Last week, I think I was talking in part about viewing practice as having two basic aspects, one being practices of compassion and practices of wisdom. And I might have said that the practices of compassion seem to me to be ways of relating to the things we know, ways of relating to the things we're aware of, living beings and non-living beings. And the wisdom practices are ways of seeing the beings which we are hopefully relating

[01:17]

to in these compassionate ways. It seems to me that compassion is not so much about seeing the nature of what we are relating to, but these practices are exercises in the kinds of activities which would arise if we understood and saw all beings and things as they truly are. It's almost as if compassion practices are, before we have fully developed wisdom, compassion practices are kind of practicing as if we could see the truth, or practicing the way

[02:25]

we would practice with beings if we could see the true nature of phenomena. Not only that we could see the true nature of phenomena, but perhaps we're seeing the true nature at the very moment we were relating with this person or thing, with this being or thing. And it seems to me that compassion practices are not even necessarily seeing the difference between compassion and wisdom, but wisdom does see the difference between things, for example, compassion practices and wisdom practices, and wisdom also sees the nature of compassion practices and wisdom practices, and it seems that they have the same nature ultimately.

[03:25]

And I think I also mentioned last week that although in the coming discussions of wisdom teachings and wisdom practices, we may not go into much detail about the compassion practices, I do hope that everyone here is involved in those compassion practices, even though we may not be emphasizing them in these studies of wisdom. So the compassion practices, again, are giving precepts, ethical precepts, patience, diligence, and concentration, so I hope that we're all working on all of those five basic types of compassion practices, along with our study of the wisdom teachings.

[04:35]

Tonight, I would like to tell you about an ancient way of practicing wisdom, which is not just a Mahayana or an early Buddhist presentation of wisdom practice, but both, all traditions I think use mindfulness in this way, although they may not speak of it this way. As a matter of fact, the way I will talk about it tonight is very difficult to find in any Chinese or Japanese or Korean Zen text, for various reasons, which we can go into some other place. Zen seems to have put aside this presentation, but I would like to tell you about it, because I think it might be helpful. And it is a presentation of wisdom practice in the form of, which is

[05:59]

called the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. Mindfulness is an English word, of course, translating an Asian term, which I believe in Pali is sati, and in Sanskrit, smriti, and its basic meaning is remembering or remember. But it also has the connotation, not just of remembering, but of noting, or being aware of, or noticing phenomena. So it means both, actually. It means noticing phenomena, being aware of them, and remembering to notice

[07:07]

them and be aware of them. I'm introducing these Four Foundations of Mindfulness because mindfulness means, really, this is not a translation of the word, but the meaning of mindfulness is really wisdom. In the early phases of mindfulness it may not yet be wisdom, but training in wisdom. So initially it's like remembering to pay attention to things, and also paying attention to them, and finally it is actually seeing into the nature of phenomena, seeing them deeply. The Four Foundations of Mindfulness, in Sanskrit they're called, I believe, kaya-smriti-upasthana,

[08:11]

vedana-smriti-upasthana, and citta-smriti-upasthana, and dharma-smriti-upasthana, which is the foundation of mindfulness of the body, the first one, foundation of mindfulness of feelings, foundation of mindfulness of consciousness, and foundation of mindfulness of dharma, or dharmas. The mindfulness of body includes mindfulness of breathing, mindfulness of posture, it also includes unpopularly

[09:22]

in the West, mindfulness of the repulsiveness of the body, but we won't go into that one tonight. Some other time, by popular request, we'll go into it. But a lot of people find the topic of mindfulness of the repulsiveness of the body really repulsive and depressing, especially in California. And another one is mindfulness, I think, of the stages of decomposition of corpuses. The mindfulness of breathing is basically just to be mindful of the breathing, and in, for example, the very important work called the Abhidharmakosha,

[10:28]

in the chapter on practice, the first aspect of practice that it talks about, well actually, I'll just tell you, it talks about practice in that chapter in terms of ethics, concentration, and wisdom. It starts with ethics. It talks about ethics in other parts of the Abhidharmakosha, but in this particular chapter, it briefly talks about practicing ethics. Then it moves on to practicing concentration. And the concentration that's recommended in that chapter on the practice is concentration using breath as the object of concentration. And then when it moves on to mindfulness practices, the first thing that's studied under mindfulness

