Can I Create a Sentient Bean?

There is a Tibetan Monk who appeared for some reason in my FaceBook feed, Geshe Jamyang Tashi, and I friended him. Most of his posts I find inaccessible. Or, more truthfully, I often feel derisive towards them. But, for some reason, a post of his I read  today on loving kindness hit home. Here it is. I preface by saying I don't like all of this. I am particularly sensitive to people who write as "we." Often they mean "you" but are too passive agressive to say it that way. I suppose I could launch into a long discorse on why.... but I should just stay on the track I started. Here is the post... 

"Identifying the nature of loving kindness, compassion and bodhichitta 

When practicing meditation on equanimity we should remain impartial towards all sentient beings by eliminating attachment and aversion. 

Once we have generated equanimity toward all sentient beings in our mind, we should meditate on loving kindness.

1}The mind of loving kindness has nature of wishing all sentient beings to have happiness and the cases of happiness.

Once that attitude has been developed, we meditate on compassion for all sentient beings, understanding that the beings of the three realms of existence are intensely tortured by the three types of sufferings.

2}The compassionate mind has the nature of wishing all suffering beings to be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

Once this attitude has been developed, we meditating on the awakening mind of Bodhichitta.

3}Bodhichitta is the cultivation of the initial thought that aspires to attain unsurpassable and perfect enlightenment in order to benefit all sentient beings.

If one investigate to find the supreme method for accomplishing the aims of oneself and others, it comes down to Bodhichitta alone. Generate such certainty and develop such a mind with joy.   

Geshe Jamyang Tashi"

What caught my mind the most was the statement near the top "When practicing meditation on equanimity we should remain impartial towards all sentient beings by eliminating attachment and aversion. Once we have generated equanimity toward all sentient beings in our mind, we should meditate on loving kindness."

I started pondering the age old question, "What is a sentient being?" What I always stick on, are items which for me are inanimate. I've seen people assert on soto zen forums that even rocks and trees are sentient. I usually can't get there (as a mental place to be). But then I started considering that the animacy in these situations are a projection of the person so finding them. In otherwords a rock become annimate when I find it to be annimate. My thinking makes it so.

Those thoughts slipped a bit more to aversion and attachment. I wonder if it is aversion or attachment from or to something that preceedes the decision of its annimacy. For example, I usually feel quite neutral about grass. I enjoy grass. It's often quite pleseant to look at and walk on, but I wouldn't quite characterize that feeling as attachment. 

Now, what about people for whom grass is the most important thing? Perhaps a grounds keeper at a world heritage archeological site who has to both keep the grass trim and beautiful for the curb appeal of the location, but also needs to watch the grass to keep it from encroaching distructively into the stones and walls, etc. Such a person might develop an aversion, or an attachment to grass and in lock step, they might begin to personify the grass.  The grass become a sentient being that is either acting for the grounds keeper's benefit (attachment), or is in a battle against them (aversion).

To me this seems plausible, and such a person is basically 'projecting' thier feelings into the grass. I could argue with this person that the grass is not plotting against them (if the person has aversion to the grass), nor does the grass care for an love them (if the person had attachment to the grass). I could point out that the grass has no brain, no observable nervous system, it has not been proven to react in any way in any laboratory setting that would suggest it has any awareness of a person such as a grounds-keeper at all: - but it's likely such a person would pay me no mind at all. All that cold scientific fact would fall on deaf ears.

A person who is attached or averse has certain knowledge that the object is what it is, and, in a sense, animates that object. They project the object's sentiences, after a fashion.  

So, the point of this blog is that I am wondering how that plays out in human interactions. Often when I see one person attached or averse to another they often project all sorts of feelings and motivations to the other with absolutely know real verification if they are correct. Phrases like "they are maniuplating me", or "she does it all for me" come out, without any interview of the object person in question that cooborates the data. 

And this brings me to the fancy that our feelings of aversion and attachment bring sentience even to people. 

But I guess here is very the fancy fails and the answer becomes clear... I think people are sentient regardless of whether I am averse or attached to them. 

Oh well ------- 

Peek-a-boo, I see You - The Flame of a Candle.

