Lankavatara 2:VII:11-12

*transcript produced by AI

Okay.

Okay.

Welcome everyone.

So, let’s see.

I didn’t want to open with.

That’s a great question.

So I have a document here, where I went through and each section of the lankavatara.

I identified as being something that requires a deep study is something that like, you know, you can get away with just scanning, something in between, whether or not it’s more of like a meditation.

So I’ll take a version of this.

It needs to be a little bit longer.

I’ll take a version of this document that I’m working from, and I’ll upload it as, as the kind of the rubric.

And basically for this training period, I’m only going to be focusing on what I consider the deep study chapters, which are the deep study sections which are the sections that are like, where to me, there’s the real meat.

Where to me, there’s the real meat.

And if we get sick of the lankavatara, I have no problem just with that.

But as long as it remains interesting and as long as there are deep study chapters left to do, then I figure we’ll just keep going.

One day we’ll be done with all that, and we’ll decide, well what about the rest of it, or we’ll pick up a new text or something.

One question, please.

There’s Red Pine’s written version, but because I’m a big audiobook guy, there is an Audible version of D.D. Suzuki’s writing translation.

If I were to download that to listen to, would that be a help or a hindrance because they are obviously not identical.

I don’t think it can ever hinder you to listen to a sutra.

I don’t know how much you’ll be able to cognitively get out of it because of the way of the language being so difficult.

But it certainly can’t hurt you to just have that on the background and get stuff in.

I have a hard copy of it.

That’s what we do when my son falls asleep every night.

He’s like, I want to listen to Daddy’s stories.

I’m like, cool, you’re going to be the most well-read Buddhist foyer on the planet because we’re going to fall asleep listening to it.

That’s fun.

Yeah, but no, I was debating on the job.

It could be awesome if they had it, I was really hoping they had it.

Not so much.

They’d have a real challenge reading Vedantines because of the way he footnotes it.

So you’d have to, as a narrator, make some really interesting choices.

So yeah, I don’t know if that’s not going to be a horrible thing.

There’s nothing obviously contradictory between the two.

I don’t know about that.

I mean, they’re both working from the same version of the Chinese.

They’re working with Gunahabin, which is what I’m working with here.

Suzuki pulls a little bit more from the…

He does look at Borobudur and Shiksananda.

He also looks at Tibetan stuff.

He also looks at Sanskrit.

So he’s really kind of like amalgamating a thing.

He has a kind of a different translation objective in his work.

Red Pine does look at Shiksananda and Borobudur.

And I think he does look at Sanskrit as well.

But he’s mostly, from what I understand, trying to make something more readable.

From what I’ve gathered from his effort, it was kind of like a…

I tried to pick up this text 20 years ago.

It didn’t make any sense to me.

I’m much deeper in my practice now.

And it’s a project that needs done.

It needs an updated version.

Here’s what I got.

And actually, some of the footnotes are like, I actually have no idea what this line says.

This is my best effort at translating it.

But he was really trying to make one that’s in modern English.

And Suzuki was trying to make one that was more technically accurate.

But he’s a Japanese dude in the 60s.

Fair enough.

Sorry for the… No, that’s fine.

I strongly encourage anyone to work.

If you have the opportunity to have a sutra in your ears while you’re doing things, I think that’s highly unlikely to happen.

Fair enough.

Any other questions before we get in?

Yeah, Michael.

Yeah, a couple quick ones.

One is technical.

Are you on the good microphone?

Because I don’t know if it’s on my end, but it’s just a little kind of garbled.

It might be my technology.

So there was that.

And then you put out, like, we could continue.

Just to give you a kind of loop back, I’m studying this because it’s just kind of a mental discernment sharpening process for me.

And just from my view, we could go on or switch gears and try something different.

You know, I know Robin had recommended it.

I’m wondering if you’re getting everything you want out of this.

Oh, that’s a loaded question.

Not to put you on the spot or anything.

No, actually, I’m getting a lot out of it, and I would love to continue working with it longer.

Okay.

Yeah.

So ongoing.

Ongoing.

And I do want to emphasize, again, that my purpose of working with this is not as an intellectual sharpening exercise, but as an actual insight and meditation training manual, which is a different process.

