As I mentioned a few days ago, if possible I would like to study with you and meditate with you on the teachings about the nature of phenomena, teachings which are offered to assist us in developing perfect wisdom. And day before yesterday I sort of started setting the table for this study by first of all suggesting a kind of spiritual context or spiritual frame on our activities here at this Zen training place.  Spiritual contextualization of this study of the Buddha dharma, where we listen to the suggestion that Buddhas do not practice alone, but they practice together with other Buddhas and they practice together with all living beings.  And all living beings are actually living in this beneficent environment whether they realize it or not, whether they believe it or not.  I suggested that to you.  I also said I wanted to talk to you about this expression “grandmotherly mind” and I would like to do that but there’s something that maybe I have to spend a little more time on with you before we go into that.   And once again the kinds of things I’d like to study with you and learn about with you are what we call wisdom teachings, which are the topics of wisdom meditation or insight meditations, but I also mentioned that another important branch of the Buddha’s meditation is the branch of tranquility or concentration meditation.  As a matter of fact, what most people think of as meditation is actually tranquility meditation.   Many of you are actually working on tranquility meditation now and have been doing so for most of your time at Zen Center, which is part of our practice but I wasn’t intending to have that be the main topic for this practice period.  
    At the beginning of wisdom meditation wisdom meditation looks more like learning or studying or investigation or analysis.  It looks more like being in school and learning about something, which most people do not think of as meditation but the beginning of wisdom meditation looks like that.  At the end of wisdom meditation it becomes unified with tranquility, and then it looks more like as a wise person doing what most people think of as meditation.  
    Some people have already started to talk to me about their tranquility meditation and I just wanted to say a little more about that at the beginning.  So I propose to you that what actually realizes or what is actually necessary in order to realize fully the serene nature of mind or to realize fully the mind’s potential for tranquility, what’s necessary is to for some period of time train the mind in giving up discursive thought, giving up thinking.  It doesn’t mean destroy it, just let go of it.  Usually our thinking, our discursive thought, our wandering thoughts, when we get involved with them they distract us.  When we get involved with them we pay attention to our thinking and it’s hard for us to see, appreciate and physically and mentally understand and manifest fully serenity.  In other words we get involved in our discursive thought means out discursive thought becomes a distraction.  We become distracted because we’re involved with it.  It is not ultimately necessary to be distracted by discursive thought, but to a large extent in the process of developing tranquility we have to give it up, because we don’t know how to be involved with it without getting hooked on it and distracted in the process, so calming, I suggest to you, is to pay attention to letting go of your thinking, letting go of your wandering thoughts.  That’s really what calms, I suggest.  However there are instructions, which most of you have heard about, for tranquility which suggest to people to follow the breath, or count the breath, and there are other ways too, of picking some topic and then in a sense focusing on the topic, and then people think quite naturally that what’s calming you is to focus on this thing, focus on the breath.  But I suggest that it’s not focusing on the breath that calms you but the giving up being distracted.  So in fact if you are looking at the breath, seem to be focusing on it, you might be actually giving up getting involved in the thinking that’s going on or could be going on all around the breath.  But still, and I often use the example, using the breath in that way some people seem to stumble upon letting go of their breathing, while they’re trying to focus on their breath, or focusing on the numbers, counting the breath, in the process of trying to do that they inadvertently give up being involved in their thinking.  Or even they could say what some other people do is when thoughts arise they say, “No!” or try to cut them off, and that is another technique.  But the problem with these techniques is that they’re a little bit discursive.  And as you proceed in tranquility you have to give up these techniques, because they’re discursive.  So trying to follow your breath, what a lot of people say is, “I followed my breath and then when I wander off then I to bring myself back.”  But when I hear them say “bring myself back” or “I come back” this coming back is wandering thought.  Bringing yourself back is more thinking. It may be somewhat better than what you’re off thinking about, but the bringing back part is another example of discursive thought.  So that has to be given up eventually, this bringing back.  So I kind of question whether you should get into it in the first place.  But if you want to, I understand that you feel it might be necessary, so it’s certainly all right.  And…
    I’ve used the example repeatedly of the duck separated from his mother at birth, and then he was walking by a pond where there were several ducks swimming, and the ducks said to him, “Hi!  Come on in.”  
    And he said, “I can’t.”  
