At a time like this, when there's so much violence, it seems all the more urgent that we find peace. In order to find peace, this year particularly, there's a commitment to study the wisdom teachings of the Buddha, and to meditate on these teachings. For example, the teaching that if we can find the middle way, the middle way that things really are

[01:14]

existing, that that will bring peace and enlightenment and freedom. Some of you have already been listening to these teachings for a few months, and some of you are new to this meditation hall, so I want to again mention that the wisdom teachings emphasize a different type of meditation from compassion teachings. And we should all continue to do our compassion meditations alongside the wisdom meditations. But I will be emphasizing the wisdom path

[02:32]

more today, but still I want to mention that some of you are, I know from talking to you, are practicing a form of meditation which is more on the compassion side of practice. For example, meditating in a way that gives rise to tranquility, that gives rise to physical and mental flexibility and buoyancy and energy and ease and calm, is more the tranquility type of meditation. And some of you are working on that type, and it's fine with me if you continue that during this talk and throughout the day. But I'm still going to be offering

[03:42]

teachings of meditations which are on the wisdom side of things. And as I've mentioned before, the type of training of attention, a training of mental attention, which give rise to tranquility, which come to fruit as tranquility, are basically attending to what's happening while giving up discursive thought. Giving up discursive thought comes to fruit as tranquility. So many people, for example, pay attention to their breath, and paying

[04:52]

attention to the breath is fine, but what brings tranquility is paying attention to the breath and giving up discursive thought while paying attention to the breath. In other words, giving up thinking about the breath and talking about the breath, or give up all kinds of wandering thoughts around the breath, and just look at the breath or the posture or the sound of the airplane. Of course, it's possible to hear the sound of the airplane and then have quite a few wandering thoughts about airplanes, but giving up the wandering

[05:53]

thoughts about airplanes and breath and posture and other things is actually a kind of compassion practice. So on the side of developing tranquility meditation, we give up discursive thought. On the side of wisdom, we use discursive thought in a certain way that promotes understanding of the nature of existence. This morning you chanted what's called the Fukan Zazengi, and in that text, Fukan Zazengi, which means the General Admonitions on the Ceremony of Seated Meditation, in part of that

[06:55]

text, it gives instructions about tranquility. It says cast aside all affairs, cease or give up the movements of the conscious mind, the engaging in pros and cons. In other words, give up discursive thought is recommended in the text. So an instruction on tranquility is given in the text. But then it says something like learn the backward step that turns the light around and shines it inward or shines it back, and then body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will manifest. Remember that part? This turning the light around in such a way that the body and mind drop away is a wisdom instruction.

[08:03]

And then later in the text, it says again, a little bit later, it gives more detailed practical instructions about how to assume the physical posture of sitting. And then I think it says something like settle into a steady immobile sitting position. And again, one way to understand settling into a steady immobile sitting position is that you you develop this way of sitting still, but also that you sit still in the sense that you don't wander away from, you give up wandering thoughts in relationship to this posture. So, as you experience your sitting posture, you give up wandering about,

[09:13]

wandering away from and back to the sitting posture. Or as the different moments of postural experience arise, your mind doesn't move from one moment to the next. Your mind doesn't move from object to object. Your mind doesn't move from this posture to the next posture, or this posture to a better posture, or this posture to a worse posture, or this posture to the sound of an airplane and back. You give up that. This is a steady immobile sitting position. The mind doesn't move. You train your mind to not move among the different objects. So that's a kind of calming instruction. Settle into a steady immobile sitting position. And then, actually not even then, he just says, I think,

[10:19]

Settle into a steady immobile sitting position. Think of not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? How do you think of not thinking? Or what kind of thinking is thinking about not thinking? And then he says non-thinking. This is the essential art of Zazen. So we settle into a steady immobile sitting position, and then we do a kind of thinking. So settling into a steady immobile sitting position, in a sense, is to give up discursive thought. Give up thinking. Settle into a sitting position where you give up thinking. And you can do that for a moment or all day long. Sit and give up thinking. Sit and give up discursive thinking. And suddenly somebody says, think of not thinking. A wisdom teaching has now come.

[11:29]

Now we're being told to think. How do you think? That question is thinking more. How do you think of not thinking? The answer is non-thinking. This is the essential art of Zazen. In other words, thinking about this teaching is the essential art of Zazen. Or essential in the sense that it's a wisdom teaching. It's the wisdom aspect of our sitting meditation. Or it's essential in the sense that it is the teaching about realizing the essential of our sitting practice, or the essential of Buddhism. We will realize the essential when we can think of not thinking. But in order to think of not thinking, we have to learn non-thinking.