And we actually get, maybe for the first time, we get into something really nitty gritty here.

We get into different samadhis, progression through different samadhis that actually lead to liberative phenomenon in this next section here.

It’s a really juicy context.

Taking a step back, what I’d like to do is I’ll just read what we did last time and see if anything pops out for anybody that’s like, we have to answer that before we move on.

But if not, then we’ll just pick up where we left off.

So here we go.

It says, furthermore, Mahamati, when wangxiang, of the threefold existence, suffering, and siddhas, when ignorance, craving, karma, and conditionality cease, the illusion-like realm manifested by one’s own mind is accordingly seen.

Can anyone else not hear me?

Is everybody else getting?

No, I have to have my speaker turned up to max to be able to hear.

And it did just freeze just then too.

Let me see if there’s anything that I need to do.

Mic’s all the way up.

I can turn the gain up.

Or turn the volume.

And move this closer.

Awesome, yeah.

It’s just not sharp.

It’s kind of wavy and garbly.

Well, hopefully that tidies it up a little bit.

Okay.

Is that any better?

Give it a bit.

I think so.

We also have some weather here that might be messing with my Wi-Fi.

Hopefully it smoothed out for us.

Suppose there are Sramanas and Brahmanas who claim that both seedless and seeded causes can give rise to effects, or that phenomena and time endure, or that arising and abiding depend on the skandhas, dhatus, and ayatanas, or who assert that production has already ceased.

If they assert continuity, phenomena, birth, existence, nirvana, the path, karma, fruition, and truth, this destroys the theory of annihilationism.

Why is it so?

Because these are ungraspable through direct experience, and from the beginning, such seeing was never proper.

Mahamati, for example, it is like a broken jar cannot serve as a jar.

Likewise, scorched seeds cannot make sprouts.

Thus, if the nature of the skandhas, dhatus, and ayatanas have ceased, presently cease, or will cease, one’s mind’s vamsyan, perceptions, will not have a cause, and they will not sequentially arise.

Mahamati, if one further claims that consciousness, whether seeded or seedless, arises through the conjunction of the three conditions, then turtles should grow hair, and sand should produce oil.

Your doctrine is thereby destroyed, and it violates the principles of certainty.

Seeded or seedless cause assertions lead to such faults.

All such undertakings are empty and without meaning.

Mahamati, the various heterodox teachers assert that things arise through the conjunction of the three conditions.

They yearn to construct contrived causal systems with self-characterized appearances, seeded and seedless, across past, future, and present.

From the beginning, they claim that completed phenomena succeed each other.

According to this view, even ground reversal, which is liberation, would be nothing more than cognition shaped by karmic habit energy.

Thus do they speak.

In this way, Mahamati, the ignorant and deluded ordinary beings, harmed by false views, twisted, confused, and intoxicated, lacking insight, falsely proclaim the teachings of omniscience.

In Mahamati, if certain other shamanas and brahmanas observe that self-nature is like a drifting cloud, like a wheel of fire, a celestial castle, unborn, illusory, a mirage, a reflection of the moon and water, or a dream, such inner or outer appearances, manifestations of mind, are but the beginningless fabrications of wangxiang, inseparable from one’s own mind.

When the wangxiang of causes and conditions ceases, and wangxiang is cut off, speech is speech and views are views, the storehouse consciousness establishes the body of reception within the domain of consciousness.

Grasping what is received and the one who grasps what is received are not establishing each other.

This is the realm of non-possession.

Free from arising, abiding, and ceasing, one’s mind arises according to the entrance of discernment.

So that’s where we got to last time.

I’m sure there could be lots to talk about there.

The next part starts to get into different progressions of samadhis.

Do we have anything we want to review before we move on?

No?

Okay.

So wangxiang, just as a refresher, since that’s the technical term we decided to leave untranslated, there’s a couple things about it.

One is, it ends up being used in ways that don’t strictly adhere to this definition, which is annoying, but this definition is, I think, critical, especially to this section.

Wangxiang is delusive mental constructs arising from karmically perfumed tendencies appearing as subject-object experience and mistaken as real.

