Last week I presented, I thought, quite a bit of material. And this week I thought I might just try to review a little bit and then see if you have some questions about what's been presented lately. So I've been presenting kind of the images about different dimensions of consciousness, different dimensions of awareness, one being superficial conceptual awareness, where we know concepts. And next dimension, which in some sense is more basic or physical, is physical consciousness in a sense, direct physical awareness.

[01:20]

And then another aspect or dimension being what sometimes is called non-conceptual awareness, which is present all the time, and the body awareness is present all the time, and the conceptual awareness is usually present. So these coexist and interpenetrate each other, and what we're What we usually call conscious, most people's, what they're aware of, what they usually call conscious awareness, is conceptual awareness. However, there are these coexisting other aspects of awareness. And it's in conceptual awareness where we have a sense of you know, concepts of self and other, and where we always suffer because of that.

[02:32]

And in physical awareness, in direct physical experience, there is also suffering. And there is also actually some sense of the things which are directly known, physical experiences which are directly known. without any conceptual mediation, there's still, even in that realm, is a sense that there's a separation between the process of awareness and the physical data. There's no words, but there is a sense that the light is over there, or the You know, the sound is over there.

[03:35]

There's still kind of a sense of knowing over here and known over there, even at the subtle level. And then there's another kind of awareness which is entirely free of this sense of separation between perception and perceived, knowing and known and so on. And so we've been talking about these different kinds of consciousness. And then I also mentioned that there's also three different levels of insight or understanding of this teaching about consciousness. And there's also three different levels of insight or understanding about any teaching And the three levels are, first one is what's called insight that comes through hearing, but also that would include through seeing or reading, and through other sense modalities.

[04:44]

But for the most part in Buddhism, teaching does not occur so much through mental messages. But even if it does, that would be included in this first level of insight, insight that would be coming basically through the senses. The next level of insight is insight that comes through reflection. The first level of insight then is then thought about or reflected upon or related to and tested out in terms of history, new experiences, patterns of thought and so on. And in some traditions of philosophy or studying of truth, those first two levels are as far as they go. But in Buddhist study of the truth we take it one more level and that is we try to realize that basically with the body

[05:56]

And so in order to have the deepest and most integrated understanding of whatever teaching we're talking about, we also practice meditation and have an insight which comes through meditation. And the meditation is often presented in terms of a kind of stabilizing meditation and an insight meditation. One kind of meditation where you're paying attention to basically one thing, and the one thing you're paying attention to is inward. And then inward. Yeah, I could also talk louder, I suppose. So, is that better? So, and... This is inward in a sense of direction of application of attention.

[07:03]

It's not really like inside and outside, but it's kind of inward. And the other way, the inside meditation is outward in the sense of you actually look at things and examine them. So another example would be if I'm aware of the hand here, or if I'm aware of some teaching. But anyway, that's just in my hand. The stabilization response to the hand is that there's no embellishment of the hand. I'm aware of this concept here. and there's no elaboration of this concept. And then if I look at Bernd's face, there's no elaboration of that face.

[08:07]

There's no embellishment of the data of the face. And if I look at someone else's face, the same. So although I may be aware of different faces and my hand and my foot are the sound of trucks. I may be aware of various things, but I'm focused on one thing, and that is no matter what happens, I won't get involved. I won't elaborate. So I'm focused on one thing, which I apply to every concept that I'm aware of. So what I'm focusing on is an inner attitude or an inner training of my attention so that my attention just gets trained onto the way consciousness simply knows things moment after moment. Attention can also be let free, and then the imagination can just elaborate on everything, and there can be trains of thought associated with everything that happens, and then we can create this normal situation of intertangling trains of imagination.

[09:28]

And sometimes the trains run nicely, and sometimes they run into each other, and we have big train wrecks. But it's possible in this way by not getting involved in the trains of thought associated with our experiences that there's no train wrecks anymore. There's not even any smoothly running trains. There's just knowing one thing after another and that's it. And turning into this mode, which is the mode the normal mode of knowing and letting it be that, the mind becomes stabilized and flexible and open. And then what is then the hand or whatever is presented is presented in this calm situation and then it actually might look different in that calm situation than it does when it's in the middle of a train wreck.

[10:41]

The insight gesture or towards the experience is to actually like instead of like working on how I'm going to relate to the experience or how I relate to the concept, namely not getting involved, now I actually look at what it is. So I can actually look at the face and see what it is, how is it. Now that I'm calm I can see more actually clearly how it is and actually I'm not going to look at it, I'm not going to stop this practice of not elaborating, I'm going to continue that, but I'm also going to look out at what it is that I'm not elaborating on, see what it is. So there's going to be inquiry into that which has previously not been elaborated on or even looked at, really, other than knowing it. And you don't have to, like, pry or anything.

