I wanted to start by kind of a simple presentation of Zen meditation. In this community we've been using a term for quite a while, it's a Japanese term actually, zazen. And the zah means Siddhi, and the Zen means one, it means Zen. So Siddhi, and Zen is kind of, has this derivative from the word jnana. it was transliterated into Chinese by the sound, by the characters, which sounded like chana. Chana. That's the way they said jana.

[01:01]

And then they abbreviated it chan. So in China they said swachan, or sitting chan, or sitting dhyana. And dhyana is actually usually used in India to mean practices of concentration, practices of developing samadhi, in the sense of samadhi as developing mental one-pointedness. But also in China, the word dhyana came to be used for not just practices of concentration, but all kinds of yogic practices. So sitting in meditation, sitting in dhyana or sitting in zen in China and Japan could be lots of different meanings. Zazen could have lots of different meanings, lots of different types of zazen. Okay? But within the tradition of this temple, sort of in the tradition of the teacher, Eihei Dogen, Zenji.

[02:13]

The zazen was usually used to mean the zazen of Buddha ancestors. The zazen which Buddha ancestors practiced. Or as we say in the Fukan Zazengi, something like the authentic zazen lineage of the ancestors' samadhi. So zazen, in the sense of the practice that Buddhas and ancestors live, that zazen has a simple definition, in a way. It can have a simple definition. First of all, it's defined as Let me say, first of all, that it's defined as dropping off body and mind. That's basically what this type of zazen is, is body and mind dropping off. That's the simple definition, okay?

[03:20]

Now, another presentation of it, which is written in the Fukan Zazengi, is that after you settle into a steady sitting position, think of not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? Non-thinking. And then he says, this is the essential art of zazen. So, in a sense, this moral thinking and this dropping off body and mind are kind of the essential definition of the zazen. Or this is, I would say, the meaning of zazen, which is the essence of it, or the essential, or the way that zazen is the

[04:24]

the gate to the samadhi of the Buddhas. The samadhi of the Buddhas means the mind of the Buddhas, because Buddha's minds are samadhis, in the sense that Buddha's minds are states of non-dual awareness. So dropping off body and mind is zazen. Dropping off body and mind is the gate, the authentic gate, to the mind of Buddha. Now, the mind of Buddha is more than just a gate. So actually, it is that by practicing, by being in the condition of body and mind dropping away, we enter into the samadhi, and the samadhi is far more than just dropping off body and mind. But in a state of dropping our body and mind, we enter this inconceivably wonderful mind.

[05:29]

And in this mind of Buddha, bodies and minds are dropping away. But also, in this world mind of Buddha, beings are helping each other. So, The samadhi, which is called the self, sometimes called the... We talked about many names for it last practice period. One of the names for it is the heroic stride samadhi. Another name for it is the self-receiving and imploring samadhi. So, by practicing zazen in the form of body and mind dropping off, Or when we are in the state of body and mind dropping off, we're in the zazen, which enters into the samadhi. So the samadhi is really the biggest turn of view, but the dropping off body and mind is sort of like the price of admission.

[06:33]

So basically when you're sitting in a meditation hall, but also it can be when you're walking or reclining or even skipping. But whatever state you're in, whether moving or still, it's the dropping of body and mind that makes your state zazen. And Dogen Zonji, in the teacher Dogen, in the Fukan Zazen, which is the universal or general intelligence to the practice of the Buddha Zazen, It's the general encouragement... Are you relaxed? I don't want to relax. No, you don't. Want to relax more? Relax. The general encouragement for zazen is the general encouragement for relaxing, the general encouragement for being willing to have body and mind drop away.

[07:50]

And then, at the end, He says, you know, he will succeed to the legitimate lineage of the ancestor samadhi. And then he says, the treasure store will open of itself. The treasure store of the Buddha's samadhi will open of itself. And it's sometimes translated, and you can use it at will. But really what it says is, ji-ju. And it says, ju-ju. Ju-ju... Is it ju-ju-rui or ju-ju-rui? Ju-ju-rui. Ju-ju-rui. And rui means at will or like this. And ju-ju means, it's the ju-ju-rui. It's receive and use. The treasure store will open itself and it will be received and used. you enter the samadhi and there will be receiving and using of the samadhi.

