I brought an extra copy of the Coke. Somebody can use it. Who's the last member that needs it? I could use it. Yeah, you could share it. I want it back. It's for Wren. Mmm. Mmm. Anyway, this is the last night of the six weeks of reading some of the cases of the Dinko Roku, the transmission of the light. Transmission of the light of awakening, the light of understanding, the light of Dharma. And I've tried to bring to bear on the subject, as you well know, probably ad nauseum, that rather than simply come into a text like this with a mind that wants to, needs to find consolation in the feeling that the ancients had some understanding called enlightenment.

[01:22]

I called a unchanging eternal perspective that is not shaped by any historical or cultural facts is a little I find it naive and I think what I've tried to bring forth is that we look at this with critical eyes and read it with a mind that is open but not simply to support our desires for something called enlightenment that we think that they had back a thousand, two thousand years ago and that would be modified by conditions from time to time historically as we go on.

[02:24]

And so that what the ancients might have meant by enlightenment or even what Dogen might have meant by enlightenment might have been quite a different thing from what we mean. I wrote down here that the figure of the ancestors evolves along with the understanding of what enlightenment could mean to the extent that in practicing through The ancestors, one projects one's highest aspirations onto the ancestors. Thus, the ancestors always represent what the current practitioner could conceivably become. Even though that conception changes over time, and the height of the ideal as projected makes the actualization virtually impossible. Since the idealization is always something that is Because it is an ideal, it's something that we can't quite grasp. And furthermore, as you know, I've been really stressing the fact that what we call practice, or what we call life, actually, or what we call our existence, at least as social human beings, is largely a matter of storytelling.

[03:45]

Storytelling. Storytelling, yeah. that we're reading stories here, and we're always telling each other stories about our lives. And these stories are passed on from generation to generation, and they're enlarged as they go on, necessarily so. And so, as I've said before, we have to bring some new, our stories, dependently arise, our story, or raise up our story with the stories that we are studying here. And in that way, it's really a critical reading. It's a dependent co-arisen event, and not something that we're just reading to amuse ourselves or come to class with, but something that can actually widen our understanding. And in that very process of widening is the opportunity for seeing through our stories, because these stories, unlike most stories, are about the fact that we tell each other stories, and because the stories are independently co-arisen, they are empty, as long as we remember that fact.

[04:55]

Empty of any intrinsic self, empty of any lasting, graspable, ultimately graspable substance. Even the story I'm telling you now, Especially the story I'm telling. If we have that kind of critical mind and that kind of awareness, I think, as we encounter one another in our life and in our studies and in our reading, in the lecture hall, even in our sitting and listening to the various tapes in our mind, understanding that that's what understanding is about. We are born into understanding. It's already understanding. We've learned how to cross the street. not get run over by cars of various metaphors. How to function in the world through stories. What else did I say?

[05:59]

Another way of putting it is simply that human beings at any stage of development will be able to imagine ideals greater than they can currently achieve, which is essentially what ideals are, yes. Something beyond the present. So, in other words, that we have a complex reality of Chan or Zen that we don't allow to be gradually replaced by some simplistic image of what we think Zen Buddhism is. That would be kind of selling out. We need to constantly renew, I feel, we need, my story is that I feel that we need to constantly come new to the material that arises in our life day by day without asserting any particular point of view as being the truth. And I think that these stories have something to do with that aspect of not, of...

[07:05]

You know, one way that the Zen masters, they taught by persuasion, but they also taught by disruption. And the masters taught by disruption, by disrupting our usual way of unconsciously solidifying the world or reifying aspects of phenomena and so on. And one of the exercises that came out of the theater exercise, actually, that's really kind of useful to To jar us is to point to something, use nouns, like table, but don't say table, say sky. Any other noun that comes in, as fast as you can go, try to do ten objects. Pointing to a teapot, for example, and calling it whatever... word comes into mind. Of course. And just practice with that and you'll notice it's very disruptive. It actually kind of is very disturbing even to your nervous system.

[08:14]

So deeply are the words embedded in our minds unconsciously with the objects of that covering, that naming. I tried it today and I got I didn't get very far. I had a hard time going quickly from thing to thing. Girl, sky, wall. Another way of saying this is since being enlightened, the ancients had to be right since they were enlightened, we think, rather than surpassed in the onward surge of history. They had to have to be interpreted in such a way that they are not only true, but also continue to represent the highest achievements projectable by our current imagination.