[11:51]

Just look. And you start noticing things like, for example, hole. this face is changing all the time. It's an impermanent face, or it's an impermanent hand. It's pulsing and changing and revealing all kinds of new things moment by moment. So you start to notice, for example, that the way the hand is, it's impermanent, and so on. All kinds of insights come as you just simply contemplate. So one, you're training yourself and not getting involved. The other, you're contemplating what you don't get involved with. And... So you keep the training of stabilizing going, but also in addition to stabilizing, stabilizing isn't just a training practice, it also produces a state of mind. So you're training yourself and it results in a state of calm. And then based on that state of calm and continuing that training, you now inquire or you now contemplate phenomena.

[12:53]

Phenomena. And then, for example, if you've heard this teaching about consciousness, now you're going to like, you've been trained. So I'm talking about ways of training the consciousness so that you can study consciousness. So there's teachings on consciousness which you have either zero insight about, First level of insight, about second level and second level of insight, and probably very few people have third level of insight. So now I'm talking about a training so you can develop the third level of insight when you're ready. And third level kind of needs the first two levels. So maybe that's enough for starters. Is it? Does that sound familiar to some of you that have been here before?

[13:57]

Yes? Oh yeah, I did, didn't I? I will. She said I would discuss hindrances to the practice and in particular I would say hindrances to the practice of, you know, immediately hindrances to the practice of stabilization. But I thought maybe before I introduce that I'd see if there's any questions or things that have come up so far before I open up these new topics. Is that OK, Jennifer? So, yes, Jimmy? So he said that maybe the process of inquiring might result in elaboration and that can happen and if it does you should generally speaking go back to putting more emphasis on the stabilization again because even if you're fairly well stabilized you can still stir things up by getting back into elaboration again.

[15:38]

In other words Yeah, so, but when you start looking at things, then you oftentimes start, that activity starts to maybe make you start thinking, well, now it's probably okay if I elaborate a little bit. Sometimes when you say contemplate or look into something, people start getting into doing something about that. So sitting, contemplating in a in a way where you're not trying to get anything from what you're contemplating. When you're training yourself in stabilization, you're actually training yourself to look at things without greed, aversion and confusion. And then when you start inquiring, you also practice the same way without greed, aversion, or confusion, hopefully. So although there still may be some confusion deep down inside, the confusion has been calmed for the moment.

[16:47]

However, as soon as you start looking at something, it's possible to get a little bit excited and then get back into trying to get something from what you're looking at. Like you're trying to understand it, right? So then you try to get the understanding. So that can easily get into elaboration, plus it also gets into agitation because your contemplation is somewhat getting infected by trying to get something. And then also sometimes what might be presented to you might be, are you tired tonight? No. Catherine, are you tired? Want to lie down? Go ahead. Take a nap if you want to. You'll probably wake up eventually. I can see you're really trying hard to stay awake after a hard day's work at General Hospital. I'm sure I wouldn't be able to stay awake if I worked there all day today. Anyway, so that is... it's often recommended that when you start doing the contemplation, if you get a little bit excited, it's okay, but if you start losing your contemplation, you should just, like, let up on the contemplation and go back to the stabilization.

[18:03]

And I just parenthetically mention that one of the hindrances is sloth and torpor, and if you're practicing stabilization and you get sleepy or dull, one of the ways to wake yourself up is to do a little bit of contemplation. It will stimulate you to wake up. It's one of the ways to wake up. So yeah, it is a consideration there, both of getting excited from contemplation, agitated from it, having some greed come into it, or of course also aversion. You're contemplating something and maybe you start getting into, well, I'd rather contemplate something else. This is not a good topic for contemplation here. Before that, you were looking at whatever was coming up and you were training yourself not to get into judging whatever is happening and just let it be. If a monster comes, you don't get into it. If something very lovely comes, you don't get into it. And your awareness is doing that too.

[19:10]

Your awareness just knows the monster and knows the angel. That's all it does. That's all awareness does, is it knows. So you train your attention into being like that, and you calm down. When you start contemplating, you kind of feel like, now I can start getting involved again, a little bit, you know. So some things I can see now, now I can argue again. Well, if you do, you start getting, that's aversion, you're sleeping into your contemplation. And another way that confusion can get in is you can get confused about how to contemplate. So they can slip in, and when they do, you should get calm again, maybe, and start up, start over. Okay? Anything else? Yes? Yeah. Well, all experiences are temporary.

