Lankavatara 2:IX:1-2

*transcript generated by AI

That’s been quite what makes the better internal clock, yeah.

The Mahler was a point that my hamstring gives out completely right about the 30 minute mark.

Like, nope, we’ve gone from like just a sensation to pain.

We’ll sit this for a while.

I’m hearing a lot of session of sensation in here.

There’s a lot of possession and representation.

I can drop that sensation in the jury job session.

That’s what we’re here for after all.

Welcome Welcome everyone to our second conversation on chapter two, section nine.

The last week we really had actually, oh, you know what, I don’t know if I ever got last week’s posted.

The last week’s discussion was quite lovely.

The first majority of it was around kind of the difference between or thoughts on what we’re doing in this space training yoga turns them.

And the contrast to emotional support groups spent quite a bit of time on that particular conversation.

There are some other rich nuggets in there.

And then we also took up the beginning of 2.9.

As the prime movers of our liberation vehicle, and also the list of the five Dharmas, which is nimitta perceptual appearance, Nama, which is naming that perceiving her naming that perceptual appearance.

which is array of fine discrimination that arises as we take the name, or the abstract concepts to be a real thing.

Some snap, which is the non dual recognition of that process.

And then, now, we’re room, which is, you know, no direct notice of suchness, no longer needing a watcher, but just a pure nowness.

So that was kind of where we were at last week.

Anyone coming today with kind of one grounded life based questions or after experimenting with seeing nimitta, Nama, vikalpa, samsara, jnaya, in their reality, any insights or realization.

This is a moment for you all to direct the conversation before we pick up with the seat.

Cool.

So, this opening of this section, like I said, it starts with a bunch of stuff.

And the stuff, Mahamati says, are all said to be characteristics of reality, all Buddhas call this mind.

So in a way, we’re getting a big definition of what mind means here.

Now, this isn’t the only definition and isn’t necessarily the most exhaustive definition, but this is a spot where Mahamati is really just opening up the idea of mind only as self-realization.

And we already talked about some of those characteristics, citta, the mind stream itself, manas, the stitcher together of experience, and vijnana, our various forms of discriminating intelligence, and the five dharmas that I just listed.

And then it goes on to say self-nature characteristics, self-nature characteristics, all practices of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, seeing one’s own mind as equal, and that objective realms are not manifested through this sequential compositing of dharmas.

So we can dig into these quite a bit if we want to, don’t necessarily have to, there’s a lot of juicy stuff in this sutra, or in this section.

But do any of those, do any of those grab anybody?

Like, what the heck is that?

Or, oh, that, or any of those phrases warrant some, have some resonance or dissonance?

Yeah, Greg.

Yeah, I forget the words you used on the last one, the something progressive accumulation of dharmas.

Yeah, so that’s, that objective realms are not manifested through the sequential compositing of dharmas.

Okay.

How are they using dharmas when they say that?

That is a great question.

So, in this case, I understand it as the actual phenomenology of conscious experience.

Yeah, so it’s, it’s, it’s like, ambiguous, in a way, because it can easily be read dharmas as in, like an atomism type of a theory.

Like we talked about earlier, where there’s an essentialism that’s happening.

And it’s like, okay, so an atom comes up upon another atom, and these two atoms interact, and there’s a sequential compositing of dharmas, or there’s a sequential compositing of time.

So it could be dharmas in that way.

It’s not specific.

It also, this general idea of samsarga, which is what this, my phrase here is translating in the Chinese, it just has, you know, are not manifested through samsarga.

Samsarga is kind of like things stacking on top of each other.

Okay, built up in a causal link.

And, and what it is, I believe, is more like the phenomenology of our conscious experience.

Okay, because when I think of dharmas, I think of, well, teachings, you know, maps, like, dharma is the part of it, that’s the abstraction that represents the, the thing.

I think they’re actually by saying dharmas, they’re saying the subject of the dharma is not the abstraction itself.

I understand it to be like, there’s capital D dharma, and there’s lowercase d dharma.

Like capital D dharma being like, I mean, Rumi, correct me here, like the way versus, or, you know, or teaching, like you said, Greg, versus lowercase d meaning like phenomena.

Those are two, those are two pretty good distinctions.

It’s a really dharma has a wide semantic range.

Okay, natural law is also another one that shows up a lot.

But I don’t think that’s where this particular usage is because it’s related to samsarga, which is more like little d dharmas the way magician.