Probably the greatest mystery facing human kind is "where am I".  Of course we can find the locus of our 'selves' rather easily. For most people, they understand it to be their body. I am quite certain for all people, it *is* thier body, but their are likely some who have a different experience.

But where do you understand "you "to be *in* your body? This is the great mystery which has given rise to, well, nearly every religious and physcological belief system.

It seems clear to me that this event I experience as myself is an elecrochemical event. Something about how neurons and neurotransmitters and other chemistries in my body, and in the untold other organisms that inhabit my body, and a certain extent the events going on in the physical world outside my body, give rise to me.... to my "I". All of these things that give rise to "me" are , as our theories go, physical, concrete things.

In saying this I include energies as a "physical concrete thing". What I mean is, for example, current theories on light have light acting as both a wave and a particle. It is exactly neither and both. There is an electromagnetic field and "perterbations" in that field are experienced as light. The same is true for mass (I'm pretty sure about this, although, honestly I can't walk down the explanation road as well as I can for light). Mass is some sort of interaction in the boson field. Protons and Neutrons are understood to be the interaction of a certain type of three quarks each, and how quarks interact is based on energies, or waves, also in certan fields.

So while we (i.e., the respected, peer reviewed, scientific community working on such thing, of which, I am not a member, but just an observer) understand all phenomina can be explained by particle/field theory - or concrete object/energy theory - noneone I've experienced has used that to explain my sense of "I", or anything I experience.
An external observer can find my neurons, and analyze the soup they are sitting in, and mess with them so that my sense of self is messed with. They can induce me into unconsiousness, they can make me see more blue (e.g., colored glasses). They can blind my eye input and defen my ear input, but they cannot stick a probe into my "I". They cannot point to me amongs all this goo that gives rise to me.

In that sense, and with an analogy that fails on any close examination, I am a spark in my brain, or I am a flame on a candle, but in truth no-one can see the spark of flame glowing in the bed of my neurons, should they happen to open my brain.

So this "I" is a complete mystery.

Every sentient being has it. In fact that is how I would define a sentient being - as a functional biological thingy that has an apparent sense of I (though I am not at all certain what the test could be for this, and whether there are organisms that have it but can't express it). I think sentient beings must needs be complex - that is to say what we percieve as independently function organisms with complex nervous systems. Casually, I would say plants are not sentient, but I am less certain about bugs and such.

Where is this I? It burns in, from, by body, but where can the flame be seen. Where does the spark exist? Maybe I is the the collected and constrained perturbations in all the fields of the mater that makes up my body. Maybe I exist in unique field that is only perturbed when other fields are arranged just so.

Yes, sounds like crazy talk, but lets back up again to the electron, for example. Most 'lay' people concieve of the electron as a thingy. A tiny tiny particle with a charge (what ever a charge is, don't ask them). But detailed analysis reveals that electrons are neither little particles nor 'waves of energy' but rather some sort of disturbance in what is call the electro-magnetic field. Oft repeated experiments can show electrons behaving as particles, and electrons behaving as waves of energy, and no-one yet has developed an robust explanation of why. Or rather, how the two characteristics of "particle" and "wave" can be explained by a theory of what the single electron thingy is.

It is from an interaction of electrons and protons and neutrons - all wierd thingies in their own right, that I am built. They are the candle and wick. They are the electrodes. I am the flame. I am the spark. But nobody can find me.

So, how is this related to buddhism? Well I think that Buddhism, more than any other school of though, has been devoted to understanding what this spark is. How is it dependent on physical realities. What makes it burn 'content' or 'suffering'. A huge portion of Buddhism is devoted to more derivative content such as psychology, but a fair portion focuses on what is the fundamental reality of I.

And from among the many Buddhist sects, I think Soto tries to demonstrate the flame. That, for me, is the beauty of Shikantaza (roughly "just sitting"). It is in this just sitting, very still, for a fair period of time, we can experience the flame of I, the spark of I. We can see I flickering and dancing in the candle of the body.

