Good evening. So let's start with some brief meditation, and then I'm going to be reading a poem for you this evening, followed by starting to read the 30 verses, Vasubandhu's 30 verses. So I'll ring the bell, and we can sit for a few minutes. Kind of wild days we're going through, aren't they?

[06:30]

Anxiety goes up and down and up and down. So I certainly am appreciating the time we're sitting in the zendo in the morning. Hope you all can take some time to sit a little bit. It's very helpful. I wanted to begin this evening by reading a poem from a book that I've maybe I don't know if I shared it with you already, but it's just a wonderful a collection of poems that have been translated by a man named Matty Weingast, and it's called The First Free Women, Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns. A couple of people recommended it and then I got a copy and I was just so pleased. Every one of them is a real jewel. I think one of the things that makes these poems so exciting is that these women, this is, you know, 2,500 years ago, were living in, you know, basically in bondage. They belonged to their parents and their fathers would give them away or sell them.

[07:32]

And some of them were prostitutes or they were servants. A few of them were women of means. But whatever case, whatever the situation, they left home. Either they ran away or they entered into the monastic practices. with permission, but in most cases they ran away from home. So they were home leavers in literal sense. That was just the first level of their freedom. These poems are about the moment in which they actually became free in the sense that we consider as Buddhist practitioners, they became free of the bondage within their own minds. So each of these poems is a celebration of some realization they had. This one was written by a nun by the name of Dantika, which means the elephant. While walking along the river, after a long day meditating on Vulture Peak, I watched an elephant splashing its way out of the water and up the bank.

[08:39]

Hello, my friend, a man waiting there said, scratching the elephant behind its ear. Did you have a good bath? The elephant stretched at its leg. the man climbed up and the two rode off like that, together. Seeing what had once been so wild, now a friend and companion to this good man, I took a seat under the nearest tree and reached out a gentle hand to my own mind. Truly, I thought, this is why I came to the woods. So that's what we're going to be talking about is our own mind. You know, how do we reach out that gentle hand to our own minds and this wild, wild. Sometimes the Buddha called it a monkey in a tree grabbing the fruit or wild elephant rampaging through the woods. So this teaching is all about, you know, learning how to tame the mind. And so I'm going to start with the first verse of the 30 verses.

[09:42]

Vasa Vanda's 30 verses and then add some commentary as I go. I actually have a copy of the verses I wanted to offer you that maybe has gone into the chat room. I think maybe so. And if not, I will make sure it's there next time. So you can follow along with your own copy. So the first verse, verse number one, everything... conceived as self or other occurs in the transformation of consciousness. So this verse is the principle subject of the 30 verses. You know, we think that consciousness is the self and that the world around is the other. You know, that me and me is at the center of all of it. We all think that way. We all sort of see it that way. You know, we've got a 360 degree... You know, spherical awareness, this bubble of awareness that surrounds us.

[10:45]

And I'm in the middle. And that's the way it seems. And that's what we believe and how we behave. So Vasubandhu is pointing out a different way of looking at the world and at ourselves. And this is a radical shift. So in this verse, everything conceived as self or other occurs in the transformation of consciousness. So in other words, consciousness is not the self or the other. that both of these are mere conceptions within a process of continuous change, like a river flowing along. Self and other are within the flow of the river of awareness. And self is trying to grasp at these objects of awareness, which simply pull away from them. They pull away from us because we can't get a hold of things, really. I mean, how many things are you holding right now, whether in your mind or in your hands? You know, we do have storage units called homes where we can put our things or bags to take them home. But most of the time we're walking around without any possessions.

