Well, there have been various reasons to have a day like this. Partly when I decided to do the lay ordination event in November, the end of November, I thought maybe it would be nice to have some events leading up to that and some opportunity for the people involved in that. Please come in. get together and to talk about the precepts and various aspects of that ceremony. And then Alan also suggested that it might be nice to have some one-day sit-ins that were pretty much for our Thursday night crew. And then Hannah suggested that it could be after the one-day sit-ins of Green Coast so she could come from Chicago.

[01:03]

and come to both the one-day dinner in Greenville Jam this Sunday at Fairfax. So here we are this Sunday and one in October. Anyway, I think even, you know, whether or not you are planning to do the ordination in November at the talk, I figured, you know, associated with that or, you know, you don't have to be doing ordination or to be interested in the talks or to find them helpful or useful or whatever you would probably find them helpful or useful or not depending on other factors. It's just anything. What's involved in the lay ordination ceremony is what we, in the Zen tradition, call 16 bodhisattva precepts.

[02:06]

type of precepts include the three refuges. I take refuge in Buddha. I take refuge in Dharma. I take refuge in Sangha. And then they include what is called the three pure precepts. The three pure precepts in some ways are the most confusing because the first is not to do evil. The second is to do good, and the third is to benefit all beings or to enlighten all beings. This is problematic, of course, because how does one identify evil or good? And, in fact, Dogen says in one of his writings, it's not really possible to identify what's evil, but don't do it. LAUGHTER You can't really put your finger right on it.

[03:14]

And anyway, and then there's what is called most commonly the ten prohibitory precepts, although sometimes they're called the ten way-seeking mind precepts. the ten clear mind precepts so there are various names and these ten are not to kill not to steal there's one about sexual misconduct which people have various ideas and considerations about not to lie not to use intoxicants or to delude the body or mind. So we'll talk about all of these eventually.

[04:18]

I think today I'm going to focus on the three refuges and possibly the perception and the three pure precepts. Anyway, there's five others of the privatory precepts, not two. slander others. Then there's one not to praise self while demeaning others. You know, not to praise self while lowering others. Then there's one not to be possessive. And of course, you know, again, depending on teaching and so forth, you know, part of the emphasis will be not to be possessive even of the teaching. So not being possessive will include, you know, not being possessive about being right. And then there's one, not to harbor their will, which is kind of nice because

[05:32]

doesn't say not to have a will. It just says don't harbor it. Don't stick to your ill will. And then there's I think we're up to ten now. And then the last one is not to abuse or not to treasures. The three treasures are Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. So those are the sixteen. Three refuges, three pure precepts, and ten. So there's actually a lot to talk about. And in that sense, of course, it means that

[06:37]

day someone asked me at Green Goats. They said, well, they had been at a Vipassana retreat and been doing META practice, M-E-T-T-A, not the M-E-T-A practice, which, you know, someone might actually be doing that. kind of metta, is that the underlying something or other, I don't know, but M-E-T-T-A, which is the Pali word for loving kindness, and so is there any loving kindness in Zen? And I realized, you know, that actually Zen teaches, the Soto Zen especially, it's one of the main emphasis of Soto Zen is to practice loving kindness, only it's called detail. In Japanese, it's the name of Mitsuno Kapu.

[08:06]

Anyway, I realized I don't do that very well. I felt sort of ashamed remembering that this is one of the fundamental teachings of the Soto Zen School. And Dogen says also, for instance, of the food as though it was your own eyesight. Well, presumably one is practicing loving kindness with one's eyesight. So, you know, this is to take care of food with loving kindness and to take care of and of course the idea in Zen is not to wait, you know, to take care of your breath with loving kindness and the floor and the cushions and the grounds and the cups and glasses and chairs and everything.

[09:07]

So we may not need exactly, you know, we may only need, you know, one precept. But anyway, we have the six talk about it. So, but what I started to say anyway, the serious students, so to speak, you know, you can study the precepts all of your life about, you know, which is some way to look into our lives. examine things. So we will have many ways to examine or many perspectives or points of view or ways to look at our life.