So that’s really what we’re talking about.

We’re talking about mental constructs that arise from karmically perfumed tendencies.

It’s like your deep unconscious processing patterns and stimulus you receive through your senses coming together, appearing as subject-object experience and being mistaken as real.

And that’s where we get our problems from, according to the system.

Greg, I see you about to come in.

No, I was just thinking, is there another word for that?

Yeah.

Yeah, last time we spent some time going over it and figured out that the best thing we could do was leave it untranslated.

Projection is one option that can be used.

False discrimination is another.

Erroneous cognition or cognizing is another.

But they all don’t really capture that meaning.

Or they do, but they only capture an aspect of it and then leave out other aspects and then introduce something that’s not it.

So that’s why we just decided to stay with Wangxiang.

Yeah, fair enough.

Yep.

So up to this point, the verses established us in non-possession.

This is the first critical step in insight.

Non-possession, meaning that the subject that we experience and the object we experience, neither of them are me.

Non-possession, right?

It’s that root form of detachment where we detach not just from an object, but also from the experience of being the subject.

Non-possession, okay?

And then it’s from this mental state, from this ability to meditatively witness experience, this happens.

It says, Mahamati, these bodhisattvas, those abiding in non-possession, will soon realize the equality of samsara and nirvana.

The equality of samsara and nirvana.

And we can talk a lot about what that actually means.

Great compassion and artful, skillful means without developing skillful means.

That’s the first sentence of this next section, which is already super frickin’ juicy.

So let’s just pause there for a second.

Is there anything you want to talk about in there?

I could riff on it, but I’d rather go with the question.

Read that quickly one more time.

Quickly?

Mahamati, these bodhisattvas will soon realize the equality of samsara and nirvana.

Great compassion and artful means without developing skillful means.

It was the, so it was the without developing.

Yeah, without developing skillful means.

So spontaneously arising skillful means?

Well, this is the beautiful thing about it.

So nothing is spontaneously arising because everything is interdependent.

Okay.

But without developing skillful means, it’s really kind of talking about the notion of, if I am sitting here coming up with a skillful means, devising, premeditating what will be skillful, then it is fundamentally based on cognition, on subject-object dualities, on my perception of time, past, present, and future, of you as a separate object that has to be manipulated in a certain way, so you no longer suffer.

Those are all wang xiang.

So I would be committing the fallacy that was derided in the opening of the section that says a fundamental basis for the skillful means that I’m developing would not be clear insight.

It would be, I would be developing skillful means based on me as a subject, having an object of experience of you, and you are thinking that this must happen for this, and in the past it was this way, and in the future it needs to be this way.

That’s all wang xiang.

So whatever skillful means are, don’t spontaneously arise, but they naturally flow through us.

That’s the difference.

So does that mean that skillful means are only ever completely present, now, now, now, in the moment?

Basically.

But this is where it starts to get pretty tricky pretty fast, because if the moment demands that I stop and journal to process an emotional experience.

Then you’re already in the past.

And then that perfumes the way that I then talk to you in a little bit.

Like the work that I did in the so-called past, which is the present moment journaling, that came up as a skillful means to deal with my structure, is what enabled the flowing through of a skillful means in the next moment when I need to respond with emotional maturity.

Would it be accurate to say.

Sorry, you can go ahead.

No, please go ahead.

Would it be accurate to say like, you know, peeling back or dissolving layers of conditioning without turning that into a new type of conditioning?

Yes.

You can say it that way.

One way that I’ve really thought about this over the years is that it’s like this system obliterates all sunkars, all, all fundamental mental formations that are based off of preconceived notion.

Right.

So this system says flatten it all out.

You might have a dip.

That’s a condition pattern that would be like an unskillful means.

And you might have a peak.

That’s a condition pattern.

That would be a really good skillful means.

This is saying platinum all out because the mountain of skillful means that you built in this context may be completely unskillful in this context.

That’s where you get the idea of taking each moment.

Beginners find fresh eyes, fresh perspective, unconditioned response.

Unconditioned response.

See, that’s what’s grabbing the gears in my brain there though.

I can under, like, I get the idea of, you know, beginner’s mind forever.

