Well, what I was going to talk with you tonight is more about this idea of home, that meditation is a way to your long lost home. I did mention a few weeks ago I wanted to talk about the Heart Sutra. I'd still like to do that, but I think what I'd like to do is kind of get some material ready for you, at least copies of the Sutra that I could pass out, and I haven't done that yet. And somebody wanted to talk about the precepts, and the precepts is the same thing. I need to kind of make up some copies, I think, to do that. So anyway, I'll work on those things. Tonight, I wanted to talk with you a little more about this idea of home. There's various stories.

[01:09]

There was a story I think the Buddha told about, I'm not sure if it's the Buddha exactly, but anyway, it's a kind of analogy of if you're at a palace, there's somebody at the door who's watching who comes and who goes, and that's pretty important, because part of the idea of home is that it's a place where you can feel secure and at ease and safe. And partly how you feel secure and safe is that you observe who's coming and going. And in that sense, there's various ways to do that.

[02:10]

One of the classic ways is with the five skandhas, which is a way to categorize the comings and goings. The five skandhas, skandhas is a word that means heaps or piles, but what it is is form, feeling, perceptions, impulses in consciousness or formations in consciousness. And essentially, these five groups, groupings, this comprises any experience we have can be put into one of these groups. And form includes, you know, this is said to be then the pile of all the possible forms is in

[03:11]

this pile, and that then includes our sensory experience, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. And it includes also the, well, if you observe any particular form, of course, you notice that in order to be aware of colors, we need to have an eye that's capable of receiving colors. And we need also to have consciousness. It doesn't help to have a good eye and no consciousness, and it doesn't help to have consciousness without eyes. But in particular, the quality of the fact that we can receive certain kinds of information is also in this category of form. And then more particularly, the objects are in this category.

[04:16]

And we can look at each particular category and we can divide up, and what is it? You know, we, so in this category of forms, we have sight objects. Sight objects are a little different than we tend to think of sight objects. Sight objects, in this case, simply refers to colors, and we could also say shapes. What we see is colors, okay? We don't actually see objects, right? That's something that, you know, to the fact that a certain grouping of colors appears to us as an object is not included in the seeing, that's included in a kind of what is in another category called perception, the fact that we can put together a grouping of colors and call it a particular thing, okay? So we have colors and shapes.

[05:25]

Some people argue that shapes is just a function of color, and basically what we see is colors. And we hear sounds. Again, if you think about it, you know, hearing sounds is different than, you know, if we say, if we hear a chirping and we say, what was that? We say, that's the sound of a bird chirping. Again, that's a kind of mental function, that's a kind of... that's not just hearing, that's naming. Say that's a bird making that sound, or we say that's a plane. The other night that I was driving last night, and it was raining and I was driving along and there was this whapping, it sounded like something was whapping the side of the car periodically, and it turned out it was the windshield wiper.

[06:29]

When it got over to the side, then it would go whap, and it would start back, and it would get over to the side and go whap, and you know, then it explained it, otherwise it's this mysterious kind of whap. So hearing, strictly speaking then, is just the sound. We like to think that there's some, you know, it must be some object. So we tend to imply, or not imply, but project, or you know, that there's an object making the sound. What is it we want to know? And we want to know other kinds of things too, you know, like what does it mean? So anyway, this is all different than just the sound, okay? And taste is like this, and we don't have very many words for taste, we have a tremendous number of words for colors, but we don't have so much for taste.

[07:33]

So we taste something, we say, well it tastes like a peach. But we don't have a word for peachy. We have, so basically the taste, we have salty, sour, sweet, peppery, salt, sour, sweet, peppery, bitter, bitter's the fifth, and then in Japanese and Chinese they have the sixth flavor, which is plain. So you have something to refer to, you know, that's your white rice, which is, in that style of eating, that's home. You go out on little flavor adventures and have something salty, and you come back and have your rice, which is plain, so you can come home, and then you go out on another little adventure and you have something sweet and sour, and you come back to home, and you have something crunchy and moist, and you can come back home. So in that kind of eating you have a kind of home which is plain, and so that's another

[08:40]

kind of aspect of home in some ways, is that basically it tends to be kind of plain, and you want some kind of place in your life that's plain. Because we're always in the middle of adventures and everything, we get tired out, and after a while we can't even taste that something is hot or spicy anymore, because our whole life is hot and spicy. So we need to be able to come back to something plain. Touch is another interesting one, because when we touch, if you observe touch carefully, we have rough and smooth, hard, soft. We have hot and cold, and we never actually, you know, strictly touch a thing. What we touch is hard, soft. So if I touch this, you know, if you actually just touch, it's hard, it's smooth, it's cool, and then, but I can look and say, well, I've got my hand on a bell, okay, but the touch

[09:46]

is not actually touching the bell, it's touching, you know, we have particular sensations. So anyway, I bring this up just to, because then if you're observing the senses carefully and this category of form carefully, you'll notice that things are not involved there. There are no objects. You have colors, you have shapes, you have hard and soft, you have flavors, but you're never actually seeing a thing. That's another, this is another category of things called perception and thinking. I think I see a chair. I believe I see a chair. I see a chair. So perception names things. This is the third category. Perception names things. Now, this is cool, solid, smooth.

[10:48]

If I hit it with a stick, it makes the sound, it must be a bell. What is it? It's all those things. But is the bell, you know, actually all those things? We sort of, so we make up, there must be a thing there called a bell that has all these characteristics, and is there a bell apart from the characteristics, or can it be missing one of these characteristics? Can you have, you know, when do you call it a bell, right? So after a while, it, you'll find that it can be rather difficult, you know, so we have koans and zen, what is it that's ringing? And then, you know, you can say, well, the bell is ringing, but you just, I just hit it with a stick. So is the bell ringing, or is your ear ringing, or is your, is your consciousness ringing?