[10:12]

And part of this is to understand then that there's not just one way to look at things. And also certainly to stick to any particular way of looking at him. refuges, you know, taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. This is quite fundamental to, as far as I know, every school of Buddhism.

[11:16]

You know, Tibetan, Vipassana, Ayurvedic, and so in some ways it's probably the most, you know, defining characteristic of what unite Buddhists depending on, you know, how one understands it, you know, so partly we'll talk about, you know, what is Buddha, what is Dharma, what is Sangha, what would it mean to take refuge? And, of course, in this regard, you know, Suzuki Roshi and other people have emphasized that studying the precepts or studying Buddhism should be about studying yourself. It's not about studying yourself. Suzuki Rishi said at one point, why don't you go do something that is?

[12:17]

So the point of the teaching you know isn't to study or learn Buddhism and to have some good teaching that's yours and that you have and that you own and that makes you you know, already you're getting into the precepts, you know, how would you have a Buddhism that's yours, and you understand it, and you own it, and the priest and you would be possessive, other people don't have it, you do, you're praising yourself at the expense of others. You know, how great I am, and other people don't get it, so, you know, etc. This is problematic, you see, to have any kind of teaching. What would be the point of it? Also, in this regard, of course, and this comes up as soon as we look at what is Buddha.

[13:27]

I was just listening yesterday. There's, you know, some tapes, two or three tapes now that have been released of Suzuki Rishi's talks. Tapes where he's fairly... understandable as far as his English and they're not too scattered. A lot of the talks are rather scattered because he's kind of feeling his way along and he starts the sentence about three times and finishes it about three different ways. It's kind of and so you it's actually rather nice you know when you're listening to it in person but I It's harder when you're listening to it on a tape or, you know, if you were to read it. But he said, you know, strictly speaking, each of you are Buddha, so you don't need any teaching. Huh? What was that?

[14:36]

And as I've mentioned to you over the years, this is similar to saying... are a human being, what would you add? And sometimes to add teaching or instruction in sin is considered to be gouging a wound in good flesh. So we try to be, or at least I try to be cautious about giving teachings. I'm not sure what people...

[15:42]

they'll do with them. And, you know, one of the main problems in that sense is that usually we have some ways of going about our life, and when it doesn't work, we look around for some spiritual authority to back us up, to reassert the way we wanted to do things and who we wanted to be. Do you know... get to the refuges yet. Do you know Robert Bly's Five Stages of Reowning the Shadow? The first is that you have to project onto somebody else. You know, they're lazy or they're really smart or they really have it together or or it's a positive or negative projection.

[16:46]

You know, you don't have it. They do. And so then the second stage is maybe they're not as together as you thought. Or maybe they're not as dumb as you thought and maybe they're not as absent-minded or way the projections start to rattle around a little bit and they don't seem to be sticking where you put them. So the third stage is the stage of you try to, you really try hard to reassert the projection. Men can't be trusted, you know, women are fickle, whatever it is, and you try to reassert the projection, and then you call in the spiritual reinforcement for backup. You know, possibly to get a spiritual authority to agree with you.

[17:49]

You know, so if you're setting out to be good, and you find others bad in some way, you know, if you set out, I'm going to be compassionate and kind, and, oh, look at that person, they're greedy. They get angry a lot. Then you call them as spiritual reinforcements to make sure that you're not going to be like that, you know. So the precept is don't be angry, you know, don't be greedy, don't be possessive. Oh, good, I'm going to do that. Well, at some point it really falls apart, you know, and uh-oh, I've got the greed, and uh-oh. So there's this stage of it really doesn't stick and it all kind of mashes together or, you know, tumbles together. The greed isn't just over there. The anger isn't just over there. It turns out you've got it too. You're in this big soup too. And then the fifth stage is you eat it. Finally, and I'm up to the truth of, you know, all of this being your