[12:37]

So we have to learn thinking, which we've been doing quite a while already. We must continue to learn to think, and we now have to learn how to practice non-thinking. And if we can practice non-thinking, we can learn finally to think of not thinking. Or, to think of unthinking. All this together, this dynamic, is the essential art of the sitting meditation of the Buddhas and ancestors. And we begin the meditation on the wisdom practice and the wisdom teachings, with learning how to contemplate non-thinking. Now, for those of you who are also hearing the teachings from the Sambhivinirmochana Sutra,

[13:48]

the teachings about the three characters of all phenomena, and the three types of lack of own being, this meditation on non-thinking, which the Zen teacher Dogen is recommending, as the beginning of the essential art of Zazen, is the same, I feel, as meditating on the other dependent character of phenomena. It's the same as meditating on the way everything you experience is actually an essencelessness in terms of producing itself. In other words, everything you meet, everything, every experience you have, doesn't produce itself. And the way it doesn't produce itself is the beginning of the process.

[14:53]

Meditating on the way it doesn't produce itself, meditating on the way what you see, what you feel, what you think, what you taste, what you hear, meditating on how all these experiences do not produce themselves, have no essence, which makes them happen. Meditating on that is the beginning of the meditation of the essential art of Zazen. You may not want to meditate on this today, which is fine. And if you don't, you perhaps may just want to sit and give up thinking, give up discursive thought, and that's a wonderful, compassionate way to spend the day. And it's not just compassion towards yourself, this compassion reaches everywhere.

[15:55]

It would be very good if we all just sat today and practiced tranquility. But I am offering this wisdom teaching for the time when you feel ready and wanting to do it. So you'll be educated about how to practice wisdom when you feel it's the right time. Non-thinking has sometimes also been translated as beyond thinking. So, one way to learn how to practice non-thinking is to learn how to practice meditating on and contemplating what is beyond thinking.

[17:12]

So, one way to approach this is every event that comes to you, everything you meet, every person you meet, every behavior of every person you meet, the way it appears to you, you bring the teaching of non-thinking to that experience. You bring the teaching that, or that, or of what is beyond what you can think about this. What is beyond your thinking about this event? The way this thing appears to you right now is your thinking. Generally speaking, what you think is happening now is what you think is happening now. What's happening now is not what you or I think is happening now.

[18:22]

But also, what's happening now is not nothing at all. It's something that's beyond what you think is happening and what I think is happening. And it's also beyond me thinking that it's beyond what's happening. It's totally beyond what I think is happening and what you think is happening. However, what you think is happening, although it's not what's happening, is based on what's happening. What you think is happening is not based on nothing at all. It's based on what's actually happening and it's based on how what's happening is happening. It's got a base and we're trying to learn how to meditate on the base of what we think is happening. But the way you do that or a way to do that is to remember,

[19:30]

Oh, what's happening, who this person is I'm looking at, has a quality, has a nature, has a character that is beyond what I'm thinking. However, I also, I'm not getting into that right now, but it's also true that everything you meet also has a quality of being what you think it is. I mean, it has that quality. In other words, the way things are for us, it does have that aspect of appearing to be just what we think it is. And we actually don't know anything more than that about it. That's all we actually see is like what you think, like I think this person is rude. Or I think this person is sweet and I don't think they're any other way right now. And I hope they continue to be that way so I can keep thinking that they're sweet.

[20:30]

We get into this kind of stuff, right? Or I wish they'd stop being rude so I wouldn't have to think they're rude. But if they're not actually rude, there's not actually a rudeness there, they're actually something beyond your idea of their being rude. They're beyond your idea that they're difficult or easy, challenging or complimentary. They're totally beyond what you think they are. The way they are, by the way, even though you can't see it, because the way they are is beyond your thinking,

[21:37]

the way they are is that the poor things don't make themselves. The person you see, the rudeness you experience, that rudeness doesn't make itself. The rudeness isn't trying to be rude. The rudeness, maybe, there might be a wish to be rude, but that wish to be rude doesn't make the rudeness all by itself. All that stuff depends on things other than itself. Everything that appears to you is actually a puppet of things other than itself. Plus, you don't see that, and what you see though is your idea of this poor little puppet. This little chunk of essencelessness that's being given to you and not taken away, because the things that gave it to you changed and so it did too.

[22:38]

Now, stories can be told about the wonderful things that will happen if you meditate, if you learn to meditate on non-thinking, if you learn to remember and be mindful of the practice of non-thinking, the practice of non-thinking, the practice of remembering that what you're looking is beyond your thinking of what you're looking at. Lots of good things, wonderful things will come forth from this meditation. But rather than get into those today, I thought I might get into how difficult it is to meditate on non-thinking, or practice non-thinking. How difficult it is to remember when you're looking at people and looking at your own behavior and looking at your own thoughts and plans and wishes, to remember this teaching applies to all this stuff. When an intention to do something arises in you, to your awareness,

[24:02]

when you feel an impulse, that impulse has this other-dependent quality, the way this thing is, is beyond your thinking. So, learn to practice non-thinking with everything that you experience, everything you feel, everything you think, everything you perceive, which is really not a perception so much, but as your conception of what it is, and your conception as you're thinking about it. I say learn to do this, I don't mean to give you an order, I mean learning to do this is the essential art of Zazen. It's the first step in the wisdom essence of Zazen. I can't remember exactly how I heard this, but it's English that I heard,