[11:52]

And so, and then sometimes, so sometimes we just say, ringing is ringing. That's pretty clear. But obviously, if there's not ears and consciousness, there's no bell ringing, you know. And if we look, if we observe things carefully, we find it's actually very difficult to, you know, actually get at what the bell is. We can say, well, it looks this way, it feels this way, it sounds this way, it must be a bell. Okay? But as to what it actually is, we don't know. Whatever it is anyway, supposedly there is a nit, we say, well, there is a nit that has these characteristics. Anyway, this is getting a little off, but I only mention this because we're talking

[12:59]

now about these five categories, and to observe form carefully is something that we don't often do, and in order to categorize by this gripping method into, if we're observing what's coming and going at the gateway of awareness at our home or our temple or our palace or whatever we want to call our mind or being, then we can use this kind of categorization, saying, and we can just, we can see, begin to see just what's there. There's a very famous story about the, I think I've told you before, the man's wife leaves him, and she's, they've had a big argument, and she runs out, and he chases after her, at some point he decides to chase after her, and he meets a monk on the road, and he says, have you seen my wife?

[14:06]

And he says something like, well, a bag of bones passed this way, I don't know any more than that, but it's kind of like, well, I saw some colors go by, you know, and I don't know whether it was man or woman or, you know, I did see some colors go by, I can't tell you more than that. So he's very, he's in that sense carefully observing and not necessarily then thinking about, gee, I wonder who that was, where was she going, what was she up to, why is she moving that way, why does she look like that, gosh, I wonder if she needs any help, and so on. So there's a lot of other things that, you know, at some point may be actually appropriate for us to do, but as far as our sort of, this careful kind of observation, we can begin to make these distinctions.

[15:10]

So we've talked now about the first category, and then the third category, perception, perception names things, that's a bell, I'm me, you're you, we're sitting in a room, this is a room, this is a room, what is it that's a room? Well, it's got a floor, it's got walls, but it's also obviously our awareness, and suddenly now we say, well, these particular kind of aspects of our awareness, namely we see these colors that, you know, I think I'd call that a wall, wouldn't you? And then, you know, there's a ceiling, I'd call that a ceiling, that's up above, and then the floor is down, this I'd call a floor, this color's here, we're all sort of sitting on it, right, it's holding us up, that must be a floor, you know, we must be sitting in a room, this is a room, and so that's perception, that we can group together these things.

[16:18]

But obviously all of this is happening in awareness, and then we made this little, we took this little mental action to designate a room, a person, a cushion, so this aspect of naming things we call, in Buddhism we call perception. The second category which we kind of skipped over, because perception is so much related to form, the second aspect, the second skanda is called feeling, and feeling is, it's sometimes called sensation, I don't know that sensation is any better than feeling. This feeling is not really what we usually consider feeling, so it needs a little explanation, it's basically, it basically has to do with liking, disliking you, or in other words, is it pleasant or unpleasant, feels pleasant, feels unpleasant.

[17:19]

And so it's this, or there can be a neutral kind of feeling, and there's physically pleasant, physically unpleasant, physically neutral, and then mentally pleasant, unpleasant. So you have a, when we have a sensation, or any of the forms appear, usually along with form, or along with any moment of experience, there's some quality of pleasant, unpleasant, liking, disliking. And neutral, yeah, and one of the, one of the, you know, kind of characteristics of, I'm not sure just the exactness of this, but of a Buddhist, so to speak, or one of the kind of ideas of practice is that, although there may be, that at some point, somebody who's accomplished, or enlightened, or whatever the quality may be,

[18:23]

qualifications are anyway, although they may have physically unpleasant sensations, they no longer have mentally unpleasant, they only have mentally pleasant and neutral. They don't, they stop having mental suffering, mental unpleasant, even with physically unpleasant things. And that's a mark of enlightenment? Well, I'm not sure what it's a mark of, but it's, you know, it's a kind of a mark of somebody who's been practicing for a while, one way or another. No, the mind can still label the physical sensation unpleasant, but as far as the mental sense, there's no longer the mental sense of unpleasant. It's just the sensation. The sensation is unpleasant, but in other words, you can have this, an unpleasant physical sensation doesn't mean you have to have an unpleasant mental sensation.

[19:25]

You know, this is really a bummer. It's kind of a little more acceptance or tolerance, you know. Ivan Illich says things like that, you know, from a Catholic point of view. One of his, he says that in the modern world, people aren't willing to suffer enough. You know, because the first sign of some physical suffering is they have mental suffering. Well, people generally have an unpleasant, when we have an unpleasant physical experience, then we also tend to have unpleasant mental experience. We become depressed or sad or angry or annoyed. Why does this have to happen to me? And so on. And rather than, that's something, you know, so part of what we cultivate as far as having some equanimity is to understand that it's impossible to control the physical world to anything like the way we think we ought to be able to.

[20:34]

And consequently, it behooves us to develop some composure with physically difficult experiences. Not that we need to go around, you know, hitting ourselves with little whips and whatever. But just sort of with the normal amounts of physical discomfort that, you know, we could probably, we're going to have to, it will help us to be able to tolerate that without becoming unduly distressed. Because what will tend to happen is that we, if we're focused on being comfortable and not having uncomfortable physical sensations, our life gets very narrower and narrower. We have to have a very narrower and narrower kind of life so that we can avoid, and it depends on our preoccupation, but, you know, Dogen Zenji, of course, says things like, if you're just interested in comfort, it's sort of like the princess and the pea. Eventually even lying down becomes difficult and painful.

