I've been coming to, I've come to Bozeman I think five times now and I don't remember exactly what the circumstances of my original but I guess I think when we were talking to Wendy Roberts about it in the San Francisco Bay Area that there was some invitation for me to come and I guess I felt from the first visit that people were coming from wide area and that there was a lot of interest in something.

[01:03]

I guess something about finding the most appropriate way to live. And that maybe something of the tradition of what we call Zen might be helpful to people. So people made an effort to come and hear teachings and learn practices. And there's been repeated invitations so I've come back because I feel that it's not so common in this part of the country to have opportunities to get together with people looking at this great issue of the most appropriate life. Sometimes

[02:14]

I think that sometimes you have to town to get people to come together. Because if it's somebody in your town or nearby, you figure, well, I could always see them. But if somebody's coming once a year, I'd better, if I miss this chance, or a year, or perhaps ever, I myself When I was in college, I really liked the jazz musician, Mose Allison. And if he came to my hometown, I would be very interested to go see him, make an effort to do so, to go hear him. But then when I moved to San Francisco, he actually performed right up the street from the Zen Center. And I never went.

[03:18]

So I come here partly because I feel like if you invite somebody and they come, that I'm part of the conditions for you guys to getting together. this part of the country is one of the places where the teachings of wisdom and compassion, which have been transmitted in various ways over the last 2,500 years through India, China, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, Korea, and so on. But these teachings defined some roots here in the west, in the western part of the United States rather than the coastal part of the United States.

[04:30]

And so part of what is necessary for the practice to thrive is to have a community So I feel that my coming here gives you a chance to make an effort to create a Sangha here, nourish your practice and nourish the harmony of this whole area. can perhaps encourage tolerance and respect among beings who are respecting and tolerating people who are different from them without some explicit teachings to promote that. So as a ceremony to

[05:33]

celebrate and recognize the community. I often suggest starting retreats by a ritual of recognition and being recognized, where I ask each of you to say your name, and then after you say your name, everyone says your name. Would that be all right to do that? Would you like to start by saying your name? Just the first names are not. Joe. Barbara. Bill. Jean. Pamela. Ryan. Jane. Laurie. Heather. Linda.

[06:42]

Lee. Leanne. Karen. Suzanne. Joan. Dave. Vivi. Jan. Suzy, Georgian, David, Bill, Wendy, Reb, Bear, David, Kathleen, Richard. Alyssa. John. John. Stephanie.

[07:45]

Stephanie. John. John. Ed. Ed. Varga. Varga. Jenny. Jenny. William. William. Robert. Robert. Robert. The title I offered for this retreat in terms of the teachings and also the practice, if possible, was the Essential Seated Meditation. And I thought I might begin by talking about a a traditional presentation of meditation in the tradition of the Buddha.

[08:53]

And kind of a dualistic way of presenting it, but with the understanding that this duality is not substantial, it sometimes helps to look at something from two different ways. What we're looking at is a way of being called an enlightened way of being. An enlightened way of being is understanding of what's happening or understanding of things that happen. In such a way, it's a kind of understanding that goes with loving all things

[10:14]

that are happening. So it's a kind of that has understanding which we might call wisdom in the sense that it's the type of understanding that goes with loving all things that are understood in that way. So in other words, it's a way of being that's wise and compassionate. In other words, we call that the awakened mind or the awakened being, the Buddha, a Buddha. And so this awakened mind can be spoken of in terms of one aspect of it being compassionate and the other aspect of it being wise.

[11:29]

Again, it's the wisdom that anything such that you care for them that you're devoted to them, that you understand that their life or their being is not from yours. And that type of understanding not only makes you care or naturally expresses itself as care for all things, but it is a care that because it understands things correctly, it is a care which doesn't run into frustration with the beings that you care for.

[12:46]

Some people care for beings. Some people even care for almost all beings. And they want all beings to be happy, to feel compassion. But they don't understand the beings that they care for properly, so they sometimes, even though they care for the beings, they sometimes, for example, hate them and want to hurt them. Because they think these beings are, for example, acting in a way that's independent from them. And when we think things are independent from us, we feel… When we think things are independent from us, we feel afraid and anxious, and we feel pain. when we think that other beings are separate from us.