[08:58]

All this happens at a very high price. You have to pay a very high price to enter into the receiving and using of the samadhi process, and the process you have to let body and mind drop away. That's the price of admission to the Buddha's samadhi, and the selfless receiving and using is the way you can tell that you're there. So that's basically what Zazen is. And so, you know, it's really what's going on all the time anyway. So as I said, basically it's a matter of getting with the program. The program is your body and mind are dropping away every moment, actually. But we resist that, don't we? Well, your body and mind can drop away, but not mine. I have to hold on to at least one of them. Start with the body. Actually, I don't want to lose my mind, though, so I'll hold that, too.

[10:02]

Okay, so then many people come to me and say that their practice is following the breath. Fine. If you're skipping, if you're following your breath, but if you're throwing chalk in the air and catching it, Whatever you're doing, okay, if at that time body and mind were dropping away, this is zazen. If you're firing your breath, sailing onto your body and mind, fine. Go ahead. It's a free country. It's a free zone. We're not going to come up to you, you know. I'm not going to let anybody else come up to you and say, okay, I saw you. You're walking onto your body and mind and you're falling in breath, aren't you?

[11:06]

Get out. We're not going to do that to you. If you want to sit there holding onto your body and then following your breath, and if you like that and spin, no problem. You can do that and you can do it for a while. Eventually you'll get tired of it and start complaining. And then we said, but you know, that wasn't really the practice anyway. That was just the hold around the bottom line kind of thing is not really what we asked you to do. That was just your own habit. The practice is not for somebody to force you to let go of your body and mind, but if they could, that might be nice. It is, people don't actually force you to do it, but suffering might, if you keep facing your suffering, you might be willing to eventually let go, or get with the letting go. So you can follow your breath, you can do it, every kind of thing you want to do under a cushion, you can do or not do anything, but the point is that the practice of zazen, the essential art of zazen, is non-thinking.

[12:08]

which means let go of your thinking. Let your thinking drop away and be reborn and drop away and be reborn and drop away. Stop grasping and so on, okay? So we'll talk more about this, of course, but I just want to make that simple definition to start off so you know what Zazen is. Zazen, the essential art of Zazen is body and mind dropping away. Shinjin, Datsuraku, and also Datsuraku, Shinjin. It's body and mind dropping away, and dropped away body and mind. Both of them. That's our practice of the ancestors' asana. And non-ancestors' asana is holding on to your body and mind and doing whatever kind of fancy practice you want. Okay? So I just wanted to get you straight on that at the beginning of the practice period, okay? Yes? Just explain what we might drop anybody in line. Well, it's kind of like you have a body line here, okay?

[13:10]

And like it just drops away. It's like no holding on to it. Like you have your hand behind your head like this, you've got this body posture, and there's no holding on to it. It's just dropping off. It's being released. It's sloughing off. Ever have that experience of something sloughing off like you're For example, if something falls off your head, like a hat falls off your head, imagine your head falling off. Imagine your body falling off. Or just like if you fell down sometimes, just fall down. You know, just... You know, like when we have a story about... What's his name? Lee Griggs. Come on. Where do we go? Oh, tease me. Why not? You want me to tease you? So, one time, Lee Riggs actually used to have, in his time of life, was called Ananda.

[14:16]

So I won't tell you, I'm not telling you about all Amanda's qualities. You can just show the module now. of what Ananda was like. One of the things I have to tell you about is that Ananda had an excellent memory. He remembered everything that he ever heard the Buddha say. And he could either remember everything that anybody else told him, Buddha said. So he would go around and ask people that it did him to teachings that he wasn't at. He asked them to tell him what happened at that thing.

[15:19]

He remembered. So he actually was able to remember basically everything the Buddha said during like 45 years of teaching. He remembered it all. So anyway, the Buddha died, and they were going to have a convention, and they were going to have a recitation of all the Buddha's teachings as part of the convention. And then they were going to, like, all try to, like, remember the teachings and keep reciting them. So they wanted to know, and they did come and tell them all the teachings. However, the only people who were allowed at this convention among, well, they have quite a few disciples, but only people were allowed to attend this convention were people who were enlightened. And Ananda wasn't. In that way, he's, you know, not like Ananda. So all these enlightened disciples of Buddha got together and gave this trash course. They all sort of focused on Ananda to get Ananda enlightened by the beginning of the convention.