[11:31]

is mindfulness of the body, and the first topic under mindfulness of the body is mindfulness of breathing. So, meditating on breathing can be both a concentration practice and a mindfulness or wisdom practice. And the difference in the way you relate to or deal with the phenomena of breathing is the difference between concentration or the practice of compassion with the breathing and the practice of wisdom with the breathing. Now, usually, I mean, I think it does say in the text, and usually we think of practicing

[12:34]

the concentration with the aid of, you know, looking at the topic or the phenomena of breathing, we usually think of that as concentration, but in terms of what I just said a moment ago, really, you can think of practicing all the kinds of compassion with the breathing. And then, parallel to that, practicing wisdom with the breathing. So the usual thing people think about, or not so much think about, but understand, is they usually think, which I mentioned before, is that when the topic of, when the phenomena of breathing comes up, you can attain concentration, you can attain tranquility and serenity and ease and flexibility

[13:35]

of body and mind and buoyancy and malleability and workability and serviceability of body and mind, by focusing the attention on the breath. And also, that's what some people think compassion is too, is to focus your attention on somebody. But I've proposed to you over and over that it's not really by focusing your attention or trying hard to pay attention to your breath that the mind becomes calm. Rather, the way the mind becomes calm is that in the moments of awareness of the breath, in the moment you're aware of your breathing, or the breathing, you give up discursive thought in relationship

[14:39]

to the breathing. This would also apply, although they don't, in this example I'm giving you from Abhidharmakosha, it doesn't say meditate on people at first, except for maybe corpses. It doesn't say, and it definitely doesn't say meditate on, what do you call it? This is California, right? It doesn't say meditate on the object of your sexual preference. Is that the term? Sexual orientation? The object of your sexual orientation? The object of your affection? That changes your complexion? It doesn't say that, it says the breath. But I'm opening it up for you and commenting that what calms the mind would be that whatever you meet, if you could, that each person, each plant, each breath, each

[15:48]

posture, each smell, each color, each thing you meet, each thought, each emotion, that you would give up discursive thought in relationship to that object. And the giving up discursive thought in relationship to the breathing, the mind becomes calm. Also, being generous with the breath is a compassionate way to relate to the breath, which basically means give it away. Give away your inhales and give away your exhales. Don't take the breath. Receive it and give it away. This is a compassionate way to relate to your breath. Practice the precepts with your breath, which again is don't kill your breath, don't take the breath that's not given. Receive the breath that is given. Don't lie about your breath. Don't

[16:57]

misuse sexuality in relationship to your breath. Have you heard about that one? Don't intoxicate yourself or others in relationship to your breath. Don't besmirch or slander your breath. Don't praise yourself, your breath, at the expense of others' breaths. You know about that one? I don't have bad breath, but you do. Don't do that. Don't be possessive of your breath. Don't be angry with your breath. And don't disparage your breath. Be patient with your breath. Be diligent with your breath. And basically concentrate on your breath by giving up discursive thought about your breath. These compassionate ways of relating to your breath are the foundations for now moving over to being with your breath in a way that's

[18:05]

different from the way you have been. Now, previously, you've just been being compassionate with your breath, like being compassionate with a person. Now you're going to look and see what this is. What is it? First of all, you're going to do it by simply being aware of it. So as you switch over to mindfulness of the breathing, you're not now concentrating on giving up discursive thought. Let me say that again. When you are practicing concentration in relationship to the breath, when you are relating to the breath in a way that is conducive to tranquility and buoyancy and relaxation, when you are relating that way, you are giving up discursive thought. Now, as you relate to the breath to develop wisdom, you're going to use discursive thought. So instead of just looking at the breath, for example, let's

[19:09]

say you look at a breath which just happens to be an inhale. When you're practicing concentration, you don't say, it's an inhale. If you do say it's an inhale, you let go of that quickly. You don't say it's an exhale. You don't say it's a smooth inhale or a rough inhale or a long inhale or a short inhale. You don't say that kind of stuff. You're not talking to yourself about the breath. You're letting go of talking to yourself about the breath. Just like you let go of talking to yourself about everyone and everything as a concentration or a tranquility meditation. But when you switch to wisdom, you start talking to yourself about things. First of all, you just talk about how they appear. You don't necessarily see