[09:23]

So maybe they weren't. Maybe the whole idea here is that we get these koans and these stories thrown in our face and immediately assume that we don't understand, don't know. That's an assumption that we come with through practice, that we don't know what enlightenment is. We don't believe this mind arising and what we call the mind arising now being shaped by the forces of the moment. The causes and conditions of the moment is already enlightenment, yet that seems to be what Dogen is pointing toward. The all-inclusiveness of our awareness. Still and all, It's a problem when we read these texts, like tonight we'll read, and they talk about the original mind. And if there's no such thing as birth and death, no beginning and no ending, how can you have an origin?

[10:33]

What was the question? An origin. Unless the origin is just the preceding causes. the conditions that are rising up. You say the origin for this class was such and such. Point to an origin in that sense and not in any kind of finality. That's finality. Anyway, tonight we're going to come to Dayataka. A little less shocking story than the one we had last week, which is the big one, as I said before. Uba Kikuta, the one who had to cut the root in home leaving, the very root of his life, in fact, the very existential root of his life to have that cut. So there's no way back. There's no way home. There's only going forward. All reference points dropped. And they carry on this story tonight, a little bit about home leaving.

[11:43]

leaving the safety of our concepts and the safety not only of our physical environment but of our mental environment. So in Cook, on page 47, it starts in, I think I want to follow along with the other book too. 24. 24. 24. I'm going to read from Cook tonight. I'll start and then we'll go around and read. I'm not sure what the DHR with a little dot. Is the R rolled? Is that what that dot means underneath? Huh? I think it's a different word.

[12:44]

Yeah. Anyway, it's easier to say daitaka than dataka. Dataka. Dataka. Exactly the same. Yeah, I know. That's kind of nice. That's a very poetic sound. Well, forgive me if I say I've been saying that for so many years. The fifth patriarch, Dhrithikā, said, quote, Because one who makes his home departure and becomes a monk is a selfless self, is selfless and possesses nothing, and because the original mind neither arises nor ceases.

[13:46]

This is the eternal way. All Buddhas are also eternal. The mind has no form and its essence is the same. There's that word essence again. In a non-essentialist doctrine, that word always upsets me, but we'll pass on. Yeah, it's got it here too. Upagupta said, you must become thoroughly awakened and realize it with your own mind. The master was greatly awakened, the master meaning Dhritaka. Is that right? Dhritaka. [...] D Sounds pretty good what he says, you know, it's all eternal and the Buddhas are eternal, the mind is eternal, it's like vast space and so on.

[14:55]

The Master says, you know, you're just quoting something you read. You must make the Buddhist really understand what you're reading here, what this co-arisen event is. All right, let's go on. The circumstances. Let's go this way with old Ino-sama. Indartaka was born. His father dreamed a golden sun came out from the house and illumined heaven and earth. The foreground was a huge mountain, magnificently adorned with jewels. At the summit of the mountain welled forth a spring, flowing in four directions. When Dhrtaka first met Upagukta, he told him about this dream. Upagukta interpreted it for him. The great mountain is me. The welling spring means the pouring forth of your wisdom and truth without end.

[15:59]

The sun emerging from the house is a sign of your present entry into the way. The illumination of heaven and earth is transcendence through wisdom. Do you not have a sense about his names? I'm going to go on and read the next one a bit. The Mass Resurrection. Isn't that in it? You guys are reading different categories. We are, yeah. So you don't have some remarks about his name? Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. So why don't you read the part? The master was originally named Gandahasta, fragrant elephant. But because of this dream, his name was changed. In India, he was named Dastaka, which in our land means intimate with the limit of reality. That's nice. Please say intimate with the... Intimate with the limit of reality. Should I keep going?

[17:01]

Having heard what Upa Gupta said, the Master made this verse. From the lofty mountain of seven jewels, a stream of prajna insight gushes always. It transmits the taste of the true dharma and brings deliverance to those who respond. You know, every religion wants to have one central teaching, right? That everybody can agree on. No matter how many schools or how many sects there are, if there's just one thing that we can awaken to, and of course in Buddhism it is this awakening idea, that no matter how many sects there are or how many schools there are, we would all understand. Why did you shake your head like that? From the lofty mountain of the seven jewels.