[20:12]

Huh? Yeah, except for emptiness is not, emptiness is permanent. But the experiences are, generally speaking, impermanent. But I think when I said temporary, I was probably... Temporary is different from impermanent. Impermanent, everything's like, you know, you're temporarily here, you know, but every moment is changing. Impermanence usually refers to not so much the fact that you've been at Zen Center for a certain number of years, So what I think I meant by temporary was actually stabilization is temporary. that when you become stabilized, it doesn't last. And another aspect of temporary is when you become quite stabilized, afflictions are temporarily subdued or actually temporarily sort of evacuate the scene.

[21:19]

So you're temporarily free of affliction. But as soon as As soon as the stabilization condition goes away, because it's temporary, the afflictions can reemerge. So that's why we need insight to go to the root of the afflictions, to find the root ignorance, which is the source of the afflictions. The experience of the root of the affliction, the understanding of the root? Yes? Yes, what about that? Pardon? Uh-huh. Is that permanent? Can that take a shift into permanent? Well, the experience of the root is impermanent. It's a momentary thing. Because we are experiencing, actually, when you experience the root of all these afflictions, you're experiencing a misconception, a conception, but that's a misconception.

[22:26]

You're actually experiencing the way you think at that moment, which is impermanent. The root conception is a conception that we think all the time. Namely, for example, that things are out there on their own. We think that all the time. It's a constantly, basically constantly held misconception. And it's very subtle, so it doesn't take much to hold it. It's kind of like, in some sense, residing in our genetic makeup. That's subtle. It's super, super, super virus. But to experience the misconception, that's a temporary experience. But if you understand how it's a misconception, the understanding of it can be irreversible. When you find the misconception and understand that it's a misconception, it's possible to never again misunderstand that.

[23:33]

So first of all, if you find it, you have a chance now to then, although you're finding it is temporary or impermanent, and you need to find it again and again and again so that you can study it now. And it's there all the time, so it is possible to find it repeatedly and to study it consistently and thoroughly until you're totally convinced of its misconceptuality and even finally just be completely free of it, even while it's still arising and possible for it eventually not to arise at all. But the understanding of how it really doesn't hold up and becoming disabused of it and disenchanted, that can be irreversible. Anything else? Yes? Yes? I'd like a clarification on the difference between a civilization practice, concepts, and embroidery on concepts, which I guess would be more concept.

[24:44]

Yes, that's right. Yes. Yes. Now, at that point, would you be just pretty much the obvious that would come out would be like the breath, in the sense of it being sort of pretty much immediate sort of sensory, you know, appearance of the body, aches, pain? You kind of lost me there. Excuse me. You lost me, so I got to go back and get together with you, okay? So before you said, I thought you were talking about maybe that you had some consistency in non-elaboration. You got to that point, and then you speeded up and lost me. Now we got some consistency in non-elaboration. Then what? What I'm interested in now is, because I want to know what would be left after the elaborating is pretty much gone.

[25:53]

It could still include thoughts of your mother, thoughts of your boss, yes. Those two could still arise, but it would just be like boss, mother, boss, breath, street noise, pain in the knee, anger, whatever, you know, these things. And there's no elaboration. It's like, kind of like life gets simple in a way. And that's the way your mind is, knowing these things. And you could put more complicated things in there, but they would be seen, you know, one by one rather than as trains. And seeing them that way is the way they're known, and training your mind to be like the way they're known stabilizes the mind.

[26:58]

Okay? Okay, so as you're trying to get rid of, or lay down in front of the operation, you're not trying to get rid of non-conceptual, I mean, a non-sort of medium, like mother. You're not trying to get rid of anything. That's a conceptual elaboration. To try to manipulate the conceptualization process in any way, other than this way, will be an elaboration. Because we've decided on this way, which we often call like a mind, like a wall. And again, I've mentioned a number of times, people get scared when they start doing this practice because they think it's cold to look at somebody without thinking, oh, she's so nice, or she's so cute, or she's so ugly, or she's such a jerk.

[28:06]

They think it's so passionless to get scared that they're becoming, you know, that the invasion of the body snatchers has taken effect finally. on them. But actually this is a very loving way to be with people and it's very intense, but it's very loving because you're actually looking at the thing again and again without putting your two bits in. You're relating to your experience on the level of what's given to you. So it actually also has a grateful aspect to it, that you're saying, thank you very much for whatever comes. You're not saying, thank you very much, I have something to say about this. You just say, thank you very much. You don't even say what's next. Say, thank you very much. And it gets taken away from you, thank you very much. It gets something else, thank you very much. Taken away, thank you very much. So you tune into the arising and ceasing of phenomena, which you might remember was what we were doing back when we were studying the middle way.