[19:07]

you're a competent person, you're an incompetent person, you're, you have it together, you don't have it together, you're, you know, it's not just the other person who's competent and capable, you're competent and capable, it's not just the other person who's angry and greedy, you're angry and greedy. Anyway, this is how, you know, this is some, you know, process we go through for, you know, any number of, things in our life of reowning aspects of ourselves that we had previously separated off or we had set up our identity as separate from. I'm not a greedy person. I'm not an angry person. I'm not very competent. Oh, look at how skillful they are. Or I'm really skillful. Look at how incompetent this other person is. So we've set up our identity to be, you know, we're a certain kind of person, which is, you know, our understanding of good.

[20:15]

And we've tried to keep away from these other aspects. It all gets rather so at some point, you know, we're much more in the soup or in the stew of it and owning up to both our greater... than we thought we had and our greater difficulties that we thought we didn't have. So anyway, in some ways, it's possible that people will practice Buddhism to try to reassert their original self. This is one of the hazards, and in fact, You know, it's what people point out about spiritual practice that, you know, spiritual practice can be a way to hide. You know, many people come to spiritual practice, it's because as a group, people in spiritual practice are, you know, try to avoid conflict.

[21:29]

You wouldn't want to have to confront anybody. You wouldn't want to have to conflict anybody. You'd want to agree with them. you know, just agree and get along and, you know. So then, what a nice practice. This is the way we should do it. We should just get along with everybody and we all live in harmony and la-di-da, Buddha-dharma. And there's a kind of, you know, myth then, you know, so to speak, that... Well, if you meditate, if you do that, then that will take care of everything. All you need to do is sit. Just concentrate on sitting. You don't need to learn communication skills. You don't need to learn professional skills. You don't need to actually be able to say anything. You don't need to be able to take care of yourself to do that. you know and so sometimes anyway people take teachings and it it becomes just another way to go on being you know to reinforce and support the person they've been so we don't know exactly you know what we're doing here and you know over many years you know there we will

[23:05]

We can have some teaching and work with it and we will find ourselves in various relationships to the teaching and various understanding or not understanding. So all in all anyway, something to do with studying oneself. one's way and one's life. So, anyway, coming to Buddha Dharma Sangha. I take refuge in Buddha originally, of course. Buddha is, you know, someone who realized enlightenment, grew up as a prince, you know, left his home, left his family, went off into the jungle for a while, practiced austerities for six or seven years and then finally sat down and, you know, in the Zen tradition, at least it's understood that he sat for seven days and nights.

[24:18]

So in the Zen tradition, we have week-long, you know, intensive meditations. And the important one, you know, will be in December, Because traditionally in the Zen world, December the 8th is Buddha's Enlightenment Day, which is the day he looked up and saw the morning star and lights flashed or whatever happened to him. Enlightenment. Whatever that is. But anyway, and Buddha's realization that, you know, I and all beings, all things are enlightened. Buddha as a historical person, but we also understand Buddha, you know, the way that Suzuki Roshi used it in the talk I read to you.

[25:24]

Each of us is Buddha. So when we say I take refuge in Buddha, it's also to say I take refuge in my own enlightened nature. So generally we can say something about, you know, our enlightened nature. It's also, we could say, undivided nature. which is not limited to what we can describe. We can say various things about ourselves, but actually, you know, nothing we say finally will stick. We can say I'm greedy, but, you know, from the Buddhist point of view, actually that means on particular occasions I was aware of greed. And, you know, to be aware of greed on particular occasions is different than, I am greedy. So, actually, whatever you say about yourself is not something that can stick and stay.

[26:32]

And we don't understand in Buddhism that there's anything that can do that, you know, that finally defines you or any of us. And any description we have is tentative. description as I said you know for particular occasions I noticed this or that I was lazy I didn't take care of that I didn't do what I said I'd do or I could have I could have set up a little earlier here so we will all the time take information about things that happen and then make it mean something about ourselves But this is not, you know, so this is what we call ordinary person, and Buddha has no fixed nature. Buddha nature, which we say each of us has, means, you know, there's nothing fixed or inherent or that we're stuck with that we have to do something about.