[18:10]

I'm not sure what the seven refers to. Anybody have any idea what that is? Oh, there's seven precious substances. Oh, maybe so. There's seven colors of angles. The one taste transmits the one taste. He doesn't have that in here. It turns into the flavor of real truth. The one taste. When you know enlightenment is like everybody going to the ocean knows that the ocean tastes of salt. That's that old metaphor about this, that we understand that one taste. So this has to be something that is not just doctrinal, you see. It's something that is fundamental to our human consciousness, the consciousness itself. Okay, so let's go on. What's the next verse? Then Uttagupta. Then Uttagupta replied with the verse, I transmit my dharma to you and you will manifest great pashna insight.

[19:18]

A golden sun appears from a house and brilliantly illuminates heaven and earth The master paid reverence to Upagupta and consequently followed him, requesting to make his home departure. Upagupta asked him, Is your intention to make your home departure a home departure of mind or body? The Master replied, My request for home departure is not for the sake of mind or body. Upakutta said, If not for mind or body, then who leaves home? The Master replied, The one who makes his home departure, etc. As in the main case, some became greatly awakened. In other words, the etc. means the opening case. is selfless and possesses nothing. And because of the original mind, neither rises nor ceases. So if the mind and the body is not leaving home, does it mean that there's no, basically there's no home to leave?

[20:33]

It's already the case, perhaps. Hmm? Anybody have some ideas? If you're not leaving physically, you know, there's home leaving, which we usually think of, you know, breaking off from the past in some sense. But this has nothing to do with that. Remember that his teacher, in the last case, was the one that was used the same thing about do I leave in mind, do I leave in body? Remember that? So he's passing on this idea that mind and body, you know, what does Dogen say about mind and body? Anybody? Remember what Dogen says about mind and body? Mind and body drop off. The original face will manifest. The original face will manifest.

[21:34]

Mind and body drop off. The original face manifests. Something that is already always the case. But is that already always the case? No. That's what this is about. I don't think so myself. But how it already is only becomes what it is when it comes to consciousness through our stories. That's what I'm adding to it. That's why they have to tell each other stories and pass the story on further along and then you take it and pass it on to someone else. So what it already is is a story and it's revealed as a story. Well, it might not be a story in and of itself but it has to be put in story form. It has to be put in It has to be put as concept designation.

[22:36]

It has to be set forth in words. And I call that, I'm just using the word story for description, for explanation, for explication, for the way we understand our life, both on the gross and subtle plane. But what is it that understands, you see? What is it that is already the case when the concept comes, what we call consciousness? or mind, we can only tell stories about that after the case, as it were. After the fact. How come that doesn't satisfy us? How come consciousness itself is not enlightenment enough? Do you feel it is? It must be. It must be enough, right? But is it? Well, it's not always easy.

[23:36]

Huh? It's not always easy. It's not always easy. We have personality and stuff. Well, does the consciousness exist apart from personality and stuff? Hmm? You thought? I think so. Because I think the personality is just our look, our face that we operate in the world, but our consciousness is the process of the internal working that we do, that doesn't necessarily get revealed with the world. Well, didn't we say, though, that consciousness has to have an object for it to be consciousness? Well, maybe not using the word personality as I heard it.

[24:38]

Personality doesn't have just been a style of relating. And isn't consciousness an eternal process and dialogue within the most intimate part of yourself? I would say consciousness includes everything. What we call inner and outer. Do we equate consciousness with awareness? Yes, that's another word for it. But consciousness or mind can go beyond awareness. For example, when you're asleep at night, in deep sleep, there is a consciousness going on. If what we're talking about consciousness, your heart is working, your lungs, you're breathing, you're doing all the unconscious or unaware things. But in Buddhism, that is still consciousness. That is still mind. You say it goes beyond awareness. I say that it falls short of awareness. Falls short of awareness. Consciousness falls short of awareness?