[20:09]

how they ultimately are, but if they appear to you as a long breath, you say to yourself, sort of, or you note, or you're kind of thinking it's a long breath. It's a short breath, it's a rough breath, it's a smooth breath, it's a deep breath, it's a shallow breath. You're talking to yourself, you're using discursive thought now in the wisdom practice. See the difference? One will calm you, the other will perhaps temporarily upset you a little bit. As a matter of fact, many Venn students think that the way to calm down would be to try to focus hard on the breath. And then I sometimes hear about this from them and they're not calming down and not only that, but although they're trying to focus on their breath, they're

[21:09]

actually, according to them, according to what they're saying to themselves while they're trying to focus on their breath, they're saying to themselves, I am not being very successful and concentrating on my breath and I am a very trashy Zen student. And I'm getting worse and worse. And I'm really getting angry, etc. This is discursive thought and this does not calm the person. They're trying to calm down through meditating on the breath, but they're actually doing something closer to wisdom practice. But because they're trying to do concentration practice, they feel frustrated. A person like that, it might be good for them just to say, forget about concentration practice, I'm no good at it, I'm going to do wisdom practice for a while. But even if you're fairly successful at concentration practice, which means not that you're trying to focus on the breath, but that you're trying to give up

[22:12]

your controlling, manipulative, discursive thinking about the breath. That's calming. Now you switch to talking to yourself about the breath and you can say things like, good breath, bad breath, long breath, short breath. But that kind of discursive thinking doesn't really calm you. However, it does start to warm you up to looking more and more deeply into the nature of breath. If you can give up discursive thought in relationship to breath, you can become serene and temporarily free of affliction in that serenity. However, you still haven't necessarily become free of your misconceptions about the nature of breath. For example, you have not necessarily become free of the basic misconception that the breath is something out there separate from you. For example, your breath. This misconception

[23:16]

is not necessarily touched by entering into a tranquil state with your breath. Whereas chatting with yourself about your breath, although it's not calming, is the beginning of penetrating to the nature of the breath and overthrowing your misconceptions and overthrowing believing in your misconceptions about the breath, which is the wisdom which will thoroughly free you from the afflictions which arise from believing these misconceptions about the nature of phenomena in general and the breath in particular. So again, looking at the breath as a mindfulness practice, you just start maybe by saying what kind of breath it seems to be. Now if you also notice that you're getting quite chatty about it and commenting on the quality of your meditation practice too, well then you're not practicing mindfulness

[24:21]

of the body at that time or of the breath. Now you switch to mindfulness of, I would say, one of the other foundations. For example, if you were commenting, if you had a view of your meditation as being excellent, that would be actually the foundation of your meditation. It's the foundation of mindfulness either based on consciousness or based on Dharma. And if you felt good about this nice judgment you made about yourself and you noticed that you felt good and you said, you know, you noticed you made this comment and you said, I made this nice comment about myself, I'm praising myself, not at the expense of others,

[25:24]

but I'm just sort of like patting myself on the back here about my meditation, about my mindfulness practice. And so I have a consciousness here which is making these positive evaluations of how I'm doing the mindfulness practice. And I also notice that this positive feeling is arising in association with this judgment. So then you're doing mindfulness of feeling, the second foundation of mindfulness. And you might also, since I told you about it, or you might have read it someplace else, you're also aware you're doing that kind of practice. So you're aware. Well, I was doing foundation of mindfulness of body, but then I started to become aware of other phenomena, mental phenomena, and I started to notice those, and I started to notice that I was noticing them, and I also started to feel good about noticing them, and I noticed that I was feeling good. In other words, you're noticing what's happening. These are like foundations of wisdom, that you notice what's going on with you.

[26:26]

When you're practicing concentration, you do have to notice to some extent, otherwise you wouldn't know what it is that you're going to be giving up discursive thought towards. So you're always aware of something, but in the discursive thought department, you're giving it up in the concentration practice, but wisdom practice, you're using the discursive thought to keep track of, not keep track of, but to keep abreast of the latest news in the department of your experience. So mindfulness practice, you're not staying with one topic, you deal with whatever comes up. So mindfulness practice or wisdom practice actually is easier to do in daily life than concentration practice for most people, because it's particularly hard to work in the office at Green Gulch or some place like that, and be giving up discursive thought. Answer the telephone, and you say, hello, that might be possible, but

[27:31]

then that's maybe pretty much it, and the other person might say, hello, and you say, hello, and they say, help, and you say, what, and they say, is this Green Gulch, and you say, yes, can you help me? Yes. Well, I'd like to make a reservation to come to the guest house. Okay. Would you do that for me? Sure. My name is so-and-so, and then you have trouble, you have trouble remembering this whole sentence there, because by the time they get halfway through the sentence, you forgot the beginning, because you let go. And so they finish the sentence, and they say, did you get that? And you say, no. And people used to do that at Zen Center, actually, in the early days, at Page Street, when we first started to have sort of an ongoing office open, you know, before we moved to

