So I want to set the table again. And when the table is set, we can have some conversation. Maybe. We'll see if we do. So the story goes like this. A monk comes to see Yakshan. And Yangshan says, where are you from? And the monk says, you province. And Yangshan says, do you think of that place? And he says, I always do. I always think of that place. And then Yangshan says, the thinker is the mind and the thought of is the environment.

[01:03]

Therein are mountains, rivers, and landmass, buildings, towers, halls, and chamber, people, animals, and so forth. Reverse your thought to think of the thinking mind. And then dot, dot. And then he asked the monk, Are there so many things there? Are there so many things in the realm where you reverse your thought and think of the mind that thinks? And as I mentioned, there might have been quite a long time between that instruction of reversing the mind and when he asked the monk How is it there? So the monk maybe might have come back and said, well, I got to that place.

[02:08]

And then Yangshan says, well, are there many things there? Like the things I just talked about above there. And the monk says, when I get here, or now that I've got here, I don't see any existence at all. And Yangshan says, this is right for the stage of faith, but not yet right for the stage of person. And the monk says, do you have any further way of guidance? And Yangshan says, to say that I have anything particular would not be accurate. Or to say that I have anything particular or not would not be accurate. Based on your insight, you only get one mystery.

[03:10]

You can take the seat and wear the robe. After this, see on your own. I was attracted to an article in New Yorker called, Does Homer Have Legs? There's a place up here if you want to sit up here. Or there's a place over here if you want to sit over there. Would you like to tell us your name?

[04:19]

Naomi. Naomi. Where do you come from? San Francisco. San Francisco? You think of that place? Yes. That's the story we're studying now. Would you show her the story, one of you guys? Mm-hmm. And... It's about a, this guy is, I guess he's, I don't know what he is, he's a literary guy who's writing an article. And somehow he got involved in the ideological war that's going on about whether you should teach the classics anymore. partly because some people say, well, that basically what the Iliad's saying is young men should become warriors, stuff like that.

[05:22]

Anyway, so he thought, well, maybe I should go back to school, take some classics classes and see how they are. So he goes back and studies the Iliad. And... He said, I didn't go back to school to regain my youth. He said, that was not what I was interested in. He basically thinks youth is a time that's basically wasted. Because... On the young. He said, wasted on the young, and basically they waste it too, because they don't notice what's going on. I sometimes... wish I could go back and do some of the things I did before, not to regain my youth, but just to see if I could do them and be awake at the same time. Anyway, he said, I long for, well, another chance, another shot at school. I looked to submit myself to something greater than my career.

[06:31]

And, um, For me it's a little complicated because these classical texts have something to do with my career, but when I really enjoy them, they kind of like have nothing to do with my career, and I'm really going back to them as a student. And I feel that thrill, which this guy also talks about. Remember when the quarter would start in school? and you get the list of books you're supposed to get, and you go to the bookstore, and you look at those books, and you open them, and how they smelled and stuff, and that feeling of, you know, wow, read this stuff. And, you know, that's all you had to do, is concentrate on this stuff. And, of course, there was some wastage there, but... a lot of us, as we get into our careers, don't have to do any concentrated reading anymore, except, you know, related to our work, and we spend a lot of time staying away from stuff like the Iliad, which is not very interesting if you're not concentrated.

[07:44]

And I remember, what is his name? Thoreau talks about these, the classics, and the classics are books that you read in the morning. You know, like, you get up early in the morning and you read them. When your mind is really not distracted yet and it's willing to read the newspaper, it's willing to read the telephone book, it's willing to read your breathing, and it's willing to read the Iliad. And... Anyway, I thought that's kind of... Most of us have been to school already and this is... We're going back to school now. to take another shot at it, to do some serious reading that we're not getting paid for. What I want to do tonight is I want to

[08:52]

I want to look at this instruction again of reversing the mind and thinking of the mind that thinks. Yeah, so this is a kind of funny setting. I'm not setting the whole table. I'm just setting... This is not exactly the... This is actually the main... This is an entree. I'm talking about an entree now. Doesn't entree mean entry? I'm talking about an entry into this meal. And I'm not talking about the rest of the menu yet. The rest of the menu will actually be the stage of the person that's referred to here.

[09:59]

But just, we'll get into the stage of the person later. Now is the literal entree. The entree is, think of the mind that thinks. And I asked last week, for those of you who had tried to apply that instruction, how was it? And people said various things. One of the things that some people said was, it was frustrating to try to apply that instruction.

[11:06]

Is there something to take notice of? We were taking notice of it. So now I wonder if it's helpful to just Maybe I just... How does that taste? How is that instruction, before I say anything about it? Can you apply it? And if so... Well, yes, you definitely can apply it, but in the process of applying it, how is it? What's happening? The instruction doesn't work. The instruction doesn't work? When I try to do that, it doesn't work.

[12:12]

When you try to do it, it doesn't work. What happens when you try to do it? Blank. Blank. Okay. So, would somebody write that down? I asked when he tries to do it or something like that. You can sit up here if you want to. What happens? Is that what I said? What happens? And he said blank. Okay? I have to collect more field data before commenting. Yes? Like a circle. You feel like a circle? It loops around itself and you're on the outside of it? You feel something kind of looping around and you feel outside of it? You write that down? Are you writing this down? Would you write that one down too? I had come to a similar image of the snake trying to swallow its tail.

[13:34]

And it was sort of an impasse or impossibility. Then it occurred to me that another way to swallow your tail is to swallow it by turning it inside out, like a sock and reversing it. And even though it's hard to describe it a little more concretely, it was sort of following or having says that the thinker itself isn't necessarily a starting place. It is generated or produced. As long as you're trying to get a hold of that which is trying, there's this circularity. But if you relax into the thinker, it's already generated. It's already a process. It's not necessarily the starting place. So if you do it that way, what happens?