[25:43]

What do you mean by awareness? Often? Well, I just, I mean, you can use the word conscious awareness then, I guess. For example, you could say you're conscious, there's a consciousness operating in deep sleep, but you're not aware of it. But as soon as somebody calls your name, and awareness comes, then you could call that conscious awareness. Or maybe that's vijnapti, not this citta. Would consciousness be the object of consciousness? Because I think what we said is you can't experience something except for experiencing it as something. Yes, and what is the object? That's not part of the same thing as saying you can't have consciousness without experiencing, but without having an object. At least one would think you could have... Consciousness experiencing itself is purely as consciousness. Isn't that self-consciousness? Consciousness cannot... There's at least one sutra where that's put forth. Consciousness can express itself, taste itself? How could consciousness... Well, it's usually the metaphor is that the tongue cannot taste itself.

[26:54]

The eye cannot see itself. The tongue cannot taste itself. The eye cannot see itself. The finger cannot point to itself. Fire cannot burn itself. So in that sense... That's true, and so by extrapolation you're saying that's true consciousness, but that doesn't necessarily follow, it seems to me, just because it's true of all these other things. Because consciousness is not... I mean, the eye is a physical organ, tongue is a physical organ, consciousness is not a physical organ in that same sense. So it's not clear to me that the same rules necessarily apply. Well, in Buddhism, I understand that the six skandhas each has a consciousness. Each skanda has a consciousness. And one consciousness can stand for all the consciousnesses. But there is no consciousness without an object of that consciousness. So I think it means conscious awareness here. I guess what I'm thinking of, I can't remember the name of the sutra, but it's the one where...

[27:55]

that Rambis talked about during the session a couple of years ago anyway, where Buddha goes and spends the night in the potter's workshop, and then he goes through all of these things, you know, this is not the self, and one of them is consciousness, all that remains is consciousness, pure, and that's all that remains. That's all that remains at that point, is consciousness, pure and bright. And still there's some question, you know, this is still, I think it's still not the self. But at that point there is no discussion of an object of consciousness. So, how that comes back to what we're talking about. But there is a discussion because they discuss it. They use language to discuss it. They're using language, it's true. They're using concepts to discuss it. To discuss consciousness. That's how consciousness understands itself. So you're saying in that case, the objects of consciousness are not consciousness itself, but the words that are being used to discuss it.

[28:59]

There's no way to... We couldn't even begin this conversation if we didn't have that. If somebody hadn't taught me the word consciousness to begin with. That seems to me. Until, according to Chandrakirti, until a raw perception The first 64th of a second is the raw consciousness. It cannot articulate anything itself, that moment. Only when concept designation arises with it. And that's what I'm calling object consciousness. You're saying if there is no articulation, there is no consciousness. No, I'm not saying that. Because you can articulate it to yourself. But I'm saying until it comes, yes. Not that there's no consciousness. It's not that you can formulate anything from that consciousness. It's just a feeling. You can say, I have a feeling about something.

[30:00]

Oh, now I got it. It's... And I articulate it. Now, as soon as I articulate it, you understand there's a reception of what I'm saying. You awaken with that. There's a response to that. Until that moment, it's inchoate. It's not even incipient yet. It hasn't even... Something's emerging, but it's not born. Conceptually. A picture, a story. Something that reflects. Until that point that it's articulated, is there consciousness or isn't consciousness? Is there an object or isn't there an object? There's always an object, always, always an object to consciousness. Consciousness does not exist, at least in Buddhist terminology, without object. And that object can be just a description. For example, there's such a thing as consciousness without an object. There, I've just described something to you.

[31:03]

Or you described it to me. Nobody described it. What you're saying is, when there is duality, there is consciousness, but when you do not have duality... Yes. Yes. When the world arises, the mind arises. Consciousness arises as the world, and the world arises as consciousness. But it splits. There's a basic split. Although we can say it's one, there's a split. When consciousness comes into being along with the world, When you say consciousness, do you mean very specifically the Buddhist notion of mind organ? Because consciousness is such a bad word. It is. Well, it doesn't matter what word we use.

[32:04]

What we're trying to get at here is, is there something at all that you can name that doesn't fall, let's put it this way, that doesn't fall into the realm of conventionality? Well, I'm not going to go into that one, but there's something I'm fascinated with here that maybe is another way into this. It's that phrase, a golden sun appears from a house. And that really interested me, because how could a golden sun appear from a house? So then there's home leaving, there's this conventional life. And I think there's a tendency, we want the golden sun, right? We want the perfect awakening, but we don't want to see that. I think this thing is coming out of the house, it's coming out of the conditions of the duality of the phenomena, and without that, Without that, I think there is a singular that includes everything.

