Quite a bit of mechanical waves coming in the window. The air is being compressed and released in many ways. If we close the windows, we might suffocate. So the topic of insight, tranquility and insight or common insight, I thought I might just mention also that from a certain perspective there are kind of different approaches or different gestures of how to relate to the world. And sometimes there is a kind of a tradition, not kind of a tradition, there is a tradition which can be called an enstatic, enstatic tradition of withdrawal from the world.

[01:20]

Withdrawal from from the world, from events, from sensation, from sensory experience, end static. And this kind of meditation, this kind of practice, goes with a view of, kind of a religious view, that salvation is accomplished through withdrawal from the world. That salvation is a transcendence of the world. That's in a well-established tradition. Actually, you might say represented by the Babylonian tradition of the divine or God being up on a hill. We withdraw from the world

[02:22]

can find salvation. Another tradition is the ecstatic tradition ecstatic approach or gesture towards the world which is not a withdrawal but a penetration and actually an intellectual penetration into phenomena actually a witness to see their true nature or the way they actually are existing. And that also has a kind of historical background in terms of a religious view of viewing the divine as immanent, as residing within. The Egyptian religion is like that.

[03:26]

The Egyptians saw the divine as in, like in people, in plants, in animals, in symbols. The Buddhist tradition is kind of, the Buddhist meditation tradition is kind of wonderful in the sense of bringing these two together. And they're brought together in some sense through the practice of meditation in the form of calm and insight. There are yogic traditions still which feel that by developing greater and greater and static trances, you can achieve salvation by completely cutting off the world finally. And there are even some traditions within Buddhism which put aside almost entirely the enstatic side and just go to the ecstatic side of just using insight as the mode to liberation from suffering, you know, meeting the true nature of events.

[04:48]

In this class, I'm presenting both sides and trying to harmonize them, but just to let you know that some traditions feel that you can achieve salvation just by the enstatic trance side, the withdrawal side. In some field you can do it just by the insight side. And even some Buddhist traditions or Buddhist texts strongly emphasize insight. Almost no Buddhist text will say that you can achieve liberation just through calm. Does, when it's established, does temporarily create a sense of liberation. It can temporarily eliminate or postpone or hold off affliction.

[05:59]

When the momentum of the calming exercise wanes, the afflictions can arise again. So in the Buddhist tradition usually is a preliminary withdrawal, a preliminary and static warm-up, and then even basis for the ecstatic intellectual penetration into the way things are. So the n-static is a disentanglement from the world, and the x-static is a disentanglement from misconceptions of the world, or desire for the world. Of course, aversion for the world, too. I'm giving a course for the learning annex.

[07:06]

And they asked me to write a blurb, but then I said, you know, if you don't like it, you can rewrite it. And I don't know if they would have written it even if I didn't offer that, but they did rewrite it. And they rewrote it into a spectacular glass. Maybe I'll read to you next time what it says is going to happen during that. It's a one glass. And it promises, you know, it doesn't say you're going to get a Cadillac during the class, but pretty much right afterwards. And actually I thought I would just go through the course description and critique it. Because the way it presents the course is very interesting and yet slightly differently than the way I see things, and I thought that might be interesting. One of the things it says, which, one of the things it says was, I think, something like, where happiness and suffering depend on our state of mind.

[08:22]

I think that was part of what it said in there. Which To some extent, I agree with. But the idea that our happiness or misery depend on our state of mind is actually of the which tradition? Which tradition is that of? Huh? Not easy to answer, huh? Huh? X? N, X, X, N, N. It's N-static. That N-static is the state of mind. If you get the right state of mind, you have salvation. It's more the N-static side. The X-static side would be more like that your happiness or unhappiness will depend on your response to your state of mind.

[09:23]

the ecstatic side, that how you relate to your state of mind would be what determines. Particularly speaking in Buddhist practice, there's some reason why this ecstatic, enstatic tradition has a life in this world. There's something to it. There's something to the idea that your happiness depends on, and your misery depends on, your state of mind. Which I think you know. State of mind means also the state of your body. Because your feelings are like the window of your mind into your body. So your body mind, the state of your body mind, is the same as the state of your mind. And if you have a good state of mind, I think you realize you often are quite happy. You have a certain kind of state of mind, you're often quite miserable. Make sense?