    They say, “Why not?”  
    He said, “I can’t swim.”  
    They said, “Sure you can.  You’re a duck.”  
    He said, “I’m not a duck.”  
    They said, “Oh, okay.”  
    Then a wise old, or a kind old duck came in and said, “Here, you want to go swimming with these other ducks?  Here’s a skyhook.  Just hook it onto the sky and that’ll hold you up above the water, and then you can swim around with us.”  So the little duck took a hold of the skyhook and hooked it onto the sky and went into the water and swam around with the other ducks. And then one day he was playing on the bank of the river or the pond with the other ducks, and some fox or something came along, and all the ducks jumped into the lake, jumped into the pond.  The little duck jumped in with them, and they were all swimming around for a while.  But in his fright he forgot the skyhook.  So he was swimming around with them, and then the other ducks said, “Where’s your skyhook?”  
    And he said, “I forgot it.”  
    And they said, “What are you doing?”
    And he said, “I’m swimming.”  
    So it actually is, in the end you don’t need this skyhook, you don’t need any kind of device or technique to be calm, but you may feel you need one.  But the problem is when people use these devices, they keep forgetting to use the device, and sinking.  So rather than not having the device and saying “I’m swimming,” they say, “I lost my device, so I’m sunk.”  Because they keep forgetting to use their device or their technique, by which they think they get concentrated.  But you have to give up these techniques after a while.  So that’s really what I would recommend.  But if you want to use some other technique that’s okay, skyhooks are allowed, if you want to use your skyhook which most people don’t really, they’re just using it because they think they need it.  After a while they say, “I don’t want to use this skyhook.”  So they go do something else, and then they get down on themselves for not using the skyhook.  If you don’t want to use it, fine.  You don’t have to.  Just let your mind be pacified, let your heart be calmed with no device.  Simply let go of discursive thought.  That’s all that’s necessary.  Including discursive thought by which you check to see if you’re letting go of discursive thought.  
    In my first practice period – I’ve told you this story before – I did counting, and I had a system to check to see if I was doing my counting, because I’d noticed that I thought I was counting sometimes but I really wasn’t, so I had ways to check to see if I really was, and usually when I checked my counting I found out I wasn’t, but then finally I got to a point where I checked my counting, and I checked, and my checking showed that I was counting, and actually I was counting my breaths, and actually I managed to use the device consistently with no slips, I actually got to that point, and when I got to that point it was not happy and not calm.  I was just totally under control.  I was using discursive thought to keep myself from doing any discursive thought except counting my breath, and it really was my breath, I had a thing to check on that, which is another thing I did, and then checking to see if the counting was right, and that I wasn’t just dreaming that I was counting, I had it all set, but I was still involved in discursive thought, and my mind was coarser in some ways than usual, but it was not involved in anything but counting my breath, I was totally focused on my breath and checking that I was focused on my breath, and it wasn’t good for me.  But if it’s good for you, find, and if it’s not good for you, don’t do it.  Just give it up along with everything else.  And you will become calm.  
    So I think being calm is wonderful, but I don’t know how good it is to be beating yourself up trying to get calm.  I don’t know how good that is, though it may be part of the course of finding your way.  
    Bodhidharma also said to his disciple, the Second Ancestor, he said something like, translated into English, “Don’t activate your mind around external objects.  Inwardly have no involvements.”  And I’ve gone back and forth about this instruction.  Sometimes I think it’s an instruction in tranquility.  Considering the rest of the story about this instruction, it must be insight meditation.  Now actually I think the first part of his instruction is tranquility instruction and the second part is wisdom instruction.  
    So apparently some of you need a nap now, so I’ll just stop talking until you finish your nap.  Let me know when you’re awake.