[16:19]

Because they were trying to get him to do that. But he just happened to know all the teachings. In other words, it's possible to memorize all the teachings and not be enlightened. And it's also possible to not memorize all the teachings and be enlightened. But anyway, they wanted him to be there, so they put a lot of pressure on him. And he was like, meditating, meditating, and they were saying, harder, harder, meditating, meditating. And they said, relax. I said, I'm relaxed, okay. Dr. Jai went, okay. Okay. You identify with that? Anyway, it was getting close to convention time.

[17:22]

And I think in the story I heard like the month before or something, he still hadn't become enlightened. He was really tired out. And he went over to his bed and he like just threw himself onto his bed. And as he was flying through the air, his body and mind dropped off. And he woke up. And he got to go to the conference, to the convention, and so now we have all the teachers, because he went there and he didn't forget them. He let go of the mirror that knew them all and became awake, entered the Buddha Samadhi, and from the Samadhi he could... Well, actually he didn't enter the Buddha Samadhi, he entered the Arhat Samadhi. We'll talk about the differences later, but anyway... So that's the Zen stuff. I want all of you who would like to know everything about Buddhism to have a chance to know everything about Buddhism.

[18:32]

So I'm going to teach you everything about Buddhism now. We're not going to finish tonight, but we're going to start. It's also clear with you. And like on Sunday, I started again. I wanted to give you some background. And a lot of you were there on Sunday, weren't you? How many people were not there on Sunday? Now, some of the people... I'm always there, but I really wasn't, thanks. I know some people you should talk to. I mean, I know some people that would be encouraged to hear that, because they say the same thing. They say that they were there, but they... Well, they say that they're... Actually, they say they're here, but not here. You know, they're here at Green Gulch, but not here. Quite a few people like that. They're all close. Well, you can come and learn how to be here, but some of you haven't learned that yet, right? Right. So I'm actually right.

[19:34]

You have some companions who are not here also with you. And they're pretty upset about it, like you are. So anyway, I do think that probably it was a lot, actually, so I'm going to go over it. So the first thing is, you know, you could say that the basic polarities of Indo-European religious or contemplative tradition on one side, but also Buddhism's dual contemplative inheritance. They're related, because Buddhism grew up in an Indo-European environment, actually. Grew up in India. And I talked at the beginning about You know, talking about Babylon and Egypt, the religion of Babylon being a religion where the divinity is transcendent, and the religion of, you know, as a generalization, and the religion of Egypt as a religion, not of transcendence, but of immanence.

[20:46]

Immanence means that the divinity is inherent. The divinity is within. You okay? Are you? So one of those divinities is like up there, out there, over there, low up there, whatever. And the other one is, divinity is inside, inside of this experience, inside of everything. And so... And there's a tendency for the transcendent, I think, if you view the divinity as transcendent, then you want to transcend the world in order to get in touch with that transcendent divinity, or you want to purify yourself of involvement so that you'll transcend. That would be one possible religious path. The other way is one where you would look inward or pay attention, you would contemplate what's going on,

[21:53]

and rather than seek purity in order to transcend, actually you're more concerned with how to be in touch with how things work inwardly. And then one realizes a power in the world. And power, the first meaning of power in the dictionary is the ability or capacity to act or perform effectively. So the understanding that the divinity is imminent would lead you to look for ways to act in the phenomenal world effectively. So one would be freedom through purity and transcendence, the other would be freedom through entering into the actuality of the workings of the world. So in India, or actually I should say in the Indus culture, the culture of the Indus Valley also was of the, and I think, I guess Babylon is in the Indus Valley, right?

[23:03]

No. No? The current Babylon is due south of Baghdad. The current Babylon is... I mean, not the current Babylon. The old Babylon is due south, not too far from Baghdad. So it's in Iraq. It's what we now call Iraq. And so the culture of that area upheld and was devoted to a transcendent deity. And that Indus culture was invaded around 1500 by a northern people, horse people, who had invented the war chariot. And they overwhelmed the dying Indus Valley culture. Isn't that the Tigris and Euphrates thing?

