Even though it's been only about 23 hours since the last Dharma talk, most of this has been through quite a bit. In the meantime, to forget what the point of this whole thing is about again, what are we here for? How did we wind up like this? So I think it is sometimes helpful to reiterate the basic point over and over. Reorient back to the root on a regular basis. Well, actually constantly. So I'm kind of apologizing for continually going back to the beginning.

[01:09]

But let me do that one more time today. And I mentioned that, which I brought up a number of times, is that there's a passage in a very important Mahayana text called the Bhavana Kraman by the Indian teacher Kamala Sheila. And he said in one translation of his work, it says that the Mahayana consists of three things. Do you remember those three things? I mentioned them before. I know some of you do, so just what are they? One. What? Wisdom. Wisdom, insight, that's the same one. Huh?

[02:12]

Working for the benefit of all beings, not quite. What? Bodhichitta is like working for the welfare of beings, but it's not just working for the welfare of beings. You can work in a soup kitchen. for the welfare of beings without necessarily aspiring to complete authentic enlightenment. But if you're working in the soup kitchen as part of your commitment to realize complete perfect enlightenment for the welfare of all beings, then that's bodhicitta. Where you work is not the main point. The point is that you're going to attain Buddhahood in order to help people. So you can be in any situation. That's bodhicitta. So compassion, bodhicitta, and realization, understanding, insight, and so on.

[03:13]

Wisdom. Those three things. Instead of saying the Mahayana consists of these three, another translation would be that if you wish to attain all knowledge, knowledge of the way things really are, then you should practice these three things. Bodhicitta and realization. And this practice period, so far anyway, I've decided not to spend explicitly contemplating compassion and bodhicitta, but more to work on the realization of wisdom. But we can't skip over these things. We need to be always meditating on bodhicitta.

[04:21]

At the beginning, we need to be contemplating compassion, and in the middle and at the end of the practice, practicing contemplation of compassion and developing our intent to attain authentic awakening. That's an ongoing thing. You have to keep in touch with the root teachings on wisdom. So, teachings by the Buddha on the Middle Way, which are teachings on wisdom, have been offered for hearing, reciting, memorizing, reflection, and contemplation.

[05:30]

And so by chanting the scriptures and studying them during study hall and also in classes, which we have and will have, we will listen to and contemplate these teachings. And then in inner meditations, we will then hopefully contemplate and understand through our study. And as part of that, the traditional explicit expression of meditation in the Mahayana, the way we receive these teachings on the Middle Way, into our meditation through the practice of Samatha and Vipassana. And we have had our

[06:33]

collateral study to try to see how Zen practice is actually a compatible and emphatically pure version of Samatha Vipassana. So we understand the relationship between our traditional Zen practice and traditional Mahayana practices. And as we develop these meditations throughout the practice period, we develop the compassion in bodhicitta, and we develop these meditation practices so that we may receive these teachings. At one time, Zen is the key that unlocks the Buddhist teaching. So we have the Buddhist teaching come to us, but we need the Zen practice of tranquility and insight so that these teachings can be opened.

[07:38]

So that the practice can open them and they can open us. And really, Samatha and Vipassana cannot be practiced separately, but still We start by talking about Samatha so far. We've been talking about it for a while. And so that's where we are. Talking about and trying to practice Samatha. And it seems to be happening. People seem to be practicing Samatha. One teacher said, his name was Polanka. He said, he lists a bunch of requirements that you need to have for practicing Samatha. He says, if you have these requirements, you will be able to realize Samatha in six months. I think that the requirements that are there are almost satisfied by being in a practice period.