[14:36]

Have you done it that way? Can you tell us what's happening? It happened. How is that? It was wonderful. It was wonderful. Again, I don't have anything but some of the metaphors, but I'll have it all short. It made sense to me in another way how the Judeo-Christian, some of this theology talks about the divine as if it was a word. It was something that was produced. I felt like a word, like a divine word. You felt like you were a word? sort of put a line through the problem that I knew. Yeah. It sort of wasn't the same that I ordinarily experience myself. Yeah. I felt like an expression. You felt like an expression of something. Okay. Yes? I felt uncomfortable. Uncomfortable? Yes.

[15:38]

Can you say something about how you felt uncomfortable? I applied the instruction to my relationship to someone I work with. Well, actually not someone I work with, but someone who's at work. So how did you apply the instruction of thinking of the mind that thinks in a relationship? Did you look at the mind? Or you tell us. I did that. I thought about the mind, the thought, and Did you think about the mind that thought about the relationship? Yes, and how that made me feel in the pictures. And it wasn't just that person, actually. It was the entire week, just relationships with people. But her mostly. It was very uncomfortable because I don't like the person. This is the best kind of person to use in this kind of meditation.

[16:48]

I tried to be everything except myself. You tried to be everything except yourself. But I don't know how to clarify that. If you try to unfocus your pupil deliberately, like try to focus on space, for instance, I tried that internally, and I tried to be this path I was walking down by the beach when I walked into the fence. But it was nice until that happened. Actually, I mentioned to you that something about be careful of doing complex movements in dangerous places when you're doing some of these meditations. Better to do them sitting still at first Yes. I scattered. I could not. It was the trying itself that I reacted like this.

[18:00]

Oh, here comes Lee Ann. Lee Ann. This is Thai again. Thai again. Okay, well, again, this guy said when he first started to try to read the Iliad again as a... This guy also, I feel close to this guy, this guy was a freshman in college in 1961, like me. And he went back to college, he went back to Columbia in 1991. And he said when he started reading the Iliad, his mind was rebellious. It kept, you know, what is it... resisting and got his word, anyway, trying to break away from the bridle of the text. And I think there is part of it, there certainly is a powerful habit to not use the mind this way. And the way we usually use our mind is to disperse it, to put it out onto the

[19:11]

to use it to think of things. Okay? So that's part of what she experienced. Yes? I had two experiences. One was walking in the field and for a moment not... I feel like I wasn't moving. I don't know... Doing this meditation? Trying to do this meditation? The path was moving and I wasn't moving. And the other was last night at 3 in the morning, sitting still in the middle of the night, feeling like I'm sensing a kind of hot red ball in my chest. And the metaphor came up like before the Big Bang. You know, all of it somehow a tension between containment and then bursting forth into objects, a dynamic between.

[20:16]

And that reminds me of the verse where it says, all embracing or containing without obstruction, and then down below it says, bursting out of empty space. That tension. Yes? It makes me feel a little bit nuts when I try, because I can't do it, of course, and I know that I can't do it, and I also know that something else is happening. So it's this kind of tension between being willing to do something that I know I can't do, so the goal is not, it's not a straight line goal. Actually, I know that something else is happening, which feels kind of freeing.

[21:23]

What feels freeing? Because I can't grab the mind. Yes. I have to let go. What are you letting go of? Um, so I... Maybe I'll just make a comment before I... I'll collect more data and I'll just make some comments now, particularly about Lloyd and, uh, Maya, because they're seated near together. Maya, you want to say something, Bert, since you're sitting between them? Do we have three in a row there? I don't know. Have you done this practice? Yes, I have. What happened? When I did it, I... I didn't want it to be so difficult.

[22:30]

What happened? How did it go? I thought about the lines at banks and it just made me feel like I was meditating concentrating more. It wasn't something that bothered me. You had a sense of that you were increasing your concentration, that the concentration was increasing when you applied this instruction? Okay. So I think I... So Lloyd and Maya are still a little bit different from him. I felt in both cases that they said they couldn't do it. And actually, not being able to do it, I think what they mean they couldn't do is they couldn't get a hold of anything.

[23:36]

But that's actually what the meditation is, is to think of something you can't get a hold of. That's what I said. Huh? That's what I said. Right. But you also said you couldn't do it. But what you meant by you couldn't do is you couldn't get a hold, but actually that is being successful at this meditation, is to be unsuccessful at getting a hold of things. Being unsuccessful at getting a hold of things is being successful at this meditation. This entree is to be unsuccessful at grasping objects. Being unsuccessful at grasping objects is to be successful disentangling from objects. This is not the same as Buddha's detachment, but it is an entry into the realm of Buddha's detachment. To be willing to spend your time being unable to grasp objects.

[24:41]

Now, also, I think what Jordan said of going around a circle, not the part about being outside of it, but going around a circle, that this reversing, this reversal that's required here is reversal, but it's not reversal like going in 180 degrees in the other direction. It is, I've said before, it's like going in a circle, winding up right where you were before, and yet it's completely changed. You've experienced this pivot, this turning. So part of what's going on here is to develop the... Well, first of all, just to enter the space where there are no objects, but not that they're not there, but they're not there in the sense that you're not grasping them. But the funny thing is that when you stop grasping them, it's almost like they're not there. So that's why the monk... said that when he gets there, nothing exists.

[25:55]

Because for us, feeling that things exist or thinking that things exist has something to do with us grasping them. If we don't grasp them, we don't think they exist. If we do grasp them, we think they exist. In other words, it is our grasping that makes us think that something exists. And if we stop grasping, it's almost like it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist any less than it did before or in any different way than it did before. But we feel that it has now moved into a different category. It actually hasn't, and it doesn't belong in the opposite category from where it was before. Its actual existence is the same way it was before. But we feel like it's flipped because we are not grasping it anymore. And we get in the hang of that by trying to grasp something that we won't be able to grasp. You know, how did you say it? Say it how you said it. It wasn't that there wasn't, that there was nothing there, but there was some energy of reaching out, not out as opposed to in, but just extending, awareness extending.

