There's a workshop being given here this week. Is it a workshop or is it a retreat? We have retreats here this week or workshops? There's a retreat being given here this week. And I'd like to read you the description of it. Part of the description. I'll give you a little bit at a time. The first sentence. Well, the title of it is Tranquility and Insight in the Zen Tradition with Rev. Anderson. I don't know if that's the title. Does that mean Tranquility and Insight in the Zen Tradition with Rev. Anderson? I think it does. So this is not necessarily tranquility insight in the Zen tradition in general. This is specifically with Rev Anderson.

[01:01]

I mean, that's true in a sense, isn't it? How come nobody else's name is on here? Huh? I didn't write that with Rev Anderson thing. That wasn't the... It should say, tranquility and insight in the Zen tradition with all sentient beings. Don't you think that would be a better title? And then the first sentence is, the point. That sounds good, doesn't it? The point. Now, of what? The point of Buddha's meditation. That's what this retreat's about. So what is it? The point of Buddhist meditation is, first of all, the realization of selflessness.

[02:07]

Any questions? Pardon? Did I write what? Did you hear it? Do you have any other questions besides that? So the point of Buddha's meditation is what? What is it? What is it? Right. Do you agree? I mean, I said first of all. The point of Buddha's meditation, first of all, is the realization of selflessness. Do you agree? That means it's not exactly most important, actually. It's just kind of the first point. Okay? And the second, and then ultimately, the point of Buddha's meditation is the purification of love.

[03:15]

And the realization of selflessness is the purification of love. Now, if there's no love, then there's nothing to purify. But if there's love, then the realization of selflessness purifies it. And that's the point of Buddhist meditation. In other words, to have pure love and compassion. That's what I wrote. And that's what I kind of, what do you call it? I guess that's what I believe. So, any questions about that so far? And this Buddhist meditation, Buddha's meditation, Buddha's meditation, the meditation about Buddha is often presented as having

[04:28]

Kind of like two aspects. One being tranquility or mental stabilization and the other being higher vision. And that way of presenting it was presented that way in India, said in these two aspects. And then that presentation spread to Southeast Asia and China and Tibet and Mongolia, Japan. So I'd like to talk...

[05:40]

discuss with you these practices as they were presented, as they were sometimes presented in those countries I mentioned. But also I would like to just sort of jump to the end of the end point of this retreat in the sense of I'd like to also mention what the tranquility and insight or tranquility and higher vision are in the Zen tradition. Just to tell you ahead of time what it is, because I might never get to it. I might... I might need all my time just to sort of scratch the surface of the practice of stabilization, mental stabilization. But I'll just tell you sort of the end at the beginning, and that is, stumbling upon the title of this retreat, I think, is in some sense the answer to what tranquility and insight are in the Zen tradition.

[06:53]

Can you guess what it's going to be? With Rabbi Anderson. That's very close. Very close. Take another guess what it is. It's tranquility and insight in the Zen tradition with all sentient beings. That's what it is in the Zen tradition. That's why you can't see, if you ever look for tranquility and insight in the Zen tradition, it's very hard to find it because almost no Zen teachers teach literally, you know, tranquility and insight in that way. They do, but they don't say so because in Zen the practice is not the practice of one wonderful yogi. practicing mental stabilization and higher vision. In Zen, the practice is the practice of all sentient beings.

[07:55]

So, there it is. I didn't expect that I would find a solution to the teaching right here in the mistake of the title. But that's it. Tranquility and insight in the Zen tradition is with all sentient beings. That's the practice in Zen. But some people, you know, are not signing up for the tranquility and insight course. So what are we going to do? How are we going to practice Buddhist meditation with those people? That's what that tradition is in Zen. In other words, we have to trick them into practicing tranquility and insight without getting involved in tranquility and insight because they don't want to practice it. But they have to. So we find some other way. And, for example, we have the guest season.

[08:59]

And we have the kitchen. And in the kitchen, people are being tricked into tranquility and insight. And they don't know what I'm talking about, but that shows that they're being tricked. Some of them want to get out of the kitchen and go up to the zendo and practice tranquility and insight. But when they get there, they won't do it anyways. But in the kitchen, they're doing it. Do you understand? Okay, now the more kind of literal presentation of tranquility is a kind of like a concentration practice. And one way you can do it is by, you know, the practice which we call following your breath, but you can follow your breath not just to follow your breath because you're practicing mindfulness, but to follow your breath with sustained mental attention to a point where you're actually like continuously attentive to the breathing process

[10:18]

And actually you get to a point of such concentration that the body and mind become buoyant, flexible, and full of joy. And when the attention becomes continuous, and easy, and stable, and there's joy and flexibility of body and mind, you have realized mental stabilization. Or I should say mental stabilization has been realized. And this can come by following the breath. Following the breath can also be simply a mindfulness practice. And mindfulness practices, of course, are... practiced by all Buddhas. All Buddhas practice mindfulness. But mindfulness is, you know, practice on whatever's happening.

