Talk:1977-0428-Zen-and-Common-Sense-KSU
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3 cassettes
Tape 1 (side 1 = 47 minutes; side 2 = 47 minutes)
Tape 2 (side 3 = 45 minutes; side 4 = 16 minutes)
Tape 3 “Zen and Common Sense Part 2” (side 5 = 32 minutes; side 6 = 31 minutes)
Notes
Note: the "white swan on a blue lake" statement is explained on the last side of 1981-Intensive-Farm. Tape dw1 at about min 40:30.
Side 1
47 minutes total
File 0
1 minute introduction (by whom?)
File 1
46 minutes.
Our approach to Zen is one of Common Sense. Sometimes the people who have been in the group or who have been acquainted with us for awhile – occasionally some of them will give up and say, “There’s an objective here that I don’t think I can reach.” And this may be true for a good many people. Etc.
Everyone is searching for the truth.
The steelworker wants to make better steel.
The systems fail to provide the proper answers.
Three questions in life …
Who are we, where did we come from, where are we going?
What is yesterday? Space-time. What is now? J.J. van der Leeuw.
Are we just a bag of protoplasm?
What is love? Is it the compassion for lesser? Then how could we love God?
What is the reality of people’s claims that they love Christ?
How would they really act toward him?
Why does love have to be digestible?
Do we have an essence? A soul?
Do we think, or are we forced to think? Is sleep the absence of thought?
What is consciousness? Does it survive death?
We’re looking for a button to press, in an automat, one says soda pop and the other says immortality.
Who is thinking about thinking? Who is the observer, the umpire?
What makes a dependable observer?
The psychological self-knowledge process is very similar to Zen.
Four directions given by Bodhidharma.
People become frightened when they approach Zen, or kevala samadhi.
Hologram.
Impression of a tremendous, unending universe. Dimensions we don’t see.
Nobody totally believes in fatalism.
The logical mind and the scientific process will not take you there.
I sensed that there had to be a direct method.
How do we find the intuition?
The whole process then is one of becoming.
[ends at middle of page 13 of transcription]
Side 2
47 minutes total
Side 2 has two parts, a main file (file 2 = 43 minutes) followed by a fragment (file 2A, the “apple” fragment = 4 minutes). The fragment is out of order. See description below.
File 2
43 minutes.
Starting middle of page 13 of PDF transcription. Everybody has intuition at the peak of their childhood. We are emotionally led out of our childhood. Forced to learn a language. Tower of Babel. If you keep attention on searching you will find a way of searching.
Here is where October 2008 transcript begins (page 1):
R. [in response to question about the origins of some religious system] I have never done a lot of research into how they really started. First of all, because we don’t have anything except what’s recorded, beyond the ability of man to have an alphabet, or to write. Etc.
Zen and psychoanalysis are pretty much the same.
psychological terms – some of them are very true. But their position is wrong. Like the word paranoia. Paranoia may be a silent intuition, something to protect you.
The finite mind cannot perceive the infinite. That’s the need for the change of being that I talk about. Because the relative mind cannot become; it cannot see or understand the Absolute. But the moment itself – you cannot predict that given certain confrontations, certain koans, and whatnot, given those for a consistent period of time, so many hours, days, weeks, years, will bring it about.
I think that the most real love is something you can’t help.
Q . Have you found fulfillment in your realization?
R. I don’t know. It depends on what you mean by fulfillment. I don’t have any great thrill with this picture show.
But this is my explanation, or my rationalization, if you wish to call it that, for living. But I know nothing better to do.
Our first changes are basically changes to accommodate the illusory social code. Our first psychological adjustments are made to adjust to the herd, the herd psychology.
The majority of our so-called thinking experiences are not ours.
Patterns of reactions, thinking patterns. But this is all forced upon us. We have no choice.
Until we have the desire and an accidental thought comes into our head, do we have individuality or the ability to think. That at some time this becomes an accident; we find a technique for stopping our thoughts.
The development of the intuition, the development of self-thinking, has to come about by stopping your head, stopping the incoming percepts.
I think the ego is implants - the result of implants. If the amoeba were not hungry it wouldn’t go out in search of food. Also implanted in the amoeba is curiosity. Our ego could also be curiosity.
The conflict that exists between these egos is the crack in the door by which we can seize our future destiny.
Now in meditation, if you want to clear up your whole life pattern, what’s lousing you up – it starts off with social incompatibility – you sit and think about things that happened in your past.