[21:38]

Because if you're too focused on being comfortable, then you can find this little thing wrong, and then pretty soon you've eliminated the gross level, and then you want a finer level of being comfortable. So anyway, most of us realize this at some point, and, you know, we have various places in between there. Where we're willing to have, we obviously can't eliminate every last bit of discomfort and uncomfortable. I used to try that with the cold at Tassajara, to keep dressing more warmly. And in fact, no matter how warmly I dressed and no matter how many things I put on, there'd be some cold that would get through. See, and then pretty soon you're so insulated, right, and still the cold's getting through. So I found that I could wear about half as much and there'd be the same amount of cold. You know, you wear half as much and then you have like 5% more cold, because you couldn't get rid of that last 5% or 10% anyway.

[22:44]

There's a certain amount you can't get rid of. Anyway, we're sort of going a little bit back and forth here, but feelings then is this pleasant-unpleasant neutral. And that comes along with every moment of experience, some quality of pleasant-unpleasant. The third category, perceptions. The fourth category is in some ways the largest, although the category of sensory experience is obviously quite large. But included in the fourth category is emotional states or mental states, or you could call it attitudes, or you could call it just the fact that every moment of experience is a certain shape to the mind. And so this includes a wide range of things.

[23:47]

Some of the more basic ones it includes is the fact that in every moment of experience, the awareness has a shape. There is some, so to speak, contact with a sensory experience, with a thought, with a feeling. We're aware of something, and there's a particular shape to that moment. It also includes the quality of concentration. Every moment of awareness there's some degree of concentration. And then, of course, there's refinements of concentration. There's more concentrated and less concentrated, but there's always some degree of concentration or we're not alive. Buddhists understand it this way. Concentration. There's various qualities of energy. There's mindfulness. Again, I think most Buddhists understand that there's always mindfulness, but mindfulness may be rather weak at times.

[24:52]

This category also includes factors such as kindness or love, non-harming. It includes greed, hate, delusion, anger, joy, equanimity, tranquility. All these are mental states or aspects of consciousness. Consciousness never comes just as consciousness. It always has a particular quality to the consciousness. And part of what, you know, another one of the... included in this group is wisdom. Wisdom is a kind of development of, in some sense, it's considered in some sense to be a development of mindfulness at times. But the quality of wisdom is seen in various ways

[26:03]

and described variously. And... I don't know exactly how I want to talk about it tonight. For one thing, you know, one of the ways it's described classically is that wisdom is what sees the three marks in all of this. In other words, anyway, the transiency of things, the impermanence, the suffering, and the lack of own being or self. That the bell, that we can't really get hold of the bell. We can get hold of solid, cool, we can hear sound, but as far as the bell itself, we don't know anything about it. We only know the characteristics. So we say that the characteristics don't have own being.

[27:11]

There's no actual bell there that we can know. All we know is characteristics. But wisdom is also, in a sort of simple way, reminding us of our own deep wish or, you know, what's of real advantage to us and what's of actual disadvantage to us. And that kind of remembering or reminding, in a very simple and basic kind of way. So in some sense, we're not exactly trying to get rid of, necessarily shape experience moment after moment, but we should have some, we try to accompany experience with some wisdom. I don't know if that's making sense, but anyway. Because we're not going to be, just as we're not going to be able to eliminate uncomfortable sensations, we're not going to be able to necessarily make our mind

[28:14]

the way we would like our mind to be. But we can be present at that time, and we can observe carefully, and we can remind ourself about what's of advantage, disadvantage, and to remember, to remind ourselves to look carefully or closely at things and to try to know what's what. And knowing carefully and seeing carefully what's what, then we have some better basis, clear basis on which to act and proceed in our life. The fifth category is consciousness itself, which comes along with all of this. And consciousness is a word that is, you know, the closest thing perhaps in all of this to what could be called I or self. But one of the things about consciousness in this case is that it's understood to be momentary and always arising and passing away. So there's one moment there may be sight consciousness

[29:18]

and then sound consciousness, consciousness of mind consciousness, consciousness of a thought, consciousness of a feeling, consciousness of a sensation. So consciousness is always qualified. There's consciousness that's arising as anger and consciousness that's arising as love and consciousness of joy. So is this the same consciousness or a different consciousness, you see? So from the Buddhist point of view, each of these is a different consciousness. It's not the same consciousness that arises as one thing and then as another thing. If it's arising as one thing and then as another thing, now it's another thing. It's not the same thing. How could it be the same thing? Okay? This is your brief introduction to five skandhas. Now, this we are going to talk about for the Heart Sutra anyway because at the beginning of the Heart Sutra it says that Avalokiteshvara, our Bodhisattva friend here,

[30:18]

when practicing deeply, observed that the five skandhas in their own being are empty and were safe from all suffering. So we've also been kind of talking about some of the ways in which the five skandhas can be considered to be empty. Now, there's many interesting... I think I spilled some tea just then. There's some interesting kind of metaphors, I guess is the word you'd call this, for the five skandhas. The one I like, well, there's a couple that I like, but one in particular is that the five skandhas each of these skandhas is given some kind of... well, form is said to be like a mass of foam because it has the appearance of something

[31:19]

but it's not really that solid when you touch it. The mass of foam can look like a great thing but there's not some substance there. Or feelings are like a bubble because they soon burst. Isn't that true? Pleasant, unpleasant, pleasant, pleasant, unpleasant, unpleasant. Terribly unpleasant. Sometimes they say, you know, even the pleasant things, basically it's a big open wound, folks. And pleasant, just because you get the sore washed and bathed and dressed once in a while, doesn't change the fact that it's basically a wound. Last night I had the pleasure, so to speak, of hearing Matthew Fox.