[29:08]

that the yogi just studies, is studying the arising and ceasing of phenomena. Okay? And if you do that, purely, that process will stabilize you. And then, when you stabilize, you turn to look at the rising and ceasing. And when you look at the rising and ceasing, you're starting to do insight work. When you contemplate, and then you start to see and realize that phenomena do not last and they are not annihilated. So then you can have insight into the middle way. But it's it's nice to first of all just settle into watching the arising and ceasing without any elaboration, and then contemplate the arising and ceasing. And then you understand that there's a teaching coming to you in that phenomenon of arising and ceasing. But in a stabilization practice, you're not so much getting the teaching, you're getting ready to get the teaching. When you're stable, then you're in a mode of revelation. And then you look to see what it is. Does that take care of your question for now?

[30:13]

Nancy and Elmer and Patty and Erwan and Todd and half of Jackie? And Jackie? Yes? Nancy? When you were talking about your head, I really thought that you had a hand. You weren't so good at playing, but in some ways, I see lately that I've been bounced, and I really see that I have a life, and it's... Yeah. Right. It can be.

[31:14]

But the kind of thing you're talking about, that kind of situation can happen, that kind of insight can happen when you're just like accepting, well, I got a body and I got a hand and a foot, and not elaborating, and then suddenly you realize, you know, oh, I got a body. So you can... First of all, accepting that you've got a body and not elaborating, you settle into a place where you can realize you've got something that you... You've got what you don't elaborate. I mean, you can see it. Yes? I think it's actually Italian. Stabag mater? Isn't that... Aladdin, yeah. Italian, sorry. Yeah, it's Aladdin. Aladdin. I think the part of what she was doing there was stabilization, right.

[32:19]

She was standing there and calming down. And maybe she moved from that into understanding what was going on there. But definitely she was not elaborating. She was just standing there suffering. And she wasn't wiggling. She wasn't complaining. And her complaining or wiggling wouldn't have helped, you know. She could have tried to fight the Roman Empire. It wouldn't have worked. Maybe she did that before. Maybe she argued with the soldiers and said, let my boy go or something. Maybe she got through all that resistance and finally when she could see there was nothing she could do but be with him, she just stood there and set a very nice example. But she was suffering, of course, tremendously. And in that standing there, this is also great compassion. So stabilization practice is a dimension of compassion. So leading up to stabilization practice is, you know, being generous, which means willing to let go of your imagination and not try to capitalize on it anymore.

[33:28]

Give your imagination to Zen Center. Donate your imagination to Soto Zen or Rinzai Zen or whatever. Give it away. And be careful of what you're doing. Be careful. Everything you do, be careful. And be patient. And be enthusiastic. And then you're ready for stabilization. These are all compassion practices which get you ready to contemplate. The name of the temple, yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So the stabilization will make it possible for us to go down and face the root of

[34:32]

misconception of our life. But to get close to that root misconception means also getting close to all the suffering that arises around it and all the anxiety around it. So it's very difficult to become intimate with this subtle misconception. It's very difficult to go into this difficult realm of experience and be very calm, un-greedy, and ready to, you know, open up to something very subtle. It's as difficult as meeting a dragon So we need... Does it seem like a dragon? What's a dragon? What's a dragon? What's the worst dragon? Elmer? Pardon? Yes, definitely. So, definitely, yes. How is it that the self drops away?

[35:47]

How is it that the self drops away? If it's not there? Well, what drops away is misconceptions about it. Misconceptions aren't really there. It is really so, though, that there seems to be a misconception or that their conceptions are there, but some things we conceive aren't actually there. Like the monstrous Elmer isn't actually there, but I could have that concept. And the Elmer which is actually out over there on his own, separate from me, there's no Elmer like that. The Elmer which is independent of me, that misconception is about something that there isn't. So when I drop the misconception, that independent Elmer also goes with the misconception. But there was an independent Elmer, but if I think there was when I stopped thinking there was, then he seems to disappear like that.