[27:18]

It just comes to my mind. Tara Tolko asked me one time, well, what object of meditation do you use? And I said, well, I'm kind of embarrassed, but actually we don't have objects of meditation. That this is not an object of meditation, this is an instruction in how to disentangle yourself from objects. And the disentanglement from objects is this is the entree of the story. It's the first main course. There is, however, some hors d'oeuvres, which I can mention later. Yes? I was wondering how breath fits in with this meditation. How breath? How... When I think of doing this, it's hard probably not to have breath be an object, because... I tend to watch my breath, or to watch the air when I'm doing it, and I feel in some way like, how... That's a very appropriate question.

[28:22]

I was going to, for more reasons than the fact that I was going to bring that up. Some of you have already studied what we call the, what are they called? six slippery dharma grates. Anyway, the six subtle dharma gates. And so there are six different ways of meditating on breath. First is counting. Second is following. Third is stopping. Fourth is to contemplate. Fifth is to return. And sixth is purification. Okay? These are six ways to meditate on your breath. This instruction is the fifth way. So in a sense, I'm sorry that this instruction is already asking you to jump to stage five in a process of six stages.

[29:32]

Counting, following, stopping, contemplating, returning, or actually the character for return I think that they use, if I remember correctly, is exactly the same character that he uses here for reverse. And the character that Jiri, the great Tendai teacher, used for returning stage is the same character that this Zen teacher uses for reversing the mind and then purification. So basically what that is, is he recommends that you, first of all, you count the breath. And then when, basically when the counting is rougher than the mind, at first people's minds are often rougher than counting. that their mind is doing whatever and they start counting and it seems to calm the mind or make the mind more smooth to count. Not everybody has that feeling. Some people's minds are already fairly smooth and as soon as they start counting they feel irritated.

[30:38]

But in Buddha, however, I don't know that Buddha ever recommended counting the breath. I think it was a later... When Buddha was around, nobody's mind in his neighborhood was very upset. Within hearing shot, within hearing range of the Buddha, everybody was pretty cool, so counting was not necessary. But apparently they were upset enough for following to have some function. And anyway, so people have the experience of having their mind upset and then counting, and then the mind becomes stabilized by the counting. And then the mind becomes more subtle or more smooth than the counting. The counting starts to aggravate or upset the mind. So then they stop that and move to just following the mind. And then at that time you can take on the instructions that Buddha gave about following the mind, being aware how long it is, how short it is, whether it's rough or even and so on. Then the next stage is stopping. And that's the feeling of basically that even though there's still breath and it seems to be moving, your feeling is actually...

[31:46]

That is, the breath is stopped. It's not moving. And again, it doesn't mean that this, in terms of thinking, in terms of, you know, over several moments or something, there is movement and all that still goes on, but it's like this show on top of a basic feeling that everything's stopped. Then you contemplate, you know, the relationships between all the different objects and become familiar with the nature of breath as an object. And then you turn around, turn the mind, and look back at the mind that thinks of the breath. And thinks of the breath in all the way that you've just studied. So after a while, so in a sense, this story would be like, if a monk came and he said, where are you from? And the monk said, I'm from the breath being stopped. And then the teacher says, do you think of that place? And he says, yes, I always do. In other words, I always do the stage of contemplation of the breath, which is the fourth stage.

[32:49]

And the teacher says, well, when you think of your breath, you see all the stuff, you know. You see mountains and rivers and so on and so forth. In other words, your breath takes on these myriad forms of people and animals and so on and so forth. Or breath, in various ways you think of breath, rough, smooth, so on and so forth. But everything is breath. But you're looking at it from the point of view of stopped. If he was following this thing, and the monk came and asked and he gave that instruction to reverse the mind according to this thing, he had already done those first four stages. So he says, reverse the mind. So the monk's already into the returning phase of this breath contemplation. So he's contemplating the breath, but he looks back at the mind which thinks of the breath. in whatever way the mind thinks of the breath. And you have a mind that thinks of the breath in various ways, right? Like you think, breath is this way, breath is that way. This is not breath, this is breath. This is a frog, this is the wall, this is breath. This is thinking of the breath, okay?

[33:52]

And if you have a stopped mind and you think of the breath and you study how you think of the breath, when you've done that enough, So that's fairly subtle. Then you reverse the mind to watch what was thinking of the breath in all these ways. That's this instruction. And then the purification stage is the stage that this monk was asked to take, or the step this monk was asked to take, or was told he hadn't reached yet, where you then bring yourself back out into the objects, as a personal expression of yourself. That's the next course. Okay? And I think maybe if I get enough encouragement, I'll go into more detail about these six stages during the practice period. Counting, following, stopping, contemplation, returning, and purification.

[34:59]

What? Okay. Well, keep it up. That'll help me do it. So... Do you want a show of hands? Do you like a show of hands? Would we be interested? I just tell you, if you encourage me, that'll probably make... I'll do it if, you know, I'm just a kind of puppet, right? I'm a puppet of the Book of Serenity. Here I am on case 32 because we used to be on case 31. And now I have to go to case 33 after this, right? Certain pressures come to bear on my performance. so the thing here is happening he's suggesting that we take our mind and turn it around but turn it around in a circular way not just reverse it according to what you think is the opposite but a complete flip a revolution revolutionize your thinking

[36:13]

and go really in the opposite way that you usually go, but you see it's not the opposite, it's a reversal because you come back again and still looking at objects. Because if you didn't look at objects, your mind would be actually blank in the literal sense that you wouldn't be aware of anything. It's a little bit different than that. It's like you're right back and now objects aren't objects. But the way that they're objects is actually the way that they're not objects. Yes? Well, as I say, this reminds me of Dogen's instructions in Furtwängler's Zange Tip, not thinking, but sort of turning around in reversible. It reminds you of that, and it's very similar. And it's also, Dogen says, what does he say, turn the light around, or how does he say, take a backward step, learn the backward step, he says, learn the backward step, study the backward step. turn the light around and shine it back and illuminate the self. Isn't that what he says? That's his instruction.