Many things can perturb the flame of I, cause it to flicker and sputter, but zazen, and studying the implications of the eight fold path can help us attain and maintain, help us realize, a more stable flame. A flame not blown by .... well the analogy does break down for me. I don't want to force it too much because I don't exactly think 'I' is a flame. But it is like a flame, burning in a place that no one can directly see. Burning in the wax of the body.

Peek a boo.... I think I see you.

Ramblings on a Goo-blob and the Right Dharma 'I'

In an interview I heard, W.Thomas Boyce M.D. (author of a very interesting book about the difference among sensitive and robust children called "The Orchid and the Dandelion") said something to the effect of "every child is born into a different family".  Meaning that because of the impact of no or previous children on the dynamics of a family, or perhaps just natural change that goes on in a family over time, that family is substantially different by the time the next kid shows up.

This got me thinking about people in general.

But first, a diversion into biology.

Open and close your eyes. With that event the picture you 'see' probably goes from full-of-content to black (or there abouts.... in fact really observe, and you will notice there is still content). This effect tends to give us the notion that the image that is falling on the retina of the eye is what we 'see'. Many people know that this is objectively not true, but few know it intuitively.

There are many demonstrations that show it is objectively not true. For example, if I highlight the nose portion one sees with one eye closed, and how it tends to 'disappear' with both eyes open. Or the fact that each eye has a blind spot on the retina, and yet only the very skilled (I'm guessing) can ever skrintch their minds up just so to see it. Or various optical illusions where the colors or motions we see change as the surrounding context changes. All of these show that what falls on the retina does not make it to perception unmolested.

But optical tricks do not quite invade our intuition. I think most people, if forced to describe it, would come up with the 'projector model' of vision. That somehow what falls on the retina is carried by the optic nerve into the brain where it shows up on a screen (sure with a little post processing to account for optical illusions and no-nose and the like) and a little person views that screen and that is what vision is.

The interesting news is that there is no little person. The interesting news is that the image we see with eyes open (or closed) is just chemical stuff happening in the locus of our brain in the neurons, somehow associated with our consciousness.  We are the little person watching, but of course, there is no little person. It is the activity of a blob of soggy neurons. The function of the eyes certainly contributes a large amount to what we imagine (and 'imagine' really is the best word for the process, because, in fact, we don't 'see' but we 'imagine an image' or we 'imagine a sound' etc...) we see, but we do not image only what the eye contributes. Other structures in our brain are part of the overall goo matrix and they also contribute to what we imagine we see.

I am, my consciousness is, the imagining of a goo blob. It has no physical reality other than electro-chemical signals being exchanged among neurons. I do not experience anything directly through my sense organs. I experience the impact of those organs on the imagination processes in my goo blob. These processes are very complex and many things influence them and can set them off kilter.

Drugs, illness, biological (structural) variations all impact how my goo blob works and, thereby, the reality I experience.

Brad Warner has quoted Gudo Nishijima as saying 'There is one reality, but we all experience it differently.' This, I believe, is a fundamental truth that is very difficult to internalize intuitively.

By 'intuitively' I mean the way we react to things prior to any analysis of "what's going on".

I often think that two healthy people in the same location must be getting the same data about any event, and so should reasonably come to the same conclusions about that event. I am now coming to realize how false that assumption could be.

The influence of our sensory systems on the image we have in our consciousness of what's going on is strongly influenced by our senses, but they do not have absolute rule.  Things like disease, biological difference, past trauma etc... all have real lasting physical impact on our goo blobs such that no two people can actually experience the same thing the same way.

Let me re-iterate this thesis, because I think it is rather surprising... it is physically impossible for two different people's consciousness to necessarily experience the same external events the same way, much less the same internal events such as pondering a particular thought (e.g. lines from a sutra).

Granted we can often be close to one another in our experiences. There are similarities in how we perceive things that have been brought on in our goo-blobs by natural selection. We tend to align more on older, more basic to survival events that have commonly impacted how our goo-blobs are structured. It is very rare to see someone genuinely enjoy an arrow through the gut, unless their goo blob is extremely altered in its functioning by unusual chemicals.

So how we function is certainly open to the 'we' commonality -- there is no real being who is not experiencing their life by means of electro-chemical events in their goo-blob. Therefore, yes, we all experience life by means of goo-blobs and the general rules of how gloo-blobs function apply to all of us.

