As I was listening to the recitation of this vow, some new people here for this session I would guess are not familiar with this vow that you just recited, is that correct? Took you quite a while to find it in the book, didn't it? It's called Ehe Koso Hotsugamon, which Ehe is the name of a Buddhist teacher named Ehe Dogen. You know that name? Dogen? So Ehe means eternal peace. It's the name of the monastery that he founded in Japan. And Koso means high priest, so the high priest of the Monastery of Eternal Peace.

[01:05]

And then it says Hotsugamon, and Hotsu means giving rise to, and Gan means vow, and Mon means verse. So it's this Buddhist teacher named Dogen, it's the verse of giving rise to the vow. So you read his own personal vow, he wrote that vow. And I thought it was such a nice vow that I decided to adopt it and share it with you. So for the last several years before giving talks we've been reciting that. And so while I was listening to you recite it and as I was reciting it got to the part where it says, by revealing and disclosing our lack of faith in practice, and I thought maybe I should reveal some things here.

[02:09]

But actually what I thought of revealing is not about lack of faith in practice, which I could do also, but I actually thought maybe it would be helpful during this session to reveal to you what I go through as I grope for the way to teach Dharma. I have these feelings, you know, these kind of Dharma feelings in me, of things that I think are important to study, important to learn, important to express, and then I wonder when and how to express them to others. And although some of the Dharma that I want to share with you, I actually wonder if you want to hear it, I do think you probably would find it interesting to hear about the trouble I go through figuring out whether I should tell you, because that's very accessible.

[03:14]

So I thought that might help you, and maybe you could sort of share my struggle about how to open up new realms of teaching in this country, this American country, which is exactly what I'm trying to do, is open up things. A lot of things are being taught in America, but some things are not being taught. Certain aspects of Buddha Dharma are not being opened up for people for various reasons, which I'll get into, but I would like to open up some of these things, because I think they're important, but as I open them I run into resistance, which is, you know, anything new is hard for us. So this year, before this year, I kind of declared to kind of specialize in a sustained effort,

[04:18]

or a sustained effort in a specialized area of Buddhist practice for the whole year, and the area is the area of developing the mind of Buddha, or as we sometimes say, the Samadhi of the Buddha, and to study various kinds of Samadhis as a way to understand Buddha, Buddha Samadhi. And part of what I had in mind was to present something and then after presenting that, to build on that and build on that and go forward, forward, forward, deeper and wider into this area of studying Samadhi. But Zen Center is a fairly open place and we keep, so if I present some teaching then new people come, and then I had, so part of the phenomenon I have of teaching something at Zen Center is I teach something and then new people come and

[05:20]

the new people don't know what happened the week before, and then if I repeat it, the people who are there start to go to sleep, and if I don't repeat it, the new people kind of like don't know what I'm talking about. So this is part of the character of trying to teach something to a whole community, not all of whom are participating in all the teaching offerings. Now if I'm willing to repeat something, supposedly others who have heard it before would be willing to listen to it, but that's not always the case. I really don't mind going over things again and again, and the reason why I don't mind is because of Samadhi, one of the merits of Samadhi. That you don't mind saying the same thing over and over. It's always interesting just to say boo boo boo or oh oh oh because of Samadhi, so I don't mind, but some people get bored hearing

[06:22]

the same thing over and over. They want to learn more, and I do too, but sometimes it's just not possible. That's one little revelation of the difficulties, some of the difficulty I have about how to proceed. So this is about three months into the year of trying to relate the teachings of Samadhi, although I was doing them all last year. Last year I didn't declare I was going to be working on these teachings, so it wasn't quite so scary, but this year I made this New Year's resolution that that was going to happen. In other areas too, I've tried to do this too, like studying a certain scholastic presentation of wisdom teachings, which we call the Avidharma. I've been doing that for about 30 years, and I would have a class, and then that class would end, and then have another class, and then

[07:23]

just a few people from the previous class would sign up for the next class, and new people would come in, so we kept going back to the ... had to keep going back to the earlier material because the new people couldn't understand, and the old people would drop out because they kept being on low level. And same with koans. I took koan collections, like a hundred stories, and start studying them, and then after a while people would drop out, so that I would keep going back to the beginning. But finally, with the koan class, I just said, even though people would drop out, I'm just going to keep going through the text. So I made that decision about 12 years ago with a collection of 100 stories, and we're now on 85, and people have come and gone, but I just kept going, and that's what I'm going to do with the samadhi thing. I'm just going to keep going, but I'm going to share with you my difficulty in the process a little bit during this sasheen, and it may help you help me continue on this somewhat foolish and heroic path of teaching something