[37:15]

And then he says, after you've done what he says, then he has something to say about that too. Yes? That also calls to mind that mountains are no longer mountains, and then later, when we're past the stage, mountains are again just mountains. Yeah, it's like that, right. Should I say what he said after that, before I answer Carrie's question? Or should I answer Carrie's question? He said, suppose one gains pride of understanding and inflates one's enlightenment, glimpsing the wisdom that runs through all things. glimpsing the wisdom that runs through all things, seeing the sutra. Suppose you could get a glimpse of the sutra.

[38:20]

Attaining the way, attaining the way, entering the way, actually entering the Buddha way, becoming a stream enterer. clarifying the mind and raising an aspiration to escalate the very sky. One is making the initial partialist excursions around the frontier and is still somewhat deficient in the vital way of total emancipation. So, He says this after he says, learn the backward step, turn the light around and illuminate the self. If you do that, then he says, he doesn't quite say it, but suppose you're successful at this meditation, you should understand that you're making the initial partial excursion around the frontiers of enlightenment if you're successful at this.

[39:32]

Another translation... is a little bit kind of cute. Carl Billfels, he says, after saying all this stuff and attaining this stuff, he says, you're loitering in the precincts of the entrance. That sounds a little sleazy. Cleary says it a little more positively. Even though you roam freely within the bounds of entry. So, This monk is roaming freely around the bounds of entry. He's actually in there, roaming around in the entry of enlightenment. He's had entry and he's roaming around there. Or he's loitering in the precincts of the entrance. Or he's making the initial partial excursions around that place. This is a successful monk in this story. He's made entry, he's around the entrance to the Buddha's way, he's actually attained entrance.

[40:34]

And the teacher says, this is right for the stage of faith. And again, the Chinese character for faith is the radical for person with the radical for word. I like that because this is the person who has heard the instruction and put it into action with his or her body. They've actually tried it. And as a result, they are now in the area of the entrance, either, you know, right at the front. They're roaming around the entrance to the Buddha way. I like Dogen's expression, also something like this, you know. If you think about what you think Buddhism is, you know, and then kind of like really get into what you think it is or what Buddha's way is or what Buddha is. It's this case of saying, actually, first of all, fall 1993, go back to school.

[41:38]

And actually, if you'll excuse the expression, do this practice until actually something happens and you get some entry. Until you first of all become comfortable living in a realm where where you can live without your usual sense of grasping things. See if you can just spend some time there. And what I hear is that it doesn't take you very long to get a sense that you're in the realm where you can't get anything. I hear people quite quickly sense, gee, this is kind of a... I'm not being successful. This is kind of weird. This is silly. This is not my usual thing. I feel embarrassed doing this even. It's kind of funny. But that's getting in that kind of embarrassing space of being somebody that you're not used to being or that you're not comfortable with being. That's kind of what it's like. It's kind of like not what you're used to. It has that element.

[42:44]

Some of you might feel it's wonderful fairly early on. Some of you might feel uncomfortable and frustrated. I feel silly myself. That's my main feeling, silly and embarrassed to be doing it. Again, I don't really feel like I'm doing it. But even to allow it to happen, I feel, is a little bit of a... Because actually, this is kind of like, this is just an entry, right? I shouldn't be doing just this entry stuff, right? Anyway... Yeah, loitering. But I feel... If you guys are going to do this, I am too. I remember one time, it was 19, I believe it was 19, I'm not sure, either 1969 or 1970, Suzuki Roshi said, and it was in about, I think it was towards the beginning of the year, he said, okay, let's all count our breath.

[43:52]

I said, I'm going to do it too. And we all thought, wow, that's pretty good, because we already knew that the counting breath was a kind of beginning practice, because it was given in the initial Zazen instruction. And we'd read the three pillars of Zen, so we knew there was counting, following, and then Shikantaza, right? So, of course, we thought Suzuki Roshi was practicing Shikantaza. So for him to be willing to practice counting the breath, we thought he was taking... learning the backward step, right, and coming to do something that we all could do together. So just for the sake of group unity, he said, let's all count our breath. He also said, you can do Shikantaza just sitting, counting your breath, too, that's not a problem, but let's all count our breath. And I remember in the summer, well, anyway, he didn't tell us to stop. He said, let's just do it all, do it together. And in the summer, this was about six months later, I was at Tassajara, and Bill Shurtlep, the guy who wrote the tofu book, of all those tofu cooking books, he said to me, Sri Krishna didn't tell us to stop, but I think he stopped. So I'm going to, too.

[44:55]

I think it'd be all right. Okay, well, now let's hear from some other people's experience with trying to do this. By the way, are you doing this right now? Do you want to take that question? Yeah, I was going to get that. Oh, Carrie. When I can be still and concentrate, it reminds me of the... The experience that I had studying long suits, black and white, ice wall, nowhere to get a .

[45:58]

But I'm willing to stay there even though it's pretty cold. But then during the day, when I'm not trying so hard, when I think about it, My mind feels like there's no difference between objects and my mind. There's the same thing. It's interesting that you talked about, did you say like an icy cliff, did you say? What did you say? Ice wall. An ice wall. Sheer ice. And the verse says, all embracing or all containing with no outside, penetrating with no obstruction, gates and walls like cliffs, doors and locks redoubled.