[11:47]

We can't carry all of these things with us. They slip away from us. They're impermanent at best. And even their own holding together is impermanent. You know, those new cars. I remember I had a new car about 10 years ago. It's not a new car anymore. So. The self keeps grasping at these others and these others just simply pull away from us, which leads to this inherent dissatisfaction that we have from grasping after impermanent objects. So the Buddha said the source of our suffering is belief in a self that's isolated. It's the center of the universe. And that's self trying to get these objects, which it perceives as permanent or desirable or worth having, worth owning, possessing. We go to a lot of trouble to own things, ownership. And so in the Heart Sutra, there's this verse that says that beyond all inverted views, upside down views, one dwells in nirvana. So these two are two of the big upside down views that Buddha is talking about.

[12:53]

The first one is this view of a self. as though it exists. The second upside-down view is the view of permanent objects that the self can obtain, you know, shopping. I like to think of this as the shopping model, upside-down views. The third is that acquiring these objects is going to bring us happiness, that shopping will make us happy. And I think we think so. You know, I think so. I think when I go shopping, I'm going to be happy. And, you know, and I kind of am for a little while. And then you get all the bags home and you unload them and you put stuff away. And then you got to go shopping again. Nothing permanent there either. And then the fourth of the upside down views is this great confidence we have that the first three of these are true. That I am a self. I can get a hold of stuff and that stuff will make me happy. This is sort of the basis of our entire world economy, basically. So whereas what the Buddha said is actually true. is that there is no abiding self.

[13:54]

Nothing is permanent. There is suffering. And only nirvana brings true peace. Only freedom from grasping brings true peace. Not wanting. Being satisfied with sufficiency, with what we have. And grateful. I mean, what a nice feeling that is. So I often call these the facts of life. Suffering, no self, and impermanence. facts of life that we don't like. We do a lot of things in our society to try to disguise the facts of life. We know cosmetics and aging creams and hair dye. I mean, there's no end to what we do to try and hide from the facts of life, facts of our own impermanence, our objects that we cherish are impermanent, the people we love are impermanent. So the Buddha really said our work in the world is to face the facts of life and to not be afraid of them. To really, you know, they're sad. Sometimes they're sad. There's a story of the Zen master who's sitting outside of his temple crying and beating on a drum.

[15:01]

And his students say, but master, what's happened? He said, my wife has died. And he said, but, you know, these are all illusions. Isn't that just an illusion? And the master said, yes, it's an illusion, but it's a very sad illusion. So we're not going to get away from the grief that we feel with those we love. That's not the point. But the point is not to overdo it. We have to recognize before it even happens that everything is going to slip away from us, including us. Facts of life. So as I mentioned in an earlier class, the main focus of the earliest teaching that the Buddha gave was sorting out these little dharmas. these tiny little individual, indivisible elements of existence, dividing them into categories. It's kind of like a shell game in a way. You're putting all the unwholesome dharmas over here and the wholesome dharmas over here. And then you spend all your time with the wholesome dharmas and you avoid the unwholesome dharmas. And in this process, you find that there is no abiding self.

[16:05]

There's no buddy that's actually sorting these. There's just these dharmas that are kind of have been sorted. And now, The sorting of the wholesome dharmas creates a wholesome outcome, which no longer has to come back. This is the end. This is nirvana, when this assortment of dharmas basically dissolves at death, and you don't have to come here again. That's great hope for outcome. Nirvana has blown out. So the 5th century Theravadan monk by the name of Buddha Gosha wrote that there is suffering, but none who suffers. Doing exists, although there is no doer. So they've extracted the self from this process of existence. There's nobody there. I don't know if I've shared with you the poem, this horrible little poem my grandmother used to say to me when I was young, which is really stuck in my mind because it's really horrible. There was a man upon the stair, a little man who wasn't there.

[17:12]

He wasn't there again today. Oh, how I wish he'd go away. So this is kind of like the self that we imagine, you know, it's there and it's not there. And boy, would it be nice if that just kind of stopped, you know, that whole relationship of craving and longing and suffering, you know, if it just would go away. So when Mahayana Buddhism... arose, partly from a concern that these abhidharmas, these ones who were sorting the dharmas, had gotten stuck in investigating dharmas, you know, kind of like Winnie the Pooh with the honey jar on his head. You know, they got stuck inside of their process, their memorized systems, and in believing those systems, you know, they were basically caught or attached to these systems. And therefore, that such a study was not conducive to liberation. Being stuck is not recommended on anything. So as the Zen saying goes, forget the fish traps and go after the fish. So forget the systems.