[08:48]

So you should be able to get halfway to Samatha by the end of the practice period. When the summer starts, the conditions that he lists, I'm sorry. All those guests are part of, they're on the list that they're not supposed to be there. But anyway, halfway to Chamatha is pretty good. Some of you might get there in three months. I haven't seen anybody that is really completely there yet, but I'm very happy with the effort that you're making. But don't be discouraged if it doesn't, you know, come really fast. This deep, you know, this deep, calm, vital energy that the Samatha realizes with understanding the clarity and

[09:56]

and non-conceptuality and radiance and joy of mind itself. So the Buddha, as I mentioned, I feel, taught the method of shamatha Udana ate. He taught the method of shamatha, which is to train the mind upon non-conceptuality, to train the mind upon not grasping the objects of thought, the conceptual objects of thought. And Bodhidharma and the disciples in between also taught that. Bodhidharma taught Samatha very simply, mind like a wall, mind like a wall. is to train the mind, again, into the non-conceptual, wall-like quality.

[10:59]

A handball wall, you know, like a handball court. Train your mind to be like a handball court. In this way, having this mind like a wall, the mind is tranquilized. stabilized without any contrivance. And I just wanted to mention, which I also mentioned before, is that the fourth ancestor, Darsin, he also taught Samatha Vipassana explicitly, used those terms. And while discussing Samatha, he says at one point, it is impossible to exhaust everything when it comes to describing the skillful methods of samatha. In other words, of practicing samatha, there's endless ways that you can find and teach people to realize stabilization.

[12:09]

So he just mentioned a bunch of them. And then he says, skillful comes from the heart. out of compassion we keep finding new ways to practice Samatha both in our own body-mind mess and to help others with their body-mind mess to make it all coordinated and happy. Again, there are many ways to practice shamatha. I've mostly been emphasizing one style, and that is the style of mere consciousness style, or this training the mind, training the attention onto non-conceptuality, or training the mind onto conceptuality in a non-conceptual way.

[13:14]

That's the style that that I've been most emphasizing. There are other styles of Samatha that I haven't brought up just because I think it would be too confusing. However, I will bring them up later when you can't be confused by anything. That'll be six months from now, right? I'll just mention those others. But each of these styles in some sense is related to the way the mind is, or the way these different styles are related to the way you realize the mind is when you attain Samatha. When you attain mental stabilization, you realize that consciousness is non-conceptual. You realize the non-conceptual quality of awareness. You also realize the quality of awareness. You realize that mind is actually primarily characterized as aware.

[14:16]

You also realize that mind is clear. It is transparent. You also realize that mind is joyful. So these different ways that you realize the mind will each be used as modes of cultivating samatha and realizing what you've been cultivating. But I'm not mentioning all those, just because, again, it's too much. At this point, although we haven't yet exhausted the different ways of talking about Samatha, or even fully realized Samatha, I am going now of starting to move towards the other side of the story of meditation, maybe to the insight or the vipassana side.

[15:30]

Where does this hit? It's behind me. Where's my sifter? Where's my sifter? Oh, here's my sifter. Here's my sifter. This is my rice sifter. See? These rice look like beans. This is like sifting. This is my right sifter. Okay, so there are many, there are many ways to practice Samatha. Right?

[16:58]

And many opportunities. In the kitchen you can practice Svakcamata in the swimming pool, you can practice Samatha in the meditation hall, and so on. So, first of all, there's the one, you know, the one about one day the World Honored One ascended the seat. One day the World Honored One got up on the seat. Okay? Got up on the seat. If you hear it, when you hear that, one day the world honored one God on the seat. Hear that? Hear that? That's it. That's all it got to say. That's all you heard, too, right? You didn't hear any more than that, did you? You haven't said anything yet.

[18:01]

There's no advertising for this. The world won when it got up in the seat. Now, you may say, well, world-honored when that's kind of an advertisement. Anyway, somebody got up in the seat. Did you hear that? That's it. Like that, when that somebody got up in the seat, and that's it. There's them up. There's Samatha. You can say, well, the one who got up in the seat was practicing Samatha, but the hearing about it, or seeing it happen, and having it only be that, more or less, that's practice of shamatha. Every time the body which, you know, which comes into this position, every time that happens, when it's just like that, you know, more or less, there's the practice of Samatha.