[32:24]

I went to an event in San Francisco and he said this is Catholicism's great gift to spirituality, is this idea of the wound. And he says, everybody's been wounded. Are you familiar with this? And then he asked the audience if they were familiar with this. He said, no, we don't know anything about it. Everybody agreed that they'd been wounded. But anyway, Buddhism says, yes, it's kind of a wound, isn't it, and it's frustrating. But so anyway, the feelings are like a bubble because they soon burst. Perceptions are like a mirage they deceive. You know, something that you can look at something and you see a rope on the ground and it looks like a snake. You see somebody and you can think all sorts of things about them

[33:27]

without even knowing them. And you can jump to all sorts of conclusions from your perceptions, how you name things, how you call things. And this can be rather misleading. The deer mistakes the scarecrow for a man, you know, or this sort of thing. And we're sort of in the same boat, mistaking things for other things. And because of that, on the basis of our perceptions, then we're treating people and ourselves a certain way. You know, we look at this last week. I was kind of unhappy and then I go, geez, you're such a baby. I really wish you didn't have to be such a baby. I'm saying this to myself, right? And Patty says, why do you call yourself that? And I say, all right, all right. I won't call myself a baby. I wish I didn't have to feel so bad and miserable and unhappy. But anyway, we tend to name things and then consequently we treat things a certain way.

[34:29]

If you're a baby, then you can sort of say, well, grow up, you baby. So depending on what you've decided to call yourself, based on this faulty perception, you know, mechanism of perception, or you call somebody else, then you can treat them a certain way. And this is what we do to the Iraqis, you know, as a country, and so on. You know, we say they're evil or they're this or they're that or Hussein is this or that. You know, this is perception at work. Anyway, it tends to be rather mischievous and something of a mirage. It's also called a mirage because it has the impression of something there that isn't. It gives us the idea that there's something there that isn't. If you don't have the idea that something is there that isn't, then you can sort of, you know, then you can treat something as, you know, that everything in that sense is something bigger than it is.

[35:33]

You know, it includes everything then. We're treating, you know, each thing we pick up or each person we meet or our own being is something much bigger because... and it includes everything. And it's where we're relating all the time to some vastness, which in, you know, certain religions you can call God. Buddhism doesn't have that, so we can just say, you know, the vastness. Or whatever. Or, you know, the emptiness. George and I were joking today. I saw George because he lives next door to the Sherwood Baptist Church. And he was saying, Well, you've heard the one about the Tibetan, the Lama hot dog maker, you know, make me one with everything. And he said, Yeah, but you could also say make me one with nothing. Anyway, the formations or the mental factors, formations, impulses, formative factors, attitude, mind shape, mind bend, bent.

[36:36]

These are known to be like a plantain tree or it's like saying it's like an onion. There's layers and layers and you never get to any core. That you can say is truly me or truly this or truly that or now I've gotten to the bottom of things. There's endless layers. And consciousness is like a magic show. Creating this and that and the other thing. So if you think about this, now how do you make yourself at home here? You know, but we don't have any other place to make ourself at home. You know, even though we have this massive foam, the bubble that soon bursts, the mirage, the magic show, nothing to get hold of in terms of these mental factors. That doesn't sound like much of a home. So what makes it home is that we can observe the comings and goings.

[37:43]

That's what we do in meditation. We can observe the comings and goings. We can see all of this. And also we begin to see that home then... Home then must be some place where we do this and home is not then some place where we feel a certain way or we see a certain thing or we have a certain kind of experience. And we're no longer trying to find our home by creating a particular kind of experience, a particular moment of experience. We're no longer trying to create a certain kind of mind or a particular quality of being which we call home and that we want to come back to and that we want to re-establish and that we want to perpetuate. So in that sense, you know, in some ways now

[38:44]

then home is like as an alternative to having the notion of a self which is to have the notion that I want to go on perpetuating certain qualities of physical experience. I want to go on. I want to have this kind of mind and not that kind of mind. This is the kind of mind that's me and that I would like to establish as opposed to this other kind of mind which I would say is not really me. And I have to watch out for that person because they could do this to me and they could interrupt the flow, the habitual flow of thoughts and emotions and feelings that I call me and so on. So rather than that, we want to develop some sense of being at home which is to observe this coming and going rather than trying to regulate it per se or produce or stop it, the flow of things.

[39:45]

And if you look at the... when you look at the skandhas, of course, then there's various exercises to say when there's a form we can say that is not me, I am not it. That is not the self. The self is... that there is no self when we look at form. When we look at a feeling, that's not me. That's a feeling. The feeling is not me. I am not that feeling. And we can do that with perceptions. We can do that with mental formations. We can do that with consciousness. None of those... we can see that none of those are me. And this is helpful too because it reminds us that, you know, we are not... we are not our feelings. We are not our sensations. We're not our physical being. I mean, you know, in a certain sense we are

[40:50]

but also, of course, we're not. We know that. If we lose a hand, it's a terrible experience but we know that I'm not my hand. And we have many experiences like that. So that's also a kind of reassurance or a kind of... you know, on one hand it's... you begin to wonder, well, what am I then? But this is the kind of basis for having an actual... a real kind of home rather than a home that is a kind of fictitious kind of home. A fictitious kind of home is a place that we... where... where I'm a happy person and I'm going to generate happy, happy, happy. And then things happen that, you know, assail my happiness. And it turns out I can't keep my happiness and now suddenly I'm homeless because I was... you know, I understood myself

[41:51]

to be a certain kind of person. But when we recognize that's... the more we recognize that's... that I am not that, that is not me. You know, our home is not something that is dependent on producing or stopping particular experiences. So I think anyway this is a little... for tonight anyway this is... I don't know if it's of use to you exactly but this is a little bit about how one... why about meditation one might say, you know, from a more analytical point of view why one might say that meditation is not difficult it's just a way to your long lost home. Or some people say I was at, you know, Stephen Levine meditation retreat and of course the first thing he says when everybody is sitting quietly for a while and then he says, Hello, welcome home. Where did you think your home was?

[42:55]

You know. Anyway, it's probably getting on about nine o'clock or so in fact a little bit after. So I guess we'll stop for this evening. As usual, as always, it's been wonderful for me to be here with all of you. Thank you very much. Good evening. Good evening. So last week I introduced to you the concept of the five skandhas. Skandhas is a Sanskrit word and it means heaps or piles. Anyway, it's a way to categorize our experience into five groups.