[18:14]

Forget these ways that you're going to catch in reality off guard. Just go after it straight on. Meet it face to face, whatever's happening. So Mahayana literature taught that not only is there no self, but that these dharmas have no self too. So there's no inherent existence on this side of what appears to be the great divide between the self and the objects, the subject and the objects. There's no subject that can be found. There are no objects that can be found either. It's basically what's there is an illusion. So what's there to sort out? It's just kind of an exercise, which isn't unwholesome to do that exercise, but it may be pointless. It may not get you what you want, which is freedom. So the Heart Sutra, Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva, relieves all suffering by seeing that all these dharmas, all phenomena, are empty. They're empty of inherent existence, meaning they're empty of being separate from everything else.

[19:21]

Everything is connected. There is no separate self. There are no subject-object divide, subject-object arise together. So emptiness means basically dependent core rising. We depend on everything else that co-arises with us for our existence. It's all coming up together, you know, all together now. Everything comes up together. So, and as I said earlier, the Yogacara is endeavoring to reconcile these two divisions of Buddhist thought. The earlier, you know, sorting out the Dharma practices and this transformation of consciousness, which can both realize that dharmas are not self, as the Abhidharmas emphasized. So by... dealing with these dharmas these apparent objects of existence by actually looking carefully at them and analyzing them we can begin to see that those dharmas in turn have no self so this is kind of a two-step process unlike the middle way teaching which is a one-step process just stop it you know just stop it no eyes no ears no nose no tongue you know no body no mind no buddha

[20:31]

But the Yogacara are a little gentler, kinder, gentler form of teaching where you're allowed to, you know, work with these sandcastles. You're allowed to work with what appears to be there until you've actually had your fill, until you can see for yourself how when the ocean comes in, they all kind of wash away. Then you make another one and watch it wash away. And Ben Conley says in this chapter, first chapter on the first verse, this first verse gives us a ground on which to do our practice, including the practice of realizing that there is no ground. So the ground, no ground. This is that, you know, reconciling dualistic propositions. Ground and no ground. How do you work with that? You work with that by seeing how they are both... dependent on one another. Without the idea or the concept of ground, there's no use or need for a concept of no ground.

[21:35]

Without the idea or concept of a self, there's no need to consider no self. So each of these dualistic propositions are also dependent, independent relationships on their partners, their negatives. So they too, their dance partners, is and isn't. You don't need is. You can't do anything with isn't if you don't have is. You can't do anything with light without dark. So all dualisms basically are just the other side of a coin. They're both one coin. One side is illuminated. The other side is dark. So no self, no object, no ground. Just this is it. Just this is it. This is the Buddha's awakened insight. Just this is it. The it includes everything. Just this is everything, is it. Wherever you look is it. And whatever you are is it. All together, inclusive, all-inclusive realization.

[22:39]

So then Ben Conley goes on to say that what this verse also gives us is the opportunity to experience a sense of wonder about what we are experiencing right now. The awesomeness of the present moment. of life. A sense that our most basic understanding of where and what we are in the world is not quite right. And what we've been taught is not quite right. That we are instead involved in a mysterious unfolding. There's another Zen saying that not knowing is nearest. Not knowing is nearest that feeling of when you don't know something. Suzuki Roshi talks about that a lot. The beginner's mind and the expert's mind is full of knowing. So there's not a lot of room for not knowing. That would be embarrassing for an expert to not know something. They better find out. But for those of us who are not experts or don't have no aspiration to be experts, not knowing is quite a tender and second envelope.