But you still have to have previous experience in order to have skillful means in a given moment.

Because if it was, so like, let’s, let’s, let’s blow this out to like an extreme, like, okay.

If you have no previous experience of any situation, any, anything as far as anger, sadness, empathy, compassion, violence, what have you, every moment is just, well, I’m going to react however feels appropriate in the moment.

So obviously blowing that up to like silly extremes, you come upon an upset woman, you know, sitting by the side of the room.

If you have no previous experience to go, well, maybe I should be compassionate and see what’s wrong.

Maybe you just walk up and punch her in the face and keep walking.

Because that’s what arose in the moment.

Are you seeing what I’m saying?

Like you have to have a previous, because that’s an option.

It’s a valid option.

Just as valid as the other one without previous experience.

This is where the power of a bowing comes in.

And this is also where the system that we’re in treats compassion as a fundamental context of the universe.

Not that different than love being an overall principle of the universe.

So basically say that the natural human condition, when it’s unconditioned by life experiences, would not overthink that situation.

And instead they just go, okay, there’s someone in trouble.

How can I help?

Because the assumption is that at that level, you’re fundamentally compassionate.

So that was the mental hiccup there.

Was that like, oh, I’m looking at this from a perfume standpoint of like, hey, been around the world a couple of times.

Not exactly all that lovey all the time.

But if you’re functioning from a standpoint of like, hey, think like an infant who has zero life experience.

I don’t know.

Love and caring is still a very fundamental experience for it.

All right.

Yep.

We’re good.

Much better now.

Sorry for everyone to have to listen to that tangent.

It’s important.

Each of these inquiries is important.

None of them are, none of them are rudimentary.

That’s it.

No, that’s an interesting.

That’s yeah.

That’s a little light bulb to realize like, hey, you kind of forgot where you came from.

A little bit there.

Like if you see yourself in the other person, then yeah, you respond with kindness.

Right.

Not always.

Yeah.

Maybe tough love is needed, but you know, you’re responding as if you’re responding to yourself.

You know, Well, I hear that maybe you are blessed to respond to yourself with kindness.

And I have a different life experience.

Not necessarily my natural response to that.

Conditioning.

Right.

Exactly.

That’s clear.

Like Buddha mind.

Well, that’s all.

There’s nothing more terrifying than an infant with a knife.

You could do anything.

I’ve always thought that’s thought rather scary.

I’ve always thought that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s true, too.

That’s true too.

I think what’s, what’s interesting about this too, is that when we, when we take it into the realm of action, and we really start to look at those ramifications, then this doesn’t quite do the Yogatana perspective justice.

And this is where we have to remember a couple other things, which is that the current moment is a moment that includes the entirety of the past and the full potentiality of the future.

So even though we say that we’re not approaching this moment with preconceived notions, that doesn’t mean that we are not approaching this moment with a lack of memory.

Okay.

So this is another very subtle phenomenon that we eventually need to grapple our framework around, which is that just because you expect something to go a certain way, does that, does not mean that you can’t detach from that expectation and try something radically new based on the 100% free imagination of an infant.

It doesn’t mean that we give up our memory.

It just means we give up the idea that our memories are accurate enough to base our behavior off of.

Interesting.

Okay.

Because the present includes the totality of the past.

The present is not void.

Right.

The present is full.

Okay.

So when we shut the fuck up, the totality of the present moment is available to us.

And that includes all of our memory plus all of our insight experiences plus every possibly conceivable future option or phenomenon is right here.

That’s what allows us to generate skillful means.

I feel like time is the X factor there.

Time is the X factor.

Fine.

I’ll go ahead and shut the fuck up.

That was my, was yes, if you had the opportunity to break that down and go, yes, absolutely.

This is all of it.

I have all possibilities.

Yes.

You’re seeing it from the perspective of cognition and the perspective of narrating and analysis.

When you, when you drop through that.

Okay.

And in Tibetan, there’s a beautiful, like nowness, the watcher and the nowness is like, the watcher is the one, like what you’re talking about.

That’s like your big S itself.

That’s like metacognitively aware of your entire process, but that’s really slow.

And the more present that you get, the less you need your watcher and the more things are directly available to pristine awareness.