[10:26]

However, ultimately, it's really your response to your state of mind that's what is final liberation. Because there are certain states of mind we're going to get into, which are the same states of body we're going to get into. Unless we die in the next few seconds, most of us are going to run into some rough states of mind. get old and sick and really old and sick and really sick. Certain kinds of states, certain bodily states arise which give rise to certain mental states which are, if that's all you've got, it's going to be pretty hard to be happy. But you can respond to those states in such a way that is liberation, that is freedom. But again, practically speaking, there's something to this thing about, you know, your state of mind, state of body means something. So we give plenty of honor to that side of the story by developing some significant level of a good state of mind.

[11:39]

It's possible, eventually, to have a response to the most difficult body-mind state, which is liberation. But it's hard to start with those. It's easier to start with something fairly stable and to try to develop detachment based on calm. So we develop calm usually as a point of departure for developing this penetrating vision of what's going on. So, you know, Donald asked me, can we start getting into the insight? And I think we should start pretty soon. But I also promised last time to get a little bit more into certain hindrances that might develop or how to deal with certain... Well, they're hindrances or they're hindrances dash...

[12:47]

unwholesome states of mind that can arise for anybody, but particularly can arise to someone who is trying to meditate. So I'd like to do a little bit more on the stabilization type of practice before moving into the insight. And let's say you're doing a practice of focusing, training your attention onto the breath, and you have the further instruction to present with the breath, not attach to it. Present with the breath without getting involved with it. Be present with the breath with no conceptual elaboration of this concept of the breath which you're looking at.

[13:54]

In other words, you just train your attention under the breath that is given to you in a moment. way of working with the breath is actually apropos and consonant with developing both insight and calm. To be present and experience like the breath and detached both calms and is the door to insight. Still, we can emphasize to some extent the calming side of it for now. And then I can say that if you slip in this type of effort, if when something arises, you elaborate on it, you get involved with it,

[15:02]

For example, if you say, no thank you, no thanks, or this is good, I want more of this, you can sort of imagine from there other elaborations you could get into. Anyway, that's enough elaboration. Just basically, you don't just work with what's given, you add something to it, you elaborate it. You relinquish, you give up the practice, you forget the practice of not elaborating on what you're focusing on. And you give up the focus on not elaborating on what you're aware of. It's kind of the same thing. Can you see that? A moment of that opens the door to... what you might call hindrances, to the practice of meditation, the practice of calm, but also just they're simply unwholesome states of mind, period.

[16:08]

So in terms of the four right efforts, which are one way of presenting concentration practice, the first kind of right effort is to prevent the arising of unwholesome states. And if you practice this kind of staying close to things without and without trying to do anything with them staying close to things and letting them alone staying close to things without grasping them this kind of way of being with things calms you and also this way of being with things prevents the arising of unwholesome states of mind in that moment If you do it again, it prevents it the next moment. If you do it again, it prevents it the next moment. After a while, there's quite a time there, if you continue this practice, where unwholesome states, where afflictions are just not arising in the first place. You're calming and at the same time relaxing.

[17:12]

because you're not fighting what's happening. And also, it just turns out that what's happening is not that bad. I mean, it may be some difficult things arise, like some pain or something, but pain is not an unwholesome thing. Pleasure is not unwholesome. These are not unwholesome states, these are just feelings, which again are like, just like information about what's going on with your body. It's actually not unwholesome, it's actually just pure information, which you basically should say thank you for and say thank you because this is actual information. You're actually getting little pieces of reality given to you, getting like Buddhist teaching coming to you. This is actually not a mistake, this experience that you're having. And you can be sure it's not a mistake because you're not arguing with it. If you think it's a mistake, you can be sure that it's still not a mistake, but that you're in trouble.

[18:18]

So anyway, these unwholesome states arise and they turn into their afflictions, but they're also sometimes called hindrances or obstacles, and they're obstacles to the very practice which you have just stopped doing. So these obstacles or these hindrances are, there's five of them. One is A sense desire. The other is, another one is aversion or ill will. One's got two names, sloth and torpor. This one's got two names, worry and excitation or distraction. And the last one is doubt. Once there's a rise, then it's harder to go back to the practice because they're happening and they're harder to deal with maybe than a lot of other stuff.

[19:30]

Like before that, you might have been listening to like the sound of two or three pianos plus a barbecue and some dogs barking. Kind of an intense, you know, offering. Plus being offered over and over. Okay? But it's not unwholesome. It's just an intense offering. Like a punch in the nose or a big spit in the face. You know? Intense, complex, rich, challenging, But not unwholesome. The unwholesome thing would be to say, I wish I was in some other room. I wish they'd shut up. They stop. That kind of thing. Those are like conceptual elaborations which then open the door to maybe like ill will.