Okay, yeah, that like, uppercase D and lowercase d dharmas, thinking about it that way helps, actually.

Yeah, thanks.

Nice.

So self nature characteristics, all practices of Buddhism bodhisattvas seeing one’s own mind is equal.

And the last one we just talked about.

So I think seeing one’s own mind is equal and warrants a just a tie in to the previous section when we talked about Pajnaparamita.

So a lot of times when we hear equality, seeing things as equal in the sutra, they’re talking about Pajnaparamita or the quality of wetness, but just seeing that, like, all of your conscious experience is fundamentally identical in the way that it is an illusory constructed phenomenon.

So that’s kind of a big, that particular concept is a really big deal in this teaching, even though we’re not Madhyamikan.

Yeah, Matt.

Yeah, before I lose the thought because I will lose it.

Circling back for a quick second.

I just was reminded of, I think it was Sun Master Subal, could be that or his, or Hwangbo directly, but love the quote.

The quote was, the entire dharma realm is equal.

I think it was Sun Master Subal, could be that or his, or Hwangbo directly, but love the quote.

The quote was, the entire dharma realm is preaching the dharma.

So one quote with two, the big D, little d. Just throwing that out.

They’re so sneaky.

It’s such an occult way.

This is the reason why I don’t resonate with a lot of the occult teachings.

It’s like they go out of their way to be indirect and unclear.

Especially in short verbs like that too.

I’d love to get a hand on the original and see what was going on in the conversation around that quote.

I’ll go back.

I’ll find it.

Yeah, please.

That might very well change our understanding of what the teaching is.

Okay, so if we’re all good on here, basically Mahamadhi is introducing, you got all y’all Buddhas who talk about this self-realization stuff.

We’re talking about mind and mind only and mind basically has these characteristics.

And then he basically says, will you please share, it says, share the Tathagata’s praises of the Dharmakaya, which is the dharma body, which is kind of like the self-realization of suchness.

Of the realm of ocean wave storehouse consciousness of the realm of the Chitta.

It kind of gets into Alaya-Vijnana and it kind of merges the terms Chitta and Alaya here.

And last time I talked about how Chitta is kind of like the main mind stream that includes all of the activity.

And then Alaya-Vijnana is kind of like specifically the storehouse part that holds the different perfumes that we get.

And it’s really interesting here how they changed terms here because you would almost expect them to stay with Chitta, the mind stream.

But instead they turn to the realm of ocean wave storehouse consciousness, which makes sense in the Buddha’s response.

That’s what he responds to.

But there’s a really subtle shift there.

And I think it’s important to say that even though the teaching of mind only encompasses all of this activity and the response we’re about to get, the Buddha is really talking about the transformational processes that turn this storehouse unconscious perfuming into what we take as an objective experience.

And so that’s what this particular teaching is going to be looking at.

How does our latent karmic capacities, our latent perfuming, turn into what we perceive as an objective experience?

Okay.

Do you want to parse any of that?

No, I don’t think.

The only thing that caught me slightly off there was why the repeated use of like referring to storehouse consciousness, or is it the ocean wave?

Why the addition of ocean wave?

It’s the first time it’s been put in reference to storehouse consciousness.

So what differentiates that from the other previous mentions?

So it’s mostly just setting up the metaphor that the Buddha is about to use?

Yeah, fair enough.

I didn’t know if there was anything deeper than that or if it was just a little like, no, it’s just a little teaser.

So when we look at non-dual Mahayana teachings, consciousness as an ocean shows up a lot.

So the same idea is like consciousness as a river?

Yeah.

What’s that, Matt?

Yeah, I was talking along like sky and empty space.

Yeah, I was always into like the whole like consciousness as a river, like no man enters the same river twice because neither the man nor the river are ever the same.

The only thing is there’s an ocean I always feel is like I feel like shoreline, and then it’s always like out and in and out.

This is more that.

This is more that.

So the river is more like an impermanence teaching.

Right.

And the sky is more like a prajna pure awareness teaching.

And now we’re actually getting into the, the mechanisms of minds, seeding, perfuming in real time.

Ah, there’s the, gotcha.

Okay.

The ocean, like accepts all streams and rivers.

This isn’t quite where that’s going.

So more about the wave part.

Yeah, it’s more about, we’ll just get into it.

So we’ll put a pin in that and let’s, let’s get into a little bit.

So, the opening of the Bhagavan’s response was due to the four causes and conditions, the I consciousness evolves, which for.