But notions of a specific experience are much harder to put in the 'we' bucket, particularly when we get into the realm of ideas, and out of the realm of direct external experience. Everyone's specific goo-blobs are structured differently, and by 'structure' I mean BOTH the physical interconnection of neurons AND the soup in which neurons sit and operate that mediates the signal jumping from one neuron to the next. This is a constantly active and changing biological system. There is no stasis.

'We all mourn the passing of XYZ' is an absolute predictive falsehood (of course one could consider a limited group of people who were all interviewed and reported mourning, but as a predictive face it is entirely false). 'We all get tired if we don't have enough rest' is probably closer to true.

The main purpose of this ramble is to get to the point of 'I'.

There is a silly notion proposed by some Buddhists that 'I' is a terrible way to think.... and that one should always think in terms of 'we', and there are some who proudly use 'we' for all manner of observations they have never tested on the population they are speaking to such as 'in Soto Zen we believe.... XYZ'.

Many in Buddhism identify 'I' talk as a sort of delusion; an 'egocentric' view of the world; bad.

My view is these notions of ego=bad are based on poor translations of the 'original' concerns wherever they might be buried in sutra's etc... mixed with old Western clinical notions of ego (which hold little sway among modern psychologists), mixed with ill informed popular notions of ego, mixed with the fact that even our Buddhists elders can have gotten something wrong as they tried to figure out the world. Certainly much information about evolution and neuro-biology was not available to them.

Thus, to extend the wisdom of Dr. Thomas Boyce, no two people are born into the same world. It is a fundamental truth that each person can only experience the world in their unique way. 'I' is the most honest and true expression of what you know. Stick to it. We can work it out.

Duck, Duck, Soup - The Role of Altering Brain Chemistry in Achieving the Profound Goal of Supreme Enlightenment

It ain't there.

If this be error and upon me proved.
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

1. The brain is a complex tangle of nuerons (Ikkyu's garden of weeds, no doubt) sitting in a soup. 
2. Yes, you can alter the soup so the nuerons function differently. 
3. The different functioning can feel like something. It can affect emotions so that it feels quite profound and special. 
4. The spectrum of soup recipies across humanity is the result of evolution.
5. Do not consider the romanticized, anthropomorphicized version of Darwins "survival of the fittest", think of the more pragmatic reality... "what can exist, will. What cannot, will not". 
6. The way society is structured now allows all sorts of soup recipes to be effective that would not have been many years ago. 
7. A "drunk" can be protected by society for a long time. 
8. A "drunk" when drunk probably could not survive a wolf attack. A sober person might. 
9. Thinking of the basic things you might like to be capable of in any moment - fucking with your natural soup recipe in ways that takes you away from being fit for them. Best not do it. That is what underlies the intoxication precept. 
10. The soup affects how you feel. 
11. Feelings are different from consideration (wisdom?). 
12. Taking action because of feelings can cause trouble directly to you or comming back atchya later on.
13. You might have experience differentiating the feelings you normally experience and managing the actions you are motivated to take with your consideration. In most people it takes a long time to even appreciate the difference between feeling driven actions and consideration. 
14. If you fuck with your soup too much you might have feelings that drive you to actions and have no experience to moderate those urges. That way there be beasties. 
15. There is one single reality as it is. It is out there. It is rather boring though quite majestic in its incomprehensibility. 
16. Our bodies are not able to apprehend reality as it is. There's all kinds of stuff going on that we can't sense, or can't sense with complete resolution to see how all be bits work. 
17. We are indeed fish looking out of a fish bowl. Frogs in a well. 
18. Altering your soup can only mess with the perception's appearance in your consciousness. It does not open any magic doors. You can dick with the horizontal, you can dick with vertical, but the picture you get is still limited by your flyback transformer.  
19. You remain separated from complete full spectrum, exact detail experience of reality as it is. Even language separates you as it puts borders on things that have no borders. 
20.  As a side note, "the mind waves" was the third truth not a correction of the first two. 
21. You are on no journey to anywhere that can be actually facilitated by messing with your soup. 
22. You are just here. A bowl of soup sitting in reality as it is, trying to make sense of reality as it is. 
23. It's like it's night and you have a cluttered porch sitting in darkness. "enlightenment" is turning on the porch light. You can see the clutter more clearly, but that's all you get. A better, perhaps longer lasting, view of reality as it is.
24. Best not mess with your soup too much. Learn to discern how your feeling and your consideration work with the soup you normally have (and its inevitable variations in the course of a day, based on all kinds of influencers from diet to biom to sleep, etc....).  
25.   