[20:38]

Or if they did stop, you say, oh, they stopped. that might open the door to, like, give me more of that nice, calm, pleasant lack of barbecue party. It's not the meditation practice, right? But since you slipped from just letting the end of the barbecue party be the end of the barbecue party and elaborated on it, now it's going to be a little harder to go back to the meditation. because it's harder to recover from that than it is from just an intense sound. But anyway, now that you've slipped, you've got to recover from the things that come in as a result of slipping. One of them, by the way, is doubt. The funny thing is that when you're doing a practice and then you stop doing it,

[21:41]

Guess what happens? Doubt arises. When you stop doing the practice, doubt arises. At least when you stop doing this kind of practice, doubt gets in there. And doubt is basically, this practice doesn't work. You're not doing it, and then you think, this practice doesn't work. In other words, since I can't do the practice, the practice doesn't work. Since I slipped, the practice doesn't work. Since I'm not good at it, the practice doesn't work. Right? So this kind of doubt, this particular kind of doubt, is called corrosive doubt. And the antidote to this doubt is to tell meditation and structure that the practice doesn't work. Then you can say, the practice doesn't work. I don't think it works. I don't want to do it anymore. I don't think it's really a good practice. You say, well, are you doing it? And you say, well, no. Well, I need to try it again. You say, no, it doesn't work, blah, blah, blah. And then you talk back and forth. And finally you're convinced that actually, how would you know if it doesn't work since you didn't do it?

[22:42]

And actually, if you think back, when you were doing it, wasn't it working before you stopped? And didn't you not have doubt when you were actually doing the practice? I guess I didn't have doubt, did I? The doubt can't get in when you're doing the practice. You're too busy doing the practice for doubt to get in. doesn't get in. And so that's the funny thing about the way the mind works. Isn't that interesting? Check it out. I think it's true. That's corrosive doubt. There's other kind of doubt which isn't so bad, like, for example, doubt that what you think is true. That doubt's not bad. Existential doubt. It actually promotes the study. Did you understand that one? No? Well, If you think it's true, does that make you happy? It does? What do you think is true? Sun rises, you think that's true? Does that make you happy? So doubting that would be good.

[23:47]

Doubting that would be good. If the sun doesn't rise, then do you get unhappy? Right, so depending on the sun to rise does not make you happy. That view does not make you happy. Most of our views that we hold do not make us happy. Actually, all views that we hold do not make us happy. So doubting all the views that we hold, that's existential doubt. That's okay. But doubting that practice works is corrosive and undermines you. And the antidote to that is reading the texts and arguing with the teachers or fellow practitioners until you can actually see that it makes sense to do such and such a practice because you should be discussing that with yourself anyway, about whether a practice makes sense. But when doubt arises, you forget the reasons that you had for doing the practice.

[24:54]

You forget the logic of the practice you were doing. You can decide that a practice is good, see that it's good, you can discuss that it's good, be convinced that it's good, but still it may be easy to slip and forget to do it, even though you're pretty well convinced that it's pretty good. Pretty good. Not 100% convinced, but quite convinced, because you have all kinds of habits to do something other than the practice, because you're training yourself to do something new. If you get involved in sense desire as a result of, you know, not saying thank you for what happens. If something happens, even something pleasant, and you really say thank you, that closes the door on sense desire. Do you understand? Do you understand that? Does that make sense to you? Looks like it doesn't. If something pleasant happens, and you just say, thank you very much, and you mean it.

[25:58]

Very much, I have no complaint whatsoever. In other words, thank you very much. I don't complain that I didn't get more of this good thing. I'm going to work with what you gave me. You gave me a really nice dinner. You gave me a really good handshake. You gave me a really nice smile. Thank you. I have no complaint. I'm not asking for another smile at this point. I'm just saying thank you. I may later ask for something else, but right now I'm not thinking about that. I'm actually just pretty much totally occupied with thank you. I'm not thinking thank you now. Will they give me more since I said thank you? No, just plain old thank you. You're working with what was given. That's all you're doing. You're not thinking about the next thing. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine being like 100% grateful for something and there's nothing else going on but thank you? That's what it's like for something to happen with no conceptual elaboration.

[27:01]

Imagine meeting like, I don't know, what, meeting Buddha and being happy to meet Buddha and not saying, you know, and hearing beforehand maybe that Buddha is only going to be here for a minute. And like saying, oh, geez, I'd be grateful for a minute. And when the minute's up, just saying, well, thanks, see you later, rather than, oh, it's too bad you have to go. Can you imagine? It's easy to imagine, oh, yeah, it's too bad you have to go because it's nice to see the Buddha, right? But that's not the practice. The practice is, thanks very much. That's it. But again, if you say, thank you very much, and I want more, that's sense desire. Does that make sense? Sense desire, uh... The sense desire, the antidote to the sense desire is basically, you know, get serious. That's basically what it is. Like, you have better things to do than to try to get more ice cream.