And so this is how we see that the Buddha is taking this as a direct inquiry into.

Okay, if all the shits mind only how do I have an objective reality.

Okay.

And so the Buddha saying, well, let’s take your experience of seeing things.

Okay.

We’re going to teach this based on your sense of sight, which is also a very common way that this works, I think in the Surin Dhamma Sutra there’s a whole big section on it, it’s quite beautiful.

Okay, so the four conditions that cause the site to appear as an objective realm.

One’s own minds manifestations are gathered and received in ignorance.

So here’s a little bit of a tie into the ocean collects everything like indiscriminately collects everything, a little bit of a time to that one’s own minds manifestations are gathered and received in ignorance.

Beginningless errors pass through the perfuming of forms.

Beginningless errors pass through the perfuming of forms will break these down but I’m going to get all four hours.

Consciousness is individuating marks are conceptually fixed.

The other condition is the desire to perceive many bold form characteristics.

We’re going to, I like, I kind of think of this as a table.

The top of the table is kind of like what we see.

And then there’s four legs.

One’s own minds manifestations are gathered and received in ignorance, there’s a lot going on.

Ignorance is a particularly loaded word.

I think we should spend time with but before I dive into my notes on ignorance.

Is there anything immediately jumping out for anybody, so we don’t lose any thoughts.

It occurs to me.

And by the way, I don’t necessarily want a tangent and expect an answer to this right now.

But I don’t have a good understanding of some of the terms that we’ve been using, and I don’t know what background I’m missing with terms like storehouse consciousness perfuming seeds etc.

I know that I sort of jumped into this at some point, and I’m missing some background context, but I don’t know how easy that would be to just give me a gist of what those things mean or if that’s something we should put off till later but I feel I’m missing that context.

I can’t imagine it would hurt anybody to review some of those things.

So, we’ll just, we’ll just do that there is one of the discussions on the month of charge through your page on the website is the talk on foundations, where I believe a lot of those terms are lost more fully.

But for now we will just run through a couple ideas so there’s eight conscious in this model.

There’s eight consciousnesses.

Five are the consciousnesses associated with your sensory experience.

The sixth is your consciousness that is involved with making sense of those sensory experiences, including thoughts, and probably emotional balance, although that doesn’t get talked about too much, but likely emotional balance.

That’s kind of in a fuzzy range though between the sixth consciousness and part of the perfuming.

So, anyway, the seventh consciousness which is like the stitching together, that gives me a self object relationship that kind of seems to persist over time so that stitches together discrete moments.

The eighth is a storehouse consciousness which is kind of like your unconscious perfuming of experience based on your conditioning.

Okay.

And that’s kind of what perfuming means is that there’s a, a conditioning that we bring to the moment from the inside out.

So we perfume our experience based on that conditioning, but then there’s also seeds which are coming through our sense experience and being dropped in to that storehouse consciousness, which then become the ingredients for the future perfume.

So the perfume impacts, the type of seed that gets built out of our sense experience and perfuming, but then the seed turns into what becomes the perfume.

So this is a very non dual recursive structure, constantly evolving.

Yep.

So those are kind of the big terms that I heard you mentioned were there other ones that we said that are outstanding.

Yeah, those were the main ones, it was like storehouse consciousness seeds and perfuming were the concepts I felt were missing.

So yeah, that helps.

Thanks for asking.

Any other questions.

I want to move on a big topic which is ignorance.

So, if you’re familiar with Buddhism and the Four Noble Truths you will probably have heard that clinging is the cause of suffering.

It’s not like the Mahayana say that’s not true, but it’s way deemphasized from what I can understand, or what I from what I found in the sutras that I believe inform the non dual Mahayana tradition.

What is everywhere.

Instead of clinging is ignorance.

If we want to think of this a certain way we could say that looking at how we cling is kind of like a mid level accessible gateway for insight and realization into the Buddha Dharma.

However, as long as we are ignorant, we will be selfing, and as long as we are selfing, we will be clinging.

So Mahayana says, great, you can understand that you’re clinging causes all of your problems, and you can do all sorts of aesthetic practices to try and make yourself not cling by developing all sorts of emotional and psychological endurance by subjecting yourself to ridiculous amounts of hoopla.

Or you could just see through the delusion of your ignorance, and how you’re selfing isn’t worth clinging to, and then you just naturally won’t cling.