A Silly Song of Fundamental Zen Concepts

The other morning I saw this posted on a Zen FB group "Please don't post silly memes on this page - it may not seem so to you, but it is somewhat demeaning to the question or issue that someone is posting. The ZD Page is about dialogue or discussion - there are times you may just want to not respond rather than respond with silliness. I would define silliness as different from humor, btw, which is a hallmark of Zen. You probably know the difference."

My immediate reaction was to recall a lovely silly thing from my daughter's childhood, and post it in reply.

As I drove into work I realized what a surprising piece of Zen that lovely thing was.

Later in the day I saw that my post was deleted, by the ZD admin(s), I can only assume.

The lovely thing came to me many years ago from some direction in our social circle in Texas, when someone had gifted my young daughter a VHS cassette of "Veggie Tales" -- a sweet and simple exegesis of Christianity in the form of the mad-cap capers of cartoon vegetables. One of the hosts was Larry the Cucumber, a lovable Gilligan of sorts, who interrupts the story line in many episodes for a moment of "Silly Songs with Larry".

The lovely thing I had recalled was "The Water Buffalo Song".

Here are the lyrics, and the surrounding script for your appreciation. Note the interruption by the much more conservative stalk of asparagus, Archie, who shares a distemper for silliness with the Zen group administrator.

---

NARRATOR:
And now it's time for Silly Songs with Larry. The part of the show where Larry comes out and sings a silly song. So without further ado... Silly Songs with Larry

LARRY:
The Water Buffalo song
[singing]

Everybody's got a water buffalo
Yours is fast but mine is slow
Oh, where do you get them I don't know
But everyone's got a water buffaloooooo [sustained howl]

I took my buffalo to the store
Got his head stuck in the door
Spilled some lima beans on the floor
Oh everybody's got a...

ARCHIE: [interupting]
Stop it! Stop! Stop right this instant!  What do you think you are doing?
You can't say everybody's got a water buffalo when everyone does not have a water buffalo!
We're going to get nasty letters saying "where's my water buffalo? Why don't i have a water buffalo?"
And are you prepared to deal with that? I don't think so!
Just stop being so silly!

NARRATOR:
This has been Silly Songs with Larry. Tune in next week when Larry sings...

LARRY:
[singing]
Everybody's got a baby kangaroo
Your's is pink but mine is blue.
Hers was small but...

ARCHIE: [running Larry off the stage]
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.........

---

Here is a link to the performance, but it might be removed for various copyright reasons, so I am also including an image of the first page of the sheet music (which itself might get snagged), cause it's important for you to fully realize the majesty of the song....

Anyway.... In pondering the song, I appreciated many Buddhist connections, none of which were intended.