[27:43]

So usually we think if, you know, Once you've been angry on a number of instances, or maybe even just one time, then you have the idea, I'm an angry person. Now you have something you need to do something about. I should eradicate this. And then how much evidence will you need? How many years will you have to go without getting angry before you will be convinced, I got rid of that? This is a big problem, you know, because most of us have ideas about ourselves that are quite embedded and we're stuck with and we feel, you know, limited by and we tell ourselves, this is who I am. And we forget that also we're someone, you know, unconditioned, undivided, already one with everything.

[28:46]

not someone that we have to punish, cajole, fix, improve, amend, censor, straighten out in some way. So to take refuge in Buddha, we consider also then to On one hand, you could, you know, there are practices where you actually envision Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha or other Buddhas, and you envision or, what is that word in Tibetan Buddhism, you know? Visualize. Visualize, yeah. It's like envision. Visualize. You visualize all the virtues of Buddha, etc., and at some point you would identify, you know, with, etc.

[29:56]

But we can also understand this in this broader context of taking refuge in yourself or in your own Buddha nature. You know, rather than getting stuck in the idea of yourself as an ordinary person who needs to be there, you know, now here, not there, wait, stop, this, that, get it right, don't get it wrong, be good now, don't be evil. So to take refuge in Buddha, you know, it's something we don't need to straighten out the ordinary person in order to take refuge in Buddha. ourself, we're also somebody who's free of all the designations. So this is also, you know, in a certain sense, has something to do with so-called enlightenment.

[31:03]

Suzuki Rishi goes on in the talk about Buddha, an ordinary person, you know, so when you're enlightened, you won't care so much what people say. Oh, I'm an ordinary person. Yes. Right. I am an ordinary person. You're a Buddha. with everything it's not a problem you can agree with everything he says because you know you understand your true nature is not any of these designations your true nature is already free of every designation and you don't have to fight against anybody who designates you one way or another or fight against yourself of you that designates you one way or another. Anyway, undivided nature or original nature.

[32:21]

In Zen it's also called original face. You know, what was your face? has this kind of idea. And Buddha also, you know, especially in the Zen tradition, the concept of Buddha is made even wider. So that, at some point, it includes everything. And there are all these koans in the Zen tradition. I'm not big for, never particularly a lot of my time. I haven't spent much time studying koans or practicing koans. It seems more useful to do that with somebody who's done that. But you know there are all these koans. What is Buddha? The cypress tree in the garden.

[33:25]

What is Buddha? Three pounds of flax. then there's also the idea, of course, you know, how could you point out Buddha? How could you designate anything as Buddha? Because to designate anything as Buddha means something must not be Buddha. See, there's Buddha. And then this other thing, that's not Buddha. So now you have divided nature, if we have an undivided nature, or if there's something as so-called consciousness, you know, that includes everything. And our consciousness must include everything.

[34:27]

Our consciousness must include good and bad, right and wrong, Buddhist, ancient beings, the consciousness that includes all of that, we are calling Buddha undivided. So now we're pointing at everything as being Buddha. we pointed everything as being Buddha, then what's the relevance of it? You know? If everything is read, why have a word for it? There's no... We don't actually have words for things that are all the same. I mean, it's everything. Everything is like that, you know? So the reason... we have a word, you know, for it. Because otherwise we will forget. You know, and we will think that there's something that's not Buddha. Yes.

[35:37]

But another way to say that is that if we point out something that's Buddha, we will try to, you know, get that or have that or keep that or grasp that. And we will start to reject other things that we don't see as Buddha. So this is the kind of problem. So some people then say, you know, there's no Buddha. Or once you call something Buddha, you know, you've slandered it. is like this in sort of saying that if you meet the Buddha on the road, you know, kill him, kill him. Sometimes it's give him an upper cut, but you know, if you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.