There will not be a process of clinging and relinquishment, there will not be a grasping that’s happening because you will no longer be so tricked by your experience.

So this is probably the primary definition of ignorance is to be living from a place where we are unaware of how our, how our mind only world functions, and through that lack of awareness we take our concept, our concepts as real, which gives us all sorts of stuff to cling to in terms of our emotional valence and our opinions and our, our possession and all that stuff.

So you get rid of the ignorance you get rid of the clinging, therefore you get rid of the suffering.

This is like, I’ve wondered this is this synonymous with like lacking right view or synonymous with wrong view.

Did they freeze.

I’m still here.

I think, I think they froze.

And I can see Robin.

They’re just in such deep stillness that up and there’s movement.

And you guys are on mute.

You’re muted again.

That’s test.

All right, I gotcha.

That was the universe giving us a demonstration of ignorance.

Man, they’re frozen again.

Audio frozen or just the video, just the video.

We can still hear you.

All right, that’s, that should be a pulse.

All right.

So, did, did the overall definition of the overall idea of ignorance come across.

Did you hear my question to me.

Not.

Okay.

I was asking is ignorance synonymous with lacking right view or wrong video.

I can you be ignorant, holding right view.

I’m gonna say that they’re different enough schemas where they’re not synonymous.

Okay.

Although they are related.

Anyone.

Could somebody just pop open the definition of right view real quick.

So I’m pretty sure it has to do with the four noble truths, and a non stop and impermanence selflessness and suffering.

I’m pretty sure that right view has to relate to those specifically.

I think that my definition of ignorance jives pretty well with what you just gave, which is the art of ignoring or aka the art of not understanding reality.

Some aspect of reality.

So, so my AI overview just punching in Google here.

It refers to a correct understanding of reality, particularly as it relates to suffering its cause its cessation the path liberation spot developing a deep understanding of the nature of existence and how to live in a way that minimizes suffering so yeah I guess it’s more geared towards the Noble Eightfold Path.

Yeah, so it’s not like it’s, it’s not like they’re not similar, but it really is handed out handed out or hooked on the Eightfold Path Noble Truth.

And I think we froze again.

I gotcha.

That would be a good research paper is the Mahayana ignorance.

How different is it from right view.

My gut says they’re actually pretty different.

If we had some data buttons here and we really started digging into it, we could agree on a lot of stuff but then we would start to feel pretty uncomfortable as we dug into the nitty gritty of those of those two, like they’re superficially very similar but and and parts that matter they get quite different.

There’s a really fascinating thing that I’ve discovered through reading this sutra and the faith, and I keep going back and forth on this I don’t have a totally solid perspective yet.

Sometimes it seems like what they’re saying is that all of our relative activity is samsara, and all samsaric relative activity is ignorance.

Sometimes it sounds like you literally can’t function in a relative way without ignorance, which is a fascinating way of putting it but it seems very true.

It seems very true because it’s like, if I do not assume that the subject object relationship is real.

Then my relative functioning will be greatly hindered.

Right.

If I really think it’s all mind only, and then I will be like completely oblivious to danger and you know like all sorts of crazy things happen.

wouldn’t have a basis for anything.

At that point, because if it’s all in my head.

Then there’s nothing saying that I can’t just go walk in front of the car and kneel it to stop and just keep going.

Right.

You’re gonna find out real fast that you’re going to get a whole lot flatter when that car doesn’t stop.

And so at that point, it’s an interesting so what hangs me up on this whole thing is the difference between like subject object.

You know, I see that it’s a bell, I see that it’s a microphone, it’s a laptop, it’s an X, Y, Z, is okay well if it’s all, you know, if consciousness happens in the mind only.

How do we get into to personal relationships, family, reproduction, small children, the continuing of the species, like but you know their whole, if the entire thing is just here.

There has to be a relation with the rest of it, like that.

Form is engines.

Yes, so this is where there’s a couple things going on here.

One of them is that in this, in this worldview consciousness is not limited to your body.

So that’s very important.

Consciousness is non localized, and it will be more akin to say that consciousness is our, our limited access to the fundamental of the cosmos, if you’d like the rest of crucial perspective which I do cosmic consciousness which is vibrating and it’s great, and there’s an individual consciousness vibrating it, that’s great and mind is the place where those vibrations kind of interact with each other.

And this is very similar to the kind of stuff that you’re hearing in the mind.

And what it’s saying is that it’s not saying that all that exists is your is your individual consciousness.

