. with no expectation of results from the action. Don't think about the result. It's the same thing that Suzuki Roshi said over and over again. No gaining idea. Do the practice. Why? Vast, abiding love. So, you know, this empowerment, this reminder... that liberation is possible. If conditioning is creating our life that we can participate in, liberation is possible. And this is, there's so many stories. Read the Pali Canon, Patachara, one of the first and greatest of the women teachers of our tradition. She was traumatized so badly that she was living, she was wandering around in the woods naked and like eating garbage. She was ravaged.

[09:37]

And the Buddha saw her and he said, it's time to recover your presence of mind. And she entered the path. And she found peace. And she inspired, led, and taught and supported people for the rest of their life. It wasn't instant, by the way. You actually have records where people are like, ah! This practice is hard! Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's not. Angolimala. Right? One of the most famous mass murderers in the Buddhist time. Buddha met him. Said, you can't outrun your karma. He sat him by his side. He sat with him. People said, what are you doing with that guy? He said, he's with me. He's with me.

[10:38]

Angolimala never became a teacher, but he entered the way, and he entered a life of nonviolence. A person who wore a necklace of human fingers. And maybe you go, well, are those stories true? I have no idea. But guess what? Remember this. I wish we had the Internet here, because this would be really good. Huge numbers of people died, suffered, and watched family members die because of smoking, and still do. Like, the numbers are staggering. It blows your mind if you actually sit down and read them, you go, no way. But it's way, way less. Thousands, probably tens of thousands of people, fewer, are dying. Because people changed the way they looked at it, and that changed the way policy was enacted. And it changed the way people live. We can do this. It happens for people and it happens within systems.

[11:43]

I'm sure some people just sat around and wept over how hard it was at times. But they did it. All right. Remembering the awesome power of karma. Yes. One, we don't really know what this is. We're confused. All kinds of suffering shows up to make it look like this is the deal. Two, that means right now we can do something. So then the question is, what can we do? Well, remembering is actually helpful. Remember, I can do something. Okay. So then, second practice in this set is mindfulness of the five senses and emotions. So... We talked quite a bit about mindfulness and emotions during one of the classes. It's really rich and deep. So I can't go. We'll talk about it here a little bit. But anyway, this is like in the 30 verses, verse 7 through 14.

[12:47]

He just lists all these factors of experience. Why did he do that? To bring your attention, to pay attention to them. That's called mindfulness. So the five senses. Well, this is nice. Now we're like, oh, I think this might be some Zen stuff. Right? Just feeling. That this morning when I picked up the bag of rice out of the truck, just feel like that. Whoa, what's that feel like on my shoulder? Both the texture of it and the weight. And whoa. That should be like, how soon is this going to be over? Right? Not looking for the external object, but just seeing what's here. And of course, we're here. It's not a mistake that someone thought you should build this place in a place that's beautiful. Why do they have gravel? So it makes a sound. That's not an accident. It's so it makes a sound that you'll listen to. Why is there incense? So you'll use your notes. So, pouring attention just into the five senses.

[13:50]

And this... is beneficial in many ways. But one of the simplest ways, the one that applies most directly to all this Yogachara I've been talking about is the most gross level of conceptualized, deluded experience we have is like the chattery part of our brain that's always narrating our experience. You know, that's the part when you're like, right, that part. That's the most grossly conceptualized, alienated from thessus or direct experience. As you come into the senses and you just hear a sound, it's still conceptualized. It's rare that you'll hear that and not know it's a creak, right? So you have a conception already. But the level of conceptualization is less. As a consequence, when you settle the mind into the senses, you're conditioning the mind to conceptualize less.

[14:53]

Back to the first point about the storehouse consciousness. You're planting seeds of a less conceptualized relationship with life. Open, open. Also, sometimes it's just really beautiful, isn't it? Sometimes you just go, wow, look at that tree. And that's enough. You go, why is this guy talking so much? I'm just gonna look at that tree. There's probably something really cool back there. Mindfulness of emotions. I would argue this is probably the most powerful and important of these practices. Mindfulness of emotions. Because the emotional energy that's in our lives drives our behavior so much. So much. We feel down and we can't do anything. We give up. We feel agitated and we drop stuff. Or we... I was kind of wound up and I was talking to everybody over here because this place is so social.