[25:23]

and of course it's not a course, and it is a translation of something in Japanese that a Zen teacher said, he said something like, I think it was, gain is delusion, loss is enlightenment. And so that's, or something like that. Gain is illusion, or gaining is illusion, and losing is enlightenment. I don't know which is a better way to put it, but... And so I've been thinking about this quite a bit, in relationship to meditating on what's beyond our thinking, or meditating on how things depend on things other than themselves for their existence. And the way I feel now to put it is, it seems like when you see a loss,

[26:30]

when you see a loss, when a loss appears to you, that phenomena of loss, that appearance of loss, has another dependent character, just like the appearance of gain. In other words, when you feel like, oh, there's a loss, particularly a loss, like a loss of something that you, you feel something that you feel you lost, or something that someone you care about lost, when you see that loss, it really, what's happening there is, this thing has this other dependent nature, which is that what it really is, this appearance of a loss, is actually beyond what you think it is. It's beyond, for example, that it's a loss. There's something there that this sense of loss is based on,

[27:34]

but what it actually is, is beyond the loss. If I, and usually when I think I've got a loss on my hands, or a loss on my body, at that time, usually, I, do I like it? Do I like it? Usually not. Now, if you say, well, if you lost sickness, well, that's, and they say, well, I like that, because that's a gain of health. I'm talking about you lose something, basically, that you like, like your life or something like that, or your good looks, or your health. Now, really, what's happening here is beyond your thinking that it's a loss. Again, usually, I think that what's happening is what I think is happening,

[28:42]

so when it's a loss, I don't like it. But if, I'm not saying to like it, but if I would open to the teaching that loss is enlightenment, what does that mean? It means that if I open to the loss, I open to what's beyond my thinking about the loss. When I just experience the loss, without shrinking back from it, that means I'm experiencing the loss without believing that it's what I think it is, or I'm giving up a little bit on my belief that what's happening is what I think it is. Opening to the loss rather than shrinking back from it and trying to avoid it.

[29:43]

Opens my eyes. I'm enlightened by the opening to the loss. Opening to loss is a door to the way things are. So I'm watching myself, what happens to me when I lose? Do I tighten? Do I become unhappy? And, or, me, or, and, do I like say, oh, here's a chance, here's an opening, here's a door. Now when I gain, and I, you say, well then do you open to the gain, would that be the same? Opening to the gain is that you don't shrink back from thinking that it's a gain.

[30:49]

You grab it. Yes, it's a gain. So then that's like closing your eyes. It's delusion. And isn't that common? That we grasp and hold and welcome when we think it's a gain? That's delusion. Now, if you reject and fight back when there's a loss, that's delusion too. But if you just lose, if you can just lose, you have just opened to that things might be beyond what you think they are. In other words, maybe this isn't really what I think it is.

[31:51]

Maybe this isn't really a loss. And you can practice on little things before you do it on like the big ones. There's lots of little ones to practice it on. And to notice how hard it is. The opening to the meditation called non-thinking means opening to loss.

[32:55]

And opening to loss is like being afraid. Open is kind of like opening to what you're afraid of. Opening to what we're afraid of, opening to losing your life. Opening to losing your health. Opening to losing your sanity. Opening to losing your children. Opening to losing your parents, your spouse. Open to that. Not like opening to something that's not going to happen. Opening to something that's happening all the time. It's kind of like opening to fear because we're afraid of those things, aren't we? Sometimes, a little bit. But this opening is not the same quite.

[34:07]

It's a little bit different than opening to these specific fears which we sometimes feel. It's a deeper, it's like being afraid of something which is beyond all that stuff. Meditating on what's beyond our thinking, learning to practice non-thinking is really, really full of awe. So I'm not exactly, I'm not saying, well, fill yourself with awe or fill yourself with fear. I'm more saying opening to what's beyond your thinking and if you start to feel full of awe, that's like, that's an aspect of this type of meditation.

[35:09]

Which you may not be up for today. And I may not be up for it either. But you might want to take a little peek at it. This is using your discursive thought, not to think about how you can avoid losing anything today, but using your discursive thought to be mindful that everything that you experience, all day long, every day, is beyond your thinking. And if we do that, and even apply it to situations where we're losing something,

[36:25]

we start to open to the other dependent character of phenomena, and we start to feel a deep, deep shudder. And shudder means to shake, but it also has that meaning of opening up. Like shudders on a window, they open. Without some shuddering, the shudders generally are already closed. They're closed in the sense of what's happening is what I think it is. Now, you're not going to say that out loud, but deep inside, there's a shudder that's closed and says, what I think is happening is what's happening. Opening this teaching, the shudder opens.

[37:29]

And it doesn't even stay open, it flickers back and forth. Because you keep getting new installments of what you think is happening, which look like what's happening. You think it's what's happening. But then you have a teaching which comes to meet that and says, open to the possibility that what's going on is not what you think it is right now. You think this is a good talk or a bad talk? Open to that it's beyond all your ideas of what's going on here, all your thinking. And I'm not saying, I wouldn't say use being full of awe as like a sign that you're doing the meditation properly. Although it might happen, don't use it as a sign. Because using it as a sign, then you can think.