It’s kind of saying that your only ontological basis for being, and your only epistemological basis for knowing is your own consciousness.

And that is when we don’t get how it works traps us and ignorance and suffering, and when we do get how it works, we’re still functioning.

According to its principles so in that sense we’re still in ignorance, but we’re liberated, because we’re seeing through it.

It’s kind of like you know you’re really dumb.

And then you have good coping strategies.

Then, being really dumb doesn’t negatively impact you.

It’s kind of like that.

You’re going to be really smart, really strong.

Well, so I don’t know who said it.

Emptiness is form and form is emptiness.

Like, yes, that sounds very deep.

But just saying that and looking at it on Facebook it almost sounds, I don’t mean it’s any kind of festival whatsoever, but almost sounds like platitude, at that point we’re like well emptiness is form and form is emptiness and if you’re not understanding that then fine.

So at that point, like, okay, give me the like, that’s the title of the book.

Give me the rest of the book.

Like, I need to read the rest of the book in order to understand the title correctly.

Like I get the overarching idea.

But it’s always just an interesting.

So, this is where consciousness.

Yeah, it’s not just about being individuals one part of another part of it too is that being is becoming and becoming as being so follow my work on weaving the way of your bread like dining categories the light that shines to the universe, or any of these types of things.

That’s where you’re getting the idea that like, or if you like Kabbalah, and you like emanation theory, and you like how I saw for infinite limitless light bounces down through the various separate and gets its various light filters into dense physical reality, and that that’s physical reality bounces back up the separate into the divine, and there’s this dynamic cosmic interplay of God breathing into the cup into form and form breathing back into God and that they’re co creating each other and this kind of echo chamber.

If any of those resonate with you, then that’s forms.

This is no other than the divine.

I’m just going to say, universal, universal consciousness of the universe of consciousness as well as not separate performance also started to be proven there that like, hey, you can do this.

But, no, that makes sense.

Like it’s just always been one of those always been one of those phrases and I’m like yeah it sounds really cool but I like any context.

Yeah, deeper content.

It’s obviously.

I agree.

Only.

I keep trying to get your attention with my hand.

I just want to drop in a comment for Ryan as well like I actually much prefer the what’s called netty netty that negation approach, where they say not this not that.

So instead of affirming form is emptiness emptiness is form they’ll say no it’s not for me no it’s not emptiness, or like Suzuki Zen put it, not one, not to like the belief in either one is a trap.

Yep.

Oh, I know.

Okay, I know.

Yeah, I know where that the course.

Eventually you’d like to have emptiness.

But that also predicates that emptiness is understood as something.

What the negation approach does know that eventually you let go of emptiness.

Right.

So, let go of emptiness then to find emptiness for us that you’re letting go of emptiness as a concept of emptiness.

But what does that mean.

Okay means no self nature.

No.

And what does that mean.

Put me in a language headlock.

What I hear is I hear you saying terms that you mostly have a grasp of, but I’m not hearing you in, tell me what your embodied perspective is.

So now I’m asking you to say okay well if you’re going to let go of emptiness.

What the fuck is emptiness.

Like really, what does that mean to you.

I don’t think I’ve ever tried to put that into a sentence.

But I’ll give it a swing.

So emptiness meaning no self nature no self nature, meaning no fixed thing, no, no thing this I suppose.

No.

It’s like, it’s not.

It’s not one’s not many.

It’s like that.

Like psychedelic flowering almost.

Well that’s very much a thing isn’t it.

Well yeah it’s our, it’s our existence.

Yeah.

Yeah, I’m not necessarily denying existence or taking like a nihilistic approach there.

Like, everything, everything matters.

Yeah, and so this is really good because letting go of emptiness is a really wonderful cliche.

And it does have a significant meaning.

But at the same time it’s kind of nonsense.

Right.

And to let go of emptiness comes from a Zen tradition where people would sit into a stillness so deep and it’s called derived such as second term is derived such as, and people would take it and Robin seventh Jana.

When you drop into the seventh Jana, you are into a void like experience where your consciousness plays out in such a way that you almost feel like you drop into a void, and it’s terrifying, and it breaks you apart.

And so we believe that emptiness and shunyata voidness for the whole time you’ve been training refers to that experience.

And some people get stuck and thinking that Nirvana is the cessation of all conscious experience, like is criticized in sections 1819 that we just read.