[15:58]

I just said something offhand to someone and I could tell they were kind of irritated. I was like, dude, I'm just agitated. I'm not taking time. This is the feeling. I don't have to just flail around verbally. Monkeys are cool. Monkeys get a bad rap in Buddhism. Anyway, like a monk. Like a me. But also, you know, selfishness, anger, desire, lust, all this stuff drives our behavior. Sometimes it's really intense and we know it. But a lot of times when it's really intense, we have no idea because we're busy trying to focus on that external resolution that we think will solve the problem. And a lot of times we just have no idea because it's sudden. So learning to have the part of our life that is emotional or affective be... within our realm of awareness, to know what it is. It's very powerful. One, because then we don't have to be impelled unconsciously to act by it.

[17:03]

But two, because we're planting seeds of awareness and whatever conditioning made that emotional fruit arise is exhausted in the light of mindfulness. And this is, if you weren't here at the other class, it's like a whole kind of system for... talking about how this happens, but you know, it ain't easy, but you just think, is it not true that some of the most liberating times you've had is when you sat down with someone and could talk to them about something really difficult and your emotions could just pour through you and they could be seen by that other person. And because that person modeled it, you could look yourself. You had time to just feel and know what it was. And it's freeing. Planting seeds of compassion and awareness and letting those seeds of suffering dissolve in that field.

[18:04]

So in terms of how to practice this, you know, this comes out of early Buddhist teachings. So, you know, Yogacharya is this integration of early Buddhists like Pali Canon style teaching and Mahayana teaching. So, you know, it's totally, well, You could just go to like a turban teacher and, you know, jump into this. But maybe I'll get in trouble for saying that. But the other thing you can do is just let the flavor of this. So we don't want to turn zazen into another kind of practice. But the thing is, if zazen is about being with everything, it should include how you feel. So it's just about being sensitive. Just as we become sensitive to the body, sensitive to the breath, sensitive to the sounds. We let ourselves be sensitive to those feelings as they move through us. Don't let that get hidden. Not a good idea. What do we call that? Spiritual bypassing.

[19:09]

But the other thing is it's actually easier to do almost. It actually sits in complimentary really well if you do that in your daily life because that's when you're more likely to just find yourself and be like, and you can go, wait, I can sit here and just do this or I can stop and I can go, what do I actually feel like? It helps if you start with the body because that's grounding. Then just see if you can sustain attention on that emotional state itself. It's power to not be driven by your karma. You're not a victim. You don't have to be a victim. Just, if you read Buddha's teachings, one thing you could not notice is he almost never talks about manipulating anything outside yourself. It's always about what you're doing. So, conceptualizing interdependence, this is like Thich Nhat Hanh type of a thing, right?

[20:29]

So, read Thich Nhat Hanh, he has all these beautiful lists of things that go to make a cup, the sun, and the hands of the worker, and the truck that brought it to you. It's good. It's good to think about this. You know, when you're sitting and eating, it's so easy to just be like, I have this. And forget that it's like someone in this room probably made it for you. Thank you. Thank you. No, it's like I have a towel. Someone wash that. Thank you. Thank you. Someone like grew that cotton. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, and you know, it's good to remember the person who grew the cotton probably didn't get paid very well. So this opens up a sense of gratitude, but also helps us see how we're part of systems that harm people. So conceptualizing interdependence is great for like kind of feeling supported by the universe, but also realizing that we have a role in doing something

[21:40]

to dissolve what's here that harms people. So, you know, how do you do this? You can just, like, it's just fun. You're eating and just be like, think about how it got to be there. Or, you know, you're like at the store and you're like, I want that. You're like, how does this end up here? I'll just sit down and make lists. You can write poems. Poems are cool. but just find ways to return to thinking about things in terms of their interdependence. And I got a friend, he's just awesome. I mean, he's a great guy. Uh, and, uh, he's been doing XAM for a long time. And, uh, I was talking about this and he's like, you know, I just, I've had that drilled into me so much. And I'm just like, probably not enough. So what's funny is I'll look at like the tick not on list. No, I'll be like, can I just skip to the end of that? Why did I do that? Why is this important to keep doing this as a practice?