[36:55]

So we interject our misconceptions into other selves and into our own conventionally existing self. There is a conventionally existing self that, you know, like Elmer and Reb, these things arise and cease. They're impermanent, dependent phenomena. But we weave into them this misconception. We weave this misconception into everything. It is really so, though, that there seems to be a misconception. Conceptions are there, but some things we conceive aren't actually there. Like the monstrous Elmer isn't actually there, but I could have that concept. And the Elmer which is actually over there, on his own, separate from me, there's no Elmer like that. the Elmer which is independent of me, that misconception is about something that there isn't. So when I drop the misconception, that independent Elmer also goes with the misconception.

[37:57]

But there was an independent Elmer, but if I think there was, when I stop thinking there was, then he seems to disappear. Like that. So we interject... our misconceptions into other selves and into our own conventionally existing self. There is a conventionally existing self that, you know, like Elmer and Reb, these things arise and cease. They're impermanent, dependent phenomena. But we weave into them this misconception. We weave this misconception into everything. That misconception is what we need to get free of. We get free of it by contemplating it. I don't know who is next. Erwan? No, the first level, the first two levels, the first level is information which you didn't have before coming to you in a sense from outside.

[39:08]

or coming to you from a part of your mind that you had no access to before, which was activated by this, you know, this phenomena called the teacher or the text, which you don't have to see as necessarily outside yourself. But anyway, if you don't have a teacher or a text, somehow there's certain aspects of your mind that you can't get to. And the teacher walks in and the teacher says, blah, blah, and you never heard it before, so now you get this information. and it comes to you and then you don't understand it at first maybe because it's new. You never got to this part of your mind before. So this person's bringing this information to you which you never heard about called Dharma. And Dharma is basically what you haven't heard about before. So then you hear it. You hear something you didn't hear before but it wasn't part of your system of delusion. Somehow the mind opens up and lets Dharma in And when farmer first comes, you say, well, you know, this doesn't work.

[40:14]

This doesn't work for this program. I don't understand it. I'll let it in because, you know, I'm sort of like in a Dharma mood, but I don't get it. And then you keep working with it and suddenly you understand. And at that level where you take in, in a sense, where you take in new parts of your mind first, or sometimes you might say where you're taking things from the outside, either way you want to put it, either other zones of your mind or something, an external person or text. At that level of coming in, you can have an insight at that level. You can understand and you can converse back and forth at that level. Do you mean this? Do you mean that? What does that word mean? You can get definitions and clarify etymologies and express misunderstandings and dialogue and you have insight at that level with these two sides. It's conceptual and it's intellectual. The next level is also intellectual, but the next level, you take the understanding now and you reflect it on everything else you know, which you didn't necessarily need to bring in at the first level of understanding.

[41:21]

So I can tell you something like, you know, Somebody pointed out to me the other day, I was talking about once you understand that 2 plus 2 is 4, you know, once somebody tells you 2 plus 2 is 4 and you understand it, you might never forget for the rest of your life. But what you're understanding about 2 plus 2 is 4 is more than just memorizing the expression 2 plus 2 is 4. You're understanding arithmetic. You're understanding adding is when you understand it. And there's a certain phase of our life when maybe a lot of us don't understand adding. If somebody talks to us about two plus two is four and talks to us and finally we can understand what that means. And when we understand what it means, we're understanding arithmetic. We're understanding the process of addition. And we maybe never forget. Okay? And that's what this conversation with some person or some part of our mind, we didn't know that before. And you didn't need to now consult everything else you know to understand that. But the next step is you take that information about two plus two is four, and you apply it to other things in your life.

[42:30]

See, you can apply addition to other aspects of your life, you can try it with other things, and you can see if it works for other things. That's a deeper level of insight, and also it's a deeper level of intellectual understanding. But it's still intellectual, it's still conceptual. And both of these levels are transformed, your mind is transformed by both levels. Just like when you hear about impermanence, when you first hear about it, you can talk to somebody about it, you know, and like when people first hear about impermanence, they might think it means things are destroyed. And then they might express that that's what they think it is, and the teacher says, no, that's not what it means. And so you talk back and forth, and suddenly you understand. A new idea of impermanence, which isn't that... Of course, it isn't that things last forever, and it isn't that they're destroyed. So you get this new concept that things change, and that doesn't mean either lasting, of course, or destroyed. You get this new idea. Some people in this room maybe even still don't have that idea, still don't know what I'm talking about.

[43:34]

So I could talk with you about this until you get that. When you get it, you change. Your mind changes and maybe change semi-permanently. But then you can take that thing and you can contemplate it and think about it and apply it to other situations and then change a lot more. You can apply it to a whole bunch of examples other than the ones we just talked about. Ones that you have in your own mind. And that's a deeper transformation. But these are intellectual transformations and they're important. But you still can be afflicted while you have these two levels of insight. Then you go down and practice stabilization, and then the afflictions back off for a little while. And then you can look at this understanding that you have about impermanence in an unafflicted, calm situation. And then you can actually understand impermanence in such a way that the afflictions won't come back. And that's the deepest level of insight. It's non-intellectual. However, you use the intellectual accomplishments of the previous stages as part of what you have to work with.