[38:33]

You see that what's happening is what you should be doing, then you get caught by it again, you're caught by your thinking again. Just more like, if you do become really, really afraid, know that this is like, this can happen. I don't want to say exactly par for the course. I just say, it's part of how difficult it is to open to another world. It's part of what is difficult about waking up, and like staying awake after you wake up, and not saying, oh that's enough of that, I'm going back to sleep, I don't need this awe. How am I going to eat my lunch with awe? You know, oh god, oh gee, oh, no, none of that. Okay, lunch, good. Let's see, we have, take a little break from that.

[39:41]

When I was a kid, my little family went through some rough times financially, in the sense that we didn't have much money. It wasn't that we had too much. And you know, we were like hoarding it, afraid we were going to get robbed all the time. We had a little bit of money, but we tended to, when we had it, we tended to spend it on food right away. And sort of at the beginning of the month when we got our money, we had quite a bit to eat. Then towards the end of the month, there was not much left in the house to eat. And so when I went to school some days, I didn't bring a, you know, a lunch in my little lunchbox. And also I didn't have any money to buy anything at the cafeteria. So at lunchtime, I didn't want to like go to the cafeteria and beg.

[40:49]

I hadn't yet learned that practice. You know, you like sit there and have other kids say, What's the matter with you? Why aren't you eating? So I went home. Some kids went home for lunch. So I went home and there was no food, but what I used to do is watch TV during lunch. There was a show on TV. It was called Casey Jones. It was about the guy who ran the show. It was like a guy who was impersonating the famous American train engineer. And so that was his thing. And on that lunch, at that noontime show which showed cartoons, he actually would lay out a lunch. You know, he would put out a sandwich and soup.

[41:51]

And a glass of milk. And I remember the glass of milk was in one of these tumblers that they had. This is the 50s, right? This is the 50s. Or late 40s or 50s. And these tumblers with the clear and colored alternating. He'd pour milk in there and then there was also Hostess Twinkies or Hostess Cupcakes for dessert. So he'd lay out the lunch there. And sometimes carrots and celery. And I watched him eat his lunch on TV. And then I'd go back to school. But it's nice to have a lunch set out there like that. So today at lunch you can do that. You can put these little bowls out there and you can have lunch. That's nice, huh? You don't have to meditate on how each one of these bowls is actually like way beyond what you think it is. You don't have to open to like what actually is there in front of you.

[42:56]

It's like totally beyond what you think it is. You don't have to do that. Just have lunch. But if you want to you can do it right then at lunch. You can do that like... You can do it all day long if you're up for it. And if you get scared, that's an understatement of what you might feel. It's not wrong that you would feel that way. Again, it's not par for the course, but it's one of the... You sort of have to be up for that. That's why you might want to practice tranquility a lot so that you'd be up for it. So that you feel calm enough to stand the awesomeness of the way things are. The awesomeness of the essential art of sitting meditation.

[43:59]

And this is the ground meditation, the basic meditation of non-thinking. Then following from that we meditate on thinking of not-thinking. Then we turn to our thinking and study our thinking and learn what is not that. Which is different from what is beyond that. So first we start studying what's beyond our thinking and then when we're well based in that we will start turning towards and learning what is not the thinking. That's another, that's the next step. The thing that will happen, that could happen when you start opening to this other dependent character. Again, this may sound nicer, is that...

[45:01]

when you start opening to the practice of non-thinking is that you start to feel an urgency. When I think that what's happening is what I think... When I think that what I think, when I believe that what I think is what's happening, then I take care of some things but not others. Then I am stinting. Then I'm stinting. Stinting in some cases and unstinting or over-generous in others. When you do this practice you see things start to become more equal

[46:08]

because everything is an equal opportunity employer of this meditation. Every person, the ones you find sweet and adorable and the ones you find repulsive are equal opportunities to realize that this repulsive person and this really attractive person are actually the basis of my thoughts about them being repulsive and lovely. But what both of them are is totally beyond these thoughts I have about them. And the more I open to that, the more I'm willing to give them both my whole heart not give one my heart and a half.

[47:09]

You can have my heart, here take it and here have some more. But just my whole heart. Not too much. And the other one not too little. Not half my heart or none of my heart. A thimble full of my heart. A speck of my heart. You can have a speck. I guess you're human, you can have a speck. When I feel that way that means hey, I'm human. I'm caught by thinking that this person, this repulsive person is actually what I think they are which is repulsive. That's what I think, I can't help it. I'm not in control of my thoughts. My thoughts are other dependent phenomena. I'm just a puppet of various conditions. And that's true. You can't help thinking that some people are like not worthy of your whole heart.