[28:36]

Page Street, we had an office, but it was open only for like an hour a day. And then at Page Street, we had an office open pretty much all the day. Some of the Zen students who worked in the office were trying to practice tranquility meditation in the office, answering the phone. They were trying to, for example, follow their breathing, or count their breathing and answer the telephone, and they couldn't. It's not really that easy to do. So then they were like staying with their breath and not being able to deal with the person on the phone, or dealing with the person on the phone and then not being able to follow their breathing and getting really angry at the person for distracting them. So we gradually made it clear to people, and actually somebody else said at the dinner table, they asked Suzuki Roshi, should we be following our breathing? He said, not at the dinner table, just give it up. It's okay to be mindful, however, of your mouth and your tongue and the taste. So you can be mindful while you're eating, but following your breathing or counting

[29:39]

your breathing and trying to give up discursive thought while you're eating is actually hard. It's not impossible, but it's not recommended. Mindfulness is more recommended. You can develop wisdom while you're eating, and you can develop wisdom while you're talking to people, because wisdom is using discursive thought, which you need to talk to people and to understand what they're saying and what they're asking of you. Now let's say again that we're doing these foundations of mindfulness now. In addition, the foundation of mindfulness of Dharma, under that foundation, is teachings about more refined analysis of the phenomena that are coming to you. So there's teachings which help you see more clearly, finer distinctions about the phenomena that are coming to you, so that

[30:40]

you can even have more detailed conversations about what's happening. So for example, under the foundation of mindfulness of Dharma, we are presented with the teaching of the five aggregates or the five skandhas. So you're told, for example, these five aggregates, and you're told that whatever happens, it would be one of these types. So whatever happens, you would be able to like see which of these types it was. And also under the Dharma teachings is a teaching, for example, of the four noble truths. So for example, there's a Dharma teaching which tells you two truths, first of all, or two truths, an ultimate truth and two types of truth, ultimate truth and conventional truth, and the conventional truth are presented first, namely the conventional truth that there's suffering, the truth of suffering. I said there is suffering, but that's not actually the right way to put it. It's the

[31:46]

conventional truth of the origin of suffering, and the ultimate truth of the end of suffering and the path to the end of suffering. So that's a Dharma teaching, so part of wisdom practice is to pay attention to what's happening, and to note it, and talk to yourself about it enough so that you know what it is, or you know how it appears. Then also, at the same time, not all the time, but at the same time, you have heard Dharma teachings, so you're mindful, you're practicing, for example, mindfulness of body, which means you're aware of your breath or your posture, for example, you're aware this body is sitting, this body is in a sitting posture, so there's mindfulness of body. And you also hear a teaching at the same time,

[32:47]

so you're mindful of a teaching, which is a teaching about this body. And what is the teaching about this body? The teaching about this body, for example, is four truths about this body. So you hear the four truths and you're mindful of the four truths while you're looking at the body. You hear the four truths and you're mindful of the four truths, you're practicing the foundation of mindfulness of the Dharma teachings of the Four Noble Truths at the same time you're aware of the practice of mindfulness of the posture or mindfulness of the breathing. And then you bring the teaching of the foundation of mindfulness of the body, breath or posture, for example, together with the foundation of mindfulness of Dharma, which means you bring the Dharma teaching into juxtaposition or you apply the

[33:49]

Dharma teaching to the phenomena that you're dealing with. And so how do the Four Noble Truths, for example, apply to the breath? Well, first of all, there is the truth. You got a phenomena there? A breath? A breath phenomena? There's a truth of suffering. How does the truth of suffering apply to the breath? Well, it applies to the breath in the following way, I would say, namely, that the truth of suffering is that breath is suffering unless you have wisdom. So it's just the truth of suffering. Do you sense suffering at the same time, do you sense the truth of suffering with this breath? And you might say, no. Okay, fine. Forget that Dharma teaching. But then you might