[44:41]

So you take your understanding from the previous ones and that becomes what you're contemplating. So when you first heard impermanence, it didn't mean anything. Then you had some insight about it. Then you had a deeper insight. And now you take that insight and now you're going to contemplate that insight. And the first way you contemplate it is you don't contemplate it. You just don't elaborate it. You calm down with it. Then you look at it to see, well, what is this thing I've understood? What is my understanding? And now you have a non-intellectual understanding of your intellectual understanding. And your intellectual understanding is about your intellect. Yes. Yes. I mean, breathing, you know, there may be scientific ways to establish that there is something called breathing, but there is no breathing being established without the conception.

[45:59]

Even the breathing we're looking for, we're looking for something which upholds our concept of breathing. To not function conceptually at all would just be a, you know, that happens in certain special cases like brain damage, dreamless sleep, certain deep, very, very deep trances where it's almost turned off. Those are special situations when the conceptualization is pretty much turned off for the time being. I didn't see how that followed, but the answer is yes.

[47:05]

The trick is to be present and stable and to be able and aware and even be able to contemplate in the midst of the onslaught of conceptualization. That's what we're trying to learn how to do. And then you can inflate into the nature of conceptualization, and when you understand conceptualization, then you realize non-conceptual thought. And non-conceptual thought is what knows ultimate truth. So we can train ourselves to study conceptual thought, and when we understand it, we realize non-conceptual thought. And that's always there, but to get access to it, we need to be very familiar with and intimate with the process of conceptualization and the way to get intimate with it. one of the phases of getting intimate with it, you have to train yourself at non-conceptualizing for a while to calm down.

[48:10]

And when you calm down, then you can look at the conceptualization. But usually if you look at conceptualization, you just get more worked up about conceptualization. I mean, most people are upset about conceptualization anyway, and those who then try to just go right from being upset to look at the conceptualization, they usually get more upset. Theoretically, you should be able to do it, but actually it seems to be aggravating the situation. So you have to calm down first in order to look at this monster. It's a monster in the sense that it's just tremendously energetic. It's your imagination. It's just power, very powerful force in your mind. You've got to, like, you know, get your sea legs before you're going to ride this thing. Any other first-timers? Yes? I think you're a first-timer. Toddler? First-time questioner for tonight. So, you know, I'm sorry. I had this phenomenal frustration to look around and make discussions like this.

[49:11]

It's just, you know, I understand that some problems with losing somebody can be very ordinary. And then I see this level of awareness and self-consciousness How does that fit into this? Is that interesting? Well, maybe what you should do is, first of all, become spontaneous and ordinary.

[50:15]

And once you've attained that, then come and study this stuff. Did you understand? This is like I'm talking to you. This is English, right? This is like an ordinary thing I'm doing here with you. So just be spontaneous now and talk to me. You work? So then, so. Spontaneously repressive. Well, why don't you just be spontaneously expressive of your anger? If you want to practice being spontaneous and ordinary, go ahead and do it. And then when you've accomplished that practice, then you can come in here and be spontaneous and ordinary in this room where we're talking about this stuff. And if you lose your spontaneity and ordinariness when we're talking about this, then maybe you can just... What you could do is just go back and get back to your spontaneousness and ordinariness again.

[51:28]

Get back to your spontaneity and ordinariness and then take another kind of... What do you call it? Another... They call it sally forth again to meet the dragon. See if you can come back here and do it again. We're just talking here. This is just concepts, right? This is the world that most people live in. It's like this room right here where people are talking. And you're saying that when you come into this realm of these concepts, you get... Did you say... What happens to you? Oh, when you get into the practice of awareness, what happens? Yes? So you become so self-conscious that all of your consciousness, all of your awareness is centered around the movement you make.

[52:29]

Right, that sounds familiar. Yeah, and when you're like that, you have trouble being spontaneous. Right, well, that makes sense, right? Most people can probably understand that. So then what's the practice in that situation? Yeah, well, one practice is the practice we're talking about here. Namely, that you don't elaborate on that situation where you're feeling... I forgot what it was you said, you know. But anyway, with something about, I'm so self-conscious, every little thing I do is a big deal. Something like that? That's the situation? Okay, so you got that concept? Here I am now feeling like this is a big deal. Okay? All right? Don't get involved with that. Let it go. It's there to be let go. It will go if you let it go. It's not actually going to stay around. If you don't grab it, it's not going to grab you. So there you are, feeling self-conscious and restricted and, you know, like every little thing's a big deal.