[47:09]

May I analyze what you said? May I analyze what you said? I don't know if it really applies to you, but here's what made me think of. And that is what made me think of is that in the process of trying to do this meditation, you became more aware of the wall-like and precipitousness and hardness of the objective realm. In other words, I don't know if you did this, but in the process of trying to reverse the mind, what actually sometimes happens is that you come upon objects and grasp them much harder than usual. And you get a chance to experience how deeply you believe in the reality of rejections of mind. And that will feel, that will be

[48:12]

you may experience more frustration and more hardness or more frustration because of the hardness and the substantiality which you attribute to the projections of your mind. That's what these second two lines of the verse are about. That the locks will get locked again. But that's not what it's like when you reverse the mind. That's what it's like in the process of reversing the mind. You start to realize that actually what is thought of is also, in thinking of it, you attribute reality to it. And that's what's called that which is thought of as the object. The word object... the character for object, is the various possibilities of translating in Sanskrit, vishaya, artha, and gochara. And they have various meanings, like environment, surroundings, but fundamentally, or one of the basic meanings is the projections of mind which are taken as reality.

[49:25]

When you complete the process of reversing the mind, you're in the realm where, what is it, it's all containing without any separation. There's no wall anymore. There's a feeling of flying without impediment or penetrating with no obstruction. However, flying without impediment, you know, flying without any, like, air holding you up, without any resistance or friction, and containing with no separation. This is, again, if you flinch from that, you might flinch back to hold on again to the objective realm. And then you might again feel, more than usual, how tightly you hold and how hard it is. And then, if you go to the limit of feeling that, the fulfillment or exhaustive and thorough follow-through on that will be also reversing the mind.

[50:37]

Because it's also not our usual tendency to use our mind to notice and follow through on the fact of what we're doing with it to make objects real, to make them seem real to us or to attribute reality to them. If you follow through on that all the way, you will again be thrown in to experience the formlessness of that which makes them solid. And then you flip into feeling like the objects are no different from mind. And you may then also get into, well, you know, this feeling of unobstructedness, which it sounds like you felt sort of unobstructed in that. Was there some feeling of unobstructedness when you said that? Yeah. It just doesn't last very long. Right. It's a moment-by-moment thing, right? That's another kind of good sign that you're not just thinking about it. One of the characteristics of actually being in the process is that it changes.

[51:39]

this feeling that I have often of how silly it is to do this practice, usually that's enough that it's all over, then I just start over again. Because thinking that it's silly is not an unfamiliar and unusual way to use my mind. To not be using my mind to think of things like this is silly or that's not silly, that's unusual and that's what I feel embarrassed about. But as soon as I think why this feels funny or silly or, you know, why am I doing something at the steps and stages kind of practice. As soon as I think of that, I'm already using my mind in the usual way. Well, I just think that there are so many things to feel uncomfortable about. Is there something that you can feel uncomfortable about that has some possibility of immersion? Yeah, that's a really good attitude. Anyway, this has the possibility, a very immediate and intimate possibility, a very close possibility of actually entering the way through this meditation, of taking an actual step into the Buddhist practice and getting a real feeling for what we mean by nothing at all, not an intellectual nothing at all, not a nothing at all that, again, you make into an object and attribute reality to,

[53:09]

but the meaning of, to get a feeling for the meaning of what we mean by nothing can be grasped. And we're all not that, we're turning of the mind away from actually entering such a realm. But you have to be silly enough and childlike enough to be obedient to Yangshan's instruction. And you have to go you have to actually let the mind return. And this is not something you can do, but it is something that definitely can happen. Yes? I have a question about that, because what happens to me I really kind of cannot control. It's like two different reactions to the practice when I'm trying it. And the first one is that it drives me crazy. I'm just kind of going around in the cage. Very usual. Very usual. And the second one is that sometimes, and that's when I'm not trying it, sometimes it just happens, that I can go to a place where I just feel like I am in peace with it.

[54:22]

I'm even at peace with not being able to do it and it is more that it it does me yes rather than i do it um it's a wonderful place but i can't really go there so what i'm working with right now is that every time i try to do something i hear that kind of light which is in the cage and i wonder if any kind of decision I make also for my life or for whatever, it seems like the instrument I can kind of control or direct somewhere is always that limited mind. And that's really very frustrating. It's kind of every time I want to intentionally do something, I'm back in that, and I wonder how I can lean more at that other place, which feels a lot better. I mean, because I can't do it, right?

[55:26]

You can't do it. I can't go to the place where I feel at peace. I feel like I can't. It's that mindset. I can't do it. It kind of has to happen. So, what is it? Also, we talked about this instruction. This, just this person, right? Just this person. So, and then, later, Dungsan, looking as reflection in the river, said, earnestly avoid seeking outside. lest it recede far from yourself.

[56:31]

I walk alone, yet everywhere I meet her. She is no other than me, yet now I am not her. That's an expression from this place. So the person who is thinking about controlling things and is thinking that she's unsuccessful or successful at controlling things, or rather the thinking of success and failure, the thinking of failure and frustration and the thinking of other things, this thinking goes on. You're not being told to stop that thinking. You're being told, just this person. Now, what this person is, is somebody who tries to use thinking to control things, or tries to control her thinking, to use thinking to change thinking, to use thinking to think in a different way, or to use thinking to think in a way that will make her feel certain ways.

[57:47]

All this stuff is the realm of thought. That's the mind which can think. And sometimes you think of how you don't like people, or how you wish people were different, or situations were different. This is what's going on. This is called a busy mind. Now you're being told, think of the ability to think. Think of the mind that thinks. The definition is the mind, that which can think, or that which does think, or the ability to think, that's the mind. That's the subjective mind. Think of that subjective mind. Think of what can do this thinking. You can think of it. However, when you do, you'll have a different experience from when you usually think of things. It will be different. You will feel different. It won't be the same. If it is the same, then you're just thinking again of an object.