And then you just know, you just know what’s going on.

And we trained for that.

We trained for that really hard in martial arts.

If you’ve done anything that requires incredibly fast paced guitar playing.

Yeah.

Right.

When you’re alone and you’re playing guitar, like you’re doing what you’re doing, but you’re also aware of what all the other pieces in the band are doing and what the vocals are, and you can adjust and you can do all the pie.

But if you do that from a place of cognitively tracking every note that everyone is playing, it never works.

So you have to drop to a state of consciousness where everything is available in the moment.

And what’s available in the moment is all of the practice and all of the knowledge and all of the skill and all of the, everything as well as all of the different.

Inconceivable numbers of ways that you can recover from a mistake, recover from an error.

And then you hear the drummer, miss a beat.

And then you just, you know, A half of a beat off of your next pick so that everyone catches back up and the vocalist holds a note out and the whole team works together.

The whole band.

Makes that work skillfully.

Without cognitively being present each and every set.

Okay.

But as soon as you ask what happened there, everyone could tell you, Oh yeah, I heard blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then so I did blah, blah, blah.

Right.

But that’s a reflection on what happened.

That’s not how you got through the moment.

That’s a good note.

That’s a good example.

Actually, that’s a super wittable example.

Much appreciated.

That makes sense.

So then that’s the sole skillful means without developing skillful means business.

Anything else about that particular sentence before we get.

How long are we going to be studying this for the next 64 years?

A week at a time.

So this next one I think is super juicy.

All right.

Well, and this kind of goes with it too.

I’ll read.

I’ll read these next three sentences together.

Because they all kind of might lock in what we just talked about, but in the lockers words.

Mahamati.

All realms of sentient beings are fully known by these photos.

To be illusory.

They do not labor.

They do not labor with causes and conditions.

And are far removed from inner and outer realms.

And are far removed from inner and outer realms.

And outside of mind, nothing can be perceived.

Okay.

So this is entering into a realm where.

All realms of sentient beings are fully known to be illusory.

And what that means is that they’re known to not.

Be as they appear.

So this is the divine interplay of light and.

The interplay of consciousness.

And because we know that they’re illusory.

We don’t have to labor.

This is the keyword.

We’re not laboring with causes and conditions.

We don’t have to work with causes and conditions.

The divine interplay of light is just click, click, click.

Magic light show.

Right.

You don’t have to labor with it.

It just is.

And as we engage with it, we’re making the next what is.

Right.

And so it’s just like, okay.

They hit a note.

Or that note.

Fit in the song.

You don’t labor with that.

You don’t sit there and go.

Because if you do, then you miss up.

And then they mess up.

So in this state of mind that we’re talking about, there’s not a laboring with what is.

It’s being with what is recognizing as it does illusory.

And then just, just knowing that all you got to do is take care of your shit.

Right.

Because that creates the next illusion that keeps the illusion going right is when we just take care of our business.

And that is the domain of no characteristics.

Okay.

So we went from non-possession to no characteristics.

No characteristics is a mind state where not only are we detached from the experience of subject and object, detached from the Wang Xiang that is always happening.

But now, well, Wang Xiang isn’t always happening.

In a typical, anyway, detached from Wang Xiang.

Now we are also recognizing that the subject object experience that’s happening has no fundamental characteristics.

They’re all changing all the time.

They’re all codependently arisen.

And this is the liberative power of this, because now we are sitting at a place that Lanka doesn’t talk about this yet, but now we are sitting at a state of consciousness where you get to kind of plug and play variables.

You get to be like a chemist in the lab and be like, well, if I drop a little sulfur in there.

Right.

And that like we talked about with the gem and the cloth.

You’re like, well, I got the red cloth in there right now.

I can see that because I’m not possessing.

And there are non characteristic, so it’s not a ruby anymore.

It’s a, it’s a diamond and red cloth.

So there’s a little bit of space there to flip in a different color cloth to make an emerald to keep the thing going, and then your friend does something and they rip it out and they put the red cloth back in and be like, no, I don’t want the ruby.

I want the emerald.

Or you could clear light it.