    (Question…)
    One translation is, “Don’t activate the mind around objects.” Or “Outwardly, don’t activate your mind around external objects, and inwardly have no involvements.”  Another translation is.  Excuse me, I got it wrong.  “Outwardly, don’t activate your mind around objects.”  Translation of that is “Outwardly, have no involvements.  Inwardly no coughing or sighing in the mind.”  “Coughing or sighing,” another translation was “gasping.”  So my current understanding about that is that when you look at objects, now these objects could be the sound of blue jays or light or feelings in your body, but it could also be thought objects, so it basically means don’t think about them, don’t activate your mind around the objects, don’t get involved.  In other words, give up discursive thought in relation to objects that you’re involved with.  That way of dealing with objects, if you train that way, it comes to fruit as the realization of tranquility.  And inwardly, no coughing or sighing.  I thought about that more and did some research on the words “sigh” and “cough” and “gasp.”  And all those words have to do with breath or breathing.  So what I think he’s saying is that when it comes to seeing things, give up thinking about them, give up discursive thought about them, and then, dealing with your basic energy, don’t grasp it, don’t catch it, don’t pull it.  Like the word “gasp” means “to draw in” or “catch” the breath.  And “sigh” means to release it as in shock or sorrow.  “Cough” of course is to kind of push your breath around, to move some particles out of your lungs or throat or nose.  I think what’s being suggested here is don’t mess with your energy.  Don’t constrict it.  Don’t distort it.  Don’t block it.  In other words, positively speaking, let your energy flow.  As an inward practice.  Which I think means give up the kinds of discriminations that cause a kind of construction or distortion of your life.  Discriminations like “self and other.”  To give up the discrimination of self and other which causes your breath to be choked, held, expelled, moved around in any unnatural way.  So that’s the wisdom teaching that Bodhidharma gave.  But his tranquility meditation is “Calm your mind with no contrivance, pacify your heart with no contrivance,” equals “give up all kinds of involvements.” And also the word “involvements” could also be translated as “stories.”  Give up stories about objects, like you look at one person and say, “Oh that’s really a nice person, I’d like to be that person’s friend, and this is really not a nice person, I don’t want to be this person’s friend.”  This kind of commentary and involvement with objects.  Have none of that.  Just see a person, see another person, see a blue jay, see the sky, see the sun, see the moon, that’s it.  And this other stuff, which you can do and we all can do, give it up.  That’s the tranquility kind of meditation.  The other one is similar in terms of giving something up, but what you’re giving up now is the discrimination between the different objects, such that your breath becomes stuck and blocked, and that’s the type of meditation that I want to emphasize more in this practice period.  
    Do you  have any questions about the tranquility meditation?
In Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind Suzuki-rōshi says something like “Concentration is not trying hard to watch something.  Concentration is freedom.  Concentration is forgetting about yourself.  When you forget about yourself you will naturally be following your breath.  When you’re naturally following your breath you forget about yourself.”  This hard focusing on things is not really even possibly for more than a few seconds.  But giving up discursive thought, you can be quite consistent with that.  
    (Question….)
    That is not a full enough description to qualify for the lofty title of just sitting.  When you’re sitting, the way you actually are is just sitting, actually.  But to realize the practice of just sitting, it is necessary that you actually understand the nature of the sitting that’s happening, and to note for example that you’re sitting does not mean that you understand what that sitting is.  Most people when they’re sitting have an idea of what sitting is.  Does that make sense?  In other words, when they’re sitting they think that they’re sitting, and what they think they’re sitting is their idea, and if they get up and start walking, now I’m not doing what is in correspondence to my idea of sitting.  Does that make sense?  So you can tell the difference between walking and sitting in that way, because you have ideas for those two thing.  Does that make sense?  Walking is walking, and sitting is sitting, but in both cases – in the one case you have the idea of walking now, being applied to the walking, which is different from the idea you use to apply to sitting, and you look at the two ideas and you say they’re different, and that’s how you tell the difference between the two things.  Right?  You use your ideas about these two activities to tell the difference.  Do you know what I mean?  But your idea of sitting is not your sitting, it’s an aspect.  It’s called the imaginary aspect of your sitting.  Or, the idea of your sitting is not your sitting.  The idea of your walking is not your walking.  Just sitting includes that you understand while you’re sitting that the idea of your sitting is not your sitting.  But to be sitting and think “Oh, I’m sitting,” usually what you notice is the idea of your sitting.  The idea of your sitting is not your sitting, which is the basis of the idea of your sitting.   When you actually understand while you’re sitting that the idea of your sitting is not your sitting, and understand that what appears as your sitting is actually imaginary, and you’re not caught by it any more, then you start to realize just sitting.  In other words, just sitting means you’re sitting which is free of your ideas of sitting, and the same way when you hear a blue jay and you understand what that blue jay is free of your idea of blue jay, floating right there by the blue jay, when you understand that you are also realizing just sitting.  One who is sitting understands just sitting and blue jay are not actually our ideas of sitting and blue jay.  If you’re sitting prior to that understanding, you are doing the form of sitting and the Buddhas are sitting with you and they’re kind of assisting you to learn the actual nature of your sitting, which eventually will be realized as you proceed  in developing wisdom.  So actually the practice of just sitting could be understood as the form of it or the actuality of it, and the actual just sitting is the actuality.  So one person’s sitting and realizing just sitting and the other person’s sitting and they’re just sitting too, but they think incorrectly that what the just sitting is is what they think is happening.  They believe that their thinking actually applies to something other than just an image.  But it doesn’t.  That wasn’t a question about tranquility but that’s okay.  Any questions about tranquility?  Yes.