[23:45]

that's very close, but you don't know what it is. It's just right there. It's right there all around you and all inside of you. What is it that thus comes? Don't know. That's what Bodhidharma said when the emperor said to him, who are you facing me? Bodhidharma said, don't know. And he wasn't being rude. He was being serious. Don't know. What could I tell you? How could I answer, who are you facing me? How do you answer that question? And someone asks you, who are you facing me? I mean, I know what we tend to do is bring out our driver's license or resume or something like that, or talk about where we went to school and so on. But that even we know that doesn't have a ring of even getting close to the question, to the answer to the question. The real answer is don't know. It's a great mystery. So Ben goes on to say that what this verse also gives us is the opportunity to experience this sense of wonder.

[24:50]

Oh, I just said that. I will not say that again. So we were involved in this mysterious unfolding. That was his point. So in the 37 practices of a bodhisattva, which were written in the 14th century, a monk by the name of Zhang Pol says, whatever arises in experience is your own mind. Mind itself is free. of any conceptual limitations. Know that and don't generate self-other fixations. This is the practice of a bodhisattva. So, you know, the linchpin in all of these teachings isn't that you get rid of the self or the object or somehow you've sort of blocked your experience of the world and so on. What's really being pulled out is belief. Or what he says here is fixations, that reification, creating as if it's true, as if you believe it so.

[25:54]

We're trying to lighten up our grasp on what we think is going on here. Like, I don't know. I'm not sure. And that's really good. That's very freeing to be able to say with utter confidence that you don't know. You'd like to know. It's not like I'm not interested. And I'm still waiting for some really good answers, you know, to what's going on here. And some of them are great. I mean, fascinating, you know, and some of them not so much. So basically, we're students of life. We're learners. We want to find out. Like the Dalai Lama said, if you can show me that I'm wrong, that our teaching is wrong, I'll change my religion, you know. So he's waiting too. He's waiting for someone to say there's a higher understanding or it's a better understanding about reality than what Shakti Mani Buddha discovered under the tree. That the master illusion was facing him. That he was being fooled by his own senses into believing things were outside of himself.

[26:59]

So the assignment from the Yogacara tradition is to engage in decentering and to see through the split. self-others split, to the tathagata, which is the epithet for the Buddha, meaning that which comes and goes, the flow. There's a flow. That's us. We're just flowing in and out of situations, experiences, night and day, rain and heat and summer and aging, and all of this is just moving along. We don't need to do much about it. We just need to kind of try to stay upright as best we can and to receive the the gift of this life that's coming to us. And if we can make a contribution with gratitude for what we've gotten, try to pay back as best we can our student loans. So that's verse number one. Verse number two. This transformation has three aspects. The ripening of karma, the consciousness of self,

[28:05]

and the imagery of sense objects. So I'm going to go through each one of these, as does Vasugandhu. So this transformation of consciousness. So remember back to verse number one. Let me find that one again. Verse number one. Everything conceived as self or other occurs in the transformation of consciousness. Okay, that's verse number one. Number two. This transformation of consciousness has three aspects. So I showed you this last week for those of you who've been participating. The eight consciousnesses model. So we have these ripening of karma. That's the alaya, which is in the unconscious. There's this consciousness of a self. That's the manas, the lover. And then there's the imagery of the sense objects. And that's the six sense consciousnesses, which are above the line. Below the line is unconscious. Above the line is conscious. One thing I was thinking, I tried this myself, I thought it might be kind of helpful for you as well, is to imagine, if you will, or not so much imagine, but notice, when Vasubandhu proposes that what you are conscious of are simply these six things, I wonder how many of us have actually checked that out to see if that's true.