[44:00]

Sensory experiences is group one. Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. Group two is known as feelings but it's liking, disliking and neutral feeling for something. So it's not our usual use of feelings but just the sense of liking or disliking or pleasant, unpleasant. I guess it's better. Pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. Feels good, feels bad. And this is also physically and then mental. Physical sensation, liking, just pleasant, unpleasant and mental phenomena. So the pleasant, unpleasant can be associated with physical or mental and the third category is perception. Perception is the function of mind

[45:02]

which names things, which applies a label and says, gives us the idea that we know what's what. That's a bell. Now you know. That's a bell. And I'm me. You're you. So you know what's going on now. You know that you're you. I'm me. But you know how so perceptions are known to be a little deceptive, right? Because sometimes somebody you've lived with for many years is not somebody you know anymore. And sometimes you yourself or you've lived with all your life is not somebody that you quite are familiar with anymore. And the fourth category is the rest of the what could be called mental phenomena including what we think of as emotions,

[46:06]

liking, loving, hating, greed, generosity, sadness, sorrow, grief, joy, happiness. They're all in this category as are the things that we could use to describe mental states such as the quality of concentration, mindfulness, trust, lack of trust, mental kind of vigor or energy, wisdom. There's also a mental factor that is considered to be the will. In a sense, the will or that aspect of mind which initiates action or focuses or organizes the other aspects of mind. And this aspect of mind isn't necessarily very smart

[47:07]

one way or another. It goes about its business the way it's accustomed to going about its business. One of the things in Buddhism we're doing is introducing wisdom and trying to develop wisdom to then help guide this aspect called chaitana or will or the impetus to action so that that will or impetus to action is accompanied by wisdom and generosity and patience rather than being accompanied by anger and hatred and greed and so on. And partly this is then based on so wisdom is this quality that we begin to observe and know carefully what what's what, how does life actually work so that we don't make so to speak stupid mistakes. Let's make more smart mistakes.

[48:13]

This is interesting you know the other night I did a cooking class on Tuesday night and it was an unusually small class. The first time I did this class there was 18 people in the second class there was 15 in the third class at 6.30 there was three assistants and one student there and the class starts at 6. I've been accumulating assistants week by week and then the number of students has been diminishing. This is not the point of the story but so I had to start making the bread you know anyway at 6.30 even there was no students so me and the assistants went ahead and made the bread and gradually while we were making the bread people more students started showing up and then of course one has to keep explaining over and over again no this is how you knead and this is what we did to start with and what did you put in and you explain that over about three times as new people walk in. But the next day I got this mysterious phone call from someone who said I came to the class

[49:17]

last night and nobody was there so I went home. What happened? I thought we were having class it was on my calendar. So we eventually talked later in the day and he said well I got to the driveway there there was only one car parked there usually there's eight or ten cars parked there and I was a little late so I figured I didn't want to go disturb the people in the house. So I just turned around and went home. I said well we were there. So here's a perfect you know here's a kind of simple you know silly example but this is our tendency to not actually investigate or look closely at things and to think that we know what's what and we make assumptions so as though and when we know what's what and so then okay we know that there's no class there's just one car here there must not be a class and we don't make this kind of effort or take the time it's going to take some time to investigate something or to you know look at it from various points of view and to try to find out

[50:18]

what is what's what what is it. Anyway the so wisdom is included in this fourth category the fifth category which I haven't mentioned yet is known as consciousness and consciousness is simply awareness of something so the aspect we can call awareness and in Buddhism I mean perhaps this is the closest thing in this categorization to a self but if you look at consciousness as it arises you see that it arises differently on each occasion there's no defining mark or characteristic that you could say this is the same consciousness as it was before you know so we have consciousness of sight objects we have consciousness of sound we have consciousness of emotions consciousness of perceptions so what's the quality of this consciousness that we can identify

[51:19]

as being the same consciousness moment after moment all we can say is well it must be me who else could it be you know it must be my consciousness so that's known as a thought you know thoughts are in the fourth category then you might be aware of that thought that's the consciousness so these aspects are arising all together you know these five skandhas there's you know moment after moment there's some particular grouping of these skandhas and so the idea of consciousness here is that it arises as one thing and then you know disappears and it arises as another thing and so there's no way we could there's no way if we try to and basically we're never we can't we're not exactly aware of consciousness we're aware more of the objects the feeling liking pleasant painful the perceptions

[52:19]

the emotions and thoughts and we're aware of sensory objects but what is consciousness what is the what is awareness okay and then you can say well it's awareness but can we say what it is see so it some people have tried to say something about awareness you know like well it's red and it's green and it's yellow and it's blue and it's not red or green or yellow or blue right because consciousness when you see something there must be awareness there but the consciousness is so the consciousness is both the colors but also we can say the consciousness isn't those colors right because the colors are the other group right the first group see should we turn on the light it looks like it's going to get a little dim in here I've lost my

[53:24]

I've lost my connection with the I'll get it here plug it in so we tend to have you know Buddhism at various times talks about in the Heart Sutra that we've sort of started talking about and I'm going to get you copies of it still but this is a a short thing kind of about wisdom if you can sort it out at the beginning it's said that the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara when practicing deeply or observing things carefully with concentration and careful awareness and mindfulness and looking closely could distinguish

[54:28]

these five skandhas and notice that they don't in fact have any own being there's no there's no thing there okay so we can the point of this is I mean this is to help us in some way in terms of our wisdom or understanding and what this is is to begin to as we've been talking about now to begin to observe things and look at them closely and try to find out what is it what is a color sometimes what is a sound what is a thought and so this comes back to things like you know who am I and so for instance we may decide at times well I'm

[55:28]