[34:59]

say, well, maybe I'll try it again. And you might notice that it is true, there is a truth of suffering right there in this breath which you're aware of. Once again, if you are meditating on your breath in this way of compassion and you're doing concentration practice, it's actually kind of hard at that time to meditate on the teaching of the truth of suffering because when you're in concentration you feel so comfortable about your breath. It's harder to understand in that concentrated state, it's harder to understand in the concentrated state the truth of suffering because you're giving up discursive thought by which you would hear and understand the teaching and by which you would notice that suffering has something to do with discursive thought, which you've just given up temporarily. But if you're

[36:09]

not overly concentrated or even if you are, but you can still do this discursive thought, the discursive thought that you use can now help you understand how the teaching of the And what's the next truth? The next truth is that suffering has an origin or an origination. It arises, therefore it ceases. But also, it arises, therefore it depends on something. And what does it depend on? Well, it basically depends on ignorance. It depends on craving, but craving depends on ignorance. So, when you are breathing and you notice you're breathing and you hear the teaching of the truth of suffering, if there is any ignorance, there

[37:10]

will be clinging, and that clinging will be the source of the suffering. Or, if when you see the suffering that's associated with the breathing, you will see that the origin of the suffering, in the middle of the suffering or the center of the suffering, is its origin. In other words, you start to see the nature of this phenomena is that it is suffering and origin of suffering. It is both, or both apply. Then there is a cessation. There is a cessation. How is there a cessation? When there is no clinging, when there is no ignorance. And how will there be no ignorance? Because of following the path. And what is the path?

[38:11]

The path is first of all right view. And what is right view? Right view is seeing this breath or this posture in such a way that you will not have craving for it or against it. It is seeing the breath or the body in such a way that ignorance has been dropped. That is the cessation of suffering. And the cessation of suffering is right there too, ultimately, with every breath. Every breath, the cessation of suffering is right there in the sense that when you see the nature of the breath, suffering ends. So, practicing wisdom would mean that you would actually hear these teachings of the Four Truths and bring them into relationship

[39:19]

with each experience. So you would be practicing wisdom in terms of mindfulness and remembering to be mindful of what you're doing, of what you're feeling, of what you're thinking, of what you're experiencing, mindful of it, remembering to be mindful, and then bringing the foundation of mindfulness based on Dharma together with that. And also the teaching of the Four Noble Truths is you start with the first two. You have to be grounded in the first two before you can go on to the second two. And the practice of the path, the Fourth Noble Truth of the path, the first aspect and ultimate aspect of right view, in other words, wisdom, that has to happen, be realized before the third truth is realized.

[40:30]

So this is a case of applying a wisdom teaching which includes wisdom practice in it. Now, another wisdom teaching, the one which I want to spend more time on, is the wisdom teaching from the Sandhya Nirmachana Sutra, which teaches that the breath, for example, the posture, for example, has three characters. So, again, in wisdom practice you are remembering

[41:36]

to be mindful of your posture. It's not that you're trying to focus on your posture, it's just that when your posture presents itself to you, which it often does, you're remembering to pay attention to it. In other words, you remember not to miss opportunities to notice the body sensations that you are able to be aware of. We cannot be aware of everything that's going on with our body, but we can be aware of a lot. In other words, we can not pass up on lots of opportunities which are actually right under our nose, lots of experiences which we're actually going through, we can actually, like, remember to notice them. And then it's also possible to remember, now, okay, now I remembered to notice my posture. I'm sitting, I'm aware of it. I remembered it and I'm aware of my

[42:45]

posture. Now, what teachings do I know about the posture? Oh yeah, I've heard that this posture is a phenomena and it has three characters. It has a fantasy character, it has an other-dependent character, and it has a thoroughly established character. And the fantasy character is an imputation or a fantasy about this phenomena in terms of essences and attributes by which words and letters can be used to conventionally designate the phenomena. That's the fantasy

[43:47]

nature of, for example, my body. So, when I have a bodily experience, one character, one aspect of this bodily experience is a fantasy, that there's an essence there to the body and that this, in other words, it is a body and there's something in that body essentially there. And there are certain attributes of the body that go with that essence. And I imagine that the body has this essence and attribute, and this is like fantasy. It's Now, the body is not just an idea, but my fantasy is just an idea. And I do have a fantasy about my body or about the body. And by using words and concepts, this projection of fantasy

[45:00]

onto the body can be the basis for using those words to designate body. And I can say body hurts, and then Grace can come and help me. She knows right where to go. And it works pretty nicely. This is conventional world. And the word body does refer to this body, but there's nothing in the body which is the referent to the word body. That's a projection. And that's there for all our phenomena. The next character is the other dependent character, namely that my body is produced, is dependent on things other than itself. And then comes a thoroughly established character, which is that those projections, those imaginations, those fantasies about the body, which are useful, because that's the only way we can