[53:35]

And you're feeling tight, like you can't move. You don't...spontaneity is like, where is it? Right? But these are concepts that you're dealing with, perfectly good concepts. I'm feeling really self-conscious. I feel really tight. I feel everything's a big deal. I don't feel free moving, so on and so forth. That's your situation. practice I'm talking about here, one of the practices I'm talking about here is let that be. Don't try to be somebody other than this person you are now. Don't try to be some other person who is spontaneous. And then if you can do that, you'll calm down, and then when you calm down, you'll notice there's considerably more spontaneity. in the context of this discipline of not getting involved in the lack of spontaneity, you'll calm down and there'll be more spontaneity. Okay? However, that spontaneity does depend on this kind of discipline of not getting involved in anything.

[54:39]

And it's temporary, because your spontaneity is coming out of your calm. If once you're calm and feeling more spontaneous, if your spontaneity wishes to contemplate, when it wants to contemplate, let it contemplate. And if it contemplates in a relaxed, un-greedy way, based on this un-greedy stabilization practice, it will gradually lead you to understand that there's absolutely nothing stopping you from being spontaneous all day long, and actually you're completely spontaneous when you're feeling self-conscious and like you can't move, you're spontaneous then too. You're never not spontaneous. But, you know, you're never not fully possessing Buddha's wisdom and compassion and spontaneity and freedom. You're always that way, but because you have some idea about what that would look like, you don't see it, or we don't see it. And because you're attached to it unfolding in some other way other than feeling all tied up in a ball, you think, well, it couldn't be here.

[55:47]

This couldn't be spontaneity. But actually it is. You're never anybody other than a person who fully possesses Buddha's wisdom and compassion. That's what Buddha thinks. Now, if you disagree with Buddha, then just tell him. And he'll say, I can understand that, but, you know, still I see you as fully possessing the same stuff I fully possess. But I can also see you don't get it. And the reason why you don't get it is because you think that you have to be somebody different from who you are to be fully possessing Buddha. And then you might say, well, how can I get this? Buddha might say, well, there's one way to do, would be just to wake up to the faith that you are Buddha. So there's other practices, like another practice would be just simply wake up to the fact that you're already free of this sense of all your misconceptions of separation from other people. You're already free of that and you have no hindrance whatsoever between yourself and other people because you completely trust

[56:53]

that reality is perfect and there's no place reality doesn't reach, and you completely trust that, that could also be a realization of spontaneity. But it's the same thing as saying you're Buddha. But it's not the same thing as saying you have realized Buddha. You have to have great faith to realize Buddha, and you can apply the great faith in many ways. You can apply it to this meditation practice I'm talking about now, because this is kind of a psychology course, right? So, I'm teaching Buddhists, I'm teaching about the mind, and now I'm teaching people ways to study the mind. Now, another way to study the mind would just be to study it from a faith-oriented perspective. That would work, too. But I've just been talking about this traditional, you know, calming and insight approach. But we can take other approaches. This is like, you know, I'm going to be here forever. You know?

[57:56]

So I'm not in a hurry to bring forth all the different meditation practices. But thanks for almost fully expressing yourself there. Yes? So is non-elaboration not getting involved with your elaboration? No, I think maybe non-elaboration at the beginning might be not getting involved with your elaboration. In other words, a concept comes up, you conceptually elaborate it, you slipped. But then if you've already slipped and you've got an elaboration here... rather than just another concept. It isn't just concept, concept, concept. It's concept and elaboration of that concept. In other words, concept and train of concepts. So this is a slip. But once you slip, then if you don't elaborate on that, that's the practice. But I find that sometimes with me, concepts and elaboration is almost... They're very close, very fast.

[59:08]

And then I become aware of what I've just done. That's the best you can do. Yeah, so I might say, you know, I might say, you know, look at your face, and I might say, Jackie. In some sense, Jackie's an elaboration of the face. That might come so fast. But I might catch myself then and say, that's enough. That's enough. Face and Jackie's enough. The judgment rises, right? Right at that... What judgment? Well, the judgment... Give me, tell me, tell me, tell me an example. Like, oh, this face is a nice face? You mean? Yeah, this face is a nice face. This face is not a nice face. Yeah, right. So it might happen very fast, but it's also possible to get to the point where you look at the face and you see the face and stop before you say nice face. That's the part I have a hard time.