[13:51]

Even though we care for them, we may care for them. Even if we do care for them and want them to be happy, we can still be afraid of people that we want to be happy. For example, our parents. We could want our parents to be happy, but if we think they're independent of us, we could be afraid of them, afraid they're going to hurt us, afraid of many things. If we think they're separate from us, or our children, or our spouse, or our friends, or our enemies. Even someone could be your official enemy, someone who has declared themself, they come up to you and say, I am your enemy. Hello. And if you have the right understanding of that, you could care for them, and at the same time not be afraid of them. You could care for them and understand that they're not independent.

[14:54]

You could care for them and see how you're actually related. Work to relate to them, be devoted to a relationship with them that would not just be caring, but that would be wisdom-based as opposed to ignorance-based, as opposed to fear-based. So the meditation of the Buddha is basically intended for people who feel compassion, who want people to be happy, at least some people to be happy, and want to work for the happiness and peace of some people or all people. but also want to purify their mind of any obstruction to understanding how to appropriately understand the relationship.

[16:04]

And so this understanding this wisdom that we need by our compassion needs to be practiced alongside of compassion practices. In other words, we don't recommend that you wait to practice and work on benefiting beings until you have perfect wisdom. Work as benefiting beings with your current understanding devote yourself and endeavor to help people with your current understanding, which is somewhat affected by a deep belief that they're somewhat separate from you. But continue to do it. And one of the ways to do it is to practice meditations which will purify your mind of the undermining

[17:14]

confusion. So the meditation practice, although actually everything in the Buddhist tradition is meditation, what's usually called meditation is sometimes meditation two, and one part is called sometimes calming meditation or tranquility meditation. And the other type of meditation is called wisdom meditation or insight meditation. And I believe one of the times I... The title of the retreat was The Hidden Insight and Tranquility Practice of Zen. Did anybody remember that? Maybe I didn't offer it here.

[18:22]

In the Zen tradition, through most of the history of Zen, the mentioning of these two dimensions of meditation has been downplayed. In the Indian tradition, and Southeast Asian tradition, and also in Chinese Buddhism generally, the presentation of meditation is having these two dimensions of calming the mind and developing insight with the mind, or calming actually the mind and body, and developing insight with the mind and body. These two were presented separately through a lot of the Buddhist tradition for a lot of the history of the Buddhist tradition. But when the Zen tradition arose, for various reasons, it didn't talk about these two dimensions so much.

[19:28]

And if you read Zen texts, you may not hear them mentioned much, or at all. But I feel, from my experience in Zen, So finding out about the wider Buddhist landscape, that actually these elements are in Zen Buddhism too. And there may be some virtue in the way that Zen presents it in a different way. I'd like you to understand these two dimensions at the beginning of a retreat. So calming meditation has to do with, comes to fruit, actually. Calming meditation is disciplining your attention, different ways of training your attention to what's happening. And these ways of training come to fruit as a body and mind which are calm, but not calmed like sleepy calm, but calm and actually calm.

[20:40]

awake and energized and buoyant and flexible. And the insight meditations are meditations which help us to see the way things are, to overthrow our innate misconceiving of the way things are. So again, kind of almost in one side Buddhism is saying all beings have the potential to become wise to the extreme. to become completely wise, but also it says that beings are naturally, or what do you call it, innately born, born to be ignorant, born ignorant, born stupid, born dumb.

[21:53]

And the way that we naturally or innately see things, and we also are innately prone to believe the way we see things, which is not the way they are. So the way we see things is they seem to exist on their own, out there separate from us. We actually see ourselves as independent of other beings. We know that's not true on some level, but that's the way it looks to us, and we believe that. innately. So wisdom meditation is to actually train us to give up believing the way our body and mind present appearances to us. the way our body and mind present us.