[29:31]

The manas, the lover, has us convinced that there's a lot going on here, that we're a big set of memories and experiences, and we have an identity, and we have talents, and we have all kinds of stuff. But what the Yogacara teaching is, is no, actually, you only have momentary experiences of either one of your five senses or of a thought. So those are the only six things that you ever know consciously in the present. are either a sensory impression or an idea, a thought, very brief thought passing through. So I was thinking that maybe you could just take a moment and I'm going to name each of your senses. And as I do that, just shift your attention to that sense and see what's going on there. So I'm going to, you know, let's try sound. Okay, how about smell?

[30:35]

Try your hand. There's something nearby. Smell. Okay, now, how about taste? What taste do you have in your mouth? Sight. What do you see? You can look around. Visual. Tactile. Body sensations. Something on your skin. Something itch has the feeling of your body's weight on the chair. So that would be touch. touching your own hands, you can touch. Okay, thought.

[31:46]

So that's it. That's all we do all day long, those six in rapid succession. You know, if there's a loud sound, the mind goes there. And then we kind of drift back. Mostly thought. And mostly we're kind of rumbling around with this chatter, chattering mind, like a little radio program that's running. I don't know whoever's running that program, but they seem to be a little bit wacky. All kinds of stuff just... Anyway, we can channel it. You know, we can take a hold of the radio station for a while and concentrate and focus ourselves. We know how to do that. We've been trained to channel our thoughts. But these are only present moment experiences we have are these six sensory objects, sensory relationships. Everything else is unconscious. Manas is unconscious. The lover is unconscious. And alaya, our past. our conditioning, our talents, the language as we speak, on and on and on.

[33:10]

It's all in the unconscious until it pops up. May we, you know, up it comes. That's the extent of my French. So as I have said before, Yogacara is emphasizing experiential learning, you know, by calling us to attend the actual workings of our day-to-day conscious experience through a non-judgmental moment-to-moment awareness. We call mindfulness. Just noticing sensory experiences and thoughts and sensations as they come and go. This is the transformation of consciousness. It's simply a process of endless change. That's the flow of the river. The flow of the river with all of these different little fish and plants and other people and so on and so forth. Boats, speed boats, running along, running by, passing by.

[34:12]

So the ripening of karma is what takes place in the alaya. So we've talked about the alaya, and that's the big bag, unconscious underneath, shape of a bag. The consciousness of a self, the lover. These are the two types of consciousness that the Yogacara tradition has added to what was in the original set that the old wisdom teachings were using to train the monks. So they had the six sense consciousnesses, the above the water. They were practicing with that. And that was present during the Abhidharma analysis of mind. So, you know, those are called the six sense above the line. So that was common to the old days. They had all of that. But the thing that happened between the old wisdom teachings and the development of the Mahayana was they couldn't really explain what was going on, as I said before, if you went into a trance, a meditative trance, when you were no longer aware of these sixth sense consciousnesses, they shut down.

[35:16]

And it was very peaceful. Like also dreamless sleep is another kind of trance. You know how restful it is when we don't dream at night, or at least for a while we don't. Very deep sleep. But then when that comes back on, when the line comes back on, human beings are able to continue as if nothing really had happened. It isn't disrupted. So what's carrying all of that stuff? They didn't have a theory for what was carrying our memories, what was carrying our conditioning, how can we could still remember how to use a spoon or whatever. All of these things that we knew before we entered the trance or went to sleep, we've got them again when we come out. So something had to be created, some theory. And that's what this alaya and manas is. It's basically a way of filling in the blank. They needed something to fill in the blank. So this word, this sensory imagery indicates that what we're making out of our sensory experience is primarily a creation from our unconscious narratives, which have connected through our emotions to paint a picture of what we think is happening right now.

[36:28]

of our experience. So Manas is the language carrier of language and it rumbles around in the unconscious to pull out various associations for us. You know, if I say, I don't know what was your, I don't know why I always end up with third grade, but in the third grade, you know, what was the name of your school and your third grade teacher and who was your best friend or whatever, you start, your Manas starts rumbling around in your unconscious to pull up as much of that as you can find. Maybe you have to get to high school to have some success. But somewhere along the line, you're able to pull up and paint a picture of that experience from the past and have that memory in the present. So then it becomes a conscious memory that you have basically stimulated by inquiring, like, what was it? Ask a question. And down the manas goes to rummage around in kind of like the attic. You know, looking for those old photographs and those old memories and putting something together. So we don't feel like we're actually cut off from our past.