[22:44]

Because the way our mind conceptualizes is always alienating. It's naturally designed to cut the world up into pieces so we can determine whether it's what we like or what we don't and then figure out how to manipulate it. That's how our condition arose to make this. So we counter it by instead of doing the thing with our mind that's about cutting up, We do the thing that's about seeing how they're connected. So you're just countering one of the most fundamental harmful things that the human mind does. It could be fun. It can be fun, you know, because you'd be like, I couldn't be here without wombats, which is really true. The whole world ended up with wombats, and so did I. And there's not some other world without wombats or one without me. Well, there might be, but I don't know what it is. Objectless meditation, the fourth of these four practices, objectless meditation.

[23:47]

Well, you know, while I've been here, I've been emphasizing a lot of the material in the early part of the 30 verses that's more associated with Theravadan Buddhism or Polycanon early stuff because I figure you guys are probably already doing some Mahayana stuff here. So this yoga chart is really about like seeing how the other side can help each person. But anyway, objectless meditation is cool. In case you didn't know, this is what we're doing here. Zazen would be generally considered an objectless meditation. So objectless, you know, two of the easiest connotations to think about are, one, we're not choosing a particular object to focus on, although sometimes we do the breath. That's called access to objectless meditation in yoga practice. But you don't choose an object, and there's no object you're trying to achieve. So this is practice realization.

[24:52]

It's not practice to get realization. Objectless meditation. So we have in this Yogacara system the idea that you can affect your conditioning, you can plant seeds, you can go from samsara to liberation, and we also have, and this is where I'm not going to get into this today. A way of showing how these can integrate with an idea that realization is now. Is now. You can just do it. You're already doing it. It's doing you. You can't get out of the way. You cannot hinder enlightenment. Just as the moon does not hinder... The water does not hinder the moon and the sky. So... objectless meditation. And, of course, objectless meditation can be really confusing. You may already know this. You may, some people will be like, well, I'm just, what? A lot of people are like, no one tells me what to do. It's a very common, like, something.

[25:53]

I had a friend, actually I've talked to two people who had almost the same experience. They were karate students when they were young. And the karate teacher said, They do the karate, they do the forms, and I think it was at the end the karate teacher would say, Zazen! And everyone would just sit down and say za, and stop moving. And that would just go on for like 10 minutes. And then like something would happen and they'd all get up. And these people are like little kids. And they just did that for years. They didn't know what the word zazen meant. No one ever told them. And both of them told me that they found a profound peace and stillness doing this practice with no instruction, no object, no gaining idea. Anyway, this objectless meditation, this part here, I'm going to refer to some of the material from yesterday.

[27:03]

So for those of you who aren't here, Just think of this as like, you ever listen to music? Just float by. Anyway, Yogachara argues that what we're experiencing here is not real. It's of an imaginary nature. It also has some other natures at the same time. One of them is imaginary. And objectless meditation helps us see this. Here's my example. When you do a session and you sit there for seven days... You go nuts. Right? At some point, most people during, at least, some session will be like, what? You have a lot of stuff happening. There's no external stimulus. You actually see that your consciousness is conditioned to produce these states of suffering, and it takes almost nothing. It's not out there. You go, where is this coming from? That's actual power.