   (Question:) A perception I had from the description of….. versus what you’re calling…. It seems like …Your quote from Suzuki-rōshi made me remember another quote…it seemed like there could be another way of doing it that’s not grasping this discriminating mind.
    Yeah.  The breath can be an object as a kind of an emblem of tranquility practice, and then the way you work with the breath is you look at the breath and while you’re looking at the breath you give up discursive thought, and then you look at the breath again and you give up discursive thought.  And you hear the blue jay and you give up discursive thought.  You feel a gurgle in your stomach and you give up discursive thought.  And you feel your breath again and you give up discursive thought.  A kind of continual giving up of discursive thought, you realize tranquility.  
    Now another way to relate to the breath phenomenon is when the breath arises is you don’t give up discursive thought, you actually use discursive thought, and you actually think about that breath, and you think, for example, this breath appears to me as my idea of the breath, but that’s not actually the breath.  This breath is actually a dependently arisen phenomenon.  And you start to apply the teachings about the nature of phenomena to the phenomena of the breath.  And when you realize that your breath is free of the idea of breath, that’s shikantaza.  So if he says, when you watch your breath wholeheartedly, or something, but when you really watch your breath wholeheartedly, you realize that your breath “your breath.”  You realize that your breath or even “your breath” is not “your breath” that’s shikantaza.  Shikantaza is wisdom in the sitting posture.  
       (Question:)  Active realization.  Would it be possible for someone to be sitting in shikantaza without…
    I don’t think so.  I think that if the someone is a Buddha, but the Buddha has heard the teaching of the Buddha.  Buddhas, you know, relate to sentient beings, and sentient beings are beings who actually have not yet realized shikantaza.  A sentient being has to hear the teaching of dharma in order to correct their basic misconception.  So as sentient beings we naturally think that things exist independently.  They look like that to us and we naturally believe it.  That’s normal for a human being innately to think that things exist on their own cut off from conditions.  That’s the way they look and we believe that.  We need to hear some instruction from someplace that says “Uh-uh.  Things aren’t that way.”  But actually most of the instruction we hear from childhood is things are that way.  So they look that way to us, plus our mommy and daddy say, “You  toy, these are your toys, you’re you, and your brother and you’re related but really these are your toys and that is your bed… and they reinforce this sense of things separately, but really you don’t need it much cause already you believe it.  Then you start to suffer.  Then you start to practice Zen, and then you hear the teaching which says things aren’t the way they appear.  They have an appearance, but that’s just fantasy.  I think you need to hear that in order to come to that realization.   
       (Question:)  I hear that things are the way…
    It’s not that things aren’t the way you think they are.  It’s just that the way you think they are is imaginary.  Things do have that imaginary way of being, but it’s imaginary. They have another way of being that’s called dependently co-arisen.  They have this other way.  Plus they have another way called emptiness, which is that the way they really are is that they’re free of  your ideas about them, so they’re not the way you think they are, they’re not how you appear they are at all, that’s totally imaginary.  There’s nothing which is the slightest bit cut off from all the conditions which give rise to it, there’s nothing like that.  So things are not that way, so that’s part of what’s going on for us in this life.  But there’s another way that they are, which is not necessarily better, it’s just that it cures us of the belief that they’re this other way.  But they’re not really that way either, because that has to be also a kind of thought construction, so it also doesn’t really have an independence that they’re that way either.