[23:01]

So right now I'm looking at all you, but I'm not really seeing you, I'm seeing the way my body is interpreting you. The way you are is not what I see. The way you are is not what I hear. The way you are is not what I think. There's some relationship between how you appear to me and you. So if you leave the room, the way you appear to me is different than when you're in the room. But even when you leave the room, the way you appear to me and the way I think about you or what I think of you is still not what you are. And it's the same, I'm not what you think I am. And I'm not how I appear to you. the way I appear to you, is due to me.

[24:01]

I'm one of the conditions for my appearance to you. But your own body and mind are also really what you're looking at. You wouldn't be able to see me if I wasn't here, but you don't even see me either. What you're seeing is your own body and mind. But I'm here. It's just that you can't see me because you're not going to let me just sit over here, uninterpreted. You're going to interpret me. You are interpreting me through your living, through your consciousness, your mind-based consciousness. I propose that to you, and I propose that I look to you in a way that I'm not. and still that you're prone to as being the way I am.

[25:03]

Wisdom is to become free of believing it and finally not even see it that way. And yet, even though you give up, people appear to you And even that they stop appearing that way even eventually. But first of all, while they're still appearing that way, you no longer believe the way they appear. You still relate to them. Matter of fact, you now relate to them free of misconception. You still may misconceive them, but you know it's a misconception, so it doesn't get in the way. So you're not afraid of them anymore. Not at all. and you're not in pain about your relationship with them. You can tell that if somebody's suffering, you can still tell and you can still want them to be happy, but you're not misunderstanding your relationship with this person who seems to be unhappy.

[26:10]

And you don't believe that they're unhappy the way you think they are. That's the wisdom side. So again, in a kind of summary way, I would suggest to you that the calming type of meditation, I'll just say, first of all, both calming meditation or tranquility meditation and insight or wisdom meditation, both of them involve working with thinking. or you might say discursive thought. But two different ways of working with thinking. In the calming meditation, the way of working with thinking is that basically you give it up.

[27:14]

Calming meditation, you give up thinking. You give up You're working with it, but in a way called letting go of it, giving it up, relaxing with it. Insight meditation or wisdom meditation, you let go of some kinds of discursive thought, but you actually use other kinds of discursive thought to train your attention to look at things differently. So in wisdom meditation, you're using your thinking, using your discursive thought to develop a clear vision of the way things are. In calming meditation, you're giving up discursive thought, and that giving up discursive thought comes to fruit as a buoyant, radiant, flexible, and tranquil state of body and mind.

[28:24]

Sound good? It's very good. It's like, in terms of like worldly experiences, it's the top of the line. Wisdom practice, using discursive thought in a new way, a wise way, a way which produces wisdom, that liberates you from whatever kind of body-mind you've got. The tranquility is wonderful. However, it doesn't necessarily liberate you from your misconceptions about the way things are. Not by itself. It's kind of like taking a break from your misconceiving. It's letting go of your misconceiving. It's not being involved with your misconceiving.

[29:27]

or your proper conceiving. Not all of our conceiving is so bad. All conceiving is a little off. When you're conceiving of things, there's a general tendency to confuse your conception with the thing. But that's not so bad in a lot of cases. Like, for example, with an apple. To confuse your conception of the apple with the apple is not such a problem, actually. It's quite useful to get the hold of the apple. But there's a certain type of misconception which is really harmful, and that is the misconception that things like apples are separate from you. And that misconception is the one which we naturally have to break from it. We have to be convinced that it's wrong. And really convinced that it's wrong.

[30:32]

And it is wrong. That's the wisdom side. So the calming side is to break from conceptions which aren't so bad and also from conceptions which are bad. You take a break and you become calm and radiant, the wisdom side, you actually stop believing in these misconceptions. But you have to work quite thoroughly to really convince yourself of this new reality. So again, one way to talk about the difference between these two times of meditation is this way. one is giving up your thinking, relaxing with whatever kind of thinking is going on, is not necessarily tensely, but carefully, mindfully, use your thinking to listen to teachings which tell you about the way things are, and then use your thinking to apply the teachings about the nature of what's happening to things that are happening.