I need to do something about my anger I'm an angry person or I'm a shy person I should do something about being so shy or I'm a good person or I'm a bad person or so we have various self-images okay is it true what you think just because you think it do you suppose it's true is there actually a person there that corresponds to this thought I'm a shy person or I'm an angry person or is there a person there what is a person for goodness sakes and then how do you decide what is you who is who you are how do you decide this so because moment after moment here's another event happening called seeing or hearing or an emotion or a thought a physical sensation so how do we decide what kind of person we are or how do we decide what is self and what's not self

[56:30]

so I'm not an angry person and then when anger comes up you say we say that's not me get out of here you shouldn't be here because I don't want anger to be part of my person so we say to our experience you should go away now I don't want you around so various parts of ourselves we like to we like to say go away or we like other things as they come up we like to say well please hang around I don't mind having you here you amuse me or whatever so in this way we try to structure our experience and we try to go on being me or who we thought we were supposed to be or who we thought we were and this gives us a lot of this is a certain kind of a problem in our life because it's kind of impossible and so if you look closely

[57:31]

at any particular thing right look closely at self how do you decide what's self and what isn't self if you take a something you see is that yourself or is that somebody else you look at across the room you see all these people is that you or is that all those people obviously you know you can say on one hand well that's I see all those people I don't see me that's all the you but what are you seeing you're actually seeing colors and then there's a perception that says all those people those colors are a bunch of people so that's perception at work saying identifying the colors as people but then there's also consciousness there's awareness of the colors whose awareness was that that's consciousness right and so everything you're seeing whose else is it

[58:31]

but you where is seeing happening so you right away you know you say well no I don't I'm not I see a bunch of other people but seeing is in your own awareness that's your awareness of seeing it's not somebody else's awareness of seeing so how could what you see must also be part of you know how could you say well what I see is not part of myself then pretty soon every object if you say that if you say everything I see is not part of myself then you also must you also would have to say well then my thoughts aren't part of myself either my emotions aren't part of myself either those are just other objects too and I'm observing them so pretty soon then you have a self which has if you follow that through then you have self which has no characteristics

[59:32]

because as soon as you have a characteristic it can't be self anymore right in the same way that you say about colors oh I see the colors that's not me so I also experience the thought the thought's not me I'm experiencing the thought the emotion isn't me I'm just experiencing emotion an emotion so we can also say about all these skandhas we have there's a simple kind of saying is we can notice that in all these form feeling perceptions impulses consciousness that is not me I am not it and you say your hand well of course it's my hand but is that you if you lose your hand you don't say well I'm not here anymore no the hand well the hand is me but on the other hand it's not me you know it's my hand but I'm separate from my hand I'm not my hand okay so we have a so on one hand

[60:33]

the self we have to either say that the self such a thing is either includes everything right everything we see everything we hear the thoughts it's all gotta be included or nothing's included right everything is eliminated the self is there's no self or the self is everything this is the you know and then different religions like in Hinduism they say or some religions sometimes they say you know I am I am that so I am that and I'm that and I'm that and I'm that we don't sort of so we can't discriminate and say well I'm that but I'm not that what's the basis for making this discrimination you see of what the self is is there any basis to it so we make this discrimination a lot about what the self is without having any real basis for making the discrimination you know and we develop a sense of who we are and we have this idea about it and then at some point

[61:35]

you know but if you look there's really no basis for that and anything we can say is kind of like a it's kind of a generalization I'm a shy person what we really mean is on several occasions or at least one occasion that was very important to me I behaved in a way that I would call shy so you know ergo I must therefore I must be a shy person right or I'm a difficult person well on these particular occasions or at least this one occasion that made me look really bad I sure behaved in a difficult way right so we tend to not talk very carefully you know so one one way to to as soon as we say things like this you know one thing we can do is you know notice that it's a thought that's a thought oh that's a thought

[62:35]

and then we can look at it more carefully is the thought actually true what's there any actual basis for this and what I'm actually talking about and it's much more helpful if you actually can specify on such and such an occasion so in Buddhist psychology this is the way we do it we say on such and such a particular occasion this was the particular these were the particulars this is very different than saying oh I'm a shy person I'm a difficult person I'm an angry person I'm a bad person I'm difficult to get along with whatever and I wish I was more you know x, y, or z I wish I was more forgiving I wish I was more understanding I wish I was more loving and then how would you ever determine that right basically whatever you think you'll find the evidence for isn't this true

[63:40]

if you think you're a shy person then you'll particularly notice and pay attention to the times that you know remind you that you're a shy person yep still a shy person damn you know and then the times that you're not shy you won't notice you know oh that was just an aberration oh well yeah on that occasion yeah it was a little more outgoing but you know that doesn't really count so we tend to notice the things that confirm our own understanding and our own view and our own thought so in this so part of the what we're talking about tonight this idea of what is it is to is to look more carefully and more closely and to begin to identify on this particular occasion these are the these were the characteristics or these are the characteristics right now this moment and that doesn't have that doesn't mean that and that's all we can that's what

[64:43]

that we can say with some degree of you know accuracy and we can also then notice so we can notice these five elements skandhas and then we can also notice that that's I am not that that is not me there's no there's no that self is something that we're making up also then you know self in the sense of I'm a shy person I'm this I'm that and it's very hard even to say then you know I had such and such an experience you know if you say just if we take something simple like seeing I see you you know there's I subject see verb you object you know actually in your experience can you find which is which don't they all kind of come along together

[65:43]

in one package which you can just as well just call it seen right and then within that seen you know there must be I but you can't actually can you actually put your hand on it can you put your finger on it I mean can you separate out the the I that's doing the seen from the seen so well all you can say is well there must be an I I mean somebody's got to be seen isn't this right so that's the way we think we say well I must be doing the seen because it's not you who are doing the seen you know but actually if you look carefully at your experience and you say I see you can you find the I that's doing the seen you can experience seen you can say yeah there's seen and right away in seen seen includes I it includes you it includes the subject it includes the object I think it's all in this event that we tend to label seen and then for the practicality of our language