       (Question:) So when they talk about pacifying the mind, that’s also a technique that we let go of.  The idea of …
     Well, first of all in terms of pacifying mind, once the mind is pacified you’re encouraged to actually stop doing the, then you can stop giving up the discursive thought.  Once you’ve realize the tranquility of mind you don’t have to train any more for a while.  You only have to train in tranquility of mind when you’ve lost it or when you’re out of touch with it.  It’s always there.  So once you’re tranquil you’ve done that work.  Now you can go do wisdom work if you want to.  And wisdom work is the work where you actually start to understand the nature of mind.  Tranquility doesn’t necessarily understand the nature of mind.  The Buddha was very good at tranquility meditation, very good at giving up discursive thought, but he didn’t understand the nature of mind until his enlightenment night. Then he understood how the mind is created.  He realized that the mind is actually not reached by our ideas of mind.  
       (Question:) Can it be reached any other way?
    It can be reached by giving up belief, false beliefs.  Then you’ve realized it, cause it’s already with you.  The nature of your mind is always with you, it’s just like because we have attachments and misconceptions we don’t see it.  It’s not like we have to make it happen.  It’s already there.    
    But we have this big job of giving up misconception and attachments, and since we on-goingly are imagining things and believing these imaginations, we need a collateral station to be piped in to have a conversation with our deluded ideas.  So this debate goes on between our belief in independent existence and the teaching of interdependent existence.  Those need to be interfaced until we give up the misconceptions and then realize the dharma.  
    Any other questions about tranquility practice?  Yes?
    (Question:)    …practice of letting go of discriminating thought…even like extraordinary practices…
    Letting go of your ideas and your beliefs is slightly different than letting go of your thinking.  You could be doing thinking simultaneously with letting go of your ideas.  So letting go of your ideas is like letting go of your beliefs, letting go of your belief that your ideas actually reach phenomena.  You could be doing thinking at the same time. So you’re actually using your thinking to refute and give up your misconceptions about things.
(Question…)   
There has to be some tranquility or otherwise you wouldn’t be able to apply the teachings.  If your mind’s too agitated you can’t tell which is the teachings and which is the phenomena they’re supposed to be applied to, so you maybe start applying misconceptions to the teachings, and things get pretty bawled up if you’re pretty upset,.  You could start using the teachings to justify all kinds of strange things because you’re so confused, so some level of calm is necessary to actually hear the teachings and apply them properly.  But you don’t necessarily have to have really deep calm in order to hear the teachings and understand how to apply them and actually apply them.  So sometimes in some texts, first they have you do tranquility and then they move on to the insight.  But even in those, after you do some insight work then they have you bring the insight back to the tranquility again for deeper insight.  So at the beginning tranquility and insight are somewhat different.  Gradually they become, they enhance each other.  Many people actually who are trying to practice tranquility, they’re very unsuccessful at it, and they start doing insight work, and somehow in the process of doing insight work, which is using discursive thought to listen to the teachings, understand it, and apply it to phenomena, in the process of thinking that way they let go of their discursive thought more in the using of discursive thought  than when they try to let go of discursive thought.  So some people get more calm doing insight work than they do when they try to directly do tranquility work.  Just like some people, a lot of people actually, can get more calm doing tea ceremony than when they try to sit in meditation.  Or people can get more calm playing the piano than they can just sitting quietly, because the involvement, the hand-eye coordination that‘s necessary, and the discursive thought that’s necessary to play the piano also involves giving up other kinds of discursive thought, like
    [side of tape changes]
...you have on your face, and whether people like you or not, and, you know, what’s for lunch.  This kind of stuff in order to play the piano sometimes you have to give up.  So then all you’re doing is doing some mathematical calculations in relationship to your fingers, and that’s for some people a radical reduction in discursive thought.  They’re feeling much calmer even though they’re doing this complex mental activity, because a whole bunch of other activities which agitate them have been dropped.  
     And some other people again they’ve heard insight meditation but when they try to do it they get very upset, but they’ve heard it and they don’t understand it, but then they sit in meditation of the tranquility type and when they calm down suddenly they go, “Oh, I get it,” and they understand the insight instruction, which they couldn’t understand when they were actually trying to do insight instruction, but they understood it when they were doing tranquility.  So a lot of Zen students have the experience I think actually of while they’re sitting practicing tranquility understanding the dharma teaching which they heard.  And they think they just realized it through practicing tranquility, but actually they forgot that somebody told them that thing.  And they’re just finally hearing it.  It got lodged in them in a state of agitation.  They didn’t even think they heard it, but actually it was registered and suddenly they think, “Oh, I…”  That can happen.  Yes.