[11:27]

It can be practiced on whatever's happening. But also you can practice mindfulness to a point of realizing a stabilized consciousness. And that's actually part of what Buddha's meditation involves. So do some of you follow your breathing? How many of you follow your breathing? Would you raise your paws? Yeah. So you could continue to follow your breathing and that could become a practice of mental stabilization with a little bit of help from your friends. what isn't necessary for you to understand, but it might be helpful for you to understand, is that when you're following your breathing, in order for that to turn into a practice of mental stabilization, you, excuse the expression must, but you must understand that what you're following is not an external phenomenon,

[12:46]

object of mindfulness not an external object of concentration in other words you're not following a physical thing called the breath in when you're practicing mental stabilization and i i think a lot of people think that the that the that they're following actually their breath when they're doing that practice. But if you followed your breath as an external object, you would have to follow your breath as a sound. You could follow the sound of the breath. Or if it was cold, you could follow the sight of the breath. Or maybe some people can even taste their breath, unfortunately.

[13:50]

Or smell the breath. Or you could feel the touch of the breath. You could have a tactile sensation of the breath. Like the feeling of it in your abdomen or the feeling of moving across your nose, that sense around your nose. So what you're actually aware of is not really the breath, but the touch, smell, taste, sound, or some visual object. If you were meditating on your breath as an external object, those would be the things you would be meditating on. And you can be mindful of those things, however, If you were actually dealing with external objects, you could not attain any stabilization by looking at external objects. You can't stay concentrated on external objects for more than about three seconds. And I say about, but actually I'm serious, it's almost exactly three seconds is the maximum, is the world's record for a human being concentrating on a physical thing.

[15:03]

Isn't that surprising to some of you? But human beings can stay concentrated on mental objects for quite a long time. Some people aren't concentrated on mental objects for a long time, but you can become concentrated on mental objects. If you want to realize mental stabilization, then the breath that you'd be working with, so a lot of you are working with your breath, if you wish to attain mental stabilization, rather than just being mindful of the breath as a physical sensation, you can be mindful of things that are not even a flash, a small part of a second, you can be mindful of something. And they can be mindful of something else, and something else can be mindful of things that are changing very rapidly. But mental stabilization means that you're actually going to stay with something for a while. And you can't stay with external objects for more than three seconds.

[16:10]

But you can stay with mental objects for a long time. So if you wish to practice stabilization, if you wish to be concentrated to a point that you realize this state of stabilization where your body and mind are relaxed, flexible, and buoyant and joyful, which is a good basis for then further study of insight, then you need to use an internal object, an inner object, an inner image concept. So, you can still be working with your so-called breathing process or breath, but you're not working with a physical thing. You're working with, actually, your imagination. And working with your imagination as the breath, as the breathing process, or your imagination of the breathing process, or I should even say your imagination of a breathing process, because if I say the breathing process, you might think there is a breathing process out there separate from your imagination of it, but that's not what, and maybe there is, but that's not what you concentrate on to be stabilized.

[17:31]

You concentrate on a breathing process. And you could call it A-my breathing process. And you can put a whole bunch of words in there if you want to, as many as you want, because this is an imaginary thing you're working with. And working with imaginary things is what you work with to realize mental stabilization. So are you surprised by this idea? Yeah. Yeah. now although I I'm saying you can realize tranquility mental stabilization and in Sanskrit it's called shamatha and in English it's

[18:45]

There's a word called blackboard. You heard that word, blackboard? Do we have a blackboard? You don't know where it is? Blackboard? Me want blackboard someday. I would like a blackboard and two microphones. So I can have one and you can have one. And two blackboards to the, I mean, two microphones to the amplifier. Yeah, so people can talk, your people, and you and your friends can talk, and I can both have one. So I don't have to hand this back and forth. Yeah, would you try? Because then your questions can get recorded. Because otherwise, if people are listening to the tape, they don't know what your questions are. If I repeat them all the time, it sometimes doesn't work very well. So anyway, you can practice, go ahead and continue your practice if you wish, following the breathing.

[19:57]

But I actually also recommend that you consider another way of practicing mental stabilization. You can do the breathing one, maybe part-time. I'd like to propose another one to you, which I think has a lot of virtues recommending it. And that is to have the object of your stabilization be the nature of mind. But not exactly the nature of mind, but rather a concept of of the nature of mind. So you can have a concept of your breath, a concept of the breathing, and no matter what your breathing is going through, you have this concept of what your breath is, and you can concentrate on that concept of the breathing and realize mental stabilization.