[36:39]

But the idea of killing the Buddha is that you actually believe there's a Buddha separate from the things that aren't Buddha. So if you meet something that you're going to cling to, anyway, get rid of this idea of clinging to the Buddha. Yeah. way this will be you know so Buddha will be something problematic for us you know as soon as there's something holy or special or perfect or good you know we will tend to want to have it and defend it against what isn't it and so if somebody says you know you're lazy or you're this or you're that and say no I'm not you know I'm good, I'm this, I'm that. So we get into these kinds of confusions and arguments with ourselves and with others about. So Buddha is also, you know, in some sense then that there's no inherent reality that we could actually grasp.

[37:47]

So take refuge in that. refuge is something that you fight about. Okay, well, my boy, we've already been going on for a while here, my goodness. Maybe I can expand this out now, too. We're just getting started. Okay. one more comment about this before we go on to Dharma.

[38:51]

I think we'll stop for lunch, and we'll just start on Dharma without going to get very far with this. Another way to think about this, I very much like the saying in Dogen, it says, I think it's in the Genjo Koan, or what is translated sometimes is manifesting our actual life in the fundamental points. He says, if you go out on a boat until no land is sighted and you look around, the ocean will look circular and the line of the horizon is a curve. So he says, you will see as far as your eye of practice can see. And, you know, you're going to turn on the oven? Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Good. and spaghetti in the oven, so if anybody else has something you want, heat it up. Yeah, you could go in and either put it in the oven.

[39:56]

I mean, we're still going to be about half an hour until we eat, so if it's just on the stove, we can wait. This thing is going in the oven, so if you want it about half an hour. We'll stop and, you know, have about 15 minutes to set up lunch and heat things and do things and get off. well, look a certain way. And he says, but if you look at the ocean, you realize it has no fixed characteristic. It looks circular when you look at it from a certain point of view. So things look the way they look, you know, from a certain perspective. And he says, but that's not the limit of the ocean. The ocean, he says, has infinite characteristics and boundless virtues. So this is another way to say, you know, what is Buddha? Infinite characteristics and boundless virtue. So you can focus, you know, on a particular thing, the ocean looks circular.

[41:02]

He says, but in addition to the circularity or angularity, you should remind yourself that the ocean has infinite characteristics and boundless virtue. This is also true with you. So as soon as you have some characteristic you focus on, I'm sad, I'm lonely, I'm scared. It's not the whole picture. It's not the whole story. You have other, you know, you have infinite characteristics in boundless virtue that you just don't happen to see right now. So this kind of thing is also a way to remind yourself to take refuge in Buddha. take refuge in, or to remind yourself that there's infinite characteristics down this virtue. Whatever you're seeing is not the whole picture, the whole story, and that you need to.

[42:05]

And you know, part of the problem for us in our life is we want to straighten out all the things that come up until we make our manifested life perfect. We tried to become a Buddha by, you know, never being sad, never being lonely, never being scared, never being vulnerable. And then finally I could say I'm Buddha because, so that's not the idea of Buddha, that, you know, we actually attain Buddha in this kind of real manifested way. I don't know, maybe there's a few saints who manage this but it seems to me they start out that way, you know? You know, saints, amazing. The saints you read about, you know, they just seem to have, mostly they seem to have gotten it, you know, from early on.

[43:06]

Milarepa seems to be one of the exceptions that he went and, you know, caused some, did some black magic for a while and caused some horrible hailstorms and, you know, people's, Lots of their crops. And then he had to do, you know, various things to... He worked at it a long time. But all these people like Ramakrishna or various people, they just seemed to like, you know, from an early age, you know, they just had it. And then, so like, what did they have to do, you know, to get there? Buddha, take refuge in Buddha. So before we stop here for lunch, a little bit about Dharma and Sangha, perhaps, or this Dharma. You know, anyway, there's this, you know, the most general thing to say about Dharma, of course, is this Buddha's teaching.