If you really want to, you know, you could just take the cloth off altogether, and really investigate it with a completely open mind and no conditioning.

And we start to get closer and closer to that.

And in the morning investigation liberates us from the illusion of the three worlds, specifically the trilogical desire form and formlessness which are the different meditative states.

Right.

And, and through that all states of this was representative of all states of consciousness.

The experiences that you can have as a mind state are recognized as being something that is not possessed and has no characteristics.

And this we realize as the summer, the as illusion Samadhi.

These are not seated meditation altered states of consciousness.

This is a persistent shift in perspective that we move through life as an embodied insight is talking about stages of spiritual maturation, and the stages of embodying insight.

So non possession.

Step one.

Like you generally are able to say like subject object, not me, right, not possession, then you can go non characteristic.

Nothing is fixed in itself nothing is as it appears, then you can start to be like well whatever state is happening right now is like that too.

It’s all illusory.

And then that’s the perspective that you move through life with the actually enter into that it gets pretty tricky for a while, but it’s okay I promise you’ll be fine.

You just might do and say weird things for a while you might elucidate a little bit and have some open visuals, but it’s fine.

Then it goes into another step but I don’t want to do that yet so let’s, let’s use the rest of the time to kind of wrap this up, we are now have three progressive states of photos of a realization non possession, non characteristic, and the as illusion Samadhi.

What questions, comments, concerns, reactions responses are in the field.

Can you say more about the as illusion Samadhi.

Yeah.

So, when you hear people talk about they’re walking through the world and everything so just a hologram, then it’s all just like something made up in my mind and then we’re all living in the matrix and all that kind of stuff.

That is very close to the state of perspective, that is called the as illusion Samadhi.

Now you might read some other things about it like in red pine I think he calls it the my Samadhi, which he interprets as having an illusory body, which he also interprets as then being able to basically like, see yourself astrally in any different world which is a deep state meditation phenomenon of subtle state of hallucination where you’re basically lucid dreaming.

I was like that’s cool but that’s not the point.

Right.

It’s the point is to be able to take that state where the reality that you experience is fundamentally malleable, because you see that everything is codependently arisen, and you see everything is detached from yourself.

material that you get to work with.

That’s a big old Pandora’s box.

Does that make sense.

It reminds me of a quote from Heraclitus fragments.

Maybe this is the same thing.

So this world, which is the same for all.

But it was ever is now and ever shall be ever living fire with measures kindling and measures going out.

Yeah.

Close came to the mystical experience we’re talking about here.

And what I love about radically is he also, from what I remember, my limited time with him is that he also has an embodied way of life.

This wasn’t a disembodied cognitive phenomenon, it was a way of moving through life, which is what makes it.

Yeah, exactly.

He was kind of poetically describing his real time experience, I believe.

Yeah.

Well, I’m just kind of tracking the, you know, I’m just tracking what I hear fundamentally here is the Zen schools that are going to come later, particularly Rinza.

I just I just track in that way of that spontaneity of a, you know, you’re not going to find liberation in kind of going through all of the various, you know, what was the skandhas.

And, you know, it’s not about examining that.

It’s just being right in the moment and spontaneous and seeing the clarity of the potential.

And just that spontaneity is you are free, you’re free of the searching and the seeking and the wanting an answer.

And then also, you know, kind of years later, you know, looking at things like I don’t know if you guys are familiar with this, like the theory you process when people get together and build teams and you’re kind of letting go of everything and just being more present with.

The spontaneity of the moment and brainstorming and trusting and all those kind of underlying psychological things we discuss.

That’s kind of what I’m putting together in my own head.

Yeah, there’s a great deal of similarity.

And Rinzai was, I’m sure, very well versed in the Lankavatara as well as the Amitabha and many other Mahayana sutras.

One, just for a point of consideration, when you look outside that lineage and you look at like Zongmi, who was a great, you know, if you know Zongmi, you’re nodding.

He basically was a great archiver of Mahayana in China and really examined Zen and its relationship to other Buddhist schools and put out of the whole Zen lineage.

And one of the critiques of the Rinzai school was that they would see the clear light gem as black and think it was black.