[31:40]

So you use mindfulness in wisdom meditations, to be mindful of what's happening, and to be mindful of teachings about the nature of things that happen, and be mindful of applying the teachings to the appropriate phenomena. And over and over again, until you actually see how the are actually behaving like the teachings say, and how things are not the way the teaching says they're not. In the calming style, you're not really talking to yourself about the phenomena, I mean you are, but you're basically giving up talking to yourself about phenomena. So that's a basic, that's a basic summary of the two most fundamental types of ways of working with your thinking. And in the in the Buddhist tradition, in the history, sometimes the way it's taught is that first of all you do the calming style, and then when you're quite calm, then you do the insight style.

[32:51]

Based on achieving the tranquility, based on practicing tranquility meditation, to fruit. And you take this buoyant, flexible, awake, and calm mind, and then with this calm state of mind, then you go and apply the wisdom teachings. But of the tradition, some people have actually taught to go directly to the mindfulness practices, directly to the insight practices, without so much tranquility practice first. And so the vipassana movement in the Buddhist tradition, sometimes the vipassana people do not emphasize doing the tranquility so strongly at first. Sometimes they do. Maybe you've seen this, that some of the people teach insight meditation, vipassana.

[34:01]

You familiar with that? Insight meditation is called vipassana. I mean, vipassana means kind of insight. So that tradition, the vipassana insight tradition, sometimes they just directly start teaching you mindfulness practice without tranquility practice first. But some of the people teach tranquility practice first, and then when you're good at that, they teach you mindfulness. And I don't I don't think that really it has to be that first of all you have to have a lot of calm before you can do insight. You have to have some calm because if you're not you can't actually hear the insight teachings. You can't practice mindfulness unless you have some calm. But for some people practicing mindfulness is a better way for them to develop giving thought than to directly try to give up discursive thought.

[35:03]

So although they're actually using their discursive thought to pay attention to what's happening, for some people that inadvertently leads them to inadvertently, or almost like an artifact, they actually start giving up the discursive thought which I'm proposing to you is what actually leads to the calm. So do you have any questions about what I've said so far? Does that make sense? What is discursive thought versus experience? Discursive thought versus experience? Well, for example, Robert just sneezed. And for me, just to sort of hear a sneeze, and all that happens is, for me, that's not really a discursive thought.

[36:09]

But if you're in a state of calm and discrepancy, something that triggers a similar effect of real non-duality, then Versus a discursive thought, achieving that as well. Is that a possibility? Meditation at the age of four? I didn't understand your question. At first you said something about... I guess I don't understand your question. Yeah, in meditation you did. an alternative to discursive thought, if there's an experience of a oneness of things or a non-duality of things, how does that relate to discursive thought, or how does that... You're asking if somebody has an experience of the non-duality of phenomena? You're asking what about that?

[37:12]

In meditation, yes. And how does that relate to the calm or discursive thoughts? experiencing non-duality, I mean actually, all day long, during your whole life, what you have actually been experiencing is non-duality. That's what's going on, is things aren't really dual. You have been experiencing non-duality, but most people, almost everybody, almost all the time, even though they're almost all the time, all the time you're experiencing non-duality, but most people, almost all the time, think that non-duality is duality. That's what is the case with most people. Now, if you actually, like, if there was a moment in your life when you, like, were experiencing non-duality, and you also didn't believe that the non-duality you were experiencing was a duality, that's called enlightenment.

[38:16]

So if you ask about that, that's what we're trying to realize, is to understand that non-duality really is non-dual. In other words, not to believe the apparent duality. But not to believe it doesn't mean that you deny the appearance of duality. does not require me or you to lie. Doesn't require that you lie. You can say, yeah, looks pretty dual around here. Looks like I'm one thing and you're another. That looks like a duality to me. But I understand that's just an illusion. I don't believe it. You know, you can test me, you know. Ask me, you know, to help you out with something. I can do it. Because I really don't believe that we're on two different, you know, life situations. We're one thing, you and me, we're working together here. That's what I understand is the way things are, although it looks like I'm on one track and I'm on another.