[28:05]

That's a reminder of the awesome power of the storehouse. And it, very strangely, is a benefit of objectless meditation. But also what happens through that, of course, is if you stay with it, you end up having mindfulness of the emotional states that arise, and it's healing. It's cathartic. Well, many things happen. I'm not saying that external things don't matter or anything like that. I'm just saying you can realize... To what enormous degree it takes almost nothing. You know, it's like the person next to you like sneezed. You're like, disgusting. Or I don't know. And you guys all have your own. I mean, it's amazing what happens. Other dependent nature. Objectless meditation helps us see interdependence and other dependence for a very simple reason. Because in objectless meditation, we're actively suspending conceptualizing. The whole conceptual process of our mind is designed to objectify, identify what we like and don't, and try and manipulate it.

[29:11]

So when we have a suspension of that, we're not cutting the world up into pieces. We plant seeds of awareness of the fact that things are depending on each other. And you feel this. Don't you? Sometimes you just kind of feel it. You know that weird thing? You sit... I've sat... I have one really good friend... by far, most of the time we spent together has been just in session practice. So we almost never talk to each other. We have a deep, loving bond. Just from being in the space together, embodied, letting go of an object, letting go of letting go. Where's that come from? You didn't make it happen. the part that makes things happen was quiet enough to see what's here, which is inherently, always, only intimacy.

[30:14]

And that brings us to the complete realized nature, which is also here. So the imaginary nature is here already. This is it. It's already the other dependent nature is here, this is of another dependent nature, and this is of the complete realized nature. It says in this text, when the other dependent nature is not seen, then the complete realized nature isn't seen. Seeing them is seeing the same thing. When we see intimacy and connection, we see realization. Well, I think that concludes my set of prepared remarks. And I would like to invite inquiry, dialogue, words of any kind. Hey, Griffin. I'm thinking maybe about the fact that you said you weren't going to get into about how the two actually work together, but just the day I was thinking about the platform sutra and the first gata.

[31:31]

And the second Gata, the first that the preceptor writes, the mind is a stand, the body is a mirror, don't let any dust gather, always keep you clean, and then go in there and say, there is none. There's a single thing, and no dust lands. And then I saw, actually, that there's a third Gata that the master writes, where it talks about pearly seeds. Oh, pearly seeds, there's no life in your vitality. Which I don't have anything to say, I just... I saw that. It's interesting. But it sounds like so much you're saying. It's not so much that the second gatha is a refutation of it first. But then what is the relationship? Well, you've really put your finger on the very spot. That moment in the Platform Sutra is like, it's all about this relationship between Yogachara thought and Madhyamaka thought. Uh-oh, we're in trouble now. Well, just, if this is all just big words... It's music. Okay. Language is musical. Anyway, so yes, in the Platform Sutra, the one student says, the mind is like a mirror. It's covered in obscurations.

[32:32]

So that's the first half of the 30 verses. It says, there's all this karmic conditioning that's making it so we can't see, and you can get rid of it, and you can see. Cool. And then Hui Nun comes and says, there's no mirror, there's no stand, this is all empty. So the thing is... Both these sides of the argument are in this text, but in Chinese thought, the first side got associated with Yogachara, and the second side with Midyamaka. But what I want to say is Huy Nung is associated with this radically, like, just cut through everything, but his most famous koan is, two monks were debating outside the monastery. One said the wind moves, the other said the flag moves, and Huy Nung said, not the wind, not the flag, Mind moves, which is an absolutely Yogacara assertion. So he's associated with this anti-Yogacara position, then he just comes up. So they live together. Do we want to get stuck on one set of teachings?

[33:34]

I don't. The whole point of this one is to remind me that it's wrong. It's just a bunch of ideas. Finally, we must work out our liberation with different diligence ourselves and together. Inquiries that are less erudite than that one. That is to say, if you're just like, what's a feeling? That's cool. It's all, everything is welcome. Can you talk more about identifying the part of an emotional state that is separate from physical sensations? Seems like... Yeah, interesting. So this has been, this is rich material.