[19:10]

And when it's completely like that, it's steadily like that, Samatha is realized. The workman Lu, who later became the big sixth ancestor, was in the rice pounding area And the fifth ancestor comes to see him in the nighttime in the rice-pounding area. Working with his mortar and pestle, the fifth ancestor comes up to him and goes... So do you see the practice of Shama? You see it? It's not the hitting. It's the hitting just being the hitting. It's not that sound.

[20:13]

It's that in the sound, there is just the sound. No discussion about, you know, is he wrecking that pole, that lectern? There's no worry about, you know, Tassajara property. There's no thing about, oh, this sounds like Zen. Oh, I love Zen. It's so pure. No, it's stinky. It's too much like Zen. You shouldn't be doing that. I noticed he didn't break his stick. The stick didn't get broken. Do you see? There's Samatha. It's no special, it is no contrivance. He just happens to carry the stick around.

[21:16]

He's going to see his little pal. There's his pal. That's it. Right there. Samatha. That's it. We're there. Everything is just like it was, you know, 1300 years ago. Except you're there. And when you're like that, steadily, you're practicing Samatha, you're developing this quality of mind which is always there, always there, always there. But we have to stop distracting ourselves, looking at the sticks, and looking at the swimming pool, and looking at the people, blah, blah, blah, to turn the light around and just be with what is happening. Be with that concept of stick. Be with that concept of sound. There's a teacher tapping the mortar and practicing himself.

[22:21]

The student takes up the rice sifter and goes, Okay. It's his practice. Now they're ready for vipassana. It's impossible to exhaust the ways to practice it. So, now I'd like to move into the transition, a transitional consideration of how we transition with the practice of Samatha, even now, maybe before it's fully realized, but still starting to make the transition to practice Vipassana, to practice insight together with this.

[23:33]

And they have this term called transitional object in thinking in analytic in psychoanalysis they have this thing of a transitional object you know like when yeah like a you know a blankie your blankie that you take to preach or your little teddy bear to take with you when you go to daycare So this is a story. Zen story is kind of a transitional object. We move from Samatha to Vibhashana without leaving behind Samatha. Hold on to it. This is a case that I've talked to you about many times before. I hope you can stand it one more time. Maybe something new will come up. This is case 32 of the Book of Serenity. and the Zen teacher Yangshan and a monk.

[24:45]

It's not always true, but usually when it's Yangshan, when it's master X plus a monk, usually the monk didn't do too well. If they do really well, it's master X and master Y. The monk gets his name in the book if he completes the course in the story or has completed the course before the story. So there's already a tip here that the monk didn't quite finish. But at the same time, I'm suggesting that he did quite well. which you will hear about. So this monk, he came to see Yangshan, and Yangshan says to the monk, where are you from?

[25:49]

And the monk said, I'm from Yu province. And Yangshan said, do you think of that place? And the monk said, I always think of it. May I stop here and make a little comment? Do you think of, you know, where you're from? Do you think about the world that you're from? The monk says, I always think about it. This is a pretty good, this is pretty good because he's confessing that he's always thinking about objects. He's always thinking about, you know, you province and all the things in you province. The things to eat and drink, all the pretty mountains and lovely people and domesticated animals. Thinking about all that stuff, he's admitting, I'm distracted outwardly.

[26:54]

He's admitting that. This is good. A good, honest monk. I'm always thinking about that. I'm always distracted outwardly. I'm always dispersed by externals. So it's good. He's confessing his situation. And we've got to start where we are. So that's where he was. So then Yangshan gives him instruction. Now that he's confessed, he's ready to receive the Dharma. So Yangshan said, his translation is, thinker is the mind and thought of is the environment. Therein, in the environment, there are mountains, rivers, land masses, buildings, towers, halls, chambers, people, animals, and so forth.

[27:56]

I want to comment on this. The thinker is the mind, and the thought of is the environment. First of all, the word thinker could also be translated as that which thinks i think in the commentary is translated that which and that which is thought of or what it yeah what thinks and what is thought of what thinks his mind what's thought of is and the character actually Chinese character, which is translated here as environment, also means object. You could just say, what thinks is the mind, what's thought of is the object or the environment. And in what's thought of is anything you can name.