[08:30]

so extensive as the practice of samadhi and the Mahayana. That was pretty accessible, wasn't it? I made a chart, and the chart's about the relationship among different classes and meanings of samadhi. How many people are not familiar with the word samadhi? Okay, so this chart is posted on one bulletin board, on two bulletin boards out in the cloud hall there, so you can look at it up close, and if you'd like a copy of it, if you have a copy of it, would you raise your hand if you've got a copy of this concentric circle chart? Okay, and how many people who don't have a copy would like a copy? Maybe, could you make about 40 copies and maybe put them

[09:41]

on the altar, so you can pick them up, when? After lunch? Yeah, so if you want, you can have a copy of this. We say not to read during satsang, so don't read this, just look at it, okay, and memorize it, but don't read it. Okay, so I wanted to like start again with this image of the world of samadhi, and the image is four samadhi circles, or four concentric circles of concentration, four kinds of concentrations. Samadhi that, you know, translated in the word samadhi,

[10:51]

translated in the word samadhi, would be translated as joining, uniting, collecting, and the Chinese translated the word samadhi using a word which means to be settled, resolute, firm, firm, but the definition of samadhi, not the translation into English, is citta ekagatas, which means the one-pointedness of mind, literally one-pointedness of mind, but you can expand that definition to the one-pointedness of mind and its object. So samadhi, the definition or the meaning of samadhi is that mind and what it knows, or knowing

[11:58]

and what is known, are actually one point. So that's basic, okay, basic definition. Now, in the various Abhidharma teachings of Buddhism, and Buddhism has, is presented, and early Buddhism was presented in the Pali tradition as the Nikaya. Nikaya? No, no, not Nikaya. Tripitaka, tripitaka. The Buddhism was presented in the form, Buddhist teaching was presented in a form called tripitaka,

[13:01]

and pitakas, pitaka means basket, and tri means three, so it's presented as three baskets, three pitakas, and one basket was the basket of the discourses of the Buddha, called the suttas or sutras. The next basket was called the basket of discipline for the yogis, the vinaya, tell them how to, tell them the procedures for living together and practicing together, and Buddha telling them lots of stories about his history, and the third category was Abhidharma, which is a scholastic presentation of the Buddha's teaching, and in some sense these three baskets are sometimes put in parallel with the disciplines of, the vinaya corresponds to

[14:05]

the discipline of precepts, precept study, precept discipline, ethical discipline, the suttas are put in correspondence with samadhi, and the Abhidharma is put in correspondence with wisdom, so these three baskets correspond to ethical discipline, meditative discipline, or samadhi discipline, and wisdom discipline, or prajna discipline. Okay, so in the suttas, and also as condensed and summarized in the Abhidharma, it is taught that all minds have ten mental factors that accompany them, so no matter what kind of experience you're having, whenever you're having experience,

[15:11]

whenever you're knowing anything, like knowing a sound, knowing a thought, knowing an emotion, knowing a pain, knowing a pleasure, whatever experience you're having, there's certain mental factors that accompany all your experiences, and one of those mental factors that accompanies all your experiences is samadhi. No matter what's happening, your mind is always one-pointed with what it knows, or I should say, whatever experience is happening, mind is one-pointed with its object of knowledge. Okay, so this samadhi, the central circle samadhi, is a characteristic of all your states. It's a factor in every experience throughout your life, or at least if, I don't know, there would be some debate about whether a zygote actually has consciousness which knows objects, but I'm of the opinion that it does.

[16:19]

So even a newborn embryo has consciousness and knows something, and it has samadhi. I'm not saying necessarily it's a human, but it's kind of like it has samadhi, and there's other mental factors also, but I think maybe I won't go into those today because if I do, I might get off the track of samadhi. Will you excuse me if I don't get into the other nine mental factors that are present in every state of consciousness? That could be another handout. So if you want to learn about those, tell Reverend Luminous Forest over there in the corner, and we can maybe provide that to you after session, because you might get too much reading, right?

[17:26]

Okay, that's the center circle. So imagine a circle which represents all the states of consciousness. Or maybe not even a circle, maybe a dot that represents one-pointedness of your experience. The next circle around that, which we sometimes call circle number two or samadhi number two, represents the phenomena wherein a living being, it could be a human living being who's a yogi, officially or unofficially a yogi, and this person is in a state of samadhi, this person has practiced concentration practices so that they've become immersed,

[18:29]

they've become absorbed in this fact of life, they become absorbed in the one-pointedness of mind. That's the second circle. So not only all people have this quality of consciousness, which is have a stable, have a quality of consciousness which is called stabilization or calm or concentration, but not everyone appreciates that in themselves or in others. Actually, if you notice that somebody else is concentrated, you're a little bit concentrated, does that make sense? If you can stop in your busy life long enough to notice somebody who's like really there, you have just slowed down almost to a stop. Does that make sense?