[34:34]

So I'm just going to talk experientially, but then I'm also going to relate it to a Buddhist teaching you may know. First, emotional states, I believe, at least in my experience, exist on their own, both in relationship to the way we think and the way our body feels, and also on their own. That is to say, if you're having an emotional state and you suspend thinking, it won't go away immediately. We probably know that. Otherwise, it'd be like, you take one mindful breath and you're like, I'm free! It doesn't work that way, does it? Well, sometimes. The other thing, though, is we have, it's gotten very big in the United States in the last 20 years to focus a lot on embodied emotions, which is very good. Very good. So... You can feel how emotional states relate to body reactions and realize that's conditioning. That helps us to see that it's about conditioning in a way. And also, the body grounds us.

[35:36]

It's the foundation of the foundation of mindfulness. So it helps us hold awareness in the moment. But feelings still exist. I haven't tried this, but I'm pretty sure if you just take a general anesthetic... Your feelings aren't gone. I don't know. But what I can say experientially is I can be like walking down the street. I'm experiencing, I'm like really sad. And I'll be like, I'm just tired of thinking about everything sucks. So I'm going to focus on my body. And I feel my feet. And I feel the languor of my body. But also, there's a sense of an emotional state there. So what's peculiar about it is it's unlocatable in space. we're not culturally conditioned to sense it, but it's there. It's moving us. And just in terms of Buddhist doctrinal thing, you have the five aggregates. We're familiar with those.

[36:36]

Form, which is like sensory, just like the five senses. And then sensation, which doesn't mean what you think it does and is something you're probably never going to detect. It's very subtle. Maybe you are, but anyway, I'll leave that one. Perception. which is conceptual categories. So like when you have a word in your mind, that's a perception. Or when you know that that sound is a creak, that's a perception. And then formation. Formation is things like anger, hatred, hypocrisy, kindness, tranquility, energy. So formation is the way your karma produces your emotional states. And the reason we have five aggregates is to describe experience. So Buddha gives you a tool for looking about You take your experience in the moment in a way that is liberative. So he wants you to see that part of your experience. And he doesn't say it's in the body. He actually doesn't mention it at all. So one, his perception is they're not identical. And two, my experience is they're not.

[37:37]

So for some people, you're like, yes, of course I have feelings that are not in my body and my mind. And other people are like, oh, you just got to look. And you can't hold them down. It's like you're inviting something into awareness. Just opening up to a sensitivity to it. Something that kind of goes along with that, that I heard a woman wrote a book who had had a stroke. And for some reason, it might have affected it. Of course, it was dependent on where this facet, let's say, happened in their brain. But she said that there had been scientific research that proved that emotions really last only about four to five seconds. That there's this reactive emotion and it passes. And then our minds, and that this is related to the word resentment.

[38:41]

We rethink it, we play it over, we tell ourselves a story about it, we feel it again, we feel it again. post-traumatic stress is like that. There's this cascade of chemical that is like, it's inescapable until there's a real deep processing to kind of release. There are even medications that can be given right after trauma to interrupt this physically bind, like the body will develop this bodily response and there's a difference between emotions and moods that moods are something that it's kind of more karmic in my mind it has more to do with like our karmic thought processes and emotional thought processes but an actual avulsion is physiologically they say a quick response

[39:46]

Yeah, well, definitely our thinking might re-traumatize us all the time. You know, it's like you could be totally over something and your mind just jumps back to it. Why does it do that? In this system, it does that because of karma. It's habituated to do that, but you can learn to not do it. And if we're talking about neuroscience, there's lots of evidence to say we can train the mind not to operate in these conditioned ways. Lots of evidence. And I guess like therapists, following therapists, it's sort of like a body memory. Our bodies may be why we sit in Sashin and, you know, this stuff bubbles up. It's not, where does it come from? It's unknown and it's, you know, this comic... mysterious. A vast well. Ours to take care of. Ours to take care of. Uh, yes?