This is a contemporary critic of the Rinzai school, which means that, and we see that actually in the Rinzai lineage, is that spontaneity itself became skillful.

It became a representation of the Dharma without the critical comparison of, well, did you really see that that was a clear diamond and not a black pearl?

And so that’s one of the contemporary external critiques of the Rinzai system, which I think is fascinating.

True or not, and certainly not every Rinzai teacher was such aware.

Some were very, very aware of conditioning and karmic impact and all that stuff.

But Rinzai as a body almost like started saying that when one is spontaneously present, one cannot be subject to or produce karma, which is in a way doctrinally sound.

But it abdicates the fact that we still live in a karmic world of cause and effect and that we have impact in that world.

And therefore, not every spontaneous action is fundamentally compassionate and there needs to be a moment of reflection.

And so I’d like to just bring that into the conversation because, yes, spontaneous presence is the way through to skillfulness, but not with an abdication of the karmic impact of our thoughts, words and deeds, which will always carry the karma.

Gateless Gate Koan 2 by John Spocks teaches us that no matter how freaking awake you are, if you negatively impact somebody, you will carry that karma.

It was right after the Mu Koan.

It’s a nice one-two punch.

Nice one-two punch.

So thanks for bringing that up, Michael, because it’s so critical, such a great point and how it developed and also a great thing for us to investigate as we step into a more engaged, conscientious form of spontaneity in our practice.

So with that, time has flown by.

That was a really…

Thank you so much.

I had a lot of fun.

Let’s do our closing check-in.

Let’s start with Matt, and then we’ll go to Robin, Michael, Greg, Brian and myself.

Matt, checking in.

I can feel the residual impression I’m walking away with here is that reading from 53, which I hadn’t gotten to, which really kind of clarified the seventh consciousness in a way I hadn’t really seen before.

So thank you for that reading, Umi.

And yeah, I’m in for the long haul with Lanka, so we can do this as long as everyone else wants to.

So yeah, it’s so cool to reflect and to be like, there are some other people who are interested in going through this text, you know, because usually, like, individually, it can feel like a very solitary endeavor, which is a good thing, you know, but it’s also, it’s good to go through this as a community.

So thank you for setting this up, Umi, and I guess, Robin, thank you for suggesting we go through this longer.

Robin, checking in.

Well, I had no idea what I was getting into when I made this suggestion, but very glad that I did.

Yeah, just really sensing the need for me to get back to the cushion tonight and realize this, not just learn about it.

I’m in.

Wow.

Yeah, great gratitude for, yeah, just bringing, coming together and working on this wisdom together.

This is, this is perfuming in a good way, in my view.

And yeah, thanks, Robin, for getting us into this.

He didn’t say sarcastically, but no, that’s a good suggestion.

It’s very interesting.

So, till next time.

Wow.

Oh, Greg checking in.

I got nothing except I’m in.

I’m in.

Oh, Brian checking in.

I’ll just start with a joke we need to do a yearly song t-shirt.

Yeah, we should do just to, you know, that should be this year’s it’s just thanks Robin.

You know, but I love the discussion of coming in and having 7 million questions when I leave, but also two or three little bits of insight to cheat in it.

So it’s very, very, very gratifying to be able to hear everyone else’s insight, which then triggers more questions and more kernels of insight.

So I’m very, I’m always very, very grateful to be here and to share the time and space with everyone.

Yeah, as always.

Yeah, as always.

Let me check in with eternal gratitude for everybody and this work.

And two things to just keep in mind, we’ll check in about it next time more in depth.

June 29 could be potentially a Zazenkai if you wanted to have a Sunday extended practice period with sits and ritual and things like that.

Please consider that and let me know if you want to do that.

So I set up the appropriate schedule.

Also, I’m currently talking to Jikoji and near Santa Cruz, California for setting up a session.

Probably, we’re going to ask about November dates.

So if you have an interest in coming to session with me.

I would love, love, love to see you there.

But I do recognize that, you know, so please give me feedback.

If that’s too soon, you would come.

If it was in March, please give me feedback before I lock things in.

But yeah, so I wanted to just put those two in your ear.

And that’s me.

And I’m in.

Have a beautiful rest of your evening.

See you guys.

Bye