[37:31]

We actually feel like we're a continuation of all that's come before. That makes us a big self. I'm 72 years old. You know, that's how big I am. I have all those memories to back me up, you know. Not really. Just right now is all I got. Just like you. We just got right now. You know, do what we can as best we can. So rather than being continuously swept away by our effort to grab a hold of this imagery, this being presented by our conscious awareness, the practice of the 30 verses offers us this possibility of replanting karmic seeds into the bed of our unconscious life rather than just being swept along by them. So our conditioning can basically carry us all the way through to the end. And if we keep on believing what we believe, we keep on doing what we do, we have these habits, you know. Samsara means endless circling. Samsara is the circle of suffering, the wheel of birth and death.

[38:34]

We have these habits. And every time we go around, we do them again and we do them again and we do them again until they become pretty well ingrained in how we do, how we know ourselves. You know, I do this. I'm like this. I have this way. When I get angry, I do this and so on. So these habits will simply go through our entire lives unless we do something now to replant the seedbed. That means to send some stuff down into the alaya. It's like a garden. You can think of alaya as a garden. And it's sprouting all the time. You know, the old things that you planted way back when are still there coming up as these habits. So, you know, practice is really about... you know, creating new habits and new ways of doing, like breaking through some of those old ways of doing. And it's one reason we call this a Zen training. You know, this is a Zen training program that we do here at Greenwald. And we really endeavor to help people to, you know, kind of regain some authority over their behavior.

[39:37]

You know, not just to, you know, it's kind of, it's not silly stuff exactly, but, you know, take your shoes off before you go in the Zendo. Why? just do that you know just do that and be quiet you know don't talk to your neighbor while you're sitting it's not that there's a reason you don't have to justify it like well because it's the highest virtue it's more like well no because then we can all be quiet here together and also the floor stays clean and so on and so forth but really the training is you know just submit just give up some of your own personal way of doing things you know Watch your resistance, how it builds up, particularly around ritual. It's so interesting how people come here. And Americans are not used to ritual. They're not used to posture. They're not used to all kinds of things that they haven't been trained to do. And so there's a way in which we're offering something which has been given to us. We've gotten this really big infusion of Japanese cultural practices from Suzuki Roshi.

[40:40]

So these cultural practices, are actually designed to keep people in a kind of harmonious state with one another. The Buddha taught etiquette. The first thing he taught were manners to the young monks. He taught them how to get along with each other. He taught them how to get along with the people that they were begging for food from. So the very survival of the Sangha has depended on deportment. on how you behave, on ethics, on telling the truth. So we lead, a lot of our practice lead with deportment, with behavior, with consideration of others, with saying thank you, and so on and so forth. This kind of old-fashioned way of being gentle people, gentlemen, gentlewomen, as used to be a really high value in cultures. of your. So this is part of what we're hoping to regain is some way of caring for each other, you know, a consideration for each other, rather than this just go with the flow, you know, whatever, who cares?

[41:51]

So in the 30 verses, Vasubandhu presents a partial list of dharmas. Again, we're back to the small d dharmas, these elements of existence. And as I said, Yogacara is making use of these. They're tools for study. They're ways of studying, identifying behaviors, which basically are causing harm. So the first part of these verses is an effort to identify those behaviors which cause harm to us and cause harm to others. So he presents a partial list of dharmas to be mindful of, which are divided into these basically two types. The first type are universal. And there's basically the five skandhas, you know, form, feeling, perception, impulses, as we talked about when we were talking about the Heart Sutra. The five skandhas are kind of all-purpose handy thing to remember because they show up again and again in Buddhist studies that the five skandhas are... Basically, another way of saying me, only a little more complicated.