[33:05]

It includes the personality. It includes the dualistic split that our mind makes. But out of that, there's the golden sun. But the golden sun couldn't arise without the house. What about that the golden sun is the house? Well, I like that he doesn't say, it's not phrased that way. He's saying it's appearing from a house. Right, that's what, I understand what he's saying, but what about the notion that the Golden Sun is the house? Well, you could say that that's the eternal, you know, it gets back to the word consciousness, that's something that Well, the Golden Sun is enlightenment or is our Buddha nature. Essentially, that's just the metaphor for Buddha nature. But we're trying to, in our storytelling, we're looking for words that are like keys to open what does Buddha nature mean? What does the Golden Sun actually mean? Is this something prior to consciousness? That's how we came to this. Before the word comes up, golden sun, before you knew this was a table, you could still touch it.

[34:08]

Before the word, you still had feeling, you still had tactile sensation and so on. It wasn't that all of our understanding of reality is simply a concept, but until you finally understand, somebody says table to the baby at one and a half or two, it becomes table. And not only does it become table, but it becomes mommy's table. And it becomes don't touch mommy's table or don't walk on mommy's table. It becomes immediately associated with a vast and subtle array of ideas, concepts about our experience, about understanding what the world is. And that understanding... arises with a perception through language. So you're, when you say consciousness, you basically mean conceptual experience. Well, that of which there is no witcher.

[35:15]

What is that? That of which there is no witcher. Can I go in? One of the things that we found out from Meg and Jeremy is that they are teaching children to sign before they can speak because it relieves their stress. Now, the sign comes out of a letter, the signing, comes out of our language, our designation of language, but that the children, I guess this has been going on for three or four years or many years, that it is a way to actually communicate. Well, we read the world, we read the scroll, we read the sutra of the world in many ways, through our gestures, through our body postures, through our expressions. We have reactions, but until we have a... That's unconscious in the sense that we react to it. It's part of our consciousness. But it can't be articulated until we find a way to articulate it.

[36:20]

Until there's, in other words, there's a metaphor. The world comes forth then and says, what does this mean? Or during the Second World War, All the other gestures we have. We can communicate with these gestures. In Japan, this means, come here. I was nearby. But you see, there's a case in point. This is an acculturation process. But What is it that is always already the case? Christians will say it's God, or Vedantas will say it's Brahma. We say it's a Buddha mind, or something like that. In other words, we found a concept. In order to name this something, the witch of which there is no witcher. And beyond that concept, you can say you have an experience, and you can't have that experience, but I can't have that experience or know what you mean until you put it into words for me to get.

[37:26]

Until you tell a story about it. So we are telling stories here because there's a vested interest to tell these particular stories about something called enlightenment. If you're experiencing outward truth, you can't describe that to someone. Everyone has to experience that on their own. That is not communicable by words. Well? Well, certainly. Well, it says the sutra, you know. They help, they point to it. Pointing. But the actual experience itself, I don't think is translatable in any kind of word. I think you just explained it. But you didn't experience it. I explained it, but did you experience it? I'm experiencing my truth because of your explanation. How do you know? But they know. You see, the point is they know that they don't know that.

[38:30]

But maybe the ultimate truth is nothing more than semantics then. Maybe. What I'm trying to say is maybe we think there's something that's lying beyond was obvious to us, was so obvious that we're looking for something else. We think that's a problem. We think it's beyond. It's not beyond, it's what is. But it's what is insofar as it's not the same as and not different than. Let's go on with our story. Where are we? We're right after... Oh, yeah. After the first word. Henceforth, Dhritaka became a disciple of Guka Gupta and eventually sought to renounce the world to become a Mexican. Guka Gupta asked him, You are intent on renouncing the world. You renounce the world and... Oh, we read that.

[39:32]

Truly. Truly. Is that actually, I guess, in here? Actually. Actually. Actually, one who renounces the world shows the self that has no personal self. Therefore, it cannot be understood in terms of body or mind. This selfless self is eternal way. It cannot be fathomed in terms of birth and death. Therefore, it is not the Buddha's, and it is not living beings. How could it be material or psychological elements, realms of desire, form or formlessness, or southern states of existence? Thus, the mind has no shape or form, even though it Even though it be seeing and hearing, discerning and knowing, ultimately it does not come or go. It is not moving or still. One who sees in this way, that is, one who knows the knowing, still must be set to understand on the basis of learning. For this reason, even through the Thakur, understood him this way, Upaputta grabbed him by saying, you should awaken completely and realize this in your own mind.