[60:11]

Everything is arising at the same time for me. Yeah, well, I just say the more you study this, the more you'll find that you can actually see things without thinking what they are or what they look like. It can get simpler and simpler. because only because that's actually the way your mind's already working. Your mind is actually knowing blah blah and then blah blah. So if you sort of catch up with your mind and tune into the way it just knows and if it does know the face, if what it really knows is a concept called, this is a nice face, then that's what it knows and that's what you work with. But don't worry about getting super simple and super radically pared down to the most concentrated form of non-elaboration.

[61:12]

Just a considerable reduction will also cause a great deal of stabilization. And the more it gets reduced, the more you kind of can see, oh yeah, this is possible. And then you get more and more able to do it. And more and more feel like it's okay to do it. You know, that you're not doing any harm to yourself or the other and actually... you might actually find that it actually is a nice way to be with people and a nice way to be with your feelings and a nice way to be with your thoughts. You start to notice it promotes intimacy. You feel closer to things, actually, by hanging in there with them without leaning into them or leaning away, but just like, I'm with you, and through all your changes, basically, I'll be with you. I won't necessarily like or dislike you, approve of you or disapprove of you, elaborate or not elaborate, but I'm just going to be with you. So it's a kind of compassion. It's in some sense, it's the finishing touch of compassion, this kind of stabilization.

[62:13]

And, you know, try it and don't necessarily expect yourself to be, you know, like absolutely not the slightest twinge of elaboration on your concepts. It doesn't have to be that, but there's a big difference between, you know, face and nice, and face and nice, but I wonder whether she likes me, and actually I don't think she does, so I'm going to get her for it. But if I do, that's quite different, you know, and just going that far, you're already much more upset than you were just a few seconds ago. So you can make a considerable inroads into calming down with things and simplifying your mind. You can do that a lot. And then, not that, but reducing it from, you know, big trains to little blurps. And then to be consistent at that, the combination of simplifying and not elaborating and not getting involved plus being consistent with it.

[63:22]

it's a practice of stabilization. And it's part of Zen practice. It's part of spontaneity. It's a discipline to promote spontaneity. And actually, there's a spontaneity in that too because your mind spontaneously does this in the sense that the mind does know things in this way. You don't have to engineer this. So it's more like just catching up with what's going on. But that's a kind of discipline because we're usually like running away from what's going on by jazzing it up. Well, we didn't get to the five hindrances. But next time I think we could probably handle them. And I'll just tell you what they are. And you might want to study them from books if you want to. Five hindrances are, the first one is, I'll just tell you, I'll tell you a little bit about it, okay? When you do not practice this stabilization, in other words, when you see things and then you get involved in some elaboration, in other words, you see things but you don't just take what's given, you kind of argue a little bit or say, I want more of that or whatever, then you open up the door to the arising of these hindrances.

[64:52]

If you do the practice we're talking about, these hindrances won't arise in the first place. But if you slip on these practices, you make an opening for these hindrances to arise. And these hindrances are things which will make it harder to continue the practice. If you do the practice, they won't even come up. But once you don't do the practice, then you get punished for that, in a sense, by your mind challenging you more. Sorry, that's the way it works sometimes. So anyway, the hindrances arise, and the hindrances are central greed, I want more, or I want to keep this. Aversion, I don't want this. And then that's two. And then the other one is double. It's sloth and torpor. That's three. And the other one's distraction or excitedness and worry. That's four. And the last one's doubt. Doubt is like, well, I don't know if this is really good to do this practice.

[65:56]

So those are the five, and so I'll talk about them next time. And then, as I mentioned, there's also six faults to the stabilization practice, six ways the stabilization practice can get off, which is a little bit different. These are things which hinder you from... These are things which happen to you when you slip in the practice and also make it harder to go back. The six faults are six faults when you're actually on the practice. You're not really slipping in the practice so much, but you're sort of in the practice and doing a little bit... This is from doing the practice a little wrong, but you're doing it. This is what happens when you slip. And then there's practices to try to get yourself back on from these hindrances. So there's five hindrances and six false or defects in your stabilization practice. So I'll talk about the five next week and maybe those other six. But I didn't want to introduce so much, and I think it was good that I didn't, so you could ask your questions. So happy, happy calmness and flexibility and peace in your practice.

[67:05]

People, some people get, when I talk about that I'm going to die any minute, sometimes people get worried. So I thought I'd tell you tonight that I'm going to be here forever. Thank you.

[67:26]

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