[42:55]

And that's parts, that me broken into parts for study, the purposes of study. So the five skandas, I like to think of it as like a little boat. There's the boat, and there's three passengers in the boat, and the boat is riding on the ocean of awareness. So those are the five skandas. The ocean of awareness is consciousness. The boat is form. This is form. The passengers are feelings, perceptions, and impulses. And these are the drivers of how we behave. That's why they're pulled out for study purposes. My body is my form. My mind is the ocean of awareness. And these three guys are, when they're misbehaving, bad news, and when they're behaving well, the journey goes very nicely. So I was explaining this morning during the Dharma talk that the way we are driven throughout the day is because of these three passengers. So form, feeling, perception, impulse.

[43:58]

So perception is what I think I see. I think I see a computer. You know, we call it a computer. I don't really know what it is. It's a great mystery. But anyway, in front of me, I think I see a computer. It looks more like a TV when I was a kid. But anyway, here's this thing that can do all these different tricks. And so I have a perception of that. And I have a feeling about it that's mixed. Let's just say I like it. I like my computer. So my feeling is positive. And then my impulse around that feeling is to take good care of it and to use it. and to be grateful for it. Now, if I didn't like my computer or some person, maybe even better example, I see that person, somebody I don't like, my behavior is to walk the other way. And then I realize, oh, that's actually somebody I do like. So my feeling changes, my behavior changes.

[45:01]

I walk toward them. So if you pay attention to these three passengers, You don't have to pay much attention to the form because you're used to how to get yourself around in your body. So the form is okay. Your awareness, you can't do anything about. That's just there. And these three passengers, however, you can pay attention to what you see, what you think you see, how you feel about it, and then how you behave based on that feeling. And are there any glitches in that process? During the day, I would say that probably how you feel about something should be looked at carefully. I like this quote by John Cage, the composer. He said that when I see something that I think isn't beautiful, I look at it for a long time until I realize that it's not beautiful or not beautiful.

[46:03]

I just don't even know what it is. This idea of being beautiful goes away. Of being not beautiful goes away. And there's just this object. It's neutral. So, you know, part of our exploration, John Cage was quite a Zen student. He spent a lot of time studying Zen. This really lovely biography of him that I really appreciated reading. So he did a lot of that kind of exploring of his own senses. You know, sound was... He said, I study noise. So part of this idea of beautiful or not beautiful had to do with sounds. So he said, I study noise, not music. And he made noise. He made all kinds of noise with water and metal and all kinds of things. Fascinating study of reality. So these five universal factors are basically the five skandhas. And then the other major category to be mindful of is what's happening right now. you know, our emotional volitional tendencies, like on what will you act?

[47:08]

What's going to move you? Zazen is great because you sit there with all these right now tendencies and emotions wanting to kind of like, for a long time, you just want to get up, you know, it's like, it's enough. 40 minutes is really long, you know. Then you do it again for another 40 minutes. So that rebelliousness that arises when sitting is a very helpful training. That's the primary training of Zen is in patience. Can you be patient with what's arising? Can you wait? Can you wait and watch the arising of your impulses to do something, your preferences? your likes and your dislikes. Just watch how they arise and fall. They don't last. There is no permanent sensation, feeling. So this practice of being mindful of mental states is an antidote to our usual tendency to externalize, judge, and then try to control objects and people in order to feel good.

[48:16]

You know, that's what we're kind of up to. We want to feel good. We want to protect ourselves from them, from the idiots, you know. And so there's this whole strategy that we all have tried out in our lives to set it all up. So I'm only with the good people who I like and those people I don't like or I don't know where they live, but not near me. So that's, you know, that's kind of crazy. Sort of what's making this world pretty crazy, you know, for all of us right now and dangerous. It's dangerous. So. If we truly want to be well, the Buddha taught that we need to learn to see and take care of our mental states, of our preferences, and cultivate those that are beneficial and let go of the rest. It's not worth it. It just causes us to feel bad. So the method centers on simply being aware and attentive to who we are and how we feel in the present moment, right here and right now.