        (Question:)   Sometimes…directly outside feels like and it sort of fills up my body.  It doesn’t happen very much, but I’m wondering – what is that?  Is that a meditation technique or what?
     You started by saying your attention is looking out?
        (Question:)  It’s like out there.
    Your mind is over there, or it’s looking over there?  It’s seeing something over there.  So the usual state of cognition is a sense of a mind or a subject which means a consciousness knowing something, and then what is known seems to be out there.  Even  if what is known is like a feeling, it’s like, there’s a kind of like, even though the feeling might be inside my body in a sense, there’s a sense that there’s a knowing of this feeling, and the feeling is out there vis-à-vis the knowing.  That’s the normal way things appear, is they appear out there, and then the knowing is over here, in here.  That’s the normal dualistic way of experiencing things.  And then you’re saying that sometimes when you’re looking at that, something turns around?
    (Question:)  I realize this by doing that. …my attention becomes…   focuses?
    So one possibility is, when we notice, become aware that there is this sense of in here being aware of out there, when you start to sense that duality, so the subject-object interaction is affirmed in the Buddhist teaching, that there is a subject-object relationship.  The tradition teaches that people feel like the subject and object are substantially separated.  But they’re not substantially separated, is the response to that.  That’s an illusion that they’re really two different things.  They’re different but not in being.  When you start to become aware of that feeling of difference and that feeling of difference in being, that’s a step in meditation, and then maybe what sometimes people feel is that, “Oh, this is like the awareness side, and there’s this thing out there that’s not the awareness side but it has something to do with the awareness side, because it’s what I’m aware of.”  And they come back and say, “This is the awareness side.”  And then it’s almost as thought you’re aware of the awareness.  And there’s basically two views in Buddhism on that.  Some people feel that you can’t really be aware of the awareness.  Other people say you can.  The people who say you can’t be, they would say that as soon as you become aware of the awareness, you’re making your awareness into a concept of the awareness, and then you have the subject which knows the object which is the idea of the subject.  Other people say, “No, you can really turn around and look at the mind.”  So those are two possibilities.  One is that the mind can actually be self-aware.  That’s sometimes called apperceptive cognition, that the mind can know the mind.  No, the mind can’t know the mind, the mind can only know the mind as it’s seen as an object, as a concept of the mind.  But still, that kind of experience might be quite different when you feel like you’re in a sense turning around and looking at the mind, whether it’s an image or idea of the mind or the mind itself, that’s quite different from looking at things as though they’re out there.  So in a sense you might feel like maybe you had a taste of nonduality there.  That actually you had a little slice of this thing called the cognition or the understanding that phenomena are just the mind.  This is a cognition which is talked about as basically samadhi, when you realize that what you’re aware of is really one-pointed with mind, it’s not really out there.  So maybe that was a moment of samadhi for you.  Anything else on tranquility?  Yes?
    (Question:)  Am I hearing correctly that you’re…   insight   
    Yeah.  
    (Question:) I heard it said that Dōgen used discursive mind though he…  discursive mind.  Is that accurate, and is that what you’re talking about?
    Wisdom work is to use discursive mind to go beyond discursive mind.  But not just discursive mind, but dualistic mind.  Discursive mind is the mind which runs around among dualities.  It’s the thinking mind.  But there’s also a basic misconception or ignorance which discursive mind can be based on.  So you can say you use discursive mind to be free of discursive mind, but you can also say you can use discursive mind to become free of dualistic mind.  Dōgen also says that words and phrases are discriminating consciousness, or dualistic consciousness.  And you can use words and phrases to liberate dualistic consciousness.  Another way to put it.  Words and phrases require dualistic consciousness and really are dualistic consciousness.  But they can be used to liberate us from dualistic consciousness.  And you need discursive thought to apply words and phrases, usually.  You need discursive thought to make sentences.  
    Well I asked if you had any questions about tranquility, but so far I’ve heard almost no questions about tranquility, which is fine.  Looks like you want to study wisdom teachings.  Even though I myself will spend part of my time practicing tranquility, I actually use it quite a bit, I just don’t use any contrivance.  And it’s a good practice, it’s good to do, but it looks like you either understand, aren’t interested, or are embarrassed to ask questions, which is fine.  