[46:04]

use it, is by imputing this essence and attributes to it, and then using words. But we can't just use words. We don't know where to put the words in relationship to phenomena unless we put essences and attributes to land them on. The thoroughly established character of the body is that the fantasies about the body are not in the body. This other dependent phenomena, the body, that really truly exists. Not ultimately exists, but it truly exists. And it arises by the power of things other than itself, and there's really something there, but its true, its ultimate nature is that our fantasies are not in it. And when you see the ultimate nature, you see things in such a way that the second truth of suffering

[47:11]

will be understood and abandoned. In other words, when you see things this way, you will stop craving the body, and suffering will cease. Now, these same three natures are also taught as three non-natures, or these three characters are taught in terms of three kinds of lack of essence, or lack of own being. So what I'm telling you now, again, is a Dharma teaching, a wisdom teaching which could be used in the Dharma, in the foundation of mindfulness of Dharma. This is a teaching

[48:14]

which, if you could learn this teaching, you can apply this teaching to all the phenomena which you're being mindful of. For example, your body, or other bodies. For example, your breath, other breaths, mental phenomena, other mental phenomena. All phenomena these characters apply to. So, first of all, the characters apply to all these things, but then going with these characters, paralleling them are three lacks of own being, or three non-natures. So the first type of lack of own being is own being in terms of character. Namely, those imputations, those fantasies, lack essence. Those fantasies don't exist at all. And that kind of lack of own being is a different type of lack of own being. It's a lack of own being

[49:18]

in terms of production, and particularly it's a lack of own being, a lack of essence in terms of producing itself. There's nothing there in things that produce themselves. So, the fact that phenomena are other-powered and dependent on other things goes with the fact that they lack, they don't have anything about them that makes themselves happen. They are a lack of own being in terms of how they occur. And the last kind of lack of own being is ultimate lack of own being. And ultimate lack of own being means that it's the type of lack of own being which is the lack of the imputation in the other dependent. And that lack is the ultimate lack, that is the ultimately curative lack. If you can see that lack, you'll be cured of ignorance, and therefore cured of craving and suffering.

[50:26]

But the order of study is not the order that I presented them. The order of study is to start with the other dependent. So again, practicing mindfulness, you've got plenty to be mindful about, I have plenty to be mindful about, namely every experience. You have an experience, tell me about it, and it's one of these foundations. It's body, it's feeling, it's consciousness, or it's dharma. And if you're confused about it, bring it up, I'll tell you which one it is. But anyway, you don't have to know these foundations, you just have to pay attention to things and not miss a beat, that's all. Just pay attention to each thing, which means remember to pay attention. You've got the stuff happening, all you've got to do is be mindful of them. And in order to be mindful of them, all you have to do is remember to be mindful of them. And of course, that's not easy, but that's it. Very simple, but hard. Namely, remember to be mindful. Of course, everybody wants

[51:30]

to know, how can you remember to remember? There's only one way, remember. Actually, the other way is to confess that you don't remember, which is another kind of remembering. So, you've got the experiences, I've got the experiences, now let's remember to be mindful of them. Now we've got an experience, whatever it is, let's say the body again. Okay, got a body. Now, first thing to study then, in terms of this dharma teaching, this wisdom teaching, is remember the teaching that this body is another dependent phenomena, and this body, this body, your body, the current body you have, it is a lack of own being, it is a non-nature. It's a lack of own being in terms of self-production. There's nothing there in it that makes itself. It's under the influence of other things. So, for example,

[52:37]

very importantly, your activity, your activity, the activity of your body, the activity of your mind is a production lack of own being. Your activity, there's nothing in your activity that makes itself happen. It does not produce by itself, and it can't keep itself going even for a moment longer than one. So here is a teaching about the nature of phenomena, in other words, it's a teaching about how to see the nature of phenomena, in other words, it's a wisdom teaching, so you and I have to remember to look at our phenomena, our body, for example, our breath, our thoughts, and then hear this teaching and remember the teaching while we're looking at the phenomena. In other words, use our discursive thought to develop wisdom about what's happening, and you can do this kind of wisdom practice