[58:48]

And again, if you're unsuccessful, now you may realize that the unsuccessfulness may have more impact and more frustration to it than it usually does, which again will be showing you more about thinking. The more you understand about thinking, if you study that thinking thoroughly, the more thoroughly you study that thinking, which is not the instruction. The instruction is not to study the thinking The instruction is to look back at, to turn around and look back at what's doing the thinking, or what can think, or the ability to think, various ways to put it. That's the instruction. But people have a hard time doing that because that's not just going in the opposite direction, that's a complete revolution. It's hard. You get dizzy, you get flipped in the air, and you feel left out. However, it's not so bad because if you study the thinking, which is not the instruction, but it's close to the instruction, If you study the thinking thoroughly, at the thoroughness of studying the thinking, which is not the instruction, you will outline or see very clearly at the edge of that, you will see what can do that.

[60:03]

And your mind will look over at that, and you'll have a different feeling, and you will fall into a realm where there's no objects. So if you can just turn around and look at something you can't look at, Do it. If you can't, which is what most people are doing most of the time, and you try to do it and you find out that what you're really doing is looking at your thinking and making your thinking an object, then do that thoroughly. And if you do it thoroughly, then right around the edge of that is that which can do this. Because you are doing it, the more thoroughly and intensely you do that, the more clearly your ability to do that will be implied. And you can see it in the periphery. Your periphery vision will start tuning in on it. And pretty soon it will tune in all the way around the back and it'll come around the front. And you'll let it come in more and more. So there's different ways to get into this. One way is to simply do a flip and completely change everything.

[61:07]

The other is try and fail and notice what you're doing. And what you're going to be doing when you're failing is just your usual trip with a new name called this instruction, which you then feel quite frustrated with, which is a good sign, but it's a little bit different when you're successful. When you're successful, you have these other reactions which people are talking about. And the more time you can spend there, well, if you spend enough time to finally be still there for a little while, you will experience what we call disentanglement from objects. You will get a feeling for enlightened consciousness, which is not consciousness in the sense of having objects anymore. It's not ordinary consciousness. It's not a consciousness of things anymore. And that will be the stage of faith. But that's not all we're asking for in this case. But I feel like It would be nice if we all have some feeling for that so we could find out that that's out of balance and then talk about what we need to be, come back into balance, which is the second course.

[62:21]

Yes? It makes me wonder, if the mind isn't thinking, is there any mind there? I didn't say the mind. In the case that the mind isn't thinking, is there any mind there? Yes. Yes. The only way you can find it would be to have a thought. The only way you can find it would be to have a thought. Well, the reason why I say that the mind's thinking is because there are... that there's still a mind when there's not thinking is that people do... yogis have gone into states where basically thinking is stopped and yet they're not drugged or anything. Or we also have cases where people are drugged and where... you know, basically the light goes on, conscious light goes on, but it goes on at the level where there's no objects. There is a level of consciousness where thinking is not operating. We have a level of consciousness where there are no objects.

[63:26]

And we go into that realm in various circumstances, in trances, in comas, in yogic trances, in comas, under certain drug states. Basically, I shouldn't say we go into that, but that state of mind is always going on in those states. It's always going on. It's before the mind makes external objects. There's still mind. There's still consciousness, but it's not consciousness of objects. Consciousness and mind are not the same, right? Well, I'm using the same. But thinking means, in order to think, there has to be objects. And you have to know things. You think of things. Subject-object. That's the way I'm using the word thinking. The mind has a pattern.

[64:31]

Part of the pattern is that consciousness has an object. The kind of consciousness I'm talking about is discriminating consciousness that arises with an object. And the vijnana means there's a subject-object separation. Now, the word pravijnana is different for the word than the word citta. And citta is the mind which, the ability to think. Subjective consciousness has a basic subjectivity in relationship to objectivity. Then we use the word citta. And that's the Chinese character which they use in referring to the ability to think. But thinking always involves this discriminating consciousness which has subject and object. However, again, if you study the subject-object game thoroughly, this mind which can think is implied, and then by implication you can turn around and look in its direction.

[65:33]

And when you look in its direction, that will not be able to be apprehended as an object, and therefore you will be able to experience the objectless quality of mind. Or as somebody said, the sky-like quality of mind. Someone said that the purpose of meditation is to return to the skylight and realize the sky-like quality of mind. That's part of the purpose of meditation. You need to experience and enter the sky-like quality of mind, but that's not all of meditation. The other part of meditation is referred to in this verse, is to break out of that sky to break out of empty space and to come back into the world like before I was I was studying for this class before I came up here and meditating on this reversing the mind you know and studying studying the poem I was I was studying the part about the mind I was studying about studying about the you know the dragons walking on the water you know

[66:41]

The dragon's walking on the water. The dragon's walking on the water. When they walk on the water, they splash the water. The ocean gets turned over. These dragons. These dragons are the things that come out of this empty space. And what do they do? They start walking on the water, but they don't walk over it like, you know, like walk on the water like, and it's like a nice smooth. When they walk on it, they go, the water goes flying over. The ocean gets turned upside down. And the Garudas, they don't just fly, you know, like at such a high altitude that there's no atmosphere. They got this real intense thing going with their arms in the air. The air is the world that lifts the Garuda up and the Garuda flies on the world and the dragon walks on the world and interacts with the world. And I was reading about that, but while I was reading about it, basically, excuse me, saying so, I was... Not like the dragon splashing the water. I was more like the dragon walking over the water without splashing.

[67:44]

I was more like a Garuda flying at about, you know, 600 miles above the Earth's surface. It's not so bad. And then my daughter came in and my wife came in and started climbing all over me, asking me various questions. My wife reached around like this. I won't do it to you, but she reached around like this, real hard and fast. I won't do it as hard as she did. If anybody wants me to do it, I'll show you. Anyway, it really hurt my neck. And I said, that's not funny. But inside I was thinking, now this is balancing the world. I said, they are demonstrating the activity of the Garuda. Can I live up to this opportunity? Am I lifted by this air? Am I enjoying the ocean being flipped over here?