[28:10]

Better things you have to do to get more ice cream? Well, how about do the meditation practice? Would that be something you said you were doing a few seconds ago? But sometimes you have to get a little, like I say, get serious. And sometimes you have to think of something serious, like the kinds of problems you sometimes run into as a person who has a body. And I used to, sometimes when I was younger and had more problem with sense desire, I used to have certain images I thought of to snap myself out of sense desire. One of them I had was I just remembered my teacher. when he was dead. I remembered what he looked like lying in his room after he died. I just see his face, I just see him there. And then I would usually like, kind of like drop this kind of like fooling around with these other pictures, these other things.

[29:16]

You could imagine other things too. There's various little horrible little images that have been recorded in the tradition to think of, to snap you out of, you know, just kind of indulging in sense imagery. Does that make sense? Yeah. Do you also actually, like, in Zazen, if you're turning yourself toward sort of a great posture? That would be... If you're oriented toward, you know... Yeah. I want to use an extra... No, that's not... Or just going for ease in the fire? No, no, it would be that you'd be comfortable, or maybe not comfortable, but that you'd be sitting there thinking about some comfortable posture, some really comfortable posture you could be in. Other than what you? Other than posture. Yeah, rather than... Well, for example, let's say you were sitting in a comfortable posture and then you got into thinking about getting a more comfortable posture and how long this comfortable posture was going to last.

[30:27]

Have you ever had a pleasant experience? And in the middle of the pleasant experience or maybe at the beginning of the pleasant experience, you think, geez, I'd like to do this again. Have you ever had that experience? Meantime, you actually miss the pleasant experience. Do you notice? Ever had that happen to you? That you miss the pleasant experience? Like you're tasting something nice or eating something nice and you think, you know, I wish, I hope, are there more of these? And you get distracted from tasting this thing. You ever have that happen to you? It's like that. It's not like saying, okay, I'm going to sit down now and try to get comfortable. No, it's desire. You're desiring something. You're not just feeling a pleasant sensation. You're desiring more. And often you're missing the pleasant one you have because you're wondering about the next one.

[31:33]

So you miss this one and then also you probably don't get the next one either because sense desire leads to, you know, promotes dissatisfaction. So it's desiring more. It's not to mention it's like elaborate plans and images of sensual experiences. which take you away from just dealing with thing after thing. And then what often... And what sometimes people do is they actually... Some meditators use sexual imagery to distract them from their present situation because their present situation is challenging. And then sometimes that fantasy stuff collapses and then they're just overwhelmed. They've been kind of like, you know, resting. Not resting, but running away from their experience. Of course, if it's an unpleasant sensation, then you can get into, you know, wishing to get rid of it, hating it. Can you imagine that?

[32:35]

Hating your body, hating the way you're taking care of your body, hating somebody who you think got you into the situation of where you're having something to discomfort. few days of Zen Center some people some of the students in their difficult in their some of their difficult experiences while meditating they thought that this whole Zen thing was a Japanese revenge for the Second World War they sent these people over here to get these trap these Americans into these torture chambers hate the Zen teachers right who are like trapping them into this painful situation So the antidote for this kind of distraction, the first kind of distraction is just think of something serious that this meditation is actually intended to take care of, like your death, the death of people you care about, severe illness.

[33:43]

Think of somebody you care about who's crazy, this kind of stuff that's will snap you out of trying to get one more minute of blah blah or one more taste of cookies or something. Does that make sense? Is it too harsh? And then if you get angry, then you try to think of loving thoughts to develop loving kindness and patience to protect yourself from that. And both of these practices that I mentioned, which take care of those antidotes and also the one of discussing your doubt. So another way to say doubt is you're wondering what is good. So again, you reestablish this area of moral clarity. You clarify that this is a good thing to do again. All these three antidotes bring you back simply to the present. Does that make sense? Is that also what you call skeptical? Yes. Well, I think skeptical is okay.