    (Question:)  What you just said, you do it without contrivance.  What do you mean by that?
    I mean I don’t do anything really to practice tranquility.  I just sit and let go of discursive thought.  I don’t really do that, I just don’t get involved.  It’s like, I don’t go to Monterey, and that’s how I calm down.  But that’s not something I really do, you know.  
    So again, what is it, in that noninvolvement can extend itself to insight meditation too.  Yaoshan was sitting in meditation one time and Shitou came up to him and said, “What are you doing?”  You know that story?  He was sitting and his teacher said, “What are you doing?” and Yaoshan said, “I’m not doing anything at all.”  And Shitou said, “Well then you’re idly sitting?”  Yaoshan said, “If I was idly sitting I would be doing something.”  And Shitou said, “You said you’re not doing anything.  What is it you’re not doing?”  And Yaoshan said, “Even the ten thousand sages don’t know.”  So that can be a tranquility meditation and a wisdom meditation.  But basically I don’t do something to realize tranquility.  I used to, but I don’t any more.  
    (Question:)  How is it helpful for me to hear that?  I’m trying to tell if I’m trying to get hold of some kind of tranquility practice, but it seems like mundane mind, running and chasing after things, happens, thinking about something I need to do, and I get excited about thinking about it, and all of a sudden I’m excited, and I realize I’m excited, and then I take a deep breath and come back to some sort of calming thing.  To come back to your breath seems like doing something, and I hear you say you’re not doing anything.
    Yeah, I don’t come back to my breath.  If I notice I’m agitated I don’t come back to my breath.  
    (Question:)  What do you do if you’re agitated?
    I just say, “Oh, I’m agitated,” and that would be it.  I would just notice I’m agitated.  Period.  And that calms me.  But if I notice I’m agitated and then I drag myself over to like be a meditator, that agitates me again.  I just let myself be where I am.  I don’t drag myself over to someplace else so I can calm down.  In other words I don’t seek tranquility if I’m agitated.  I find seeking tranquility contraindicated for tranquility.
    (Question:) I find breathing in and out and the physical sensation of breathing in and out calming.
    Fine.  
    (Question:)  It’s not 100% but there’s something helpful in that for me.  I don’t count it, but, I guess I, I don’t know what I’m trying to do
    You said you find, what did you say you find?
    (Question:) Like breathing in and out and being with the physical sensation.
    You find breathing in and out helpful.  Okay.  (laughter in background)  Then you could say I find breathing in, period, and breathing out, period, helpful.  You’re usually breathing in and breathing out, right.  So another way to reinterpret what you said is, “I find just breathing in when I’m breathing in, and just breathing out when I’m breathing out helpful.  Because usually when I’m breathing in, I’m planning various things along with ‘I’m breathing in.’  In other words I’m involved in discursive thought, I’m caught up in discursive thought when I’m breathing.  But when I’m just breathing when I’m breathing and not being discursive about it, I find that helpful.  So I think what you find helpful is giving up discursive thought, not the breathing in and breathing out which you’re doing all day long.  The special thing you find helpful is that sometimes when you’re breathing you’re not doing discursive thought.  And then when you’re not doing discursive thought, you might notice your breathing a little more than when you are doing discursive thought, that might happen.  But you wouldn’t necessarily notice it more, but you might.  Like I said, when you forget about yourself you may notice that you’re breathing, because in fact you are, all the time.  It’s always there to be noticed and enjoyed.  But to direct myself over to it has the potential to become addictive, in the sense that I think, you know, that I’ve got to do this to have my life, rather than, I’m breathing anyway and all I have to do is give up distraction and be a breather.  So I think that’s what you described, I think, you didn’t do anything.  You just were breathing without doing anything, and that’s what you found helpful.  It’s that you were breathing and you were with what you were doing without trying to do anything with it.  That’s what I think was helpful, not the breathing, which is the basic thing, of course that’s helpful in terms of being alive, but in terms of tranquility you gave up discursive thought for a little while.  It’s immediately calming to give up discursive thought for a bit, but after you do it for a while you get even calmer.  So then you can even start doing discursive thought again and still feel calm.  Does that make sense?  But when you’re following your breathing, if it’s really helpful, I don’t think you’re trying to do anything.  If you’re trying to do something I’d say that that would be breathing in and trying to do something about it, breathing out and trying to do something about it.  That extra thing you’re trying to do I’d say is discursive and I’d say is antithetical to calm.  Giving up trying to calm down is conducive to calming down.  Seeking calm is antithetical to it.  Giving up trying to calm down is giving up a form of discursive thought.  Seeking calm is involving yourself in a form of discursive thought.  It’s jerking yourself around.  But just breathing, without even mentioning it, you’ve given up discursive thought.  Without even trying to give up discursive thought you have in fact given up discursive thought. Does that make sense?