[40:49]

Um, so I'm just curious, like, just on your opinion about it, uh, but, um, the difference between speaking from the heart, like, the feeling of ours, speaking from the heart, the vulnerability, and the being in the body? In your mind. In healing work that I've done over the years, I've noticed that my mind tricks me. It kind of tricks me, because it is me. I mean, it's not me, but it is. It tricks me from getting into my body. It makes me think that I'm doing constructive healing work. It really is moving it in my mind as opposed to the difference of speaking for my heart. Because I have gotten a lot of feelings or from speaking for a place of vulnerability for my body, it seems like there seems to be an expression from here as opposed to here. And so I'm just curious about your thoughts on that because it seems like I have been able to define the root of suffering for myself as I'm going to spy.

[42:02]

I guess using my imagination of going to my child's self and speaking. And so, I'm just curious in your own experience of this work here, how can you, or how can you, I mean, I feel like I do find a little difference, but I want to see it here in your works, how the difference between being here. Because sometimes, sometimes you can't not. Sometimes the emotion is so powerful we need a release. Yes. And we need to vocalize it. Yeah. And that there's a difference between vocalizing it from here and then churning it in here. So I just want to know what your thoughts are on how to tell the difference between us. Yeah, so this is really good. So one, it's kind of the emphasis I've been talking about is kind of the internal process. But actually, you want to do it interpersonally.

[43:02]

It often happens interpersonally. So I'm trying to frame everything in just within this framework of this set of teachings. So you could look at all this a lot of different ways. But basically, the argument here is the real healing is happening by the degree to which you're intimate with the feeling state as itself. So actually seeing what the feeling is and being there with it, not just like with the ideas. And also with bodily formation would also be part of that process. So like when you interpersonally, you talk to someone and you're like, you have that cathartic moment. What made it powerful principally is that as you were talking about it, you also were very aware of how you felt. You're seeing them both because you can see more than one thing at one time. So awareness is very malleable. So when it gets just clamped down into the thinking range, there's very little capacity for healing.

[44:06]

Now if you can be totally mindful of the thinking and it's an object of concentration that you see over here, you can start to see its emptiness. That's really hard. The cognitive mind is too powerful. It sucks us in. So we want to make awareness broad. That's why Zazen is so helpful. Awareness gets broad. It's going to be like, oh, there's thinking. And there's like body. And there's like a feeling. And there's sound. So all those things become seen. So that can happen when you're with yourself. Like you could be thinking about something, but you're also tuned into the feeling part. Or you can be just caught up in the loop. And likewise, that can happen interpersonally. that there's that seeing happens together and they help you to get close. So it's more like a difference of what you're aware of. Being actually sensitive and aware of the feeling states, the body states, or just being only aware of the cognitive process.

[45:10]

Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. You can do it! You're strong! What about helping someone who has search? debilitating for the stress that they don't know how to help them down. So like, I never can't get into that position. Like the woman who became naked in the woods, naked in the woods. I started thinking about that. And I don't know if it's enough to eat money for yourself and not to share that, to teach that way.

[46:19]

Yeah, well, I mean, the thing is, the range of activities we're engaging in in humans is really, really big. So, like, my experience, principally, like, if I'm working with someone who's very traumatized, a family member or a Zen student or just someone I meet, my main first go-to tool is presence. So in the four foundations of mindfulness sutra, it says mindfulness of emotions in the self and mindfulness of emotions in the other. Mindfulness of the body and the self. So just paying attention is actually powerful healing. I think what happens is people, it helps them realize that that can happen for themselves. But then there's many excellent systems for healing trauma, many of which I have used as a trauma survivor. So, like, this is just one kind of frame for looking at how the healing happens within them.

[47:21]

So, I can't, it's too big of a field to open up. But what it points to here is that this, when I'm talking about this, it sounds like it's all about just this very internal process. The thing is, you're going to act. You're going to act. Everybody here is going to stand up and do stuff. Like, I guarantee it. No one is just going to sit here for the rest of their life and just be incredibly present to what's happening. That might be good. You might find people pouring in the door to ask you questions in a few years if you did. So the thing is, these teams are medicine. So the point is, the way we act is so powerfully conditioned that if we don't interrupt it, we have no idea what's happening. There is huge amounts of suffering in the world. And so many of the people are like, I'm doing the best thing. I'm doing something really helpful. There are people who don't think that, but there are millions of people doing things that harm people a lot who are like, we operate out of conditioning.