[53:42]

in the meditation hall and in daily life. You can do it while you're answering the telephone in the office. You can see how the picking up of the telephone and the speaking and the listening, each one of those things are things you can be mindful of. And when you're mindful of reaching for the phone, your fingers touching the phone, your hands gripping the phone, your hands lifting the phone, up, [...] reaching the ear or perhaps the mouth and ear, approximately, which one, maybe the ear first and then the mouth, or the mouth sometimes first and then the ear, or sometimes it winds up on top of your head. Anyway, this thing happening, you're meditating on it, this is wisdom practice. Here comes the phone, here comes the arm, the hand and arm and the phone are going

[54:47]

to meet the face, here it comes. And now, each step of the way, there's another dependent character here. There's also, by the way, which you can't see yet probably, there is the great medicine every step of the way too. But we can't understand the teaching of the great medicine of the suchness of hearing the phone and touching the phone and lifting the phone and feeling the phone and hearing the word, each one of those things has a suchness which cures our illness. But the suchness is about the other dependent nature. So we have to be tuned into the other dependent nature before we can find the suchness, because the suchness is not just the way things are in mid-air, it's the way the other dependent things are. Suchness is about the way impermanent things are, impermanent things like sounds of phone, hand touching the phone, feel of the phone, temperature of the phone, look

[55:55]

of the phone, taste of the phone, these kinds of things are impermanent, other dependent phenomena. They're there, they're happening all the time, can be mindful of them and realize that, again, with some confidence that being aware of these type of phenomena, noting them and remembering to note them, each step of the way is wisdom practice. In addition to that, we also have to get a little guidance about how to, now that we're in touch with them, we've laid the foundation for wisdom. Now you got the foundation, you got the body, got the foundation, now you bring the wisdom teaching and first you bring the teaching of dependent co-arising to each one of these things. And as the teaching of dependent co-arising is brought together with the mindfulness of each particular phenomena, the wisdom practice

[56:58]

starts to transform the meditator. Being mindful prior to receiving these teachings is good, it's a foundation, but our unskillfulness is not necessarily curtailed much. In other words, you might still, in addition to being aware of the body, still be also excessively involved in being the most excellent office worker or something like that. But as you start to tune into this teaching of the other dependent phenomena, the other dependent nature of the process of answering the phone, the way you answer the phone starts to change, which I talked to you about before. You start to find a balance in the way you listen to the ring, the way you reach for the phone, the way you pick the phone up, you start to find

[58:03]

a balance which comes from understanding that the activity is not done by your own power or its own power. In other words, you start to develop a balance between being careful and not caring at all. You balance between the extreme of being full of care and caring too little. In other words, you find through bringing this teaching together with your activity, you find the appropriate level of care. You find a balanced caring, not caring too much, not caring too little. The teaching of other dependents helps you, as you take that teaching in more, you don't have to try to find the balance, the teaching gives rise to the balanced relationship. And so we have, for example, in this community a range of

[59:09]

styles, as you may have noticed. Some people are wonderfully full of care in this community and some people are wonderfully almost empty of care. Have you noticed? And you know who they are, right? So we have our styles, our proclivities. Some people care too much, some people care too little. But in both cases of caring too much and caring too little, they are both examples of believing in the self-powered nature of things. Both of these extremes come from thinking that things are produced by themselves, that you do things

[60:12]

by yourself. The personal power perspective drives over-concern, over-care and under-care. This teaching is antidote to that personal power perspective which drives us to those two extremes and helps us come back to the more balanced way of relating. So you see, it starts to make us more compassionate, but not being compassionate by trying to be compassionate, but being compassionate because we start to see things differently, because we're ingesting a teaching which points to things being different from the way we usually think they are. We usually look at things through the personal power perspective and that leads to craving. Now, we keep bringing this teaching in mind, bringing relationship to phenomena over and over, listening to it over and over, and our conduct is transformed

[61:15]

from the inside out. Any comments? Mike? Generally speaking, two things. One is we haven't really discussed the other character

[62:30]

that much yet, so part of your problem may be that you just haven't heard enough teachings about it to apply it yet. That's part of it. The other may be that although you feel pretty good about your understanding of the other dependent character, it may be that maybe if you had a little bit more understanding of it, you'd have a better basis for understanding the imputational, with those two things together. So as we proceed, I haven't really mentioned that much yet about the imputational, the fantasy process, but I feel like it won't be very productive or successful to talk about the imputational unless most of us are pretty well grounded in the other dependent meditation. And part of this meditation would be not to