[24:06]

Tigris and Euphrates. I think that's called the Indus Valley. The Tigris and the Euphrates is called the Indus Valley. So it's the Mesopotamia is in the Indus Valley. So these people came down from the north and their tradition was a Vedic tradition. And their tradition was of an immanent deity. They were like... From the West, you know, they had a shaman tradition. And shamans were these people who originally used a part of their techniques for using mushrooms. They used mushrooms to enter into these states of ecstasy where they actually felt like they were like in the shining world of the shining beings and they actually came to feel that they could like deal with these gods and goddesses that they actually could have they could act in that realm and acting in that realm they could actually determine the way the world worked those people invaded india and dominated india

[25:23]

And their priests became the highest class of the caste society, and the warriors were the second highest, right? The Brahmins and the Kshatriyas. And this power-oriented religion a religion that was concerned about actually controlling and acting effectively with the divine forces, also went with acting effectively with political forces. So it led to a very powerful dynasties for whom the main practices were the practices of reciting the teachings about the immanent divinity, I am it or I am Brahma type of meditation. Okay? So that's the story.

[26:25]

Anybody have any kind of critique on that that they want to make before I go on? Yes? I'm still confused geographically because you start off thinking about Iraq and Egypt as being the locus of these two different traditions, but later with India. Well, another area besides Egypt that had this kind of like eminent tradition were northern people, the mushroom people from the north. These light-skinned, actually light-skinned Caucasians. Who's there? Basically, they were Vikings. They're from Norwegians. So they came back, breaking down. But they had a similar take on religious life as the Egyptians did before, except the special thing was that they had this summer cult, this mushroom cult. And coming down into the Indus Valley, they also spread into India.

[27:31]

that culture had spread into India also. Okay? So, I don't know exactly when, I forgot, but anyway, a while before Buddha, they developed a religious, what do you call it, a religious reaction to the caste system and the Brahmin system, the Vedic system. The Vedic system had stopped using Sama, and they were now using meditation techniques to enter the shining world of the divinity. And therein, the Brahmin priests would manipulate and make deals with and control the divine forces for the sake of spiritual freedom and, if they were working for the government, for governmental power. So the government supported these people and made them the highest class, highest caste, because they were like keeping basically the government in power.

[28:38]

And they were doing quite well. Very powerful, big states. They were the orthodox. And there were heterodox practices, too. And heterodox practices, one of them was called the fact that the heterodoxy of the wanderers Now the wanderers used lots of, you know, some of the wanderers practiced on the basis of the divinity and the transcendence. Some of the wanderers were trying to become, you know, more and more pure. So some of the yogis were doing yogic practices of getting more and more pure, more and more pure, getting to higher and higher states, pure and purer, less and less phenomenal, less and less worldly involvement. So actually they were like They were able to do things which most people who are concerned with their body can't do. These people were purified of bodily concern, almost completely purified of bodily concern.

[29:38]

And the idea was that if you completely purified of bodily concern, you would realize divinity and freedom from suffering. But also among these wanderers, there were some that were experimenting with working inward with the nature of psychic and physical processes and trying to understand the principle of them. And in that way, rather than getting transcendence, more like get power over the way things go. And the Buddha was sampling all this, the Shakyamuni Buddha sampled all this stuff And I think that actually in his practice what you find is, I feel, a combination of these two sides, that he became an expert at these kind of transcending practices, these yogic practices of getting truer and truer, but he also developed the practices of understanding the way the world works inwardly and outwardly.

[30:40]

He understood how the world, he saw how the world dependently co-arises, how suffering arises and ceases. So he actually, like, in his life, in his practice, he kind of combined these two sides and tried to work out the relationship between them and actually Maybe he succeeded at doing the following. If you think that the divinity is transcendent, then you have ontological problems. If you think that the divinity is immanent, then you have epistemological problems. In other words, if you think the divinity is transcendent, you have problems of understanding or verifying how something is transcendent could be related to existence. That's an ontological problem. If you think that the divinity is immanent, then you have a problem of epistemological problems.

[31:43]

You have trouble understanding why we don't know it. I combine the two. I think the Buddha perhaps developed a teaching which takes care of these problems. In other words, he showed how something which in some sense transcends or is free, actually by its very nature in the world, the way the world actually is, is why it's free. And on the other side, by the nature of karma and rebirth, there's an explanation of why it is that we can't see the way things work. And by understanding this process, we can then finally see what is already there. So anyway, we'll talk about that more later. And I'll just jump ahead and say that these two sides will later be seen in Buddhism as on one side, the practices of calming and tranquility, and on the other side, the practices of insight or wisdom.