[34:45]

It's okay to be skeptical, like ask questions about how does this practice work, what's good about it. But once you've like had that conversation and you've reasonably satisfied yourself that this is good, then your habits come in and knock you off your practice. Then this other kind of doubt, which isn't skeptical doubt, comes in, which is this doubt of like, it's more of a pouting kind of doubt. You know, like, well, here I've been meditating for 15 minutes and, you know, see what it gets me? Or whatever, you know. If you argue with what's happening, then you get the reward of arguing more with what's happening. If you don't say thank you to what's happening, you get then in addition to that the possibility of doubting not just what's happening, but doubting the whole enterprise of meditation. Doubting what's happening is kind of, you know, what do I say, it's too bad that you doubt what's happening. Not being grateful for your experience, for your life, is a bit of a problem.

[35:47]

It makes you upset. But it doesn't just do that. It opens you to all kinds of other problems. One of them being that not only did you say no thank you to this, but now you're actually getting depressed about... You're getting cynical, actually. Not skeptical. It's more like cynical. It's more like... It's serious. Serious kinds of unwholesome states come into you when you say no thank you to your experience. The others are... sloth and torpor and for sloth and torpor you have to like work on getting in touch with your aspiration which got you to do the meditation in the first place to do something to arouse yourself and uh... worry and agitation basically well one of the main things to do is just go back to the meditation of following your breath following your breath is good for for worry and agitation there's lots of other ways to antidote these these uh... hindrances, but that's just a few.

[36:52]

Is that clear? You know, it's interesting that these hindrances, these five hindrances, are presented in the context of developing calm as obstacles to calm. And then they're also brought up within insight practice. And within insight practice, then they're dealt with differently. An area of when developing calm, they result from slipping in your calm practice. And then you do antidotes so you can go back to your calming practice. When they arise in insight, in the context of insight, they're probably there arising also because maybe you've let the calm practice let it go a little bit.

[37:57]

But you're not so worried now because you're doing insight work and you're going to expose yourself in insight work to what it's like not to be so focused on calm. So now when the hindrances arise, you still have to have enough composure to basically look at them for a little while, and then now you're going to examine them and penetrate them and understand their nature. Understanding the nature of a state of mind that's calm, where these hindrances are not arising, insight into a calm state of mind with no hint where those hindrances are not there that's a case of insight a case of enlightenment having insight into a state where the hindrances have arisen seeing the nature of the hindrances is also a moment of insight a moment of enlightenment okay so you can be enlightened when there's no hindrances and you can be enlightened when there are hindrances

[39:04]

If the hindrances are... If you're not familiar with how to work with the hindrances and you can't stabilize in such a way that they don't arise or that when they do arise, you can either antidote them or basically be present with them and be detached from them and recognize them and let them alone. If you can do that with the hindrances, then you can have insight into the hindrances. it doesn't matter whether the hindrances arise or not because you're free of them and you're not attached to them. So you're also free of no hindrances and not attached to no hindrances. The tradition of common insight is that you have had, before you try to like meet the dragon, see the dragon and become free of the dragon and not grasp the dragon, Before you try to do that, you take a little break from the dragon.

[40:10]

From taking the break from the dragon, you come in to go back and look at the dragon. Again, the end static tradition is stay away from the dragon forever, stay away from the hindrances forever, and if they keep coming up, you just keep working at them until they don't come up anymore. And basically, and there's another tradition is, let's just go look at the hindrances right now and penetrate them and become free of them. Some people can't successfully look at the hindrances. They're not calm enough, so they have to develop more calm before they can look at the hindrances and have insight. So then they go back and do antidote them for a while or do a practice so they don't arise. Okay? Yes? Sounds like you're saying you need a certain level of calmness, space of calmness, or you could go to insight. But I find my mind isn't that neat.

[41:14]

Some days I'm not. No. I went to the inside again. If you have no rapport with calm, You could try to practice insight. I mean, if in your mind you have no rapport with calm, I would recommend that you don't try to practice insight. But if you wanted to try it, you could try it and see. But I would say if you're successful at insight, you just don't know that you have some rapport with calm. Some people are calmer than they think they are. Some people just have a self-image that they're hysterical, but actually they're more calm than some other people who think they're really calm. But if you think... I would say if you think you're not calm, if you think you don't know what it means to, like, be able to just be close to your experience moment by moment with no elaboration, you don't know how to do that, I would say get better at that.

[42:27]

Once you have some... some intimacy with calm, then I would say, you know, you know me, for example, you could ask me if I think you should move on to insight. My experience tonight, all the activity going on outside, I went from consciously blocking it out, then becoming very aware of it, finding it all this kind of And painting it, but not really, just humorous, I don't know. And then I'd go from there to being irritated. And I just watched myself in all these different positions. Right. I felt like I was all over the map. Right. 30 minutes sitting. Yes. And that's the way it usually goes. Yes. So anyway, by the way, I just want to mention that thinking that this stuff is humorous might be very close to calm.