Okay, letting go of emptiness as a term that came as a corrective for meditators who believe that their voidness cessation experiences were a more absolute form of reality than the one that they were currently living in.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean I guess I put it in the broader bucket of, if you’re, if you’re attaching to anything, or if you’re holding up a single view you’ve now divorced yourself from the original mind.

That would mean that all of our, our perceptual corrections that we’re going through in our yoga charm training would all be really bullshit.

Well yeah, there’s, there’s a healthy ego that is, you know, facilitating the awakening process but if I’m still holding on to empty emptiness as a concept that I’m never going to fully break through.

At some point, I have to set it down, just like I have to set down everything else.

Maybe, but if emptiness is the real time realization of the interpenetration of phenomenon, and the ongoing flux and flow of the ocean of consciousness interacting with it stimulus and it’s perfuming and our liberation comes from seeing that in real time.

I’m sure you’d let go of the concept of it because you have the direct experience of it but that doesn’t make the articulation of the concept invalid or cause for suffering.

No, it’s just not something it’s like the light switch, once you turn the lights on.

I don’t have to keep flipping the switch.

Right.

You do.

Well yeah, I mean what if your kid comes in and turns it off.

You know, I noticed I got lost in thought, you know, yeah it’s like, again, not necessarily negating the whole process of the storehouse consciousness, and how those those waves exist as the ocean, you know, like and being able to to recognize the mechanics of it so that you can live within it without being diluted.

Yeah, so then in that case we certainly don’t want to let go of the truth of interpenetration.

Well, yeah.

Do I, I don’t know, I okay.

Do you see what I’m doing with you here.

I’m not just trying to be frustrating.

No, no, no, I, yeah, I see it.

I see it.

All right, I think I’m seeing your, your subtle correction here.

But yeah, I mean I guess I still, I still take it back to you if I’m trying to analyze myself into awakening, you know, then, like, I’m just going to be spinning my wheels through useless efforts forever.

Well we’re at time.

All right.

I really encourage you to reflect on that position, because that.

And there I’m immediately thinking well what’s your definition of awakening.

What do you think awakening is and why can’t you analyze your way through it.

If this whole suture is teaching that right view and resolving ignorance, which is basically updating our conceptual framework is the path of liberation.

What’s the basis of awakening, what are you doing, what’s your practice.

And if you’re not going to embrace your analytical function then why bother with suture study.

I mean it’s not that there’s no use to it, but, like, are we really sitting here stating that, that there is a definitive path, like the way to do it.

We’re not saying that there’s a path but we’re there, we are saying there is a definitive form of liberation.

There, you can people come to this many, many, many different ways but what liberation is fundamentally has these characteristics.

Yeah, because if it was only one specific A and B and C and D and E wouldn’t have the difference in tradition that we have there wouldn’t be.

Right, it wouldn’t be what had it would just be this.

Like we were given expedient teachings but expedient teachings are like a yellow leaf, you know, well that’s where we have to understand the purpose of the expedient teachings, like, why was the, why was the phrase, let go of emptiness created.

All these, all these teachings are specifically you know for a specific audience for a certain set of circumstances and conditions.

Right.

And so, what would you, I’m going to leave this for you for your co on what would be the specific set of circumstances where the instruction to let go of conceptual proliferation be appropriate for the audience.

What is the specific context and a Buddhist paradigm for that instruction to have value, right alongside one of the most prolific traditions that involved writing down what the fuck it was talking about.

So how do those two jobs, make that make sense understand why that instruction exists because there’s a very good reason for it, and it’s a very essential one.

Did you just, did you just describe it to me.

No, it wasn’t able to getting stuck in a void in this, you know, and holding on to that.

No, that was, that was for let go of emptiness.

That’s what we’re talking about the question is what is the purpose of let go of all concepts analysis cannot lead to awakening, what is the context for that instruction is necessary.

Yes.

Someone who thinks that the, the answers are in the books.

They’re in the written word.

Could be, could be your close your contract.

Next step for that though.

Next step so when they start answers in the book, they start doing what.

And when they start doing that, what is an essential instruction that is required.

Okay.

I’ll try to play it out.

And sorry Greg Ryan Robin for the detour.

No, no such thing as a bad detour.

We just got to have some straight direct Dharma combat that’s way better than reading.

That’s, that’s how everyone learns evolves and grows.

And because maybe something in the conversation between the two of you then spark something in my head that would have been sparked had that conversation that happened.