[40:41]

It is like putting the imperial seal on an article of merchandise. When the imperial seal is on it, people know it is not poison. It is suspicious and it is not a government property. What is next? Therefore, people use it. The merging of the paths of teacher and apprentice is like this. Even if one understands all principles and comprehends all paths, one must still become greatly enlightened before really attaining it. If you are not greatly enlightened once, you will vainly become mere intellectuals and never arrive at the ground of mind. Because of this, you are not yet rid of the use of Buddha and Dharma. So when will you ever get out of the bodies of self and others? Thus, even if you can remember all the sermons spoken by the Buddha over his forty-nine years of teaching, and do not misunderstand a single doctrine of the three and five vehicles of liberation, if you do not greatly awaken once, you cannot be acknowledged as a true Zen Adept.

[41:50]

So even if you can count 1,000 scriptures and 10,000 treatises, cause the Buddhas to shed their light, cause the earth to tremble and the sky to shower flowers, this is just the only step where the professor is not that of a real Zen adult. So you should not understand in terms of the world is only mine, and you should not understand in terms of all things are characteristics of reality. You should not understand in terms of all existence being the essence of Buddhahood, nor should you understand in terms of ultimate empty silence. The character of reality is still involved in classification. All is empty is the same as decadent nihilism. All existence resembles spirit. Only mind is still not free from conscious cognition. Therefore, when those who would seek this matter seek it among the thousands of scriptures and myriads of treatises, unfortunately they are running away from their own progeniture.

[42:54]

Could we hear what Todd just read from Cook? All things are realities. It still has to do with ranking. All is empty is the name of the incorrect view of nihilism. The whole being is Buddha nature, resembles the spiritual nature, and mind only does not avoid ordinary understanding. Someone who seeks this matter in the thousand sutras and ten thousand treatises is regrettably abandoning his father and running off. When each of you breaks open your own treasure store and carries out the great store of sutras, which is your own mind, the holy teachings will naturally become your own. Someone else want to be the next? If you do not attain realization in this way, the Buddhas and Zen masters are all your enemies. That is why it is said, What demon caused you to become a mendicant? What demon made you go traveling?

[44:01]

Even if you can say, you will die on the hook, and if you cannot say, you will also die on the hook. Thus it is said that the renunciation of the world is not for the sake of mind or body. So even though Dayataka had understood in this way, he was still not a true adept. He had to have it pointed out to him again before he was greatly enlightened and actually realized it. So you should look on the way carefully and continuously. without being a literalist and without interpreting the spirituality subjectively, smash the universe completely, without any obstruction, even as you go back and forth between before and after, without any disparity, even as you go in and out, above and below, digging out a cave in space, rousing waves on level ground, seeing the face of Buddha, perceive enlightenment, clarifying the mind, experience the unity of being and spin the pearl of perfect life.

[45:02]

When you know there is something in the inner sanctum of Buddhas and Zen masters, then you will finally attain this. I want to add a saying to this story. When you attain the marrow, know the attainment is clear and that it still has an incommunicable subtlety. By acquiring the marrow, you will know the clarity of what you found. Luangpian still possesses subtleties he does not pass on. Yes, sir. Sounds like we can never tell the whole story. Yeah, that's right. We can only tell the story, but it's never the whole story. That's right. Because the story, because the universe, every story, I think, is because the universe is an open system. It's constantly opening, constantly changing.

[46:06]

So how could our stories be the same? But the incommunicable aspect of my subjective experience is the same as what we're saying, I guess, in other ways, that the subjective experience is incommunicable. Your subjective experience is incommunicable other than through conventional words, which only point to what I'm feeling or what you're feeling. But knowing that, saying that, doesn't particularly free us. I don't see anybody up dancing around suddenly going, I just felt like a huge burden dropped from me. We've heard this a million times. And we go back to more books and keep digging for the final explanation that will make it clear to us.