[29:04]

All the concepts possible for a human being are what is thought of, are what is presented and thought of. And also I mentioned this before too, if you haven't heard it, is that the Chinese is arranged so that on one side they have the Chinese character for think, and they have a passive marker, I mean an active marker. And the active, so you take the activity of thinking and put this active marker with it, so that means that which thinks, or that which can think, or the ability to think, or the capacity to think. So you could say the ability to think, the capacity to think, that which thinks. Okay, that's one side. Consciousness has the capacity to think, has the ability to think, is that which thinks. The other side is a passive marker, that which is thought of, that upon which we think.

[30:11]

So both have the character think, one with the active marker and one with the passive marker. Actually, these two sides, they're two sides of thinking. The active and the passive side of thinking are thinking. There's never just thinking. It's always the active and passive together. And when you split them, you have mind and consciousness and concepts. Okay? Short course on Buddhist psychology. Yangshan gives a course on Buddhist psychology. And then he says, reverse your thought and think of the thinking mind. Reverse your thought and think of the thinking mind. Reverse your thought and think of that which thinks.

[31:14]

or think of that which can think, or think of the ability to think. Many ways to put it. This is the same as to say, turn the light around and shine it inward. This is the same as direct the attention inward to the mind itself. Engage, mentally engage with the mind itself, okay? So we've said these instructions over and over. Here's the same instruction given by a Zen teacher. So here again, I see a connection between a Zen teacher's teaching and the teaching of lots of other Mahayana teachers in India and Tibet. Okay? Everybody okay so far? So this is instruction in Samatha, basically, isn't it? Who knows? Yeah? He said, in this translation he says, reverse your thought to think of the thinking mind.

[32:29]

Alright? And then he says, Are there so many things there? Okay, so, in that which is thought of, there's all these concepts. Which is what he's, he's always thinking about those concepts. Now Yangshan said, okay, now reverse the thought and look at that which thinks of those concepts. Now are there so many things? That's his question. And, uh, So you understand the situation? The instruction, by the psychology course, and then the question. Are there so many things there? And there's a little dash there between the instruction and the question. And that dash, again, we don't know how long that time space was between the question

[33:38]

It could have been right away, or it could have been quite a long time. Or it could have been right away, and then the monk gave an answer, and then he came back the next day, and he asked him again, gave the same instruction again, and asked him the question again, and the monk kept going like that for a long time. We don't know. Okay? They're working together either just for a moment like that or over several months or years. And finally he says, now there's so many things there. And the monk says, when I get here, I don't see any existence at all. So, just like in the story of the sixth ancestor and Nanyue, we are not privy to what was going on between the first question and the right answer.

[34:54]

And in this case, we're not privy to what happened between the and an incomplete answer. In this case, we don't have the right answer, we have an incomplete answer. But we don't know what practices the monk was doing to arrive at this incomplete answer. And we can find out. There's only certain possibilities. And they can't be exhausted. But we can find out. So he got someplace. He got here. Got here, he said, I don't see any existence at all. And the master said, this is right for the stage of faith, but not yet right for the stage of the person. So there's this statement, you know, you got a certain ways, but you didn't finish the course.

[36:09]

But I'll finish the story and then go back. So he said, he got to the stage of faith, but not yet the stage of the person. And the monk says, don't you have any other particular ways of guidance? Okay. And he gave him that psychology course. He gave him that instruction. He asked him the question. They went around and around with that once or a million times. Not a million. Once or a thousand times. He gave the answer. And then he said, this is good for the stage of faith. But not yet for the stage of person. The guy says, do you have any further instruction? And then he says, to say that I have anything particular or not would not be accurate. Based on your insight, you get one mystery. You can take and wear the robe. After this, see on your own.