So indirectly, I get to learn as well.

And so, yeah, never, never, ever bad.

I need to let go of the concept of let go of the concept of emptiness.

Get into like the realm of Zen, where like, it just gets redundant for no reason.

And it’s just a bunch of people in a Reddit forum going.

Well, everything is nothing and nothing is empty and everything is something like, let’s see who can try and coin, the more profound phrase that doesn’t actually mean anything.

And then you get back to kind of the basics of like, maybe all I need to do is just sit.

Now we’re getting our hour.

Beautiful.

Yeah, thank you very much.

And actually, this is what I’m hoping for every time I come prepared for a Dharma discussion is that one of these types of exchanges happen.

So, someone to point.

Thank you very much, clapping back as the kids.

I hope so, please.

And so we are five after so if anyone does have to go, I apologize for keeping everyone.

Once again, past time.

It’s just too it was just too good to go.

So if we may, and do our closing round of checking we’ll go with Robin, Greg, Matt, and then myself.

Robin check it in.

I’ve stayed quiet so long I can’t find words.

Just gets back to all of this.

And then just shut the fuck up.

But, yeah, just really, really appreciating the wisdom tradition and that there is all these minds, looking at this for, for so long, and that I first had to derive from an experience, and then define the words to describe it.

It’s something that’s so easily taken for granted.

And I greatly appreciate the opportunity to hear what you all, and what the, the old day guys as I say had to say about it.

I mean, okay Greg checking in.

What time is it five after the hour.

Or is it now.

Let’s fight about it.

Let’s fight about it with enough passion and good faith, we may come to the conclusion that they are true.

Another Suzuki Roshi and they’re like, what is it.

Say you’re going to eat lunch at one o’clock then lunch and one o’clock or the same thing.

You can just happen.

I wasn’t me.

I’m sorry.

Take a quarter, take a page from Robin.

It’s me.

Matt checking in.

And I appreciate I’ve done something out of every week, a little nugget here and there or a slight, slight provocation that that is a good course correction like back to the middle.

And, and yeah, I do appreciate it, I am, I am seriously like a, a noob in the, in any sort of a Zen battle sort of context.

I don’t have the language for it at my practice has been so solitary and so, like, outside of any structure that I’m not really equipped with the vocabulary, but it’s the utility is there I do appreciate it.

And I do, I do like that it pushes you to the, you know, pushes you to a boundary to an edge.

I’ve yet to see some sutra or a text or an account, you know, where a master, you know, got tongue tied.

So, you know, we can talk about language and the written form and the finger, you know, all we want, you know, but they can summon it.

And so I think like being stretched and being pushed is like super helpful.

So, so thank you for this, Umi, and the rest of you for sparking the conversation and pushing each other’s edges.

Uh huh.

Ryan checking in.

I don’t have anything to add that I haven’t already said at this point.

So, with that, I will come in.

So again, Let me check in.

Yeah.

Always, always a fantastic time.

And thank you Matt for willing to be willing to participate in a Dharma combat with me.

I will say, and then the others can close, but I’m just going to close with deep gratitude.

Gratitude for, again, I’ll probably say this every week for the next three years as we work through this freaking project, but without you all coming and taking this seriously and deriving benefit from it.

I probably would have already taken like a two week break from this fucking thing.

However, however, I’m really glad that I’m not, it’s gaining momentum and getting more familiar with the Finnish syntax and stuff.

And you all are driving my practice so hard.

You know, you don’t see me ripping my hair out trying to parse this and sitting with the koan like structure of these for hours turning over three, three characters to try and figure out what’s going on.

So, to come here and get to take out some of that on you.

But I do want to say that I’m appreciative of your capacity to understand the function of that type of exchange, and the rigor with which we bring to it.

And I also want to say that that’s one of the things that makes ODZ.

That’s one of my commitments to Dharma practice is to not lapse into soft squishy affirming semi correct statements type of thing.

Now, so I do want to say that that’s like a consciously chosen culture here.

If it ever feels confrontational or demeaning or frustrating or unhelpful.

Because none of those things are the purpose.

Right.

Now, it’s so critical that we understand that this type of exchange is supposed to be constructed and formative and deepening and stretching and breaking our brain in a really good way so it can be restructured.

So, my commitment to the space is to hold the energy of that, but it is not to not be receptive to feedback.

So please always feel free to let me know if it’s not going well.

Okay.

Thanks.

Good night.

Love you guys.