[47:08]

Only to realize it's just another explanation, another story. What I'm trying to say is although our particular, what I think I'm trying to get at is although each person's particularity or uniqueness, if you want to call it that, from a subjective sense will be just that and can only be communicated somehow through signs and representations. Still, that should be flowing in the water, as they say. It's like we are this consciousness along with the world. And we've always known that. So what's the problem? What's this thing called suffering about then? That's what I want to know. But we've always known it.

[48:11]

I think there's also, we don't know it or we forget it. And there's suffering. They asked, you know, I brought this up before, they asked, was it Satya Jananda or Muktananda, what is nirvana? And you know, he answered, suffering, of course. Suffering and nirvana are the same thing. Well, that's not what I understand. If that were the same thing, what would we be practicing Buddha? And yet... I guess because we just think it's suffering. Well, you just said a mouthful that we just think it's suffering. Well, you're all looking at me.

[49:20]

I don't have the final words. As you can tell. Do you want to give us your poem? Well, how many people brought their poem down? All right. I don't have a poem. You heard my poem. That was a long-winded poem. So let's start with you. Is this for the nights? You ready? Some people wrote for last week's, I think. I wrote mine for the whole thing. Okay. This is your understanding of... We understand that the subject is roughly what? For the poem. Transmission of light? Transmission of light. Yeah. Transmitting the light. Bong. [...] Look in the depths.

[50:22]

Feel their approach, arising through murky waters, gradually revealed. Too late to hide. They are here, blinding radiance. They are you. Thank you. Oh, you're going this way? Yeah, OK. This is titled, Messages from Home. Enlightenment doesn't last. Greed, anger, and ignorance rise endlessly. Bowing to cut off the mind road, you have nothing at all to depend on. Leaving home, and another, and another after another after another, weeping over each failure. Will I ever see that failure is what homes are for? I like that last line. Falling and standing are matter.

[51:37]

No matter is melting into a heartbeat. Butter blaze. Butter what? Blaze. Butter, butter blaze? Butter blaze. Yeah, yeah. I guess I should call it wick. Is that like a butter lamp? Yeah, it was a butter lamp. Or a butter ball. Oh, I see, I see. No, no, a butter lamp does much better. Do you want to do it again? Yeah. Falling and standing are matter. No matter is melting into a heartbeat. Butter blaze. Thank you. So, I didn't mind I had a line from Cook, which is, um, uh, paint divisions on empty space and raise waves on flat earth. My phone rolls. As far as I can see, space is painted and waves are raised.

[52:40]

I can't see it any other way. And if I could, I don't even know it. What's what? Um, the line is, uh, paint divisions on empty space and raise waves on flat earth and on those. As far as I can see, space is painted and waves are raised. I can't see any other way. And if I could, what I know, but you can't see. And could you read the last line a little more clearly? The last line, and if I could, would I know it? So, I was a little confused about which chapter or verse to write it for, so I thought, So I'm just fooling around and don't make me write a capping verse with footnotes, but I'll just... With a footnote?

[53:44]

Diving under the margins, crawling over the page, waving goodbye to an introduction and telling an epilogue hello, tickling the underside of a footnote and tipping a hat to a capping verse. The body of this text is spoken in banks, bars, and muddy fields. It crunches under our teeth for breakfast and slithers out the door with the morning's cats and dogs. If you can't hear it, you can't come alive now. If you can't say what it is, let the green gulch sangha trample you on the weighted ice cream. Thank you. Nick. Yeah, about the story of Ananda. Ananda asked Mahakasyapa, did you get anything beside the golden-sleeved robe?

[54:55]

And Mahakasyapa said, Ananda, yes, take down the bannacle. So what I thought was 20 years and 20 more lost in the shadow of giants. There's a time to remember and a time to forget. A golden wind scours the ancient forest and snaps the banners around your gate. Mmm, good. Why are you writing a poem in the dark?

[56:02]

Even if your tongue didn't get twisted into knots, words won't feed a poet when he starves. I wrote that for one of those. Well, I'm sorry nobody got enlightened tonight. Or maybe nobody got deluded tonight. I didn't think when I picked up this book and wanted to present it that we would make any outstanding discoveries. At least, I didn't know that we would. I hope we might. The thing it does for me in presenting a text about something so elusive as this subject is that you can hear when you begin to voice your opinions or your ideas where there's grasping, where there's some investment.