[48:30]

So looking into and dismantling that pattern of conditioning is the emphasis because we'll still act. But if we do this work, the way we act will be transformed. So I actually want to talk for a few minutes now. I've been talking a lot, but not with questions. I want to kind of wrap up because I gave five talks. I want to give, like, a little sandwich. This is the bread. Oh, my goodness, the bread around here. Holy moly. Just have some of that. This bread is never going to be as good as the bread at Tassajara. Anyway, at the end... Of this 30 verses text, Vasubandhu says, as long as consciousness does not rest in projection only, the tendencies of grasping self and other will not cease. I know that just sounds esoteric, but what's the key word rest? Consciousness resting in projection only. That is to say, we can find rest.

[49:34]

It's not going to be somewhere else. It's not going to be when your mind is perfect. It's not going to be when everything is settled. It's going to be right here in this river, this waterfall of projection only. There is rest that can be found there. And not only is that rest able to be found there, but when he writes this sentence, the word that we translate as rest is abistati, which means abide. As long as consciousness non dot abides, As long as consciousness does not abide in projection only, our tendencies of grasping will not cease. It already abides. We're already in a projection of our habits. It's already here. It's hard to feel it. This is a faith tradition that we can trust the moment. That this can be complete and is complete. And you think...

[50:36]

Maybe you go, someone's going, oh yeah. And then a few seconds later you go, I don't think so. Not with this mind. Not with this mind. Not with this moment. Not with this world. But you know, people model this. We see how amazingly at peace people can be in the froth of life. You see people like Nelson Mandela. You see people like Sister Chen Kong. And... Thich Nhat Hanh, who emerged from what they call the American War, and just poured peace, love, and joy into the world. Wow! You know, you look at the Dalai Lama, to me, sometimes I'm like, God, what a goofy guy. He is the exiled king of a country whose country was invaded when he was young. And the joy, the peace. This is possible. And you go, well, okay, well, that's possible for them. But this whole tradition's about, it's not about them.

[51:37]

It's always your opportunity and your capacity. I have a friend, Venerable Thuan Bach, she's a Vietnamese, a nun from Vietnam. She lived through what they call the American War. I don't even know what kind of atrocities were inflicted on her people. And we meet, and she pours joy and inspiration and compassion into my life. You can do this. You can do this. Patichara left us a poem. Patichara is the woman like the, I won't tell the trauma was bad, but she is the woman who was just completely living naked in the woods. And the Buddha said, it's time to recover your presence of mind. She wrote a poem. It goes like this. When they plow their fields, when they sow seeds in earth, young Brahmins find riches.

[52:41]

I'm not lazy or proud. I've done everything right. I've followed the rule of my teacher. Why haven't I found peace? Bathing my feet, I watch the bathwater spill down the slope. I train my mind the way you train a good horse. I took a lamp and went into my cell, checked the bed and sat down on it, took a needle and pushed the wick down. And when the lamp went out, my mind was freed. Sometimes it's hard. You look at you, those Brahmins over there, it's all working out for them. And I'm just pouring my life into this practice. Why haven't I found peace? They look happy. I thought I was supposed to come here and be the happy one. Yeah, we're there. We get there. But then, you know, there's so much I. I. The second half, it's all just about the details of her experience.

[53:53]

Bathe my feet. I train my mind the way you train a good horse. I don't know about training, but let's just think about Have you ever been with a horse you love? People groom their horses. Their horses come up to them. You give them food. You love them. They're beautiful. Your mind is a good horse. Then she just does simple things. Tuck a lamp. Check the bed. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Our intention equally is that this is the three ways.

[54:54]

We're in this way. We're in this way. I hear the voice. I hear the voice. It is a human. [...] Thank you. Thank you.

[55:42]

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