[48:13]

But that's not what they are, really. But that is what you think they are. And that's important too. Because we'll have to know what we think they are in order to later move on to find out what it means to think of not that. But for starters, again, see if you can notice for starters maybe that you are stinting, that you are stinting, that you do hold yourself back in some cases. Because of what you think. And overdo it in other cases because of what you think. Notice that. That will be maybe a way to find what it would be like, again, to go back to the meditation of whatever is happening today,

[49:15]

moment by moment, is beyond, is beyond thinking. And then notice how that, does it have any effect? You're starting to equalize your energy. And make you, you know, unstinting. Moment by moment. There are other aspects in the actually challenging course of transformation that occurs in this mind training. This training of our mind to be mindful of a teaching which will transform our way of seeing. But maybe that's enough for today. Just to tell you that mind training,

[50:17]

mind transformation, or like priest training, whatever, it's, it's an awesome reorientation. It's a reorientation that makes cracks in the walls of our prison. And when those cracks in the prison walls occur, sometimes lots of stuff comes flowing in. As the energy starts flowing, it can be really, really surprising and shocking. It's not the whole point. It's sort of the basic practice, the basic meditation. So maybe some of you already are feeling kind of like, what do you call it, reoriented. And again, reorientation can feel like disorientation because you're just from your previous. So I,

[51:20]

I encourage you to again, practice compassion alongside of this whole transformational process that you might be starting to go through. And sometimes the way to do it is just take a break and have lunch with everything set out in a nice orderly fashion and the bowls and stuff aren't jumping beyond your thinking. But then, take a break from that maybe and practice non-thinking for a little while. Okay? Did you have a question? Is that a question? Yes? How to hold? How to hold? Okay.

[52:34]

So there's this war situation and I can tell you I want myself to, I want to live in such a way as to promote peace under these circumstances. So how do I relate to the war? Fundamentally, I try to meditate on the war as beyond my thinking about it in the hopes that this meditation will this meditation will allow this body and mind to relate appropriately under these circumstances. I don't know what my behavior will be. I can't predict it, really. But I'm actually making a commitment in terms of how to train myself to put my attention in my mind and make a commitment to this teaching to see how this teaching, if I meditate on it, gives rise to my

[53:36]

influences and gives rise to my responses and watch my responses and see for my life does it contribute to a peaceful way of living. The awesomeness of what? You've got awe and fear of the war, right. The difference? Yes.

[54:41]

If you are meditating on something that you're afraid of, like that someone will get hurt, you feel some fear that someone's going to get hurt, that someone's going to be harmed, that someone's going to be really injured and you're afraid of that, that's a certain kind of fear you can feel. Now, if you're open to the fact that the fear you feel and the injury you imagine, that both of those things are actually beyond your thinking about them right now, that'll be a different kind of fear. An additional fear on top of the ones you have or beyond the ones you have now and it's more inward. It's inside you, that other fear. It's not out there. That fear of the way you feel in the face of that what's happening is not what you're thinking or is beyond what you're thinking. Again, I'm not saying it's not what you're thinking

[55:45]

because what's happening is closely related to what you're thinking because what you're thinking is based on what's happening. What we think the war is is based on what's happening. As you know, some people, the way they think about this war, they think it's a good idea. They think, you know, terrible but good. That's the way they think about it. No matter how we think about it, this is the hard part for a lot of people who, well, either way, no matter what we think about it, it's not what we think about it. It's beyond what we think about it. It's based, what we think about is based on it but it actually has an aspect, a fundamental aspect that's beyond our thinking. When you're open to that, you'll be afraid of something inside you, an inner sense of loss, of control,

[56:46]

an inner sense of loss and confidence in your own thinking. It's not up there that somebody's going to get harmed by this. Nobody's going to get hurt by this out there. You may translate this into, well, if I feel this way, will I be able to take care of my children? But really it starts inside, it's not outside. And it starts inside because you're letting things change inside. It's a deeper, actually, change than the changes you're afraid are going to happen in the world. Like that this child is going to change from a healthy, happy child into a maimed or diseased or murdered child. You're afraid of that. That's terrible. This inner fear is harder to face than that. So are you giving up this fear of what's out there? Are you giving it up? Yes.

[57:50]

Because you're giving up believing that what you think is happening is actually what's happening. You're giving it up for a while. This is part of the dangerous process. And if you would give up that and then switch into by giving up that, not caring about these things, then you shouldn't do this meditation. This shouldn't flip over to, well, it doesn't matter if I kill people. Then this meditation isn't appropriate for you. This meditation actually should start to promote your caring for more beings than before. It may not instantly give you that feeling, but it should fairly soon start evening your concern for beings and making you less what do you call it,

[58:57]

what's the word, partial to the people who agree with you. It should make you actually, can you imagine, open, somewhat open, more open to the people who you disagree with about this present situation. And less, sort of, close to your little group of like-minded people. Less close to, I don't know, less close to, more close to actually, which means less sure that your group is right, is closer to your group. You're actually closer to the way your group really is when you're less close to the way you think they are. But that's a scary transition. So, this is a dangerous situation. When we feel in danger, we don't necessarily want to