[32:43]

The wisdom tradition has more to do with actually how things work. How the way things work is actually the divinity itself. The way things actually work in reality is what releases us on the other side by being calm and pure, and not clog up in the world, you can practice wisdom and see the way the world works. So actually Buddhism uses these two sides. The one side, the transcendent side, goes with practices of withdrawing from objects, of sensory withdrawal, of not getting involved in things. Something like body and mind dropping off. The side of emulience goes with observing the sense of your life, observing the object, seeing what it is. So calming and wisdom, calming and insight, then, actually also are the Buddhist way of building these two dimensions, or these pillars of understandings of what is actually liberating together.

[33:55]

Was there some question, Jesse? Just briefly, when you're talking about the wanderers who are involved in purifying themselves more and more, would that be similar to aesthetics for a cynicism? Yeah, well, part of a cynicism would be like, you don't need anything, right? So purify yourself of greed. Another practice would be the giants pulled out their hairs one by one. because I guess they didn't want to be mean to their hair, and not eating anything, not sleeping, these kinds of jisana practices, but also the yogic practices of getting more and more purified of any kind of dreams for any type of phenomenal experience. So you use, one will come to your attachment to a gross, kind of material experience, you let go of that by getting interested in a more subtle phenomenal experience.

[35:00]

Then you let go of that by becoming interested in a more subtle phenomenal experience. Then you get rid of that by becoming interested in a more subtle. So you get more and more subtle, getting more and more detached from all kinds of phenomena. The problem is that Buddha found is that when you got to the more subtle state, you couldn't get out of that one. He went to the top of the line. He attained the highest possible, you know, worldly detachment, but he couldn't get liberated until he understood selflessness. Okay? Yes? Do you have Upanishads and expression and some transcendent path? The Upanishads are more on the immanent side. The Upanishads are the outdated texts. So they have to do more with understanding the... So, again, the transcendent side is developed by enstatic, enstatic trance.

[36:03]

It's kind of a contradiction that you... By working with... By going... Enstatic means standing in the body. Ecstatic means outside the body. So the transcendent goes with thinning the body. In other words, you use the body to gradually purify any kind of attachment. The other way, you're out of your heart. You're more like dealing with the world. That's why they were very powerful, to work with the phenomena in such a way that you could actually govern the way the world works, that you could get the world and divine forces under your control, that human agency could actually control the divine function, the divine process. In the Vedas, in the Upanishads, the Upanishads taught ways to do that. Taught phrases to concentrate on in order to, like, realize that. I had a question.

[37:12]

Well, someone told me, I was told that the Indus people practiced yoga, at least in the Asanas. Yes. So can you say anything about that or how that influenced this? I mean, because they must have been presumably doing some form of meditation before these mushroom people. Well, Glenn, you can kind of say that the yoga practices in the sense of calming practices, they would go with the transcendent model. So it's very likely that in the process of trying to purify yourself, sitting across various yoga postures will be part of transcendence. Another way they do this is like not just sitting cross-legged, but someone standing on one foot. They stand on one foot for the rest of their life as a transcendent practice. They're called fakirs.

[38:15]

or some standing in some bent over in a painful position. They stay that way for their whole life. And after a while, their muscles atrophy and so on, their bones set, and they actually are stuck in that position. And this is their demonstration of world transcendence. This is a, you know, it occurs in that way still in India. The people are still born there. In the Christian tradition, too, there was, I forgot his name, but there was one Christian yogi who lived on top of the hill. He lived in a prayer for, I don't know, eight years or something. Forty years. Forty years? And then he came down finally and walked around in his very impressive gown. Because he really, like, transcended our concern for his body. So this is a dimension of what human beings conceive of as a path to freedom from suffering.

[39:20]

So sitting cross-legged and doing what you might call more reasonable types of yogic postures could also go with entering into deeper and deeper states of calm in the process of transcendence. And so that was available in that culture. And then the Vedic people brought from a different approach, working with the way things work as a means to power. So one is purity and one is power. So power goes with immanence, and purity goes with transcendence. And these warriors were using all these methods, and Buddhists, they used both. If you tried one, but the one makes it possible to be more successful at the other, actually. Being able to withdraw from sensory input, you calm down. In that calm, you can see more clearly the way things work. So the calm on the east side again. Is there something like the reverse? I mean, by understanding the way things work, calm them down?