[43:37]

Not, you know, not, you know, I don't know what necessarily like gut-splitting humorous, but just kind of like... I just found a little smile. Yeah, a little smile is kind of in accord with calm. Getting irritated sounds more like no thank you A painful experience, however, doesn't necessarily have to... Sometimes we mean irritated, we mean, I don't like that. To be irritated, to actually have something irritate you, you don't necessarily have to reject it. You could say, thank you very much for the irritation. So irritated has its two meanings, I think. When you're calm, you develop calm, And you look at something, you look at some phenomena, see what it is. So a very simple introduction to calm is that you see.

[44:46]

When you, like, look at something, if you're calm, what kind of thing might you see? See what you think it is? Yes? What else might you see if you looked at something in your account? Huh? Yeah, you see what it is. And what might it be? And what might the texture be? Yeah, you might see that. And what might the soft texture be? How might that soft be? What? How might that sensation be? Huh? How might that pleasant sensation be? What? Thank you very much is your response. Thank you very much is how you calm down with the sensation. Okay? So now various sensations have arisen.

[45:48]

Various textures have arisen. Okay? And now you've calmed down because you've said thank you very much to everything for a while. Now you're calm, and now rather than just trying to train yourself at not arguing with what's happening, rather than just train yourself at not elaborating or arguing with what's happening, now you're going to look at what's happening. And so I asked you, you know, when you see something that's happening, and then you gave me examples of things that are happening. Which is fine. Those are examples of events. We're looking at an event and we see the event. What do we see when we see an event? Impermanence. Because when you see an event, an event means it events. You see something happening. You see it happening. And then you might, and also you might, sometimes when you first start practicing insight, you might not see it happening.

[46:51]

It might be kind of like it's there before you see it happening. Maybe you can see it passing away. So then you might start being able to see things, some things happen and some things pass away. And then you might start to be able to see things happening and pass away. When you're calm, you can not just, not only are you seeing things, And not only are you not fighting them anymore and being present and not grasping them and calming down, but now you can actually see more clearly what they are because you're not agitated. And then when you see what they are, when you start looking now to see, well, what is it? First of all, you're just trying to not basically argue with what's happening. You're noticing it and training yourself to not mess around. But you're not really, in the calming phase, you're not really trying to see what it is. You see enough.

[47:53]

We see enough to argue. We can see a little of something and wish something else was going on. We can see a little of something and want more of it. We can see a little of something and want less of it. Before we understand what something is, before we know what it is, we can argue. Before we know what it is, we can say, no thanks. Before we know what it is, we can say, I hate this. Do you understand? Just a glimpse of something is enough for us to freak out. Right? Just the hint of an insult is enough to get angry. or the hint of a compliment is enough to feel pretty good and ask for more. Do you know what I mean? So that first of all, you're not like looking deeply into the things because you can't anyway because you're going into reactions to them all the time. All right? When that stops, now you're looking at things, you're seeing them, you're not reacting, so you have all the energy of reaction

[48:58]

is not... is available. Plus you're calm. Now the energy of reaction and arguing in this calm state can now be turned to look at, well, how is this... what is this? How is it existing? And you'll see, for example, well, it must have arose and if it arose you'll see eventually that it ceases. So you start to see impermanence. What else might you see about the thing? You see your relationship to the thing. Your relationship to the thing. And what else? The thing's relationship to you. And you see the thing's relationship to other things. And you start to see that the thing doesn't have an independent existence. You see the thing doesn't have an independent existence, etc. The insights are, you know, I'm just opening the door a little, squeaking the door open a little bit tonight on the insights.

[50:00]

Just the first one to see maybe is impermanence because arising and ceasing, impermanent, is a window into impermanence. So this is the beginning of insight. And when you start to see that things are impermanent, that promotes impermanence. this way of being with them, which is that rather than worrying about what state this is that is arisen, is this a complimentary state or an insulting state? Rather than worrying about that, which you're not doing anymore, so you're calm, also have this response. And your response to everything, well, everything, but anyway, this particular thing, your response to it is that you dwell in freedom and you don't cling to it. Eventually you're going to dwell in freedom no matter what the state is, and no matter what the event is, you're not going to cling to it. So this is like a highly developed insight practice.