[21:03]

But partly because I'm kind of like sidling over to the Zen tradition. In the Zen tradition, there's very little instruction from the ancient masters to the monks, to the yogis, to follow the breathing. If you look in the Zen records, there's not much encouragement to the monks to practice concentrating on the breath to realize mental stabilization. And in the Mahayana Sutra that we studied last winter here, the Samdhi Nirmacana Sutra, the sutra which is about unlocking the meaning, the hidden meaning of the scriptures. In that scripture, which is one of the main texts for the Bodhisattva meditation course, in that text too, what they recommend as the object for concentration to realize mental stabilization, the object is the nature of mind.

[22:06]

And mind, or mind, and what they mean by mind in this case is awareness itself, or consciousness itself. And one of the characteristics of consciousness is that consciousness is non-conceptual. So, this week and all winter, I recommended and still do recommend the practice of being mindful of the concept, steadily mindful of the concept of the non-conceptual nature of knowledge. The non-conceptual nature of awareness. Awareness has other characteristics too, by the way. For example, it has the characteristics of being transparent to itself.

[23:11]

Awareness cannot see itself. So awareness has the quality of transparency or clarity. Awareness also has the quality or the characteristic of being joyful. These are also... qualities or characteristics of mind that you could have a concept of and that you could be mindful of and steadily mindful of and realize tranquility by concentrating on these qualities of mind. But I recommend, first of all, the non-judgmental nature of mind. I said non-judgmental. That was a slip, but that's also true. Mind is not judgmental. Okay, so when we say that awareness or mind or consciousness or cognition has the nature of being non-conceptual, it does not mean that in an experience, in a conscious experience, that there's no concepts.

[24:17]

Because in fact, in normal... mind awareness, for normal mind consciousness, the object of the knowledge is a concept. That's what is known by mind consciousness. So non-conceptual doesn't mean there's no concept. It means that the awareness itself simply knows what it knows. Its knowing is perfectly clear. It's just knowing the concept. There's no quibbling. There's no argument. There's no wiggling. There's no niggling. There's no griping. There's no complaining with what it knows. It just knows what it knows and that is absolutely it. Consciousness never arises without knowing. Mental consciousness never arises without a concept, but whatever concept it arises with, and that it knows, that's it.

[25:26]

It doesn't elaborate, it doesn't manipulate, it just knows that, and that's it, and that's an experience, and it arises and ceases, and that's life. That's the nature of consciousness. The nature of mental consciousness. So what you do in this practice of stabilization is you have a concept of the way that the mind is and you keep attending to that concept. And as you tend to that concept, that practice makes the mind like the way the mind is. Because it's also possible wonderful mind that we have, it's also possible that there can be some quibbling and some arguing with what consciousness knows. Have you ever experienced that?

[26:27]

Arguing with what's happening? Wishing something else was going on? Wanting what's happening to stop or last longer? Not liking what you're thinking? You think something, right? And then somebody says, I don't like thinking like this. Ever had that experience? The knowing of that, whatever that thing is, doesn't wish something else was happening. But there is other aspects of mind which can argue, which can look for something else to be going on. And you take, you gather those tendencies of mind, you gather them in, away from their arguing, away from their being judgmental and so on, you gather them in onto the practice of being like the mind which doesn't argue. And that stabilizes the consciousness. If this rattling in the cage goes on, there is this manifestation of constriction, instability, heaviness, and so on.

[27:39]

that can be manifested. This practice is an antidote to the disturbances of the mind and a returning to the undisturbed, unequivocal serenity of knowing. This is not in opposition to anything. This is just simply training the various factors of consciousness the various factors of knowing. In other words, the various mental factors that arise with knowing to train them into a coordinated and harmonious stability by making them align themselves with this non-manipulative accepting nature of knowing. So... Again, the non-conceptual nature of mind is that it simply knows the concepts it knows and doesn't argue.

[28:41]

That's non-conceptual. Or another way we put it is it means that whenever you're aware of a concept, there's no conceptual elaboration. So when you're aware of a concept like pain or pleasure or blue or red or hot or cold or good or bad or up or down or you or me, whatever concept you're aware of, that's it. There's no mental elaboration of that concept. Whatever kind of conceptuality is going on, you become intimate with that conceptuality and you train yourself into stability by non-conceptually relating to that concept. That's another kind, that's basically the same thing you do with your breath. is that the breath arises as a concept. You follow the breath and you simply follow the breath. The concept of the breath, that's it. You don't argue with it. You don't wish it was longer or shorter. It's just this image, this concept of the breath at this moment, that's it.