[39:22]

And non-duality means you don't have to be afraid of duality anymore. You don't have to believe it and suffer because of that, but you also don't have to run away from the appearance of it. So non-duality means when you realize it, you can come back in the world and things look dual. But act in this unusual way called truly compassionate and truly wise. But we actually have to do a little work, I think. Most of us see ourselves, but I think we would see that sometimes we really do kind of like have more concerns for our car than somebody else's car. We get more upset about our car not working than hearing about, you know, so read a newspaper article. In Texas, his car broke down, you know, out in the middle of nowhere. You know, you read it and you go, why is this in the newspaper?

[40:27]

Whereas when your car breaks down out in the middle of the newspaper, you really think that this is a big deal. Well, how come? Well, because it looks like I'm here and he's over there and that's not such a big issue over there, but over here is really a big issue. Well, it's true. Over here is a big issue. It's true. I'm not saying it isn't. It is. It's a big deal. But it's a big deal everywhere. And that's the part we don't get. And that causes us to... In other words, big deal everywhere means everywhere is here. This is actually everywhere. But it doesn't look like that to us. And there's a lot of reasons why it doesn't. I'm not criticizing them. They're part of how we have life, you know. Like, you know, whether my friend's here or over there, it's all the same. So we do want to realize this non-duality.

[41:29]

That's the whole point. But it's already the case that it's so. We just don't believe that yet. We believe duality. But again, this non-duality does not say to get rid of duality. Duality says get rid of duality. Certain kinds of duality, let's get rid of. Duality is the one that's trying to get rid of some stuff. Non-duality is embracing everything. Because non-duality understands everything. us. So that's really what the meditation is about, is to learn how to see that there's everything and then you're born in everything, rather than there's you and then there's everything. Rather than you acting on the world, the world's happening and then there gets to be you. The world's supporting you, always.

[42:31]

and you're part of what supports everything. Any other questions about this? Yes. Yeah, we talk about duality, non-duality, the same sort of thing as separateness and oneness, but you're just trying to... Is it the same as separateness and oneness? It's not quite the same as separateness and oneness because separateness is a little bit separate from, oneness might seem separate from separateness. Yeah, so non-duality is that oneness and two-ness are not actually separate. Or, you know, oneness and separateness are not really separate. nonduality is how separateness doesn't have any problem with oneness. They're not actually in conflict. That's more about what nonduality is about.

[43:34]

But I was more wondering if my first suggestion to you about these two different dimensions of meditation, if that was clear. And do you understand now how to practice either or both of them. Yes? Well, just in an effort to avoid duality here, on tranquility and wisdom, how does one know... Did you say making an effort to avoid duality? No, I'm not recommending you make an effort to avoid duality. about tranquility and wisdom. Yes. How do you go from tranquility to wisdom? The way you go from tranquility to wisdom, well, you say go from tranquility like you got tranquility? That's what you mean?

[44:39]

Yeah. If you have Tranquility, again, doesn't just mean calm. It means, again, it's you're light, energetic, and you're like up. You're like up and ready for anything wholesome. So somebody says, anybody here want to practice some wisdom? You say, yeah. So when you have achieved tranquility, it's a calm yeah. If you can imagine an energetic, calm yeah. Like, I don't know what, like, yeah. Let's do it. Let's hear about the wisdom practices. So it's natural that when one realizes tranquility, one is up for all kinds of wholesome practices. One would be up for hearing about teachings about wisdom. In other words, hearing about teachings, how you can practice in such a way as to realize deeper and deeper wisdom. So you would naturally, you won't naturally go from You have to sort of like, somebody has to like say something to your butt.

[45:43]

You want to hear about it? That's when Zen students have a problem with that. You're not going to trip on your own on wisdom teachings. You have to actually hear them from somebody else called Buddha. He's the one who understands that you're not separate from Buddha. So this is somebody else who's not separate from you. But you have to hear the teachings because you, in this calm house here, this house is a house of ignorance. This house is a house that says things are not interdependent. We live in a house which is antithetical to the Buddha's teaching. which says things are separate, independent of me, I'm independent of them. That's what we think. Somebody has to come up to you and say, things are not the way you see them. Here's the way they are. And when you're calm, they hear that insult. And if somebody says, you want to hear about wisdom?