[57:13]

I can feel it myself. And until you actually articulate it, you can't see how you're building stories for yourself as you take Israel all the way to Israel. And I find it helpful to sit up here and put out something and then either feel something coming back or nothing coming back and going, whoa, you know. It's kind of like a stand up or sit down comedian who tries to get some kind of response and by doing so hones his or her schtick. And so we'll teach, we'll come back and read the next six cases in September, if I'm still here, which I plan to be for this class. Any parting remarks?

[58:17]

Thank you. Yes, thank you. You know, besides that. For me, it's really been a real treat to separate all of the aspects of form in my life. It's given me, you know, a real chance, you know, to look at... And I leave here and go out into the world and I see everything differently because of what we've done. It's been a real growth process. How well? A relative growth process. You said he tells stories about it, but isn't there also it telling stories through us?

[59:23]

It's the other way of saying it. It's the other way of saying that the world understands itself through us, so to speak, and vice versa. Yeah, I like to reverse it that way. It feels good that way, to do it so. Yes. Joe? Joe? I wanted to ask if you thought painting or art is somehow different from telling stories in the way that we've been talking. Well, of course, there's all kinds of different As far as painting, there's narrative painting, I mean the storytelling in pictures, but just say abstract painting, for example. It's interesting you ask that because there's a long history in art, art history about how much content it should have to do with questions, metaphysical questions, for example.

[60:32]

And of course, as you know, the abstract expressionists were big on expressing themselves in paint. The emotion of the inner life would Jackson Pollock and so on would be expressed. This is who I am. But that theory, at least for art, no longer, at the moment, no particular theory of art holds true as being the way that human beings can best communicate. There's a style of art that answers some deep question that art is in a different category than religion, for example. But someone like Gerhard Richter says, I don't hold any ology whatsoever other than painting. Ideologies? Ideologies. Ideologies. No ideologies whatsoever. No idealisms. All idealisms are made up out of our fantasies for comfort and security in the world. I just paint for the sake of painting. I have no designs. No idea what I'm painting when I started.

[61:33]

It has no content other than the painting itself and so forth. So what I think about that, it depends on the picture I'm doing. And what do you think? You're a painter. Well, I developed a theory, and of course that's something that I'm grasping really hard, that there's some quality that isn't dual in art, in very great art, even though it's an object, but still that there's something that is expressed there that can't be conceptualized. I attended a lecture in September with Lama Tartu Rinpoche, who's an artist, and I was reading just last night what he said about that. I have it on a disc. I'll be able to send it to you, you know, because I took notes. But basically he says if I were to put it into... So it's really freaky that you would ask that because I've been trying to think about that.

[62:43]

Before I go to bed, I was reading it and thinking about it. He said that... art brings beauty into the world, and beauty goes to that place that has no story. But he says it, you know. He's really precise. So if you give me your email, I can send you the stuff that he said. He's very old. What about art that isn't beautiful? The process of making a picture, of having a two-dimensional, and making a mark on it, and just starting with a mark, color it, maybe, let's say red, Picasso did that, just a light, set something. To watch the process between a shape that two lines, three lines, five lines of color and so on begins with your conceptual and feeling and perceptual organism, this kind of co-arising of the two, the tension between those two.

[64:05]

When the picture begins to take off in its own direction from something that you don't know what it is here, Something else is working itself out. And the best, I think the best pictures from my own point of view is something that turns out to be entirely different from what I expected. I think most artists would say that. Painters would say that. So that might be something, a metaphor for our life in essence. We start with this kind of thing and we arrive at a whole different realization in the give and take of the the dynamics of the, what would you say, the dialectic between what's manifesting on the canvas, or in the room and so on, and what you wanted to control. And there is control, to some extent. There's also skill, though. Yeah, skill. I think it was also Picasso who said, painting, and this is good for life, painting is not about objects.

[65:13]

Painting itself is about the crisis of painting. And the crisis of painting is that you get a picture to a point. And it's a picture, but so what? Now if I do this to it, it'll fall apart and be something else. But unless you push it to that next point... That's what painting is for a lot of artists. That was particularly in his case, constantly work with form that way. I found that very interesting. So maybe practice is about the crisis of practice. Anyway, I don't want to keep getting it all here. Thank you very much.

[65:50]

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