[29:45]

That way of being with your breath is the same way is what I'm talking about, except you have the breath in there. I'm just sort of like cutting more to the core of consciousness by this kind of meditation, because you're looking at the way to be with your breath. Instead of looking at being with your breath that way, you're looking at the way of being with your breath that way, which is the same way you are with everything. And before I... open up for comments, I want to say that, first of all, I'll say it this way. Mind is, or consciousness and knowing, is vulnerable to concepts. Vulnerable to concepts. And it is innocent of concepts.

[30:48]

And it yearns for concepts. And yearns to be intimate with concepts. And there is no knowing. No objective knowledge. knowing, what we usually consider conscious knowing. There is no conscious knowing without concepts. And I just want to kind of make this huge parentheses to say it another way. Mind and emptiness or mind and selflessness. Selflessness is the point, the primary point of Buddhist meditation. Mind and selflessness are vulnerable to concepts. And mind and selflessness, or mind and emptiness, are innocent of concepts.

[31:52]

And selflessness yearns for and is inseparable from concepts and wants to be intimate with concepts. And for now, practicing mental stabilization you can forget about the selflessness if you want to but I'm again forecasting for you so you can see maybe that this kind of work will also be part of the understanding of selflessness but for now I just want to tell you that awareness is vulnerable to concepts I'll say vulnerable vulnerable music can be hurt But also awareness or knowing, although it can be hurt by concepts and is hurt by concepts, maybe hurts too strong or maybe vulnerable is too strong. But in fact, there is no consciousness without being hurt. in that sense, without being touched.

[32:56]

So maybe hurt is too strong. Vulnerableness, maybe I should say, consciousness is vulnerable to being touched or impacted by concepts. But again, now I'm modifying this, really there is no consciousness before being touched by concepts. In fact, being touched by concepts is the door or the source of conceptual awareness. But knowing itself is innocent of concepts. It doesn't have any concepts about how to be aware. It is aware of concepts and being touched by those concepts is the origins of consciousness. But consciousness itself or knowing itself is innocent of. It itself doesn't do anything. Innocent means not hurting. Consciousness doesn't hurt the concepts. But there's other aspects of mind which arise with knowing that do hurt concepts, that mess with them, that argue with them, that don't say, thank you very much, I have no complaint whatsoever.

[34:05]

They say, I don't know if I like this concept and I'd like to complain about this concept. Mind can do that too. But consciousness is innocent. It does not harm concepts. It's vulnerable to concepts. It must be together with concepts. So, stabilization means get involved with the way the mind really is, and when you get involved with the way the mind really is, you realize the stability, the basic stability of the situation. Okay? And again, I said mind yearns for concepts, but actually that's kind of wrong, because that makes, again, sound like there's a mind sitting there yearning for concepts, but really, There isn't a mind before the mind has the concepts in its knowing grasp. But sort of like, it needs, maybe, rather than yearns, it needs, mind needs concepts in order to be born.

[35:11]

The conscious never arises all by itself, just knowing. It's that when touched by concepts, there's knowing. But if a concept hits this Marley mug, there's not knowing. There's only certain kinds of situations that, when touched, give rise to conceptual awareness. So when mind is touched by concepts, conceptual awareness arises, and conceptual awareness is what we, is ordinary, you know, dualistic consciousness that we know about. Okay.

[36:17]

Yes. What would you call these other aspects of mind? Well, one of the main ones is conceptualization. So the mind has the ability to make concepts, to create concepts, or imagination. Imagination is not knowing, but there's knowing of what is imagined. We have an imagination. It's a power. Anyway, it's like a force of our biology. We have this biological force called imagination or conceptualization that creates images. An imaginer, an imagining. That's an aspect of mind, but that's not knowing. That's the production of images. That's basically it. There's lots of other aspects of mind and all those other aspects of mind then get channeled through the imagination and presented to the mind consciousness.

[37:29]

So it's anger, fear, feelings of pain and pleasure. These are mental phenomena too. But anger doesn't get presented directly to knowing, to conception. The most superficial, the most evolved concept level of our awareness the newest in terms of the history of biological phenomena the newest is also is also the most superficial the newest the latest the highest in a way in a certain sense in terms of the front edge of the history of beings on the around here the newest the greatest the latest breakthrough in evolution of consciousness and all that Actually, enlightenment's a later one. But anyway, a fairly recent one is conceptual awareness. This started around the time of the Garden of Eden, not so long ago. So that superficial new level of our consciousness, of our ordinary consciousness, in that level, all the different mental phenomena that are arising with knowing, if they're going to be known, they get shunted over to the imagination.

[38:44]

Imagination makes an image of them, and the image of them is what the consciousness is touched by. It's what we know. We know the imagined, we know the image of, or the imagined consciousness, version of whatever mental phenomena we're going to be dealing with. So all these other things are churning around, changing all the time, evolving, offering opportunities for the imagination to present an image or concept to the knower, the knowing, I mean. Right. Right. And so in fact... In fact, there isn't an elaboration, but there can seem to be if there's confusion. So, if something happens like blue, so, you know, some electromagnetic radiation happens, stimulates the tissue around here, a sense consciousness arises. That sense consciousness then becomes an opportunity for the mental imagination to make a version of that called BLUE.