1. Larry is a cucumber --- David Chadwick wrote a well known biography of Shunryu Suzuki-roshi called "Crooked Cucumber". From the introduction: From the Introduction: "From the time he was a new monk at age 13, Suzuki's master, Gyokujun So-on Suzuki, called him Crooked Cucumber. Crooked cucumbers were useless; farmers would compost them; children would use them for batting practice. So-on told Suzuki he felt sorry for him, because he would never have any good disciples. For a long time it looked as though So-on was right. Then Crooked Cucumber fulfilled a lifelong dream. He came to America, where he had many students and died in the full bloom of what he had come to do. His 12 1/2 years here profoundly changed his life and the lives of many others." .... So we can imagine Larry as a proxy for Suzuki-roshi. Worth paying attention to!
2. A water buffalo is a kind of ox --- The 10 Ox Herding pictures are a famous representation of ones travels toward realization.  
3. We each travel at our own speed --- The lyrics declare "Everybody's got a water buffalo, yours is fast but mine is slow". This is clearly a message of the fact that we are all on a journey of discovery, but each of us must move at our own pace. We each must take responsibility for our own direction and learning. 
4. "Only don't know!" --- This is a famous answer of the Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn to question of life, the universe, and, well, everything, and Larry uses it too when considering the fundamental question we all have of how did we get placed on this journey, what is the meaning of all of this, as represented in the water buffalo. His reply; "Where do you get them, I don't know" - Only don't know. 
5. The universal truth --- These are tough questions for Zen masters and for Larry, but it is a situation common to us all... "everyone's got a water buffalo!"
6. The gateless gate - as you probably know well, koans are those little Zen stories that help puzzle us into understanding. One of the great collections of koans is the forty-eight cases gathered in the Gateless Gate. The thirty-eighth case is a quite short somewhat awkward answer to a question that is not captured in the case. It is as follows: "To give an example, it is like a buffalo passing through a window. Its head, horns and four legs have all passed through. Why is it that its tail cannot?”. Another famous koan has a novice monk asking Master Tozan, “What is Buddha?” to which Tozan replies, “Three pounds of flax.”. In the silly song we see Larry skillfully combine these into the buffalo stuck in the door and spilling the lima beans on the floor (my guess is three pounds worth). Where is Buddha in this? What comes next when the head is stuck in this trap!? Just spill them to find the freedom!

Why the ZD admin(s) deleted reference to this vehicle of fundamental Buddhist principles is beyond understanding.... at least, clearly, theirs.

I'll finish with further defense that silliness has not just an important role, but a fundamental role in Zen. The silly puzzles the mind away from normal modes of tired, formal and normal thinking and opens it to new essential non-sequitur of reality as it is. 

1. The first transmission occurred when the Buddha silently picked up a flower and twirled it. Among hundreds of serious arhats gathered, only Mahakasyapa apprehended this special transmission outside of the scriptures. Please do not try to convince me that the Buddha twirling a flower silently in that audience was anything but a silly thing to do!
2. In another Koan Master Joshu famously put his slippers on his head and walked out...
3. Kodo Sawaki warns "We cannot exchange even a fart with another, can we?..."

Silly is fundamental to Zen. 

Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps

https://youtu.be/GUVT1NZtZPo

"Whether art it was or heedless hap ."

An early meaning of hap is just what occurs without particular planning or obvious agency. So a happy person could be one who gets along with what comes along, not necessarily a  delusional person. In this sense, the eightfold path could lead easily to better happiness, and I could live easily, per-haps.

Transcription of Peter Rocca Chatting with Gudo Nishijima-roshi about Buddhism, Realism, Intuition, and Precepts

Audio file from http://www.zen.ie/audio.html

Above is a snap of Peter's blog where I got the sound file. It is an image, so the link does not work. 

Transcribed by Lauren Crane around July 2018.

Regarding the transcription:

• ·       In the following SNS = sympathetic nervous system. PNS = parasympathetic nervous system. ANS = autonomic nervous system. ANSs = autonomic nervous systems [which are the SNS and PNS]… all are spoken out by Nishijima-roshi, I have abbreviated them for convenience.
• ·       I have attempted to capture some of the flavor of the natural flow of this conversation with various “ahs” “unns” and the like. Not all have been captured.
• ·       Nishijima-roshi often started speaking with “so da…” which, with my limited exposure to Japanese over many years, I take as a casual thought starter which might more formally be “so desu…”. I do not think it has literal meaning other than a gentle confirmation of what was said, or affirmation of what will be said.
• ·       I’ve installed some time stamps in brackets throughout so you can locate snips in the tape (sorry... my age is showing. I mean, of course, the sound file).  
• ·       I’ve also installed some comments in brackets where I had trouble clearly understanding what was being said, or to note vocal effects such as chuckles.
• ·       Comments in braces {} are my impression of the meaning of what is happening on the tape that is not present as words.

Peter and Nishijima-roshi are discussing a story from chapter 20 in the first volume of the  Nishijima-Cross translation of Shobogenzo titled "Kokyō - The Eternal Mirror". In particular this story...