    (Question:)  Do you think I’m jerking myself around because I’d rather be calm than be agitated?
    Yeah.  To be agitated, fine I’m agitated, that’s what a calm person does.  Calm people when they’re agitated say, “Yeah that’s me. I’m agitated.  Hi.”  Agitated people when they’re calm they’re agitated.  “My god, somebody might take this away, I’ve got to keep this.”  And when they’re agitated they say, “This is really terrible.  I’ve been trying to get calm and I’m just getting more and more agitated.  This is getting worse and worse,” rather than, “Hey, I’m agitated.  That’s what’s happening.  Anybody agitated here?  Me.”  That’s what calm people do.  They don’t have a problem being agitated.  They, like, “I live here.  This is my house.  I’m agitated house.”  Ha ha.  You know, it’s like nice wherever you are.  
    You know that story of Don Juan and Carlos Castaneda.  It’s probably not a true story but it applies.  He’s supposed to find his spot, you know that one at the beginning of the first book.  “Go find your spot.  See you later.”  So he spends the whole night totally a wreck, looking for his spot.  And then he goes to see Don Juan in the morning and Don Juan says, “Did you find your spot?” and he says, “No.”  Say “Where’d you go to sleep?”  He said, “Over there.”  “Well, that’s your spot.”  It’s where you just kind of give up and stop trying to make yourself into a great meditator, that’s when you become calm.  And when you do insight work you’re still not supposed to be trying to make yourself into a great meditator, you’re trying to understand what’s going on.  You’re not trying to make yourself into something, you’re actually interested in what’s going on.  Lauren?
    (Question:)  You describe that you used to use…   I’m hoping that you…discover for yourself whether the aids work or not.   
    I’m not exactly advising, I’m just telling you what I think is actually, I’m saying this is swimming and this thing here is not swimming, and if you think this helps you to swim, okay, but I just want to make clear that’s not really helping you swim.  That’s actually hindering you swimming, except if you refuse to get in the pool without the skyhook, fine.  But I’m just trying to make clear where the actual pivot of the tranquility process works.  I’m not telling you not to do these other things which don’t really work.  So for example like, if being paid to meditate would help, fine, but the actual money doesn’t help you calm down necessarily, it’s the actual when you get the money and you feel, “Hey, I’m rich now, I don’t have to worry.”  It’s the actual giving up of worry that did it, not the money.  Some people if you give them money to meditate then they spend the whole time being afraid somebody’s going to take it, so it doesn’t work.  So I’m just trying to point out what actually is the key, but I’m not telling you not to use other things which aren’t the key, so you can do it and find out for yourself, but I’m also saying that when you use these other things and you don’t like them, it makes sense that you wouldn’t like them cause they’re not really appropriate.  So don’t be upset when you try all these techniques and they don’t work, cause they don’t.  They’re actually distractions which are slightly better than some other kinds of distractions.  See, wasn’t that good?  I say, sure.  It’s like Dōgen said, in an interview on Japanese TV (laughter), “Well, what do you recommend for your students?” and he said, “Just sit.”  “You mean you just sit, you don’t do anything, that accomplishes the way?”  He said “Yes.”  “What about koan study?” “That’s good too.”  The interviewer said, “I thought you said just to sit.”  He said, “I do, but some of them won’t sit unless you give them a koan.”  So, some people won’t sit without a skyhook, some people won’t give up discursive thought without getting paid, and some places they have other things that they do but really the thing that makes it happen is just giving up discursive thought.  That’s what makes it happen.  I’m not exactly advising you to do tranquility meditation, I’m just saying it’s good and this is how it happens, okay.  But the trial and error may be helpful for you to understand these other methods actually aren’t necessary.