[39:49]

and that concept then gets presented to consciousness, consciousness knows it, it's blue. Okay? At that moment, that's it. If you stay at that level, this is the path to stabilization and tranquility. Okay? But, in the next moment, there can be another kind of like churning thing happening, and the concept comes up, I wish it was a different blue. That's actually a new event, but in confusion, you think it's concatenated with the former one, and that causes disturbance, because you think you're arguing with what's happening, but actually what's happening is blue, and a perfectly good experience, no problem, and then I wish it was a different blue. It's just another concept, but the mind isn't trained onto the first concept and then trained onto the second concept. It isn't trained on the nature of mind, which is right there for the first one, and that's it, and then right there for the second one, and that's it. There's some confusion in the situation, so there's a sense of there's an argument going on. Like, I sometimes think of, you know, they have these little decks of pictures of Mickey Mouse or something, you know,

[40:59]

and you can spin them and it looks like Mickey Mouse is moving, like a movie or whatever. And if you look at the different pictures of Mickey Mouse on the different cards that you're spinning to create a sense of Mickey Mouse moving, It looks like the pictures are in contradiction. But actually, looking at one picture, and you got one picture, that's it. Looking at another picture, that's another picture, that's it. There's no contradiction, because you're not comparing them. It's going Mickey, [...] Mickey this way, Mickey that way, Mickey that way, Mickey that way. If you put them together, then there seems to be some contradiction, but also there's a movement or an elaboration of his activity. This can happen, right? This is like the movies. But the stabilization is to like deal with one position at a time. one concept at a time. Because in fact, that's the nature of mind. It knows one thing at a time. But in confusion, there can be a sense of continuity or discontinuity or contradiction or whatever. And there can be arguing and judgments and all that can happen and it does happen.

[42:03]

So how do we, and that creates our normal sense of not feeling flexible and stable and relaxed and buoyant and so on. Because we're not disciplining ourselves into the non-conceptual thing that's going on all the time. It's already happening moment by moment, but we're kind of sloppy and we experience things in big chunks rather than moment by moment. So we don't know stabilization. To tune into the momentary way that the mind knows something is to tune into this non-conceptual way of dealing with the concepts, which is just know it. Know it. Know it. Know it. Like that. Boom. Simple, but it requires training to live at that level. Make sense? Yes? Non-conceptual is very much like non-judgmental. Equating mind with thought is a little confusing because sometimes what people mean by thought is that which is thought of.

[43:08]

Yeah, that, no. So the thoughts that are going through your head are the concepts that are going through your head. So that way of using the word thought makes thought equivalent to concepts and images. But sometimes people use thought for awareness. But I think it's better not to use it that way. But if people use it that way, we can tell by the way they're using it that what they mean by thought is knowing. And what you know is concepts, images, representations of mind, mental representations. Images... concepts, ideas, notions, and mental representations. These are synonyms. Okay? So, when a mental representation arises, and you're just like fixed on that, and don't mess with it at all, no, that's the path to stabilization. That's the way, that's a training.

[44:14]

But you're right, that's my, that's also, that's the way consciousness relates to everything that happens. Is it? Whatever mental representation is presented to it, it just knows that. It doesn't argue. And then that, things change, another mental representation, another image, another idea, another notion, another concept, another image. I present it. Might turn down. You trying to turn it down? Maybe you turned it up. Cover your ears. Okay. How's that? Not so good. Why don't you put it back where it was before? Things change, huh? Maybe that's okay. Is this okay? Is this okay? No? It's not on? Turn it on a tiny bit. Okay? How's that? That's okay. Is that okay?

[45:16]

Yeah, that's okay. So anyway, sometimes people use thought and what they mean, you can tell by the way they're talking, what they mean is cognition. So cognition, knowledge. Cognition, knowing, sensing. uh awareness consciousness can be synonyms and mind can be uh also you can use mind as that but mind can also mean the totality of cognition and imagination and all other mental phenomena and imagination is then the representations of all the mental happenings and these mental happenings need to be process through the imagination and then delivered to the cognition faculty. Cognition is the most overall, but it's not the whole story. So I would use thought carefully and make sure that I wasn't confusing it with thoughts like concepts.

[46:17]

But some people... I think mostly people, when they say thought, they mean thoughts, namely concepts. But it also can be thought, referring to the whole smear of mental activity and mental phenomena. Let's see, so, to be touched by concepts. Actually, what I said after that was, first I said it's vulnerable to being touched, and then I said it's innocent of. Yeah. It can be touched, but it doesn't hurt. It's innocent. It doesn't hurt. Innocent means not that it can't be hurt, but that it doesn't hurt.