[51:04]

But for starters, we're going to look to develop this ecstatic penetration into the nature of the thing, how the thing is. And when you're calm, not only can you see more clearly that this is the case, but when you're calm, basically, in a sense, you have nothing better to do than to see what's going on. Because you're not devoting your attention to distracting yourself from what's going on. Usually when things are happening, we think we have something better to do than pay attention to it. Therefore, we're not calm. We look at what's happening and don't get into what else might be happening or what better thing might be happening. We calm down, plus also we just happen to be looking at what's happening. Kind of see how it comes together there? So the logic of calm is the logic of this is all we've got to deal with.

[52:12]

And the logic of distraction is there's lots more, there's something, there's things more interesting than what's going on to look at. That's one of the things that's nice about being at Tassajara, they have practice periods there, is that, you know, if I give a class, the people come and they pay attention because there's no other show in town. You know? And I could talk about anything and they sit there and go, mm-hmm, no. They listen to it because they can hardly imagine something else going on. They try, but they can't because nothing is. So they pay attention and they understand. Whereas Up in Berkeley, sometimes people think, you know, he could be talking about something else besides this. He could be giving a better talk than this. Et cetera, right? Because you actually think that's the case maybe sometimes. Maybe not if you do, but I heard somewhat sometimes people think that. So then if you think that there could be a better talk than this, then you don't feel calm, then you don't see the reality that's happening right here tonight.

[53:14]

Namely, that everything you're hearing and seeing is arising and ceasing. It's, you know, a little picture of ultimate truth, which, when you see it, then you're free, and you don't attach, because you can't attach to impermanent things. might like to but the more you look at them you realize these things cannot be attached to you can't attach to impermanent things you can try but it's just painful plus it doesn't work and the reason why it's painful is because it doesn't work but it is very important to take care of impermanent things because that's all there is to take care of and the more you take care of impermanent things like for example people When you take care of them, the calmer you get. And the calmer you get, the more you see how impermanent they are. And the more impermanent you see how they are, the more free you are with them and the less you cling to them.

[54:18]

And the more free you are with them and the less you cling to them, the more you calm down. And the more you calm down, the deeper you see what they are and the better you can take care of them. So we take care of impermanent things. And we should take care of them. We should be devoted to impermanent things. See? We're taking care of impermanent things. Do you see how he did it? Huh? Sarah? And then Edith? At the beginning of the class you were talking about the word for your... class and you were saying something about happiness or misery depending on the state or the response. Could you say that... The blurb didn't say or the response. That's going to be one of my critiques for the class. Would you say that meditation is sort of training and insight meditation is training the response?

[55:26]

That's what I was saying. Except, as Linda said, they're not necessarily... They're not mutually exclusive. We have this planet, right? And on this planet, there's these two, in a sense, extremes. One extreme is that salvation is found in transcendence of the world. The other extreme is that salvation is found in the immanence of enlightenment in all things. But actually, the two actually can be... Buddhism combines the two. So, if you... developing a state of mind of calm, part of the way you do it is by the way you respond to your state of mind. So it's true that I think you could sort of put developing a certain state of mind over in the side of calm and developing insight over in the side of responding to whatever state there is. You can sort of do that. When you unhook? When you unhook?

[56:27]

Yeah, that's right. No, no. No, but the difference is that in both cases you want to unhook right now. It's just that in the common practice you focus on a particular area to practice unhooking. You're just practicing unhooking. You're just practicing withdrawing. You're just practicing not getting involved. That's all you're doing. Okay? The insight practice, you're now going to not focus on one particular thing now, one particular topic of basically not getting involved.

[57:33]

However, that's in the background now, not getting involved, unhooking. Now you're going to look at each thing. Still, hopefully, you're going to be unhooking. But having some calm will help you unhook. to each thing. But you're not focusing on the unhooking in the insight practice. In the insight practice, you're practicing looking, penetrating. In the calming practice, you're emphasizing, you're focusing on unhooking, on not attaching, on not arguing, on not manipulating. So in both cases you want to unhook, but the unhooking in the insight practice will come, it will be the unhooking which will come from your understanding rather than training yourself. You'll train yourself to a point where you understand such that you can't hook. Whereas insight practice, you're training yourself not to grasp things while you still think you can.

[58:38]

You could be successfully practicing calming even though you still think you could argue, even though you still think you could grasp. You don't. In insight practice, once it's developed, you can't grasp. You can't argue. It's not possible. Because you can't think anymore that there's something other than this. Whereas in calming practice, you train yourself not to get involved in something other than this. And you still think it's possible that there could be something other than this. See the difference? So in calming, you don't move among objects. If you're concentrating on Soos, you don't move from Soos to Lucy. As you train yourself to stay on Soos. In insight practice, you don't have two different things called Suze and Lucy anymore.