[40:23]

Definitely, yeah. Once you understand how things work, you would immediately calm down. But most people have to be fairly calm before they can understand how things work. So it's pretty difficult. Although in this lifetime, you might not do much calming practice. Like some people... I know some little kids, they don't seem to do any calming practices, but you see them down at the piano and they just immediately are concentrated. So this, you know... They're just born easily concentrated on certain tasks, and so they can understand the way piano music works, so they immediately can play. They're already calm in that situation. Even in a playground, they wouldn't be so calm. But from that setup, they can work the piano. And then as they work the piano, they enter into a deeper calm. And then as they enter into a deeper calm, they move into a deeper relationship with the music and so on. So musicians... A lot of people who are musicians before they come to practice Zen have an easy time, actually, because they already know how to use working with things as a way to calm, and a way of calm to enter into how things work.

[41:34]

So Buddhism develops ways of going, a recursive way of wasn't calm to see, and by being able to see, you can go calmer. You're going calmer, you see deeper, you see deeper, you get calmer. So calm and insight deepen each other. So once again, On one side there is freedom as purely transcending phenomena, and the other is freedom as a state of being in the world and able to respond effectively. And also I would say that the one side, the one side, has to do more with private reality, and the other side has to do with public reality. Can you repeat that?

[42:42]

You said you heard something in the Mormon church. I heard that in the Mormon tradition that they say something like, I don't know if they say it, but certain people looking at the Mormon tradition anyway, certain clever people looking at the Mormon tradition say, oh, the unit of salvation or the unit of liberation is the individual, and the unit of exaltation is the community. Exaltation means to be lifted to the divine, to become a god. the group does that, individuals don't actually get exalted in that tradition, but they get liberated. You can become free of your own problems. And that's somewhat similar to early Buddhism and later Buddhism. And another kind of just general thing I could say for you, you know, this is open to criticism, is that although in early Buddhism you find the use of both karmic and insight practices,

[44:22]

Still, there seems to be within that practice, within the tradition of using power and insight together in a way to develop wisdom, which understands selflessness of the person. The goal of that tradition seems to be transcendence of the world. In other words, nirvana, transcendent birth and death. and entering into and realizing a state of birthlessness and deathlessness. So again, although the Buddha himself drove together these two sides of calm and insight, or sensory withdrawal and sensory observation, sensory withdrawal being calm and sensory observation being insightful, he drove them together and brought them together very nicely leads to an insight into the selflessness of the person. And this then can also lead to the realization of freedom from birth and death, the realization of nirvana, true peace and contentment and happiness.

[45:37]

And then, after realizing nirvana, one practices to bring that nirvana together with all living tendencies and habits, and purifying those away, so that they're all great penetrating vision of the selflessness of the person, but also the selflessness of all things. And then the goal was no longer to be just free of samsara and enter nirvana. The goal was, by understanding the nature of all things, living the world in a way that saves all beings. So the movement from early Buddhism to later Buddhism, in a sense, is a movement from world transcendence to world immanence.

[46:43]

or moving from world escaping to world saving. Even though both traditions use both of these dimensions that we talked about earlier, they didn't, but neither side, neither tradition uses just one side of the story. Both use common insight, but one actually seemed to tend towards the transcendent side and the other more towards the engagement in the world, to realize omniscience in order to save the world. So I see a lot of people are kind of like getting ready to go to bed, so I probably should stop soon. I know this is kind of boring, but it's on tape, so if you didn't get it through the ear, you can listen to it on tape. It may be useful. So I just wanted to say just a couple of general things and go into more detail next week. The problem is

[47:47]

How do I put it? At the beginning, I talked about Zen meditation, you know? And I'd like to kill energy to understand where Zen fits into this picture. And I just want to tell you right now where I kind of see it fitting in. And in this week, I'll go into more detail. There's early Buddhism, which seems to be concerned with individual transcendent liberation, and later Buddhism, in the form of the Mahayana, is concerned with about saving the world and obtaining the omniscience of a Buddha in order to work for that end. However, this Mahayana tradition generated a really tremendous variety of meditation practices. All the Mahayana meditation practices were for the purpose of realizing omniscience.