[47:20]

So consciousness doesn't hurt the concept. but it can be touched by concepts. In that sense, you could say, well, the concepts can go right through the consciousness, but they don't go right through. They're known. I'm talking about consciousness as knowing, not consciousness which doesn't know anything. They don't go right through. You can say they go right through, but when they go through, there's knowing. They're cognized as they pass through. just passing through like innocent? Yeah. And this morning, Bruce mentioned this story, this Zen story of a monk comes to see the great teacher Matsu, I think it was. And the Jisha or the superintendent of the monastery comes and says to the teacher, he said, there's a monk who just came. And I think he asked, you know, what's the way? You know, what's the Buddha way?

[48:22]

And Matsu said to him, tell him to have some tea and go. And then the attendant goes and tells the monk to have some tea and go. And then he comes back and says, well, I told him to have tea and go. But by the way, teacher, what is the way? And Matsu says, have some tea and go. So. that's kind of like shamatha practice. You just, something comes and if it's for normal, superficial, conceptual awareness, which is where we usually live, you know, where we're caught, it's where we have self and others split and so on. It's where we suffer. For this world of samsara and confusion, in that world, when things come, if you just have tea, you know, to say hi and let them go, that's like they pass right through. Or they just, you know them and that's it. That's it. Just taste that tea and that's it.

[49:26]

But still, we are vulnerable to guests. Guests do come to the monastery. And they touch us. They come and they touch us. Things do come to the mind and they touch the mind. But, hopefully, we practice and they just go right through. They don't stick. But it isn't actually that they don't stick, we don't stick. We don't hold on to the guests. We let them go. The mind doesn't hold on to what it knows. Let go so but there's other aspects of mind besides the just a simple knowing which do try to hold on to things and you know Hold on to some things and get other things out of there and organize what's happening Those aspects of mind we want to train those into Not making this big mess We want to coordinate them into the practice of being like the mind is like being like awareness is so the

[50:31]

For example, conceptualization can make new images all the time. So we want to use conceptualization to make this over and over, make the concept of don't mess around. Fix whatever's happening, whatever's being offered, just stay with that. So you're going to try to enlist the imagination to this simple practice, to this simple discipline, and that will stabilize the consciousness. But all the time, the consciousness is Being touched by things and letting things pass through. Or being touched by things and not grasping them. And being touched by things but not rejecting them. Being touched by things but not elaborating. The knowing is very pure that way. Okay? And transparent. See, who is next? Concept, idea, same thing, yeah? Similar to in polygraphy, sometimes you see just this written on a board.

[51:40]

And that's it. It's just this. And that's similar. Yeah. It's similar. The word this or just this is a similar type of instruction. You can understand that what that means is it's a kind of stabilization instruction. Richard? That's why I said, you know, in Zen, we trick people into doing the practice by getting them to work in the kitchen. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Right. right right

[52:43]

Right. [...] Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, so we have some... The kitch is a place where it's relatively easy. And then zendo is... Especially in soto-zen lately, the zendo is more open. We don't give you so much feedback. If you wander off, we don't hit you immediately and kick you out of Tassajara. And if you wander off, your leg doesn't break. You know, you don't cut your thumb off if you're sitting there and you start elaborating on concepts. But if you're cutting... very rapidly or handling very dangerous material, hot things and so on.

[53:52]

If you wander off into mental aberration, it's very dangerous. And so you learn, stay concentrated on just this. So that's why we... And that's nice because a lot of people who don't want to discipline themselves in a more open space, they will do it in the kitchen. I forgot your name. Dennis, yes. eternity is eternity is in love with the productions of time yeah same thing eternity make eternity equals uh awareness and even and uh images are productions of time time is actually an imagined thing too so Eternity just is? No. No. Eternity needs something.

[54:54]

It should be eternity. It's got to have some, you know. Eternity has churned up these conscious beings, you know. It doesn't just sit in there. Eternity has made us. But it also loves us and lets us be what we are. And what we are are beings who don't let ourselves be what we are. So there's a training opportunity here to let ourselves be the way we are. In other words, to let our productions of time just love them and just be that way. The next person, next question left. Oh, Marta, yeah, Marta and Galen. Will I explain what? How does the mind work with the concept of death?

[55:56]

Well? Particularly my own death? Well, it seems like when the mind hears about the death of certain people, certain things when the mind hears about the death of somebody you don't know the mind generally speaking the way it works is it kind of goes oh but when it hears about uh the death of the person who seems to be you know having this awareness then the thought of death sometimes uh is startling to some people because they haven't been thinking about it before If you've been meditating on death steadily, and then the concept arises, there will be a different kind of way of working with it than if you haven't thought about it for a long time. Does that make sense? So I would say that for people who are thinking about death quite frequently, then when that image comes up, it's rather smooth.