[68:47]

They came in just at the right moment. It was beautiful. I was very happy to have them helping me. Yes? i would like you to repeat those six stages of the bread counting following do you understand the difference between counting and following counting means you exhale and you go one inhale exhale two often up to ten and then you start over again that's counting then When you feel that's too gross, you just go, just following, not saying anything. You could say, well, it's long, short. After a while, just following, not saying anything. Just feel the breath. Then, when that seems to be rougher than your mind, then just experience that everything stops. And you're still watching the breath, moment by moment, but basically you're watching it from a stopped place.

[69:54]

Then start studying the qualities of the breath as something you're watching, something you're watching. This thing that's happening that you're watching from a still place, what's it like? How is it? Well, they said how it is. Then reverse the mind and look back at the mind which has the breath as an object. Then balance, balance between looking and studying objects and reversing the mind. Balance those two. That's purification, which is the stage of the person. So these meditations on breath can take you through the whole course of the study which is represented here by these last two phases. Kim? I was thinking you mentioned the idea of a blank mind and that we achieve a trance state. Oh, yes, right.

[70:56]

I was just wondering if anywhere in the Zen meditation practice there's the hope of reaching a blank mind, or the idea of blank mind. What is it? There's a story about that where Nanchuan, I think, says to Matsu, what Buddha and Matsu says, everyday mind, and something like that. And then Nanchuan says, well, should we turn towards that? He says, if you turn towards it, you turn away from it. Is that how it goes? It's Nanchuan and Jiaojiao. So Nanchuan is a teacher, Jiaojiao is a student. So Matsu said the same thing, then Nanchuan copied his teacher and said the thing to his disciples. They do that kind of stuff. And then, so, he says, if you turn towards it, you turn away from it. He said, well, then how can you know whether you're doing it right or wrong?

[71:57]

And the teacher says, you know, knowing, it has nothing to do with knowing or not knowing whether you're doing it right or wrong. Knowing is just discriminating consciousness. It's just thinking, right, that we're just talking about. Knowing, oh, now I'm doing it right. In other words, you think you're doing it right. That's all it is. Thinking that you're doing Buddhism right is thinking you're doing Buddhism right. It's very similar to thinking you're doing Buddhism wrong. Okay? This instruction is look back at the ability to think that you're doing Buddhism right or doing Buddhism wrong. That's what this instruction's about. Then he says, not thinking is just blind consciousness. Like if you wouldn't think, stop, you know, just don't think I'm doing Buddhism right, or don't think I'm doing Buddhism wrong, or don't think I'm Kim, or don't think I'm not Kim, don't think I'm a Green Gulch, don't think I'm not a Green Gulch. Don't think. If you got really good at that, you'd get into this trance. So that's not it either. The way has nothing to do with thinking or not thinking.

[72:58]

It has to do with finding a way that's completely beyond doubt. In other words, faith. In other words, what are you up to? And you have to give up everything, absolutely surrender everything, except doing what your concern is, your ultimate concern. Are you going to give up everything except this instruction and reverse the mind, or are you not? If you have some doubt, that means you're going to do it 80%. If you do it 80%, you still might accidentally be successful. If you do it 100%, you will be successful you will definitely be successful. Now, what you might be successful at is like scary. You might be successful at getting extremely frustrated. In other words, you might misapply or misunderstand and just redouble your thinking process and make objects more objective. But that mistake is easily remedied. As a matter of fact, it will remedy itself because at the extreme of that mistake, you will achieve liberation from that mistake.

[74:04]

The point is that you're thorough and wholehearted about what you misunderstood, and you put yourself wholly into it, and that wholeheartedness, that faith, you'll get the stage of faith. So, basically Buddhism has nothing to do with that, except that Buddhists sometimes practice those things, and Buddhists sometimes go to movies, and Buddhists sometimes play golf. Those trances... Golf? Golf? Those trances are simply thinking in a certain way, so intensely that you get into a state where you don't think. Like, I'm not going to think I'm Kim, I'm not going to think I'm not Kim, I'm not going to think I'm anything. You know, there's a way you can get into a trance. And Buddha, actually, he just happened to have done that himself. So he had that sort of, that was in his repertoire of yogic tricks. But he did not recommend that. Well, actually he did recommend it, but only because if you were a Buddhist teacher and you played golf, you might recommend people play golf, just because it would be something to do together.

[75:15]

It's not the Buddha way, although it does give you certain information, namely that even when the mind is almost completely suppressed, still the body stays warm and so on and so forth. I was just thinking about coming to live here and doing this practice. Sometimes it's really exhausting. And thinking of other traditions, which have a lot of trance elements, like the drumming and the singing. And I guess it's hard to think right now that the chanting, in a way, can't fit in like that sometimes for me. But just thinking of other cultures traditions which have like kind of a relief like where you where you connect with this trance state in a sense to it seems to me like maybe it's a sense of like the beef from from this reversal and from this process at a moment you know to to be in a trance around dancing or drumming or right well uh it's kind of kind of if you bring up some complexities but i if i could quickly say

[76:30]

Some of these kind of things like drumming and so on put you in a trance where basically what happens is you get into a state where you get some kind of buffer from your pain. And then as soon as you stop, the pain comes right back in, sometimes considerably heavier, and people freak out at that time. Another way of doing this drumming is that it is a totally different way of using your mind you know, like wasting your time, in a sense, by your ordinary standards. And doing something that is totally useless or wasteful from your ordinary point of view is another way to reverse your mind. So those trances could be just like this, reversing the mind. And then they aren't just temporary relief from suffering or buffer. They aren't putting yourself in a comfortable place for a while and numbing yourself from your pain. So I couldn't say which ones are which in those things. But sometimes in Zen people are doing the kind of like escape by numbing type of meditation, which is called quietism.