Here’s where side 2 ends – on page 10 of October 2008 transcript]
Now this is a very superficial type of self-analysis, [break in tape ] but pretty soon you get a completely different picture of yourself and this continues to change.
Fragment - File 2A, the “apple” fragment =
4 min 21 sec.
This is material in the “1974” version of Zen and Common Sense, middle of page 14 of pdf file (transcript) on Search Within.
.....which in turn means that words have positive intention, but often in a negative type of definition.
In other words, we can take the word "apple." What is an apple? Truth is a white swan.
The shortcut of course is to seize an apple and say, "This is an apple."
In the absolute sense the truth is a white swan, it is a lake, it is even an apple. It is also a black swan, or it is an ocean, or it is even a plum.
But if man and the swan are projections, and they appear to our minds as real, then before we could ever demand of ourselves the acceptance of man and swan as not-being, it is evident that such a truth could only be observed with any degree of conviction by another mind. Since our mind believes that we are substance.
Zen would then be a system of looking at man with another mind.
[Fragment ends at middle of page 15 of the PDF (“1974”) transcript.]
Side 3
45 minutes total
Side 3 has 4 fragments. The fragments are separated because they are at different volume levels on the tape and they had to be equalized.
Fragment - File 3A
11 minutes.
[This is continuation of fragment 2A (the “apple” fragment, see above) and there is no break (no missing words).]
If man is to look at himself objectively he has to first realize that he is not really scientific about himself, and he must take a first step and assume the position of scrutinizer, of impartial observer, and not listen to the self-definitions of the man under the microscope.
It would appear that we will get nowhere by continually questioning everything that appears to mankind as being a fact or factual object. I don't deny that to do only that - to evaluate and hesitate forever to take any stand, or to accept any premise because of the finite or fickle nature of man's mind – would cause a stalemate that would put a stop to any future investigation or prospecting.
Most of the writings on Zen do not get into psychology much. If self-psychological systems were taught in old Zen schools, it must have been done privately; perhaps the koans were goads to force each student to come to the same conclusion, but each in his own way.
While much of thinking is not truly objective, each of us must keep on thinking, because the problem is not solved by just admitting that our heads are messed-up with body-oriented ideas or desire-born concepts.
I personally depart from the limitations of what is called traditional Zen - from the limitations that inadequate literature about Zen impels upon us.
Zen is a mental system. And the field of the mind is its battlefield.
Man cannot approach the Truth. (That which I call "capital-T Truth". Small-t truth is just the evident, the everyday things that we accept, i.e., a lie that we recognize, or something in chemistry or science that we generally all agree upon to be true. Whereas capital-T Truth refers to the final state of things.)
Man cannot approach that which he does not yet know. It is like saying, "Let us go to the planet Theos," before knowing beforehand where it is.
There are two choices in this business of finding truth from garbage. One is milk from thorns, and the other is by means of the reverse vector.
[fragment ends at the bottom of page 18 of the pdf file]
Fragment - File 3B
5 minutes
[fragment begins at the top of page 19 of the pdf file]
...promises nothing for certain. Then there can be no other way except to retreat from the erroneous human methods of thinking, all the while closing only the doors that lead us into manifest absurdities. This is the technique of the reverse vector. However, by the use of yardsticks and by examining religions persistently with the idea of sorting and discarding the manifestly absurd, for those less absurd, we will arrive where there is less and less absurdity, and where with new courage we can evolve only in the direction of true choosing. For instance, some of the yardsticks are the motivations of the particular movement. To see - if it is motivated by money or power. I have without hesitation walked away from movements which charge enormous fees, or which are more interested in power than in helping someone look for the truth. Other yardsticks measure them for ritual, pageantry, and dogma. We must examine them to see if they are trying to compensate our weariness, by offering gimmicks and formulas that will enable our souls to develop while we sleep - or they might give us secret words that will supposedly overnight transform us from pumpkins into celestial potentates of some sort.
[fragment ends at middle of page 20 of pdf file]
Fragment - File 3C
xx minutes
[fragment begins at middle of page 20 of pdf file]
At this point a person might argue about the utilitarian values of Zen, or point out that Zen is largely a system with an unattainable goal, and that while we accuse other religions or systems of being time wasters, is seems evident that since the goal of Zen, meaning Enlightenment, is very difficult to attain, then a large percentage of dedicated Zen students waste their time, because of the mathematical percentages of failures.
I knew that the making of the search for truth as my tantamount goal might cost me. I might find death or insanity as the price of the searching. I had heard of people going insane over religion, and I had heard of people impairing their health with ascetic techniques.