[59:46]

They're not different. Because you're looking at what they actually both are. Both, you know, enlightenment or Buddha or whatever you want to say. See the difference? Well, it seems like in common practice, there's a little bit of faith involved. And in insight practice... Well, in insight practice there's faith involved too, but in insight you confirm all the Buddhist teachings. All the Buddhist teachings which you thought maybe were worth studying or learning about or trying to apply, you now see that that's the way it is. And in insight practice too, I mean in calming practice, you get to a point where you realize that the instructions for how to calm actually are correct and you did get calm. So when you first start practicing inside a calming practice, there's some faith there that this might calm you. This might be a reasonable way to stabilize and create a wholesome, flexible, buoyant, you know, alert and relaxed and happy state of mind.

[60:50]

Okay? And you also might go along with the teaching that all of this, you might get such a wonderful state of mind, this is only really temporary and it's going to be of support to do another practice which you also think makes sense. and when you attain calm, the faith is confirmed, and now you turn to insight practice, which you think, I'll give this a try now, too. Because, you know, somehow I trust Buddhist teaching, but I don't know why I'm just going to give it a try. And you try it, but when you actually have insight, then it's not that the faith goes away, it's faith is confirmed. So faith is involved in both insight and a calming practice and in both cases you get confirmation that it was good to do the practice when you realize the practice. So there's almost no records of any yogis actually getting really good at Buddhist meditation and saying it didn't work. However, there is a story of the Buddha getting very good at calming practice.

[61:53]

He got very good at the trances and he said they don't work They work temporarily, but they don't end suffering definitively. But so far, we don't have any graduates from both sides in the Buddhist tradition that got great insight and said, well, this is a great insight, and it didn't relieve suffering. But the course has been a success. But they all say that it takes quite a bit of effort. So, you know, say it's easy. But it is effective. Edith? You answered my question already. What was the question? It was about grasping and how it is in the tranquility side and how it is on the inside. Okay, yeah. So they're both mind training exercises, and one is to develop a state of mind,

[62:55]

But in order to develop that state of mind, you have to develop a certain kind of response to your experience, which creates a state of mind. The other is not to create a state of mind. Well, it's to create a state of enlightenment. The other one is to create a state of enlightenment. But a state of enlightenment is not a state of mind. It's a state of freedom from your mind. So no matter what kind of mind you've got, you're free of it. Which also means no matter what kind of mind they have, you're free of it. So you're not afraid to go and hang out with non-enlightened people. In other words, your compassion is purified, like I said at the beginning. So insight into selflessness makes you able to hang out with all beings with great happiness and be devoted to impermanent beings. Impermanent, uncontrollable beings. So we are impermanent, uncontrollable beings. We should be devoted to ourselves.

[63:57]

And these are two ways to be devoted. One is, well, one way to be devoted, called the Buddha way, and it has these two aspects of no conceptual elaboration and deeply penetrating into a vision of what this impermanent, uncontrollable being is. Okay? Okay? Yes, Ellen? So the practice of insight practice is meditating in a way that calms your mind. The practice of insight practice is meditating in a way that calms your mind. But the practice of insight practice is practice... You said the same thing twice, I think. So the calm part is meditating to calm your mind. Yeah, that's tranquility side. Tranquility practice, all right. insight practice is that plus a study, some sort of study in teaching. Right. Exactly. So just meditation alone is not sufficient, for instance.

[65:01]

Just tranquility alone. See, some people call, what some people call meditation is what we call tranquility. The Buddhist tradition says both tranquility and insight are two aspects of our meditation. So one side of the meditation is to calm, to create this state of mind. And based on that state of mind, you practice study, insight, learning the nature of reality, which means learning the Buddhist teaching. Sometimes, you know, Sikhiro used to say that Zen was the key to unlock Buddha's teaching. And I think when he said that, he meant in that case that Zen was calm is the key to unlock Buddha's teaching. Calm is the key to entering into insight. But really they go together, you know. And again, sometimes the teaching doesn't say much at all about the calm. It goes right into the insight.

[66:02]

So you'll find certain scriptures that go right into insight. But I think that those are appropriate for people that are already just sort of, for whatever their karma is, they arrive to meet the Buddha and they're already calm. So then the Buddha just immediately lays on this teaching to them of insight. They're already, you know, somehow they got that state of mind so they're ready for insight. They're already not fighting what's happening. They're already calm. So that's why you have to sort of sometimes have a conversation to find out where you're at before you go into insight practice. Okay?

[66:49]

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