[57:08]

Usually people who think about death quite steadily, some of them maybe you may say are sort of morbid, but usually people who think about death a lot are fairly happy that they're alive. So meditating on death or thinking about the concept of death usually has a positive effect on most people. So looking at the concept of death, or even looking at the concept of dying, looking at how we're dying, usually has a positive effect on the mind. But if you looked at the concept of dying, you hadn't been looking at it for a while, it might be temporarily destabilizing until you sort of got used to looking at this area. Because you might become afraid or something in reaction to the beginning of the meditation. But steadily meditating on dying, I think, is probably all... I'm not sure, I don't remember, but I think it might be one of the topics for stabilization.

[58:17]

Okay? So it's possible that that concept would be a good concept for stabilization. Because again, when you think about dying, that doesn't go with mental elaboration so much. It goes with like, well, let's settle down here. Let's, you know, life is kind of simple when you start thinking about dying. So I think meditating on the concept of dying is similar to meditating on the concept of non-conceptual, non-conceptualization. All right? You're welcome. Elin? Selflessness is vulnerable to concepts and selflessness is innocent of concepts too. Actually, I didn't mean to say the nature of mind was vulnerable to concepts. I meant to say mind is vulnerable to concepts. So part of the nature of mind is that it's vulnerable to concepts.

[59:21]

It can be touched. It's vulnerable to being touched. It needs to be touched by concepts in order to be what it is. But it also, awareness itself is innocent about the way it is with concepts. It doesn't mess with them. Yeah. Yeah. And it's sort of a coincidence that knowing and selflessness are similar. It's kind of a coincidence there. In other words, that maybe selflessness is very much what awareness is. That's the way awareness really is. Awareness being innocent and vulnerable is the place where awareness is closest. to selflessness. So, for example, you can't have selflessness without concepts.

[60:22]

You can't. You can't have emptiness without concepts, without forms and feelings and so on. So emptiness and selflessness need selfishness and forms and images and so on. They need it. They're vulnerable to being touched. You don't have any free-floating selflessness. Selflessness is always the selflessness of a self, or the selflessness of a concept. So selflessness is touched by, needs to be touched by, self. And the non-conceptual, I mean, the selflessness of all phenomena needs to be in close contact with all phenomena. The selflessness of the person The selflessness of all images has to be touched by all images. Or maybe I should say, the selflessness of each image has to be touched by the concept.

[61:22]

Has to be touched by each image. And when selflessness is touched, it doesn't mess with or tamper with or hurt in any way the concept. When ultimate truth meets conventional phenomena, ultimate truth doesn't tamper with it. Ultimate truth, when it comes and touches you, doesn't hurt you. Doesn't like fix you up and move your eyebrows around a little bit. Doesn't fix you. It completes you. It completes the picture of what you are. It's innocent of you. Doesn't stick to you. So studying mind in this way not only stabilizes the mind, but once the mind is stabilized, then you've got to see that the way the mind actually works with things is the way ultimate reality works with things. So this kind of meditation is a way to see ultimate reality working in the phenomenal world. That's why I like this particular type of stabilization practice because it so easily moves from stabilizing to this vision of how selflessness works with phenomena.

[62:32]

You don't have to switch meditation practices midstream that way. And since the point is realization of selflessness, I like this one. This style of stabilization. Does that make sense? So now, there's more questions, but I want to just remind you that I'm bringing this up for you to practice. So again, you can continue, of course, to practice mindfulness of breath, but maybe you could take into consideration that what you're looking at, what you're meditating on, is you're not just looking at the image of the breath, but you're trying to look at the image of the breath with no argument whatsoever. So, you're just going to like, there's going to be no elaboration of the breathing process. It's just going to be breath, and that's it. And in that way, you're doing the same thing as if you would just look at basically treating all things that way.

[63:38]

So, no matter what happens, no matter what image arises, you just let that image be that image. And no... Elaboration. No increase or decrease, no messing with what's happening. And this is the path to stabilization. So if you want to, you can start practicing that right now. She just raised her hand. I tried to practice it while she raised her hand. A question arose in my mind. A question arose in your mind? Yeah. Yeah. Is it non-verbal? You might want to say a few things to yourself to get the hang of it.

[64:43]

Like, you know, you might be sitting and you notice the breath and you might say... You might say one, two, but you also might say just the breath. But then once you get a feeling for just the breath, just the breath, just the breath, then maybe just you don't have to say it anymore. So this is another way to talk about this is a way to be intimate with the images of breath. Does that make sense to you, Judith? A non-verbal observation of the breath.