[48:56]

The Mahayana is about a profound and thorough understanding of emptiness. The bodhisattvas, the beings of infinite, great compassion, their realization, their understanding is emptiness. So all the Mahayana meditation traditions are in order to develop a wisdom which understands emptiness. All the meditations of the vehicle of world-saving is directed towards understanding of emptiness. But the ways of understanding emptiness are tremendously varied. And basically I would like to suggest three basic types of meditation practices which are devoted to developing the wisdom of the Mahayana. And one type I would call sort of the center of gravity or the standard model of meditation for the bodhisattva.

[50:04]

And I would like to tell a little bit about that, talk with you a little bit about that for the next few weeks, so you understand that. That, and I'll repeat this, but that type of, that presentation of the meditation of the bodhisattva from which the realization of emptiness grows, That is taught in, like, the Sandhiramacchana Sutra, particularly in Chapter 7 of the Sandhiramacchana Sutra, and it's taught in the chapter on the ten grounds, the ten stages in the Avatamsaka Sutra. It's taught in the Lodha Sutra. It's taught in the Prajnaparamita Sutras. The Lodha Sutras teach this path to the bodhisattva. And in terms of presenting it as a system outside the scriptures, I would just tell you that in India one of the best presentations is by Kamala Shila.

[51:07]

And do you have a reading list? Did I give you a reading list? No. So there's a reading list of Mohanlal meditations, and on the reading list is the Kamala Shila. So Kamala Shila presents one of the best summaries of the bodhisattva meditation practice in India. And then in China, the presentation, the most comprehensive, standard presentation of the Bodhisattva meditations is by Jiri, Tintagiri. And in Tibet, the basic program is set by Tsongkhapa. So those, in India, Tibet, and China, those three people, those three texts, give you kind of a system of what the basic course in Bodhisattva meditation is. All every other types of meditation are connected to this basic structure. But a lot of people at Zen centers don't understand the relationship between this wonderful practice of body and mind dropping away and entering into the Ancestor Samadhi in this basic bodhisattva course.

[52:12]

So there's this basic bodhisattva course, the standard meditation process, which is extraordinarily elaborate and takes three eons to accomplish. But you should know it, because it's not so difficult to know about it. To actually accomplish it takes quite a bit, but to actually know about it with even your grasp, I mean, you can accomplish it in terms of understanding the Course. Then there's two other basic types of Mahayana meditations. One type is the type sort of over on the side of, actually, Yeah, it's over on the side of, it's kind of like a revitalization or a resurgence of the Vedic type of practices, of the practices which are about entering into the shining world of the gods and goddesses and getting control of them, and thereby actually in order to manipulate and control the world.

[53:24]

to create actually a world, to create a borderland. And then actually live there and like do business there. And the two basics, the two main schools which work along the way are the Pure Land School of India, China, Japan, Korea, and the Punta School. to actually generate another world that you inhabit and work. And you work that world in order to save the world. You work this alternative world to save the whole world. OK? And then there's another branch. And this branch has no precedence. So maybe you can guess what that's going to be. This branch is in India and Tibet. It's called Maha Mudra. And in China, it's called Zen.

[54:29]

And this branch is like unprecedented, unprecedented practices. It's coming from the same program of saving the world and achieving omniscience. but there's more precedence and there's no thorn to it. It's a tradition that in some sense can't justify itself, has given up trying to justify itself as coming from the tradition. It's a spontaneously arising way to be in the world and save it. And so Zen and Tantra are that type. And so this practice of zazen is a practice of this type of Mahayana Buddhism. But this must be, although you can't justify it in terms of showing all these practices as having, like you can't find dropping off body and mind in the Mahayana Sutras. But you must understand that it is totally there and totally the essence of these teachings.

[55:37]

Yes. You just said that this was Zen and Tantra, but... No, I meant Zen and Mahamudra. Okay, so Tantra is the first... Tantra and Pure Land are created in the inner world. Tantra and Pure Land are actually private, private reality. And from this private reality, this inner visualized world of ecstasy, which is similar to the world actually the shamans entered long before. And the Buddha also entered the Shamanic realm in his practice. And that world, from that world, you actually operate from that world, almost like remote control, you save the world. The other world, the other mode, there's no precedent for it. And it uses every other technique, including time-frame pyramid, the Mahayana mudra and the Zen. We use everything, and we have no excuse. In one sense, we use all meditations, and in another sense, when body and mind drops away, all the meditations drop away too.