[46:46]

You say, yeah. And say, it's going to be kind of a shock. You up for it? Well, is it going to be helpful? Yes. Okay, I'm ready. Well, you're ignorant. Okay, fine. Now, what can I do? Anything that would be helpful to do with this ignorant person? Yeah, listen to these teachings. Okay. So you move from tranquility to wisdom practices or insight practices. by listening to the insight practices, by listening to the wisdom teachings, which are teachings about the way things are, and then teachings about how to move, teachings about the way things are to what's happening in this calm state. That's how you move from one to the other. Yes? My question was about if I'm practicing to one or the other on my own, I just need a sort of Clarifying what are the instructions and how do they differ? Yeah, okay, good. So when I'm working with people on this on a regular basis, I often suggest to get a feeling for what the two are, that when you sit down to do meditation, that you actually do them for the whole period, or even for a week or two, or even for several months.

[48:04]

Just do one of them. So you get a feeling for what it's like to do one versus the other. Because a lot of people of various traditions, they mix them so much that they don't really know the . Because it's all in your own mind. All this stuff happens in the human mind. And in a Buddha's mind, they're both fully functioning. So they're not really truly separate, but they're two different gestures of your attention. So that's what I would suggest to you if you start this retreat in the quiet sitting times. It doesn't work to do this so much during our discussions, but in the quiet sitting times that you get a taste for some, spend some period practicing the tranquility style, which means basically that you just sit. and then something happens when they sit. You have various experiences. You hear cars.

[49:06]

You feel your body touching your cushion. You feel your legs crossed. You feel yourself breathing. You have thoughts. Many things happen. Plus, in addition to all these particular things I mentioned, it's also being discursive. Discursive means — discourse means to run back and forth or to wander. Your mind wanders between the car sound, how long has this period been, you know, is there something better to do this weekend, you know, my feels good, my back doesn't feel good, my eyes are open, my eyes are shut, I'm getting sleepy, I feel quite awake, I'm doing fine. You know, your mind's running around among all this stuff. You familiar with that kind of? That's called discursive thought. And there's a reason that we have developed this, why we humans can do this. You use discursive thoughts very good for writing symphonies, doing mathematics, driving to retreats.

[50:12]

It's very useful for our... It's necessary for language. In order to talk, you have to use... Run back and forth from the beginning of the sentence to the end of it to see if it makes sense. You have to put the predicate and the subject in order. This is like, did I get them in the right order? And if you watch children learn, they're using discursive thought to get the stuff, different words, in the right place for the language of their neighborhood. If they move to a different neighborhood, they have to just move the verb and the noun into different positions. We need discursive thought to function, and we've got it. Now, in meditation, how about like, give it up. So just sit down and see if maybe, maybe you can do it for a whole period, but try. Make your period shorter. If 30 minutes or 40 minutes is too long, shorten your periods to a time that you would dare to give up discursive thought. Is there somebody outside who wants to come in? A lot of people just think, you know, I can't spend like 10 minutes not doing discursive thought.

[51:20]

...fall apart. If you don't keep checking to see, you know, like, what's my name again? What's my telephone number? And what do I have to do after this retreat's over? You know what I mean? That's discursive thought. So, you might just try for a whole period and you don't feel like you can spend a whole 40 minutes giving up discursive thought. We'll shorten it to how long you think you could give up discursive thought. For example, how about one exhale? For example, I'm inhaling. I'm exhaling, exhaling, exhaling, exhaling. Okay, so I'm telling you now discursively that when I was exhaling, I was not really involved in discursive thought. I'm going to take my hand now and make my hand go up for the inhale and go down for the exhale to show you when I'm inhaling and exhaling.