[65:47]

Yeah, the observation is non-verbal, but what you... Right. The awareness isn't words. The awareness is awareness of words. For example, the word breath. Awareness isn't a word. Awareness knows words. Like breath, or breathing, or dying. Right, but if I'm doing this, no words are coming in. Well... I don't know how long that went. That's fine, but there... You can say there's no words, but there's an image. There's a silent awareness around breathing. There's awareness of your breathing, but you have an image of your breathing. It's your aware of. That's what I'm saying to you. And you don't seem to, it doesn't look like you get that. So what I'm saying to you is that if it's a physical awareness, you won't be able to use that for shamatha.

[67:05]

Physical awareness is fine, but you can't stabilize your mind with physical awareness. The physical awareness is not really what you use to stabilize, because the physical awareness isn't where your destabilization is. Your destabilization is in mental consciousness. And in mental consciousness, you don't know physical reality, physical phenomena. You know concepts. So the training of Samatha is training of mind consciousness, not physical consciousness. Not consciousness which is arising in dependence on actual physical stimulation. It's the consciousness which is arising due to stimulation by concepts. And concepts... our concepts, our images, our ideas. So you have these ideas which are touching the mind and giving rise to non-consciousness. That's the realm where we're destabilized. That's the realm where we suffer and argue. And this is the realm we're talking about stabilizing.

[68:07]

And the awareness itself, you could say, is silent, but it's aware of noise. It's listening to noise, listening to the sound of the creek, the sound of the blue jays, the sound of people talking, the words in your own mind, the images. It's listening to that stuff, it's hearing things. But this consciousness itself, the ear is silent, the mind is silent, but it's hearing noise, it's hearing sounds, it's hearing words. But it also hears them with no... It doesn't talk back. It just listens. Like you're going... You're nodding your head. It's like that. It nods its head, so to speak. It says, huh, hear you? But it doesn't say, I hear you. It just goes, mm-hmm. It doesn't even say, mm-hmm. It just goes... The mind just always nodding to, yes, mm-hmm, yes, I... Mm-hmm, I hear you, but it doesn't say, I hear you. It just listens. It just... you know, sees it, you know.

[69:12]

It doesn't really listen and see, but I mean, there is listening, there is seeing, but there's no comment by the mind. But it knows all the comments. So comments are arising all the time. It knows them. But it doesn't talk back. This is going on all the time. So the stabilization is tune into that. Train the whole mind field into this mode. and that will stabilize the whole field. We have meditation at five o'clock, so we can maybe have a little bit more questions. Let's see if they can be fast. Yes? What the role of language is? Well, one in stabilization, The role of language is language is a product of the imagination.

[70:13]

So language presents linguistic concepts to be known without elaborating on whatever concept is being offered. Is language destabilizing? No, the concepts are not destabilizing. It's the argument with them that's destabilizing. So, if I say a sentence, or I say a word, and the mind knows that that word's been said, That word doesn't destabilize the mind unless some aspect, some mental formations argue with that word and say we don't want that word or whatever. It's not the words that are destabilizing, it's the way of relating to them.

[71:19]

So like you say, maybe you say, hi, and maybe over here where I'm sitting there's like a knowing, that there's a knowing of hearing high. If that's all there is, that's the mode of stabilization. But if there's then a kind of, well, I think she hates me, and she's a jerk, and that kind of thing, and I wish she wouldn't be that way, And that kind of thing. Then that, it isn't that those words destabilize, but the confusion about those words destabilizes. That I think they're not just a series of thoughts, which I, each one of which is left alone. But I get caught up in the stream. Then the getting stuck in the stream destabilizes. It's that I get stuck in the stream. It's not the stream that destabilizes me. It's my sticking to it that throws me off.

[72:23]

So there is a stream, in a sense, of consciousness. Consciousness seems to be flowing. If you oppose it, you get knocked all over the place. If you go with the way it works, it's a nice ride. So we're training ourselves to go with the way it works rather than arguing with it. And there is a capacity to argue, so we're suggesting take that arguing capacity and line it up with what's happening. Use it to go with what's happening rather than oppose and niggle and argue with what's happening. Turn with the flow of the mind. Harmonize with the mind rather than fight the mind. Rather than blame the sentence for upsetting you, go with the sentence in a way so that it doesn't upset you. So when someone says hi to you, listen to that hi in a way that doesn't upset you. And the way it doesn't upset you is when somebody says, hi, it's like, that's it.

[73:26]

Don't make life more complicated than that. This stabilizes you. Somebody says, uh, somebody says, boo, you, that's it for you. You don't, it's like, kind of like you're dumb. It's kind of like you're an innocent babe. People go, that's all you know. Then this stabilizes this attitude.

[73:55]

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