[66:44]

we say I see you isn't this true that experientially we can't find the I that's doing that seen in the same way you know I feel sad can we there's sadness but can we find the I that's feeling the sadness apart from the sadness basically you know all we can experience is the sadness and then we say I must be doing the sadness but if we just observing our experience carefully we can observe sadness and we say on this occasion there is sadness but so and accurately and carefully speaking we can't say I am sad we can say there's sadness this is not something we're making up now this is just this is just careful observation of one's experience

[67:44]

right what am I making up we're not making up something okay this is not some you know trick to say you know it's just looking carefully at your own experience what can you know so we can find sadness we can find colors we can find seeing we can find hearing we find sounds we find sensations we find emotions and when we tend to in language as soon as language comes up then we stick in an I I'm experiencing this I must and then we go I must be this I must be sadness I am sad and then once we've created this I like this who's doing who's having the sadness who is sad

[68:47]

then we figure well I I should do something about this because this is me by golly and this is important so I better I better fix this you know I better do something about it I better straighten it out I better I don't want to be something else I don't want to be sadness but the I that was the sadness we just made that up oh what we really experienced was sadness yes there was there's sadness there's awareness of sadness is there a self is there an I can we actually separate out the I that's that and if we can separate it out why do we want to tie it in with this sadness how can we identify so closely with the sadness if the I is not the sadness so this all

[69:51]

has to do with wisdom you see looking very carefully beginning to find out and investigate what is it and and what is what is the self then is there a self can we actually find the I that's supposedly doing all this experiencing and people who have made this kind of investigation carefully over the centuries nobody's been able to find it yet so if you find the I who does all this experiencing and so on then you know you'll be first so nobody in Buddhism said Eureka which apparently

[70:51]

means I've found it so if you take another thing say take body right we make a distinction between body and mind you say well I know what the body is it's obvious the body is the body right but is there any experience you have a body that doesn't that mind doesn't come along with it what experience do you have a body there's not mind present every experience of body is an experience of mind only we you know for the sake of language and discussion and talk we say no that's well that's body but all of our experience of body is through mind right there's no experience of body that's you know mind must be there consciousness is there mind is there and in the same way

[72:04]

every experience every experience of mind there's a body there we may not be aware of body and we have this idea that body you know exists moment after moment and it's a continuing kind of thing yeah and in the same way but actually you know but we when we are observing carefully moment after moment what is it and we look at any if you look at any particular thing or sensation you know we know we have this body and it's a certain shape and we have this sort of idea but you know you can do this simple thing like take your hand and put it on your head and if you close your eyes and then if you feel the floor or what you're sitting on the chair and you feel your hand on top of your head and then if you experience the hand on your head

[73:06]

the weight on the floor being supported by the floor and how much space is there between those two sensations and you can't tell these two sensations could be you know right next to each other or they could be universes apart so to tell how much space there is between your hand and the floor you open your eyes and then you kind of compare you have to put those two sensations you say well you sort of stop thinking about those two sensations and let's just put me up against the wall and then we'll check out what this is we'll put a yardstick up here behind me we can tell you know how much distance there is there and how tall I am but experientially you know if you're experiencing in your body we don't know how much space there is you have to put that up

[74:07]

against some outside measure if you if you just put your awareness you know in any part of your body without having you know an external standard to putting your arm up against the wall say well my arm is about as long as you know such and such but if you just put your awareness in your arm you can't tell how long your arm is how much space is in your arm but we have the idea that you know our body is a certain shape it's a certain size that must be the body but when you observe carefully and you have your awareness actually in your body there's not a particular shape there's not a particular size things are very flowing and dynamic and mysterious as to what it is you know as to what's what

[75:08]

so we come back then to you know the Nangaku and the Sixth Patriarch what is it and he said as soon as you call it something you miss the mark you call it body you've missed the mark you call it mind you miss the mark you say I'm sad you miss the mark for the purposes of language and for the purposes of discussion and for the purposes of talking about things you know we we use language but in some sense you know to observe things carefully we should also know what we're leaving out or we should know that our designations are kind of tentative and for the purposes of the language and for the purposes of communicating and not really intended to describe reality your actual experience of your own body of your mind

[76:11]

of sensations of form of feelings perceptions impulses consciousness of these five categories or groups so in some ways you know this is you know a few weeks ago I talked about I told you that story about how I was I ordered the things from the seed catalog and when the box came I thought that they the stuff hadn't come that I wanted because they told me that they had to back order the seeds the ground cover and I was getting this 12 by 6 foot piece of netting and I didn't realize it squashes up like a down sleeping bag into a packet about like this that's 6 by 12 because it's in this little box and finally about six weeks later I opened up the box and everything's in there that I ordered and then each seed packet says the best teacher of gardening careful observation of the obvious

[77:11]

right? so this tonight what we're talking about is nothing different than this you know just to carefully observe your experience is the basis for is in fact liberation is freeing you from all these thoughts of who I am my problem is other people say and so on and my body is 5 feet tall and you know because as soon as you're in your own body and you don't have this external standard to hold up to it you know there's infinite space there could be any kind of space in your own body just in your hand just in a finger your awareness in your finger and you're not sort of seeing your finger and oh my god the room is much bigger than my finger you put your awareness in your finger and it's there's a universe here there's many universes just in your finger this is not something somebody's making up right it's just your own experience looking carefully

[78:14]

at your own experience okay so [...] it also reminds me that

[79:21]

the story I told you many months ago about Robert Akin Akinassa he had been in Japan when the second world war started and he was arrested and put in prison and one day they were in the dining room And one of the other prisoners, actually, well, before that, they kind of heard from the Japanese guards as the war was coming to an end. They heard from the guards. The guards had kind of let them know that if they lost the war, they were going to kill all the prisoners. So you better not root for the other side to win, sort of thing, you know? Because if they win, we're going to kill all of you. So everybody was kind of depressed, you know, feeling really sorry and unhappy and worried. And one of the prisoners came into the dining room where most of the people were and said, guess what? And they said, what? And they said, well, if the Japanese lose the war, they're going to kill us. Everybody said, yeah, that's, yeah, we heard that.