[63:30]

be in too big a hurry to move on to the other one, even though we don't have much time left, but to build a really good base in the meditation on the lack of own being in terms of production, because we have to continue that practice anyway when we study the other two characters. But I'm not saying I'm going to wait till we're all past Masters in that basic meditation before I introduce more, so I will bring up the other teaching pretty soon, but if you are feeling pretty comfortable with that one, then I would say just enjoy how nice it is to do that meditation, but I don't feel like everybody has yet got the hang of it, that's my general impression. Am I correct that you don't have the hang of that meditation? But some of you don't? Yeah, so I think we have to, what do you call it, you have to

[64:37]

bring along your friends with you a little bit longer before we can take the next step. But I would say to you that this whole conversation, you know, is using the imputational. It's been cooking right along while I've been talking, I have to use it, I have to use the imputational to talk to you, and you have to use the imputational to understand me. So it's been going on at the same time, that's part of the mix, but it's not the same as the other dependent character. It's a different kind of insubstantiality. Joe? Yes.

[65:40]

Yes. [...] Right, so wisdom is the fruit of discursive thought, but wisdom is not the fruit of all kinds of discursive thought, because some kinds of discursive thought take us away from what's happening. So one form of discursive thought would be, I am devoted to this person,

[66:49]

and whoever is on the other end of the line, I'm devoted to, I'm going to listen to this person. Here's a discursive thought, where is it, what do you call it, the Enmei-Juku-Kanon-Gyo, although we chant it in Japanese, it's actually discursive thought. It says, in the morning, I'll think of Kansai-an, in the evening I'll think of Kansai-an, every moment of thought I'll think of Kansai-an, without any break I'll think of Kansai-an, when I imagine the telephone I'll think of Kansai-an, when the telephone rings I'll think of Kansai-an, that's basically what that's saying. So you're actually using discursive thought to say, I'm going to think of Kansai-an or I'm going to be mindful of Kansai-an every moment, I'm going to be mindful of Kansai-an every moment sitting here in the office, and that would mean I'm going to listen to everything that happens, to every voice, to every cry,

[67:52]

I'm going to listen to everyone, listen, listen, listen, I'm going to keep listening, I vow to keep listening. This is discursive thought, this is using it in that way. I'm going to be mindful of this, and I'm going to listen to the teaching about the nature of each one of these things I'm listening to, so that I'm not just going to listen, I'm also going to hear the Dharma, which tells me about the nature of the sounds I'm hearing, so that while I'm listening I don't get excessively involved in what the person is saying, so I don't care too much about what they're saying or too little about what they're saying. And I would say these things to myself, I would remind myself, do not get excessively involved in this person's crying, which means do not get too involved or too little involved. This is an example of discursive thought which I don't think would take me away from what's happening. Does that make any sense? Of course, there's other discursive

[69:00]

thoughts which might take me away, like for example, this person does not deserve my attention. Here's another discursive thought which doesn't really help. Mindfulness is a waste of time. I hate Buddhism, and I hate all people, and I'm right, and I'm going to go cause some big trouble now. This kind of discursive thought too, right? But wisdom is not really a fruit of that type of discursive thought. Wisdom is more the fruit of the discursive thought which, if that story was going on, there would be the discursive thought of, this guy seems to be really upset, and he's me. And I think, again, each thing he's saying is another dependent phenomena. And then you don't get in excessively involved in this guy who's freaking out, who happens to be you or happens to be somebody else. In other words, you're remembering the way Avalokiteshvara would relate to the person. Avalokiteshvara does not get excessively involved in this. She's always with us, always listening to us. Or

[70:03]

rather, when we're always with what's happening, we are Avalokiteshvara. When we're always with what's happening, not too much, not too little, we are Avalokiteshvara. Avalokiteshvara has inhabited us, or we've let Avalokiteshvara in when we're that way with things. So not all discursive thought comes to fruit as wisdom, but some discursive thought does. And so you need to be able to do the discursive conversation with yourself, and you can also have it checked out with your discursive conversation mentor about whether this type of discursive thought is the type that comes to fruit as wisdom, or whether this discursive thought is the type of discursive thought that comes to fruit as suffering and ignorance, or promotes suffering and ignorance. If you can't tell the difference between the two, does that make sense? Thank you.

[71:07]

Thank you. My mind is out of numbers, I cannot imagine them. The world is great, it's unsurpassable, I don't know how to become it.

[72:04]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