[59:59]

open to more danger. But I guess what I'm proposing is that the path to liberation from this dangerous situation involves opening to more dangers than a previous, a new set of dangers. So, in addition to the dangers of living at the level of believing that the world is what we think it is, there's dangers in that world, now we're talking about a meditation where you're going to open to a whole new set of dangers. Yes. In addition to the dangers that would happen if you just continue believing the way things are is the way you've been believing that things are, just continuing that road there will be dangers. But also, one of the dangers of that path is that you'll just stay in that pattern and you won't get out. The dangers of retraining your mind is that you get a whole new set of dangers

[61:00]

on top of the previous ones. However, some of the dangers of the previous ones are still there because you can always flip back into the previous ones and have all the problems you used to have. But it might not happen, you might not have the old problems. But actually, it sounds good to have the old problems too to me. So, I think that sounds better, have all the old problems and a whole new set of problems. But taking on a whole new set of problems although it doesn't eliminate the old problems, it sets up a new possibility. It sets up a possibility of liberation from the old and the new problems. That's its selling point. But, it sounds awfully expensive. And it is. It's really expensive. It's kind of like

[62:01]

awesomely expensive. But somehow it feels good to be dealing with something so expensive. Something that requires total payment. Not holding back anything. To me it does anyway. It doesn't explain what's more. Well, just that, you know, like he got something here and he says, what's the price? You say, everything. What he got? Hand it over. Doesn't that sound expensive? And so I'm saying, yeah, wow, it's awfully expensive,

[63:02]

but it also feels good that something would require me to hand over everything. And then I'd be finally like, wouldn't have to worry about carrying all the stuff around anymore. It'd be like, hey, you got it all. What a relief. Finally, I paid everything. And I'm not anymore being, holding on to my little thing, which I kind of like to do, but I'm free of that now. How can we be free if we're holding on? And yet, when it comes time to pay off, we get scared. So how can we pay it all? Is that enough further explanation? Or do you want more? It's good? That was easy. Wasn't very expensive. Let's see,

[64:03]

we have Stephen and Joe. Correct or incorrect? Well, it's not so much correct or incorrect. It sounds good, though. I actually sometimes say that to myself. And I'm pretty happy with the way I am when I'm actually thinking that. I'm never going to... I shouldn't say never, but it makes me not want to hurt anybody just because I think they deserve to be hurt. Get the picture? I think this person

[65:05]

deserves a little punishment. But they're actually beyond what they actually are. It's beyond my idea that they deserve punishment, so I'm not going to punish them. And I say, well, maybe I'll punish them a little. Nope, they're beyond. They're actually beyond your idea that this person deserves punishment and you're the nearest person, so you should be the one to do it. No, they're beyond that, so you don't punish them. How about, this person deserves my reward. They're beyond that too, so you won't reward them. So you don't reward them or punish them. You say, well, shouldn't I be rewarding them? Hey, you reward them when you don't reward them or punishment. You're with them, you're with them, moment after moment, moment after moment, you're there. Each moment you're there, paying attention to the person, looking at them, watching what you think and not going for that, remembering this is a big reward to that person. They get to be with somebody

[66:06]

who's awestruck, unstinting, and I'll tell you more later. Joe? Scared and unstinting. It's kind of like being with God being with a mystery that's like, okay, [...] whatever you want. How about you? Okay, here. This is a big reward to whatever that is. You are like now this person's total donation. You're a gift to everybody when you're in this mode, but you're not trying to reward or punish people. You're actually in the mode of meditating on them in terms of the teaching and making yourself in that way a gift to all beings. But you don't know who to reward or punish.

[67:09]

You just know who you think you should reward and punish and you're not into what you think anymore, at least for the moment. I shouldn't say anymore. At the moment, you're not into what you think people are. So right now, you're not into what you think I am. And when you do that, you open up to like, yikes, what's he going to ask of me now? And how would I be able to resist? Because if he asked for something that I think I should resist, he's actually beyond that resist deserving guy, resistance deserving creature. Joe? He's smiling back there for some reason. What do you expect from this point of view about everything that you know about about when we can't read everything that's written and who we're to be to be.

[68:10]

And so, to set that aside, you're talking about the act of keeping everything that's been said and done written. Correct. Correct is not just one payment. It is on the installment plan, but you pay the whole thing and then pay the whole thing and then pay the whole thing. It's not just one time pay the whole thing. And it's not one, just one time. Liberation is reenacted then each moment. The liberation's also impermanent. The liberation is a dependently co-arisen thing too. It's an other dependent thing. The liberation is beyond your thinking too. It's impermanent. It arises when we relate properly to other impermanent things. And then it's all over and here's another thing happening. And then pay it totally and there's another liberation. And that's gone and here's another thing. So it's always going beyond, beyond, beyond. Non-stop.