[80:27]

And he said, well, 100 years from now, it's not going to make any difference. But that's a little bit, you know, like what's the perspective that we take on things, you know? And we kind of decide, and this is where, you know, fights start, right? We decide that the fact that I experienced something is a problem for me, and I'm going to blame you. We do many things on the basis of our perception and our understanding and our, you know, what we think is what. What is the truth? What's what? Why is it like this? And we look around for, you know, why is it like this? Kurt Vonnegut, who's, you know, such a wonderful kind of sardonic author, right, he said, the thing that we don't want to admit to one another and that we almost never will talk about is that it's really painful. Life is really painful. Because if we admitted that, you know, it would be...

[81:32]

You know, we don't want to admit how painful it is. But it's really painful. And it's very easy then to say, well, it's your fault. Or it's, you know, it's the government or mom and dad. I heard this... Did I tell you that joke I heard about a person who went to his therapist and he said, I had this Freudian slip the other night and the therapist said, well, really? And he said, yeah, I was having dinner with my mom and I said, I meant to say, please pass the potatoes. And I said, instead I said, you've ruined my life. I remember the other thing I wanted to tell you, but, you know, I couldn't believe it this morning. There's this article, a wonderful article in the paper

[82:32]

across from the comics in the Chronicle. It's about this new book out called The Myth of Beauty. I think that's the name of it. Written by somebody, Wolf. Naomi, right. And now there's a perfect example of what are women doing? The myth of what? Beauty. She points out things like, you know, the Miss America, you know, over the last 20 years, they're getting lighter and lighter. They weigh less and less. You know, the myth of the beauty is thinner and thinner, right? There's a, you know, $33 billion diet industry. There's a $20 billion cosmetic industry. There's all these external standards that are, you know, that women are buying into. You hold up the standard to yourself, then you go, how do I measure up to this standard? And now, apparently, women are getting their nipples moved so they have the official breast. You know, like if your nipple isn't in just the right place,

[83:36]

you know, you can have it surgically moved. I had no idea, you know. Don't these women ask men, you know, for like a man's opinion? That's why women buy into the standard because men buy into the standard. Well, nobody asked me. I find it kind of interesting that nipples are in different places, you know, personally. Not that I have that much chance to observe, you know, where nipples are located, but. Anyway, there's this external standard, right? And so, you know, we have, there's certain problems that we have in life because we take these external standards that are, you know, somebody's made up or they're out there in the universe or we've got them from mom and dad or we've got them from somewhere, from school, from our culture. And we sort of, you know, kind of like look at the standard,

[84:37]

look at what we think of as ourself and, you know, how does it measure up? And instead of just experiencing and looking very closely and carefully at our own experience, you look carefully and closely and experience. If you experience your body from inside, it doesn't have any shape. My girlfriend, Patty, and her friend, Elise, they're making these puppets to do the Vimalakirti Sutra. And one of the great saints in the sutra is Sariputra, who's one of the Buddha's foremost disciples, meets the goddess of wisdom. And she does various things and says various things. And finally, after a while, he says, goddess, you're so wise, you're so beautiful, you're so wonderful. The only thing I don't understand is why are you still in the body of a woman? Because at various times in Buddhist history, you know, women have gotten a bad name. And theoretically, you have to be in the body of a man to get enlightened, you know? And if you're in the body of a woman,

[85:38]

you don't have a chance. At least this was the understanding at one point in Buddhism. So, you see, at some point, the sutra, here's a new sutra that comes out where we're going to try to change this kind of understanding, right? And so she says, but Sariputra, this is not real. This is just an appearance. I just appear to be in this body. Sariputra's kind of like, really? It sure looks to me like you're in that body. I mean, what body? I mean, I'd say you were in that body, you know? And so finally, you know, through her eloquence, she can't convince him, so at some point, she changes bodies with him. She's in his body, he's in her body, and then she says to Sariputra, Sariputra, why are you in the body of a woman? And he sort of looks, oh my goodness. And he says, well, I don't know.

[86:44]

There's nothing I can do about it. I'm not really in the body of a woman. This isn't really me. And she says, well, that's the way it always is, Sariputra. What did you think before about your body? What made you think that you were in the body, that that was you in the body of a man? What made you think that you were actually a man? These are appearances, Sariputra. After a while, he goes, yeah, I can see it's pretty, and then she switches him back. He says, oh, yes, well, it makes a lot of sense now that you mentioned it. That these appearances are not really real in the way we take them to be really real. And we should have some understanding of that so we don't go off and get our nipples relocated and all the various things that we might do to try to measure up to some standard.

[87:46]

It's the same thing with food. When I started cooking, I thought that there was a way things were supposed to taste and I was trying to get certain dishes to taste the way that I thought they should taste instead of just tasting the way they are. What's wrong with a carrot tasting like a carrot? No, it should have some caraway on there and a little vinegar and a little, maybe a little salt and some red pepper, and then it tastes good. What about a carrot being a carrot, tasting like a carrot? What's wrong with that? Can't we just taste something the way it is and appreciate that? And also find this kind of, this spacious quality right there in the very particulars that are the particulars of our life. Observing carefully, and we need to have that time to observe carefully. We need to have some quiet, be receptive, be concentrated to be able to receive something

[88:48]

and to experience it closely enough to notice the space there. One of Patty's yoga students complains every so often. He says, this pose says nothing to me. This pose doesn't speak to me. Patty just gets sort of frustrated because she doesn't know what to say. Like you want the pose to speak. Why don't you shut up? You know, I mean.

[89:23]

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