"Great Master Seppō Shinkaku on one occasion preaches to the

assembly, “If you want to understand this matter, my concrete state is like

one face of the eternal mirror. [When] a foreigner comes, a foreigner appears.

[When] a Chinese person comes, a Chinese person appears.”

(the PDF files have been available here)

==== Transcription

G: Okay?

P: Ya 

G: umm.

The story suggests the difference between European civilization and Indian civilization.

And in European civilization the two fundamental philosophies - idealism and materialism - are the ehhh main um symbols, but in the Indian philosophy, Guatama Buddha insists reality exists only, and therefore, Buddhism insists that even though in European civilization people revered two philosophies - idealism and materialism; but in Indian Buddhism they think that transcending two philosophies – idealism and materialism; and should establish only one realism, is Buddha’s saying.

So in such situation, the Shobogenzo Chinese master utilizes the symbol of two mirrors. And when two mirrors have met, two mirrors vanish, and reality exists in front of them, that is the meaning of the story. [2:16]

P: So the mirrors are symbols of ideas, of concepts.

G: ahhhh… yes ...  so da … such mirror is the human intuition.

P: Right. When the two mirrors meet… human intuition vanishes?

G: unh…so da…. vanish… and reality manifests itself.

P: ….

G: So manifesting reality, is the ultimate phase of Buddhist philosophy [2:52]

P: ohhh

G: Therefore, to explain such situation, Chinese Buddhism utilized  two piece of mirrors. [3:10]

P: um um …I see…so at the beginning of the story the master Seppou Shinkaku says uh, if you want to understand the matter … my concrete state is like one face of the eternal mirror. When a foreigner comes, a foreigner appears. When a Chinese person comes, a Chinese person appears.

What does that mean – “when a Foreigner comes a Foreigner appears”?

G: mmm so da…it is the story which symbolizes some kind of philosophical relations so da ….. Chinese master utilizes mirror as the symbol of human intuition and uh…. Two masters have met…. Two masters idea vanishes and only one reality is maintained….

P: So when they meet face to face, they are in reality, that’s the real…..

G: So this is the process of explanation [?]…. So the real situation such kind of intuition vanishes and there is just reality itself. [4:46]

P: This intuition, is it something that we that we can kind of unders … is it something we can understand ourselves and think about … or does it just happen… is it a very natural…

G: So intuition is different from thinking, so da …we should explain such problem on the basis of ANS, and when SNS is stronger, we are skillful to think. Therefore, in that case, we are skillful to consider philosophical problems on the basis of idealism, but when PNS is stronger the people usually be sensitive. In that case, people think philosophical problems on the basis of material world. [5:55]

So da…. we have tendency that when our SNS is stronger we are prone to be spiritual, and if our PNS is stronger, we are prone to be materialistic. So those two states are different from Buddhist situation. In the Buddhist situation, SNS and PNS have the equal strength. In that case, plus minus zero, then we can notice the existence of reality. [6:54]

So European philosophies and Buddhist philosophies should think about utilizing such [unclear – something like “uh… simile”].  So in Euorpean civilization, there is body and mind, but in Indian philosophy, our ANSs are balanced…. so such is described “plus minus zero”, then we can grasp reality directly. [7:41]

So practicing zazen is making our ANS balanced, and then, we can grasp reality directly. So not consideration, not perception, but just sitting, keeping the posture regularly, then we can experience reality itself, directly. That is the practice of zazen. And therefore, practice of zazen is the central importance in Buddhist philosophy.  [8:26]  

P: And what is the relationship, then, between intuition and this balanced state?

G: Ah…so da… when ANS balanced, function of autonomic…[correcting himself] function of SNS and function of PNS become equal, so such situation is like plus minus zero, and such situation of plus minus zero is just the basis of reality. [9:15]

Therefore by practicing zazen, we can utilize practice of zazen, we can live in the reality. The reality is situation of plus minus zero. [9:36]

P: I see. So this situation of plus minus zero, is the same as the situation of reality, of the universe.

G: Yes, yes, that’s it.