[77:36]

And one of the criticisms of Soto Zen is that some Soto Zen priests and practitioners go into quietistic states and are basically just sticking their head in the ground. And that's all they know how to do, is kind of like create a buffer from their pain and basically numb themselves like a drug. Pardon? Quietistic, I think, means that you're creating a certain state which has the qualities of quietness and peace, but it's just a concocted state. It doesn't change your understanding at all. You're not meditating on Buddha's teaching of of impermanence and suffering of all beings. You're not looking at the cause of the suffering, which is dualistic thinking, which is subject-object dualism and believing that objects exist solidly. That's the cause of suffering. And you can enter into states of meditation which simply give you a relief from the suffering temporarily but don't get you to address the fundamental problems.

[78:43]

You can also get into states of calm which give you relief and calm, but then are good ground upon which then you turn to study this dualism and start to notice what's causing the pain. That would be an awakened use of composure. But some people just go into the composure state and they just keep returning there and coming out, causing trouble and going back. They just do that repeatedly. And they come out and they say, yeah, well, this is really a bad place, so I shouldn't go back. So they go back. But it's bad because of their misunderstanding. They're causing trouble and everyone wants them to go back and maybe never come around again. So a retreat into meditation should, when you come out, you should come out and things should be, you know, not necessarily better, but you should be better able to interact with and be more compassionate rather than basically just be sorry that you came out. And, you know, where did the composure go and where did the happy... So, again, you know, when these people come and bug you, one of the signs that your meditation is doing well is that you happily give up the bliss that you're in, if there was bliss.

[79:58]

Or happily give up the pain, if there was pain. But the fundamental thing is to... address and be awakened to the nature of the subject-object duality so that you can be a Garuda, so you can be a green dragon, so you can be exhausted, so you can glimpse the wisdom that runs through all states of exhaustion. and loiter around the frontier and then actually enter and start, you know, promoting exhaustion in the marketplace. Bill, you were going to say something earlier. Would you like to say something now? Well,

[81:00]

In talking with a friend about this teaching, I came to the conclusion that the whole thing is ridiculous. The whole... I could find no really solid reason why I practice Zen or am your student or... or go to, you know, Tres O'Hara or come to Greenville. There was no really reason that I could really put my finger on for doing any of it. And that date was really the only conclusion that I could come to, that there was some sort of date that that brought me out here on Monday nights and took me wherever I was going all the way.

[82:14]

Strangely enough, when Jordan talked about this, well, early on talked about this circle, my experience of it was a 90 degrees. I was pretty happy about that. I felt a little distressed that I only had a quarter of the circle. It gave me a little something to hold on to, which did feel so ridiculous for a while, because when I was talking about the announcement, there was just really no reason other than faith. It seemed like faith was something that I really don't find the necessity to define. Would you, even though you don't find it a necessity, would you mind telling me what it is? Would you tell me what your faith is? My faith is that even though I don't understand what's in the book of Surah Al-Nisr, and even though I don't understand what people are talking about, it's glad I'm supposed to be talking about it.

[83:32]

It's just wonderful that my teacher has the guts to sit out there year after year and use this language to talk to us. And in the student-teacher relationship, I find this big. I find that there is a connection that doesn't require an explanation. I don't have to name it. I sometimes think it's gaseous, some sort of... It's not that. I try to name it all the time. Nothing works in naming it. That's... Nothing works. And it's great fun to try to name it. I try and name it year after year, day after day. But it's... Yeah, I've experienced these things.

[84:40]

Today I was thinking about glass, I was driving a tractor, and I was thinking about this glass, and I thought about this practice, and I drove off into a ditch. And so there are those kind of solid things that go on. But when it gets right down to it, there's just no need. And that's great. It's so ridiculous that it's... So you've been pretty thoroughly unsuccessful at naming it. Absolutely. And in that complete unsuccessfulness you feel pretty good. I'd have to say one. You have to say that. Well, yes. Yeah, but I didn't say you had to say wonderful, although I'm glad you did. Well, I'm not... Because your faith, your faith... And David said wonderful, too.

[85:41]

That was two of you, so that's two wonderfuls at the end of this ridiculousness. Yeah. I mean, I felt wonderful about feeling shitty at this whole... Okay. So we're waiting for you folks to be thorough. So as soon as we're thorough, we can go on to the next case. So we'll see you next week if everybody's thorough, all right? And then if we are, we can study something else. But until then, please practice this. Try this out. Help us out here. We need your help. Just a few more weeks. If you do it, we'll be able to get out of here. Do I recommend reading any more of the case?

[86:44]

I don't recommend reading. I recommend... I recommend that you... What does it say? Uh... It's getting late, but I'll just say this, okay? This is encouraging to me. Yunyan said to Dengshan, or Dengshan said to Yunyan, when people ask me to describe you after you're dead, what should I say? And Yunyan said, just this person. Then, after Yunyan died, people asked Dengshan, tell us about your teacher. And Dungsan said, just this person. And the monk said, when your teacher said, just this person, was that actually this?

[87:50]

Was that actually this? And Dungsan said, it was. So what I recommend is that you make your life just like that conversation. You make your life like your teacher asks you, where are you from? You say where you're from. Your teacher asks you, do you think of that? And you say, I always do. And your teacher says this to you and says, reverse your mind and think of the ability to think. Think of the mind that can think. And then you do that like he did. And when you get there, you tell us about it. That's what I'd recommend. Once you do that, then the commentary will really be fun. Before that, it's basically a distraction. A lovely distraction. That's what I'd like you to do.

[88:55]

That's what I'll do. I'll do the practice with you. And this is serious reading. If I'm too strict, if you think I'm too strict, please tell me. I'll lighten up.

[89:17]

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