[44:08]

The Dharma is the teaching of the Buddha, of the enlightened one. So, in the narrow sense, there are these teachings that you can look up in books and that you can hear from people that the Buddha taught. So that's Dharma. Then there's another understanding of Dharma, which is everything in your life is Dharma or teaching. But of course, to have it be Dharma or teaching, you would have to treat it as Dharma or teaching. you would have to receive it as a teaching. So when you say, this isn't a teaching, then it's not the Dharma, exactly. Except that we can also understand that as a teaching. I'm not treating this as a teaching.

[45:14]

Oh, yeah. There's also a kind of technical meaning. There are various technical meanings of dharma. So, you know, one of the technical meanings of dharma, for instance, is that, you know, dharma with a small d now instead of a capital D is, you know, there were, some of the early Buddhists took, you know, what we think to be reality and narrowed it down to like what, more specifically, you know, what characterizes any particular moment of experience, what are truly existing things. So a person, for instance, isn't truly existing in this kind of schema, you know. What's truly existing is there's color and there's form and you see a particular shape and then another aspect of mind says, that's a person. Or that's Jenny or Alan.

[46:16]

You know, so... There are certain functions of mind. There's seeing a form. Then there's another function of mind called perception, which puts an identity on that particular form as being that form is distinct from, you know, the surroundings. So we call that perception. You know, the surroundings. So we call that perception. Then we may have various thoughts about the person. That's a different function of mind. So there wasn't any person there. There was being, and there was identifying, and there was, you know, having feeling, and there were these various little events, but there wasn't actually a person. So the kind of technically, the truly existing events are called Dharma's. And then we say, oh, those aren't any more truly existing than the other things we said weren't truly existing. And, you know, Sangha is the, again, in the technical sense, Sangha is the community, originally was the community of Buddhist monks and guns, was the Buddhist Sangha.

[47:38]

So nowadays we understand it's like this, but, you know, nowadays there's this narrower, and then there's the Sangha, which is the group of people practicing Buddhism. There's, you know, for instance, the Sangha, there's the people practicing on Thursday night, the Thursday night Sangha. There's the Korean called Sangha. Then there's the Sangha of all the people practicing Buddhism. And then, you know, the widest sense is, well, just everything. Everything must be doing this deal together. You know, the earth and sky and trees and everything must be in there. So we can call everything Buddha. We can call it Dharma. We can call it Sangha. So why have three different names for the same thing? Or form is emptiness, you know. I have two names.

[48:52]

So, basically, or, you know, sometimes I think about it as, you know, there's a, I like to say, every day, you know, there was a Zen master who said, every day is a good day. I think it was Uman, Every day is a good day. And, you know, this is to say, you know, in the context of Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, Buddha, you know, this is, you can't compare this, you know, then to the bad days. Every day is a good day compared to which bad days? If every day is a good day. that every day is a bad day, it doesn't mean you can't complain. It doesn't mean you can't have problems. So what's the difference between, you know, in that sense, you know, everything is shit and every day is a good day?

[49:53]

Well, language-wise, it seems to make a difference to us. You know, if everything, you know, which is it? Buddhism seems to have tried to create some language for shifting our awareness, shifting our thinking, shifting our consciousness, so that we somehow can see all of the ups and downs and stresses and difficulties of our life in the context of or realization or enlightenment or Buddha or undefiled, undivided, where we can appreciate our life and be grateful for our life even though it's not working out.

[50:55]

minutes for if you have some questions or comments or follow-up interest because it will help me in terms of if nothing else it will help me in terms of you know what direction to go in this afternoon and then we'll stop for lunch and we'll take a few minutes to set up Yeah. Good sign. Yeah. more than just the latest labels that somebody's put on us or that we've put on ourselves.

[53:23]

And because we forget, then we try to have some language to remind us. Yes. We tend to believe in the drama, yes. It's very vivid. So, in fact, you know, in the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, it says, you know, we... a reality, we create a story, and then we settle down in it. In a story that didn't actually, it isn't actually the truth, it isn't actually the reality. We make up the story, and then we live in it, we settle down there. And it said, that's a bodhisattva who's unskilled. You still get to be a bodhisattva. You know, we're not saying like, an unschooled bodhisattva. Sometimes it's called an ordinary common foolish person. Makes up stories and then settles down in them.