P: So we’re in plus minus zero and reality is plus minus zero.

G: Yes, yes. [9:53]

P: And then where does intuition come from? Is that, is that, part of reality [???] does that come from inside each person?

G: Ah, so da…. reality comes {“from” seems implied by not said} the equality between strength of SNS and strength of PNS. [10:14]

P: That’s .. intuition comes….

G: Yes,

P: They’re, they’re…

G: Yes. So intuition is beyond consideration.

P: Right

G: Beyond sense perception.

P: aha

G: ummm

P: And is it an individual thing? Do individuals kind of generate their own intuition, or is it a kind of a universal… ?

G: Ah..so… therefore in European philosophy, we do not revere intuition, and sometimes we think that intuition is very dangerous. Therefore, before deciding something, we should be more considerable, but Buddhism insists different theory, and true decision comes from our intuition, not from consideration, not from sense perception. [11:25]

When our ANSs are balanced, then we can grasp the truth directly, intuitively. That is the theory of Buddhism. Therefore, Buddhism revere the balanced state, and when our ANSs are balanced, we can reflect the truth intuitively. [11:53]

P: …and we reflect the truth intuitively… the truth exists in reality.

G: Yes.

P: I see.

G: so da…. the universe is truth itself. [12:07]

P: Ah ha…

G: So if we … make identify {perhaps he intended “identical”} our mental wave with the universal wave, we can listen to the universal voice [light chuckle] {my impression is he is amused by this analogy with radio signals}  [12:24]

P: ah ha… great…great… When we do that, can we listen to it kind of consciously? Can we do it in our men[tal]… do we get a mental … can we actually recognize it?

G: Ahhh yes… therefore, sitting spine straight vertically, we are having balanced state of ANS then the wave from the universe come into our body and mind.

P: ah… and where does the wave from the universe… where does that originate.

G: It is fact. [13:02]

P: uh huh… it exists.

G: Universe has such function.

P: I see. Is this… is intuition… prajna… the word prajna… is that separate to the word dharma? You know we talk about the universal law and universal rule. Is…

G: Therefore balanced ANS is the wave of the universe. Therefore when human beings make their ANS balanced, then they can listen to the broadcasting from the universe. [13:52]

P: right.. and the broadcasting from the universe is truth, it’s reality.

G: Yes, yes.

P: well that’s very good, thank you.

G: So the Buddhist philosophy is not belief but philosophical fact. Therefore, I think all human beings should study Buddhist philosophy. Buddhism can never be [unclear] but philosophy itself. [14:25].

Because in the case of Buddhism, that is nothing to believe in. The Buddhist theory is fact itself. Therefore, we should not believe in anything. We should find the existence of Buddhism itself. [14:55]

P: We believe in reality.

G: Yes.

P: …like that…

G: Yes.

P: It’s not that… we don’t believe in a particular idea, we believe in….

G: ah…We do not need to believe any idea [15:12]

P: uh huh…

G: umm

P: I’m sorry.. one last question.. how do the precepts relate to, you know, our intuition?

G: ah..so da…. when I want to explain such situation, I usually use very wide pasture. And in the pasture, ox and horse are playing very pleasantly. But if they over the fences, the outside is very dangerous. Therefore, without getting out from the fence, is very important condition to make ox and horses safe. [16:15]

P: right..

G: umm… so precept is such kind of face… fence… therefore we should not get outside of the fence, that is the precepts.

P: I see…. Occasionally there are times when we have to act…sometimes we do something that goes against the words of the precepts.

G: Ah yes…. Therefore, in such case we should come back to the pasture hastily.

P: Hastily…

G: [chuckle] {of amused confirmation}

P:And usually the precepts and the truth in reality they should kind of be… they should … uh conform to each other… they should be…

G: uhh… Precepts is first step. And first having the precepts, but it is rather difficult to follow the precepts. So we make our effort and gradually we will get ability to follow the precepts.

P: I see…

G: So precepts is the first fess… fence…

P: yes…

G: umm. And breaking the precepts is common for human beings. Therefore, we should make our effort to follow the… play… inside the fences. Then we can have freedom, even though we are living on the earth. [18:08]