[49:16]

it's always safe in the present moment I don't know how many of you have ever had a car accident probably almost everybody you don't get to be too old in America without having some car accident but I think one of the things that you may have noticed and I noticed too is that at the time it's happening I wasn't afraid I was awake you know it's like okay something's big happening right now and I need to I need to stay awake and deal with this, you know, figure out how to escape from whatever this is, you know. It was after when I got home, when I thought about what could have happened to me. You know, then I was really upset, you know, crying. And my mom said, what's the matter? I said, I almost got killed. Oh, honey. But, you know, I was inconsolable because I almost got killed. At the time, I almost got killed. I was fine. I was... way too busy being awake to be upset so right here and right now is a safe place for us but you know somewhere else might be better than here and now you know we think like that somewhere else as soon as you get there becomes right here and now so there's no point in thinking like that because as we know

[50:38]

As soon as you get there, it's just here right now. So becoming good at here right now is really the kind of talent we want. You know, it's like riding a unicycle. You want to get good at it because that's all you're ever going to be doing is riding that unicycle wherever you are, finding your balance, figuring out how to make this thing work, you know, whatever's arising. Dogen says that here is the place and here the way unfolds. So manifesting awareness of mind without trying to control it is an excellent way to practice. Suzuki Roshi said to his students, give your cow a big pasture and watch her. Don't let her get hurt. Don't let her hurt others and don't let her wander off. So, you know, we want a lot of space in our lives and a lot of space for our thoughts, space for our emotions, space for our relationships and for our, you know, the things that we care about. Give them lots of space, big pasture and watch them, pay attention to them.

[51:42]

You know, don't let them get hurt. Don't let them wander off and don't let them hurt others. That's how we treat the objects that arise in our consciousness. Again, this is the mind-only school, so really the focus is on the experience that you're having, your conscious experience of your own life. You know, what's going on with your mind? Like this wonderful nun, her poem about sitting down and watching the elephant of her mind and gentling it like she had seen the elephant tamer, you know, until the two were together, until they had become such good friends. So again, to repeat the first two verses, everything conceived as self or other occurs in the transformation of consciousness. Verse number two, this transformation has three aspects. The ripening of karma, the alaya, the consciousness of a self, the lover, the manas, and the imagery of sense objects, coloring in our experience.

[52:45]

making stories out of what we experience, sending the lover down into the aliyah to bring up a version of reality that looks familiar to us, right? Probably in our language, probably in our timeframe, probably in our, you know, we think we're in the, what century is it? 21st century. I mean, it's all of these ways that we believe to be so are stored in our aliyah. And we just keep fishing in there and pulling up what we think is true. So we want to be suspicious. about that process. So it's about seven minutes till six. So the next thing I'm going to go to is verse number three, which is now going to focus on this first transformation. So remember, there's three transformations of consciousness. And those three, as I described, are made up of eight, the six above the water and the two below the water. So Vasubandhu is now focusing on alaya. So he's going to begin offering some verses about this one that's below the water, the big guy, the one that the lover is in love with, the storehouse consciousness.

[53:55]

So verse 3, I'll just read it to you now, and then I can offer. I mean, you can ask whatever you like. So the first of these is also called alaya, the first of these transformations of consciousness. The first of these is also called alaya, storehouse. The store consciousness, which contains all the karmic seeds, all the plantings from the past, what it holds and its perception of location are unknown, so unconscious. We don't know what's in there. We don't know where it is. And yet there it is showing up. The way we know it is by evidence. It's evidence-based because the products of that holding tank come into consciousness. Okay. So I will stop there and invite you to please ask whatever you like.

[54:50]

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