[54:30]

And then treats them as though they're real. And believes them. The conditioning. The conditioning. And we believe what we say about ourselves or what others say about us or, you know, the story that we've had. As soon as you can start believing without us, you start believing in the unconditioned nature or you start believing in Buddha, then you don't have to anymore settle down. So when you're standing on the line of charges, what do you do? I mean, it's pretty lives that end up charging.

[55:49]

Most of them are not actually, you know, like Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? The research between being and having two of the basics.

[57:01]

is also why Buddhism has, you know, like the Vipassana walking I mentioned this morning, you don't mention I at all. You just mention anger, you know, frustration, sadness, joy, equanimity. You just mention thinking, judging, and you leave out the also has to do with you know just strictly speaking what is it that you can notice and what you can actually notice is anger and you can't actually find at that time the I that has or the I that is you know the anger separate from the anger you can't actually find that so you know that's an example of

[58:04]

dharmically, so-called dharmically speaking, we couldn't say I am or I have either, although I have would be slightly more accurate or, you know, not as finding or not as identifying. So, as you say, strictly, you know, we can't find an I that would be doing the having or the emming. And we can't find the having or the emming. You know? So all we can find is, oh, anger. Oh, frustration. Joy. You know, even feeling. You know, feeling is extra. It blips. There's a blip of, there it is, anger. And then the having, the doing, the being, the I, We can't actually get hold of it.

[59:07]

We can't actually, like, well, where is it? Yeah, well, then, you know, physical sensing, then, you know, usually you, you know, in this kind of language, you know, then you say something, you know, about characterizing the physical sensation. It's in the category of touch. seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. It's in the category of touch, heat, cold, hard, soft, pain, ache, trembling, tingling, burning. It's in that kind of thing. And then you can say, oh yes, and that could also be characterized as anger. Then you're shifting the You know, because, yes, some things we could see in physical terms or emotional terms, and we could have, you know, in any moment of experience is considered to have, you know, a certain range of... That's what the five skandas are intended to do, for one.

[60:25]

If there's a sensory aspect of touch, bodily aspect, there's a feeling tone that's pleasant or unpleasant. And all this is arising together. And there's the possibility of identifying something as anger or sadness. And then there's the whole range of concentration and mindfulness. Anyway, a big category called the samskaras are the shaping influences. Influences are factors that shape consciousness, that give consciousness its particular And that includes anger and greed and lack of greed and lack of anger and faith and energy. That's the biggest grip. And then there's consciousness, the so-called consciousness, which must be present. But we can't actually find, you know, it's considered basic to that kind of teaching is that consciousness only arises with characteristics.

[61:33]

It never arises just as consciousness. And we can't actually... find the consciousness apart from the characteristics, but we figure it must be there. Or we wouldn't have all these characteristics that we can notice. But consciousness being there is different than what we usually identify as I. Because what we identify as I is some Usually what we define as I is identifying with certain characteristics as being I, rather than identifying with consciousness as being I, because consciousness must include everything that I am, only these certain things as opposed to these other things. So consciousness itself can't be characterized as I. Sometimes consciousness is characterized as I in the sense that I am the entire universe, or the entire, you know, the self is the entire universe.

[62:44]

So in that sense, consciousness could be identified as I. But then, you know, again, the designation becomes irrelevant. I am the entire universe. Why mention it? Well, because I usually think that I'm not. LAUGHTER It's not a thought that, like love, or rage, or any of those kinds of feelings are really just this huge thing that everybody has to do. It's my rage, my love, it's my spirit. We all have these feelings that are, that you tap in. Okay.

[63:53]

Yes, refuge. Okay, I'd like to stop now, so I think what we'll do, thank you.

[64:04]

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