[37:24]

So that's the whole story. And so what I'd like to do at some point is to go back and look at what maybe, what kind of understanding this monk had. Okay, unless, is it okay if I do that now with you? So there's different possibilities, I thought. So first of all, it sounds to me like the instruction that we've got on paper here is, to me, what Yangshan's giving the monk instructions in shamatha. The instruction I hear him giving at the beginning. So one possibility is that he gave that instruction, the monk practiced shamatha

[38:35]

and practiced it successfully. And then, as a result of practicing it successfully, the teacher said, you got to the stage of faith but not to the stage of person. Another possibility is that he practiced shamatha and did not realize shamatha and said what he said and the teacher said that's good for the stage of faith but not stage of person. Okay? There's two possibilities. Another possibility is he practiced shamatha incompletely and tried to practice vipassana and therefore incompletely and said what he said what he said the other possibility is he practiced shamatha then practiced vipassana but the vipassana he practiced was based on fully attained shamatha and he had some real insight and the teacher said what he said

[40:02]

But, although he had real insight, there was something incomplete in his insight. The other possibility is, I'll just put it out there, is he practiced shamatha, he practiced vipassana, he had insight, and his insight was complete. Another possibility is he didn't practice shamatha. didn't realize shamatha, tried to practice vipassana, and was successful and it was complete. There's another possibility that he went against the Buddhist rules and somehow had insight without realizing shamatha. Okay, and maybe there's some other, can anybody think of any other possibilities that are reasonable? Could you even remember the ones I said? Did I leave any out?

[41:09]

Any of the people who are still on their feet, so to speak? Did I leave any out? I'll make your life simple. I don't think you have to consider that he practiced shamatha, realized it, practiced vipassana, and completed it. I don't think you have to consider that. Because I think the story says his understanding wasn't complete. not trouble you with that one okay you got enough problems don't worry about that one it wasn't complete i agree with the tradition which leaves the monk anonymous but he did not have a mature insight And there's other reasons why I agree with the tradition too.

[42:13]

As a matter of fact, if they even had his name in there, given what he said, I would still say his understanding was not mature. But I do think that he attained Samatha because the teachers basically said he did. Because he said you attain the stage of fate, which means not only did you have some insight, but you had some tranquility upon what you faced. So anyway, I guess I'm kind of eliminating various possibilities here for you. I might as well eliminate all of them and just tell you the right answer. I think he did achieve Samatha. He listened to the instructions and achieved Samatha. He moved into insight work, had insight. He was incompletely I think it's not possible to have insight, real insight, without samatha.

[43:15]

So he had samatha, and that's what the instructions are about. We don't know gave him an insight, though. We don't know. We can discuss that too, but basically, I don't know what that discussion was. But he did ask him, do you see anything there? So if he was just asking him another possibility, though, which is still, I haven't crossed out, really, well, I sort of did, but anyway, he could have attained tranquility, and then he's saying, in tranquility, do you see anything? And some people think that if you would turn the mind around and look back at the non-conceptual nature of mind that you wouldn't be able to see anything anymore that seeing the radiance of the mind non-conceptual quality of mind there wouldn't be any things left i disagree with that interpretation of shamatha some other people i think think that but i don't think so i think there are still

[44:37]

Concepts arising And some people but you don't bring any thoughts to the concepts You don't bring any thoughts to them So no thoughts are arising in relationship to the experience You're not Elaborating what's happening with more existence and So if you're looking at the Samatha, the Samatha is not contributing anything to what's going on. But I don't think that would be the same as saying that I don't see any existence at all. I think that what's happened here is that he's attained Samatha. One eye is looking at the non-conceptual nature of mind and looking at the non-grasping aspect of mind, and being trying... And the other eye is looking at the concepts which are being treated non-conceptually.

[45:48]

And that eye is looking at concepts. This eye is looking at non-conceptuality, or is looking non-conceptually at concepts. This eye is examining... and analyzing concepts. This is the eye of insight. This is the eye of tranquility. And this eye of insight that looks at phenomena is not seeing any phenomena exist at all. Okay? And he says that. When I get here, namely when I get to Samatha, where I'm where I'm experiencing a life

[46:32]

@Transcribed_v005
@Text_v005
@Score_87.2