[69:14]

Non-start. I would like to hear maybe things you can make me um make me um at wrong mental things that's beyond what is different that's wrong that's beyond what I believe that to be and that's beyond what I believe in. It sounds like a translation I can make maybe things are beyond what I'm thinking therefore I'm wrong and therefore I just go around thinking I'm wrong about it all the time. Um you know a couple of times I said things are not what you think they are but I think when you meditate when you're when you're learning to meditate on

[70:15]

dependent co-arising when you're learning to meditate in a way that we call non-thinking it's maybe more correct or more uh helpful to say it's not that things are not what you think they are but that things are beyond the way you think they are because what you think things are are related they're based on you're thinking about things are based on what the things actually are they're related it's not like they're not related they're related they're together and yet they're beyond so beyond I think is better than not so it's not exactly that you're wrong about the way things are the wrong part if there's a wrong it's that you're wrong to think that the way you think things are is the way they are that's wrong but the way you think about them is not exactly wrong it's related so for example that you think that there's a self

[71:17]

to yourself to your person to your being that's a misconception but if you know it's a misconception you're not wrong but if you believe it then you're wrong you know then you're in trouble so I just and if you yeah so you don't going around saying you're wrong all the time might be helpful but it might be also just say that if I believe that what I think is the way things are then I'm wrong but just that I think things are a certain way is not necessarily wrong it's just that they aren't that way you say okay that's wrong okay I guess if that's what you mean by wrong then I guess we're wrong is that enough? no? no? you have some other point on that?

[72:20]

no? okay so when the Zen teacher was settled into a steady immobile sitting position a student said to him what kind of thinking is going on there when you're sitting still like that and he said thinking of not thinking that's the kind of thinking he was doing and the monk says what is thinking of not thinking and he said non-thinking but you could also say

[73:23]

what is thinking not thinking you could say it's a mystery so that's another way to approach everything everything you look at it's a mystery but if you think that if you do that and that would mean that if if you saw some harm being done to someone and then you would say this is a mystery and that you would convert that into well let the harm be done no problem then this meditation might not be appropriate for you if you see if you think if you see yourself about to do something cruel to someone and then you think oh well this cruelty I'm planning is really beyond my thoughts

[74:26]

that it's cruel so I guess it doesn't matter if I do it and then you would think of going ahead and doing it based on this meditation then this meditation is not appropriate for you or for me this meditation shouldn't make you less careful of protecting beings it should actually make you equally careful I shouldn't say equally careful again it might make you a little less careful than you are about yourself now because generally speaking we're too careful about ourselves we're too worried about ourselves we're overly concerned with protecting ourselves and not enough concerned about protecting some other people so it should start it actually if you do this meditation it should not remove your concern to protect beings it should make you more evenly concerned with protecting beings so that you'd want to protect beings that are rude to you as much as you'd want to protect beings that are sweet to you

[75:27]

rather than you say hey this person is a mystery so I can punch him in the face because you know this punch isn't really what I think it is this meditation that makes me more frightened of the awesomeness of reality of beings should actually soften me and make me more gentle if not instantly in fairly short order so watch out for that that's another danger of wisdom meditations is that you could think hey nothing matters because everything is beyond what I think it is no that's a mistake does that make sense? so I'm thinking again

[76:41]

and my thinking is to watch for me to watch if you know where I'm stinting who I who I care more about than somebody else or who I care less about than somebody else and then look to see when I care more or less am I doing that meditation at that moment I think I may be that I'll find I'm not really doing that meditation when I care more about this person than that person maybe you can check it out see or again when I'm caring more about this person than that person have I lost track have I closed to the awesomeness of this person and that person

[77:43]

because according to this teaching everybody has this quality so everybody has this awesome quality so everybody we should be kind of in awe of not every you know the way everybody really is happening is awesome and do we feel like hey this person is not that awesome this person is and as you know in our I don't know what you call pop culture it's a term right awesome so and so is awesome but this teaching is more like that's fine but is the awesomeness unevenly distributed among phenomena like this person's awesome but that one's not so awesome she's close that one's like way down in the awesomeness that's the way things are in society right this awesomeness is unevenly distributed

[78:45]

according to this teaching it is evenly distributed but we've closed our eyes to it and opening our eyes to it means that no longer can we control with our thinking who gets the awesomeness so if you notice it's uneven then just like check to see is the reason why is uneven because you're not applying the teaching to this person I'm not going to remember this teaching I'm not going to practice non-thinking with this person this person I'm just going to let them be so sweet that you know I'm just going to really like wallow in my awesomeness of the sweetness it's so fun even though when that person walks away and this other person walks up they're not going to get much awesomeness at all

[79:45]

I'm going to stop practicing actually but in this first case I wasn't practicing really awesomeness I was practicing my idea of it so this is a way to like you know have some feedback on whether you're into this mode of this practice of non-thinking and again Dogen says in one case he says learn the backward step in another case he says take the backward step and this backward step this is the first part of the backward step is to learn non-thinking so it's a learning thing this is the essential art of Zazen yes Catherine

[80:51]

I'm under anger this evening and I feel like I want to avoid this treatment you know because I think it's my thinking is a little bit an unwise activity yet I'm thinking now this is non-thinking maybe it's a passion but the other thing is I plan to get pulled into something that is unwise so I was just talking about I think it's right now that I'm glad I'm here meditating maybe I'll be more stable like the ego in this treatment and not be in a sudden going on in this treatment so you got a person in your life and you're currently feeling like you should stay away from this person you have that feeling like you should avoid this person okay so that's your current feeling now and then if you would