[56:44]

All the teachings drop away, all our knowledge drops away, all the sutras drop away, and we enter into Buddha's mind. Because Buddha is, after all, the one who doesn't have anything. So in some ways, then, it's just some way that we can stop having something. Like this piece of calligraphy I did for May one time. It's something like, Buji Korekini. Is that right? Buji Korekini. Having nothing, this is a fine person. But this having nothing is a fine person, you should understand how that's related to this inconceivably thorough training program of the Bodhisattva. I mean, I think it would be good if you understood that. It would be good if I did, too. So if you'll allow, we'll look at the standard course, letter on side of looking at the Zen course.

[57:53]

In Mrs. Medieval, you spoke of three different developments, and then you said you remember where that was in the talk. Three different traditions within the whole enemy? Yes. Three different categories, yes? Right. And then out of that came, you said, Sam came out of that, and then all that came out, these three, right? Right. Yeah, right. The one is the standard mala that you find in the Mahayana sutras. The other is this creative offshoot that is really kind of a reversion to archaic methods of meditation that were actually pre-Buddhist almost, of entering the world and working with the inner divinities of our own mind. And the other is this innovative thing called Zen and Mahamudra. So was this a medieval development?

[58:58]

What does medieval mean? I'm thinking historically, the period of time that this happened. It's happened in... Tantra and... 300 and... Tantra and Zen. Something like that. Tantra and Pure Land developed, I would say, the Pure Land texts. I don't know exactly when they were developed, the Mahayana Pure Land texts, but I guess that they were developed in the first 500 years of the Common Era. Mm-hmm. tantras develops around starts to being developed around I think 1500 years after Buddha a Thousand years after Buddha and there's been develops from like about about 500 in the common era to about well 1200 in India Until it was extinguished, but it gets transmitted to Tibet in Central Asia and Southeast Asia around the eighth and ninth centuries Zen however Anahamudra is something that developed, you know, maybe in the 6th and 7th centuries in India. It's kind of a spontaneous eruption in the Buddhist tradition, and Zen is similar, but we'll go into that more later, okay?

[60:08]

Is that enough? Yes? Joe? Yeah, just quickly. I'm wondering if there's a book or any primary sources you get the information about this culture clash you were talking about, the mushroom people and the Vedic cultures coming in. I could make up a waiting list on that, too. But one book that comes to my mind is From Shamanism to Zen by Eliade. from mushrooms to Zen. So even Zen... Zen has a good reputation as being like the pure distillation of this long tradition of rather elaborate practices of purifying and purifying and simplifying and simplifying until we have no techniques, you know, and no meditation, and no mind. And that's how we enter Buddha's mind. But it's in the lineage of

[61:12]

all these techniques. So that's one book. But I could try to make a little reading list. Also, we have this Mahayana meditation reading list, too. Okay? Which I passed out during the last practice period. And so, Bert, could you bring up that text to the next work meeting that people would be at? And also you could bring some to this next time we have a talk here. So I made up a Mahayana reading, a Mahayana meditation reading list. And on that reading list, there is not text about the so-called Theravada or individual vehicle meditations. I'll make another list for that one. But I wanted you to see what the Mohayana ones were like because if you read... the Mahayana ones and the individual vehicle ones, you get kind of confused because they're so similar in a lot of ways. Because Bible concentration practices are the same, and a lot of the insight practices are the same too. But you should see that what's the difference?

[62:14]

So maybe there's big differences that in one case, they're... Well, that's what I'll tell you next week. But in the other case, that's what I'll tell you about quite a bit later. but you can look at these different categories. But I would recommend actually that you start with the Mahayana ones because those are actually, funny thing is, those are the things which are most unfamiliar to Zen students. Zen students usually misunderstand Zen in terms of looking at Zen through the individual vehicle. Most Zen students, of course, are starting to practice from the individual vehicle point of view. Most Zen students start to practice from the point of view of, you know, me. So... Who else? Yeah, right, well, I don't know. Anything else tonight? Okay.

[63:18]

Yeah, my cliff notes are, get ready. And, what do you call it? If you don't give up wandering around in your head, you might miss the body that's leaping off the cliff. Swimming in Buddha's mind. Is that enough of a note for you on the cliff?

[63:45]

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