I decided that despite these possibilities, life could only be endurable if I were making an attempt to find the reasons for life.
Most people identify their desired path, whether it is business or religion, as being the proper thing to do, and they look upon themselves as being wise deciders. And regardless of what any of their relatives are in, if it's different, they'll take a dim view of it.
We fail to take note that some of our most admired thinkers and spiritual leaders in the western world took a position that implied that they were only pawns in a game already determined as to the outcome. Both Einstein and Ouspensky had space-time concepts that had been accepted in other terminology by eastern philosophic minds. What Einstein was able to put down in mathematical form had already been stated by many Tibetan and Indian scholars.
A way of life becomes necessary. And I maintain that we do not have to join a monastery, but we either have to join forces with people equally interested in protecting themselves and each other, or we have to design a lifestyle [end of fragment 3C – page 25 of pdf file] or curriculum of our own, figuring in every possible factor. Which means figuring in hundreds of factors that a close-knit group would not have to worry about.
Fragment - File 3D
15 minutes
This fragment is out of order. It is not a continuation of 3C
Q&A session
RR : “[person isn’t motivated by a] quotation from Krishnamurti or quotation from Ouspensky or somebody else. Your desire is there. From suffering. Gives up desire. Then he gets interested in psychology. And if he’s not brainwashed from birth …” HGA (holy guardian angel).
Story about guy in the hospital sneaking cigarettes, couldn’t stop.
Q – Do you actually have to have your survival threatened.
RR – I don’t think there’s too much spiritual work without a lot of cowardly fear. [laughter] You can’t apply this philosophy to everyone. When I’m talking I’m implying there is balm in Gilead, but for some there’s no chance for consciousness.
But the fear of death is what begins to motivate you. Death is universal; the next step is how to escape. Curiosity is another path. At seventeen I thought I was immortal. One day they hauled me to the hospital and I was dying; I had a conviction to the contrary. Vision of total death. Came to the conviction that if there was any life after death it had to be generated. Generate the capacity for it. Destroy that which separates you. Your essence is indestructible but it’s evident we don’t remember who we were, if we lived before.
Your awareness is the finger of God, so to speak.
Imbeciles and mongoloid idiots are aware but they can’t do anything about it. They live in a world where they can’t make contact.
These intuitions may come to you but you have to get your data from the world; from books.
Your intuition has to be verbalized. To act on the hunch.
Different people have different categories of experience at death. Instinctive people have no recall.
Emotional people meet their relatives or Jesus.
I think a baby comes through a bardo before it gets here. There has to be a transition. It doesn’t come directly from an absolute experience. But their awareness is very clear. It’s still aware of its previous experience.
We lose our intuition as we grow older. Christ says become as a child. We get caught up is specialization, the child sees directly. Sensitive children can tell in a lineup who is the criminal just by looking at him.
Q – can you raise a child not to lose this?
RR – Yes, I think you can. Your greatest avenue with the child is your love; reasoning and arguing doesn’t do anything. Child may rebel but the mark of that love is always there; he will understand what you are, later. But programmed to leave home.
When a child is born it’s like an acid trip; beautiful colors, fantastic happenings, intense pleasures, even eating. This is to draw the child away. Pretty soon the baby becomes identified in hypnosis, dies to its birth-state.
So then enlightenment has to occur by going back through all this garbage, to become a child again.
Side 4
16 minutes total Tape = 16 min total
Gap in audio at minute 1 ½, poor audio for several minutes, Ok at min 4 ½.
Fragment - File 4A
1 min 20 sec.
If you go back with enough energy you can survive the death experience.
Fragment - File 4B
15 minutes
In cases of trauma, they don’t have the opportunity of going through step-by-step with the egos. But a transformation occurs. The mind knows it is dying.
[sound fades away, then comes back]
Do you think or do you think you think?
Q – Is the observer and the essence the same?
RR: Depends on what you’re talking about. The observer of the ego is like a ruminant in which the mind is watching its own mechanism so it doesn’t get destroyed by the egos. But I always capitalize the final Observer. The ultimate Observer and the Absolute are one. It’s not an observer in the sense that its observations are verbalizable.
Q – Is the umpire an ego also?
RR- pretty much. The umpire is the survival ego. It’s the strongest ego you have. You can encourage it. It will inhibit the other egos, the sex and food egos. It builds up a certain amount of strength with your help. Allow it to take control. Then above that, spiritual survival is another ego. Compare the earth to the size of the universe, and a human being is like a flea on the earth. So what is that compared with the universe. Why should it demand survival just because it’s a thought? Then we discover self-definition and find that if you define yourself you define the universe.