[82:08]

open to the possibility that this person is not what you think they are like you think this person is dangerous in the sense that you might be drawn into something unskillful so in that sense they're dangerous so you already see the danger now if you would open to that this person is beyond what you think they are then you then you think maybe you'll even be more likely that you'd be drawn into this unskillfulness is that part of what you're afraid of? you don't want to condone that and so then when it comes to a situation where you think such and such would be destroying a person's property you don't want to condone that but what do you

[83:08]

want to do? and what do you want to do? you want to do something which will what? which will be beneficial to all beings which will be skillful right so if you think something's destructive and harmful to beings you don't want to like be involved in that right so one way to so now you could so that's the way you already feel so now you can look at that and say okay what I think is this is harmful and I think I don't want to be involved in that now what's actually happening is beyond these thoughts now how will that change the situation? there's still a danger that you will that something that something will happen which will be the basis for thoughts of harm

[84:11]

or thoughts of non-harm still may happen but what will change in you? if you open to this possibility that what's going on is beyond your thinking how will you change? yeah that's part of what might happen you might be passive you might be passive it might happen that you be passive and she said that's not good so there now you have the thought that that's not good to be passive now if you would open to that that thought that it's not good to be passive that what's going on about passiveness is beyond your idea that it's not good then you might say well then I might be even more likely to be passive but not necessarily so matter of fact

[85:12]

you might be drawn in to being passive because you're stuck on the idea that being passive is the way you think it is namely not good and that's part of the reason why you're afraid maybe to open your mind to what past to what you're thinking is because you think you're going to slip into something unwholesome whereas actually unwholesomeness comes from not meditating on how things are beyond your thinking unskillfulness comes from not thinking about how things are beyond your thinking unskillfulness comes from thinking that things are what you think they are that's where unskillfulness comes from so it's perfectly fine to think oh passive is not good that's fine but sometimes passive is really good I mean it is but really when I say it's really good I mean whatever is happening that's the basis of the thought passive that there's something good

[86:15]

about that there's something radiant and beautiful about whatever is the basis of that's passive but whatever is the basis upon this idea that that's passive it's beyond the idea of that's passive and as long as I think that whatever is the basis of my thought that's passive whatever I'm referring to when I say that's passive as long as I think that that's what it is my behavior will be unskillful at that moment that's what I'm saying because you're making a mistake you're thinking that things are what you think and they're not and that's our usual way is already set up that we think things are a certain way and we think that they are the way we think they are that's our set way and that's the basis of unskillfulness that's our set way

[87:19]

that's what I'm saying and making this change to non-thinking means that when you look at something and say that's not good you realize that what that thing is is beyond your idea of that's not good for example you look at someone or you even think of doing something cruel to someone that comes back to what I said before you think of doing something cruel and you say that's not good I'm saying that that thought you have in your mind at that time about this activity is not what that activity is or you may be doing something right now and you say like you're writing something and you say this is not good or this is ugly my handwriting is ugly I'm saying that your handwriting is actually what's actually going on here is beyond your idea of this is not good or this is really beautiful

[88:23]

handwriting what's actually going on here is beyond your idea this is beautiful handwriting that's what I'm saying now if you think that if you open to that meditation that you would not care anymore about how you're writing that you wouldn't care anymore about writing skillfully that you'd lose all concern for the world then this meditation is not good for you but I'm proposing that this meditation actually makes your handwriting more virtuous more appropriate and more beneficial if you remember while you're handwriting while you're writing while you're talking while you're walking whatever you're doing that what's actually happening how things are happening is beyond your ideas about them that you're walking you're talking and you're writing will become more virtuous that's what I'm proposing and if you have some doubts about this I would encourage you

[89:25]

to bring them forward and discuss them and I certainly am again stressing that one of the dangers here might be that you might think that well that nothing matters that's one of the things you might think but again that's something you think and that's something and the way things are is that they're beyond your idea that nothing matters but I'm also not saying things do matter I'm not saying they do matter or that they don't matter I'm not saying that I'm saying they're beyond such statements of pro and con of this matters or this doesn't matter I'm saying they're beyond that I'm just saying that when you realize things are beyond your evaluations and you meditate on that you will act virtuously and I'm not saying it matters whether you

[90:25]

act virtuously or not I'm not saying that you can say that somebody else can say that I'm just talking about how to realize virtue I'm sort of into how to realize virtue how to realize skillfulness how to realize that which is appropriate to liberation and peace I'm not here to say peace matters or peace doesn't I'm not here to say happiness matters or doesn't or virtue matters or doesn't that's up to my thinking to do what I'm saying is that if you want to realize virtue and happiness and freedom give up believing that what's happening is what you think is happening and learn to remember the meditation that what's happening is beyond your thinking that will lead to virtue in this scary way in this dangerous way yes

[91:32]

I'm not evaluating the truth I'm not thinking it's good or it's bad yes words don't fly in my mind I think that's the truth

[91:52]

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