[52:28]

So while my hand was going down, I wasn't really doing much but just sort of being there with my hand going down. I wasn't thinking about much else besides that. I wasn't someplace else. I wasn't wondering how I was doing. I was just pretty much giving up being discursive and wandering around like being there with my hand going down, synchronized with my exhaling. That way of being, that's like giving up discursive thought. I wasn't thinking about any teachings about the nature of hands or breath or floor or light or people. I wasn't like applying teachings about interdependence and stuff like that. I was just simply basically letting go of all the wonderful things I can do in association with or besides simply watching my hand go down. So calming meditation is really quite simple.

[53:46]

Although there's millions of ways to do it, it basically all comes down to giving up discursive thought. Now, if while I was watching my hand go down, somebody said, boy, you have nice hands, and if my mind would go off and comprehend that sentence, you have nice hands, And then I might think, well, who said that? Well, that was nice. That's getting kind of discursive. I can also just like relax with that, and I'm back with my hand. But it's not so much I'm back with my hand, I'm just back with not getting involved in running around. So that's that way. is not itself calm, but it is calming. If you train yourself to be that way for a while, that produces a state of mind where you are calm.

[54:55]

Once you achieve this calm state of mind, then you actually don't have to give up discursive thought anymore. Actually, you can start doing discursive thought again. But you're calm at that point. Like you could go type or sew or have a conversation with somebody, but you would be calm and alert and buoyant and flexible. Like if they do something different from what you're doing, you could probably do it if it was in a wholesome way. And you wouldn't have any problem with staying in the position you're in, because you wouldn't feel heavy and stuck in your, what do you call it, your entropy, your inertia. So the state of calm is the fruit of giving up discursive thought or relaxing with your discursive thought. So basically, it's good to do in a sitting posture. You can also do it in a walking posture, a standing posture.

[55:57]

The problem with the walking posture I shouldn't say the problem with it, but because you can develop it by walking. It's just that the walking is a little discursive. But it's not impossible to develop while walking. But sitting still is nice because, again, another way of talking about calming meditation is that it is basically to give up the movement of the mind among different objects. So if I look at Bear, and then I look at Suzette, and you just came in, what's your name? Tina. And I look at Karen, and I look at Leanne, and I look at John, I look at each one of you, And if I'm calm, I look at each one, but I don't really move from one to the other.

[57:07]

I mean, my mind doesn't really move. Because what I'm looking at when I look at you is the same thing I'm looking at when I look at you. Each person I look at, I'm basically paying attention to the same thing, so my mind's not really... different things are appearing before me, but I'm always looking at, relax with her, relax with her, relax with him, relax with him, let go of her, let go of wandering thoughts about her, let go of wandering thoughts about her, let go of wandering thoughts about her. Like I might think, oh, she's really nice. Those are discursive thoughts. Like, okay, Tina, oh, she came late. So I let go of that she came late. I don't deny it, just like drop it. So really I'm paying attention to each . My mind is still. That's why sitting still is a good opportunity to develop tranquility because your body's kind of saying what your mind is being trained to do.

[58:13]

Namely, whatever happens, you don't move. You're the same with everything, namely, let go of discursive thought, let go of discursive thought, let go of discursive thought, let go of discursive thought. All the ways your mind can move around things and elaborate on them, temporarily, let go of it. How long can you do that? Okay, I'll try five minutes. It would probably be all right for five minutes. But you try it. That's even quite difficult. You may think, geez, it's hard, you know. Actually, like, take a break from that wandering of the mind. But five minutes of doing it, you can get it. It's a different way of being alive. Plus, it has the consequence, or the fruit, of developing this buoyant, calm, flexible body and mind

[59:15]

which will then be useful in itself. Just get up from that kind of meditation and go, you know, be happy for a few hours. You know, run around Bozeman or wherever, just much more flexible and buoyant and upbeat and, you know, ready to, you know, and actually not interested in doing unwholesome things. Kind of like, unwholesome things? Forget it. I'm happy. You don't have to pollute yourself. You don't have to have too much or too little of things anymore. Not in this state. You're fine. It's really good. However, you need more than this because this is temporary. This is like the fruit of this training that you haven't yet overthrown your ignorance alone. So that's one way. Then in some other period, set that period aside and say, whether you've achieved calm, and you're now going to go to the insight work, or you haven't really achieved calm, but you're going to start practicing the insight work, even though you haven't really been doing it.