Minute 7 of this fragment:
RR - What time is it? [answer inaudible 10:30? – may be aid for piecing fragments together]
Q – on reincarnation?
RR – Because a person couldn’t tolerate it; some mechanism for shutting off a life of sorrow. If its memory were strong of the other side, and I think some infants are. Reference to babies who just die, no apparent cause. They have carried out experiments with monkeys; their babies who don’t have some degree of affection get sick. I have heard of children 5 or 6 years of age, being abused, they just die. Little children die very easily; without fear of death. Children have to be called back; back from the valley of death; same as you call back an old person who is about to die. Tells story of doctor being back from a heart attacked; cursed out hospital workers.
The idea of life being to gain knowledge, religions say it is like a school – what for? This is relative knowledge; you don’t carry that back with you; it’s the play of the mind; all of that stuff is gone. Kabalistic interpretation, God lost himself. In Genesis, Elohim created a playhouse for their pleasure, they let imagination create. Imagination plus the will plus the fiat. The consciousness was scattered. Indian philosophy, finding way back to the father.
Progress, awakening, specialization in education, concentration on different levels of consciousness. Paradox in finding the absolute.
Let’s wrap it up. [end of tape]
Tape ends at minute 17
Side 5
32 minutes total
Tape is labeled Zen and Common Sense “Part 2”
This side has 2 files.
File 5
27 minutes.
This material is part of the 2008 transcription (starts on page 11).
Because we are programmed, also, to be periodically in heat, or periodically depressed, and unless we observe this in meditation we will not be able to circumvent it and still continue on a given path.
You start to evaluate who is thinking, where do these thoughts come from, why are you forced to think in a given time a certain way?
And unless you realize this, you can’t find a spiritual success. Because we are programmed, also, to be periodically in heat, or periodically depressed, and unless we observe this in meditation we will not be able to circumvent it and still continue on a given path.
And eventually it goes into a point where you start to go back behind your thoughts, you go back behind the observer, you pick up what I call the ray of the absolute. You go back through your manifested mind, the dimension of the prop room from which all this stuff is projected. And once you start it’s almost inevitable.
Q – why “Zen”?
RR … there was a necessity for using or studying a language. And I ran into this Zen teacher who had a method of transmission. Not only language, but a method of transmitting this to someone else’s head. And I was kind of overjoyed to find that there was a method. And he called himself a Zen teacher.
So we called ourselves the Pyramid Zen Society here.
I think there’s another power behind it. I think that we’re in the company of other powers, or other intelligences, and we possibly get a bit of help from them.
First of all when you realize that as you are now, you never existed and you will never exist. This is a blow. This hits the ego.
There is Reality. This is what I call small “r” reality. There is a capital “R” Reality . There is a small “s” self. That’s your personality. And there’s the capital “S” Self which is the Absolute. The small “r” reality is here. Don’t hit the traffic cop, he’ll hit you back, you’ll feel it. You can’t violate it and say this doesn’t exist and try to walk off a cliff, you’ll be killed. There is small “r” reality. But in relation to capitol “R” Reality it’s only a projection.
Well, you can watch Clark Gable in the movies and you’ll weep with his dying and rejoice with his love-making and all this sort of thing, and really think that you’re in the presence of a real-life drama. Then when they shoot him at the end of the show and you see him alive in another show, you’ll realize that he’s not dead. It’s pretty much the same thing.
This is explained in the Tibetan Bardo, the Book of the Dead. A person who dies believing they’re going to meet their parents or their grandfather or their guru, will meet them. It will be a relative picture. They will be living in a mental projection, all he does is project another realm. End of lecture, applause.
Fragment = File 5A
4 min, 26 seconds.
Satori is nothing more than like an illumination from solving algebraic problems. Something that happens momentarily, and you say “wow” and go about your business. Enlightenment may put you in the hospital.
Side 6
31 minutes total
Tape is labeled Zen and Common Sense “Part 2”
Fragment = File 6A = 31 minutes.
We raise cows for their milk. If the cows saw us knock the calves in the head they might quit having calves.
I was talking about common sense. There is an excess of misleading terminology.
I don’t reject the entire systems. You have to look them over. But you should use yardsticks when you look at them. Anecdotes about Rosicrucians who spent 40 years in the movement with minimal results.
Yardsticks: no money; avoid dogma and ritual. O chicanery; and I don’t define that, you have to define that for yourself.
Common sense is different for different people.