[60:19]

But you feel like, and this is a place to talk to a teacher, you feel like you're calm enough to practice insight. You try it. And you just do that for a period. And don't mix it with the calming work. You just do the insight work and you see what that's like. And it's not necessarily calming, although some people do get calm by doing it, I've found. They actually aren't trying to get calm. They're actually trying to do insight work, but they get calm. Insight can be somewhat calming. In other words, they kind of give up discursive thinking while they're doing the calming exercises. I mean, while they're doing the insight. which is great, you know, fine. Yes, Karen? What you're describing is clear. I think I was still in a little bit of shock, one of those students who thought that there wasn't such a thing, and that the calming practice was, I guess, efficient over time.

[61:29]

practicing it, getting more adept at letting things go would produce the necessary condition to the way things actually are. Yeah, I think that's, like I said earlier today, I think a lot of Zen students think that. We have one of the main practices of Soto Zen is called just sitting. So a lot of Soto Zen students think, well, if you just sit, that's the practice, right? But you have to have a considerable education to understand what it means to just sit. And that's what most people, a lot of people don't understand. You can't just sit unless you're taught how to do it. And in order to be taught how to do it, you have to listen to teachings. Well, that's what I was wondering, you know, you do that and then listening to teachings and all that, and now it's taking on this new level of you're actually doing this inquiry and this study in meditation. Yes.

[62:31]

You can't just sort of put that out there. And that there are times without having made that distinction, that my practice has gone an inquiry route, that I sat with a question or observed something in a certainly decided way. But I don't know that yet. So I'm expecting that you're going to be talking about the insight practice. Yes. as a matter of fact, the insight practices that are involved in sitting meditation. As Karen has just said, more or less, I'll say it again to underline it. Sitting meditation, the essential art of sitting meditation is an insight practice.

[63:38]

said to be the essential art of sitting meditation in the Soto Zen tradition is actually an insight or wisdom instruction. It's not a calming instruction. That's sort of what this is leading up to. But I kind of would like you to see how this is a general, in a sense, a pan-Buddhist instruction, but the way Zen people often teach it is they often give insight instruction in the form of Zen stories. So Zen stories or koans are often devices used to teach Zen students how to practice wisdom. So as you may have heard, sometimes people come to Zen teachers, at least in the last few hundred years, not even the last few hundred years, maybe more like in the last few decades, And the first thing they teach is calming practice.

[64:42]

And then when they're fairly calm, they teach to give them koans, which are stories, which are actually narrative versions, historical narratives, which are actually ways of teaching. And then, after understanding, then you practice just sitting. But I don't know if we need to go further on this, but I guess you spent, if we, were you planning to stop about nine o'clock tonight? So I don't know if we have much time to sit tonight, but in the morning when we start, at what time? Yeah. So in the morning, maybe at the first period or two, that you actually, I would suggest you just give you give the first period to just sitting and letting go of discursive thought.

[65:54]

Just the whole period if you can. Now, let's see what that's like. What was I going to say? Well, I'll let it go. Just some discursive thought. Yes? We are thinking and speaking to us about thinking about not thinking. Yes, you will have quite a bit of that, I think, before the weekend goes to its conclusion. Which is at what time? What time we start? At 11 o'clock. Oh. It could be later, you know, I don't have to leave until 4.30. So I think we ended before at 11 o'clock. I had a flight at 1, but actually I'm leaving later in the afternoon, so we could meet.

[66:59]

If people can stay until a little bit later, we could have more time on Sunday, if you want. I don't know if people have to leave to go far away, but how many people would have to leave at 11? One, two, two of you. How many people would have to leave at 12? Two more. How many people cannot stay till one? Just till four? We could have a little bit more time. I'm sorry we didn't get that straight. I made my airplane so I could

[67:41]

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