[19:31]

Something came in my mind now which might be relevant and it is a a film I saw one time of a Kenyan distance runner. He's a gold medalist, I think, in the... is there 15,000 meters or 10,000 meters? I think maybe it was 10,000 meters, might have even been marathon, but anyway, he was a long distance runner and it was a film of his face while he was winning a gold medal in this race. And of course his legs were like working away, moving him across the earth, but they took the picture of his face and he looked like somebody sitting still and relaxed. He looked like somebody in meditation, just like... But it was slowed down, I think probably, the head probably would have been going up and down

[20:40]

a little bit if you speeded it up, but in slow motion it looked like he wasn't moving, he looked very calm and present. So me watching that, of course, I get a contact samadhi, right? I feel calm looking at this guy running. Because I see that he's actually one-pointed about it in a gold medal way. That's the second meaning of samadhi which I present to you, or second kind of samadhi. This is also called sometimes dhyana, or jhana. That word is often translated as trance or concentration. But again, the definition of dhyana is samadhi, but it means just a more thoroughly

[21:41]

established realization of this basic nature of our mind, which I think a number of you have had some experience of this second circle. And the Buddha Shakyamuni, when he wasn't a Buddha, before he was a Buddha, when he was a Bodhisattva, he practiced the second kind of samadhi very thoroughly and attained very deep states of absorption in one-pointedness of thought. But he found that they didn't produce liberation. So the second kind of samadhi, although when you're in these states you do feel calm, and as they get more and more deep you feel calmer and calmer, but also relaxed. You feel buoyant, light, full of light, joyful, flexible, and you feel really good.

[22:48]

And you feel like the mind's just ready to do whatever wholesome deeds need to be done. Okay, let's do them. So this is the result of training in this second circle, is to attain this very nice condition called concentration. But on the chart I also wrote in the second circle, still holding a view of self. So before the Buddha was awakened to the nature of self, he held a view of self which wasn't quite accurate, and actually, I'd probably better just say holding a view of his self, like that the self is something that really can be held on to. So the second circle,

[23:53]

is not really a Buddhist situation. Anybody who does the yogic practices of concentration can attain the second kind of samadhi, and many people throughout the world have attained the second kind of samadhi, but it's not really Buddhist because there's no wisdom really in the second samadhi. What we mean by the second samadhi is that Buddhist wisdom has not yet penetrated this state of concentration. However, the afflictions that come to human beings, the normal afflictions and pains of daily life, are temporarily, as long as you're in this state of concentration, they're basically at bay. The afflictions and torments of being unenlightened are at bay by the power of the samadhi.

[24:54]

That's why samadhi is good, even without wisdom, but anyway, the second circle represents concentration not yet united with wisdom. Okay, third circle, third type of samadhi, is samadhi which is illuminated by wisdom. And in this case, we mean a wisdom, strictly speaking, of the type that we consider to be Buddhist wisdom, where there is a realization of the selflessness of persons. The selflessness of, you realize, the selflessness of your personhood, in other words, you realize a fairly unconceited version of yourself, and this is personal liberation from suffering in the third type of samadhi.

[26:03]

And in order to realize the cure for personal bondage, this selflessness of the person is a sufficient medicine to cure us of the disease of the ignorance of not understanding the self of our person. So it's a wonderful samadhi. The third samadhi, the fourth samadhi, is an even deeper understanding of selflessness. And this goes beyond personal liberation. The wisdom here, the selflessness understood here, goes beyond removing the hindrances to personal liberation. It goes beyond to remove the hindrances to, excuse the expression, unsurpassed

[27:12]

complete and authentic awakening of a Buddha. That's the fourth type of samadhi. It's the samadhi of those who wish to become optimally beneficial to all beings. Now, of course, realizing the third type of samadhi and being personally liberated, you're like good news to the world, to most people. Now, some people, however, still might be turned off by seeing a free person. So you wouldn't necessarily be able to help everyone. But in the fourth circle, if you give yourself, if the person in the fourth circle is given a chance, well, if the person is ready, they can help them. But even there, not everybody's ready. So those are the four samadhis which I would offer to you. And then, so now the next step is that I would like to talk about the wisdom practices.

[28:35]

By which we enter into the third type of samadhi. So we have these four samadhis and now I'd like to introduce to you the teaching of three wisdoms, three kinds of wisdom. And these three kinds of wisdom are taught in the early Buddhist teachings, in the Pali and Sanskrit versions of the Buddhist teaching, and they're also taught in the early and later Abhidharma works, and they're also taught in the Mahayana scriptures. And these three kinds of wisdom are wisdom which arises through hearing, literally, the first type. The second type is wisdom which arises

[29:41]

through reflection or examination. And the third type is a wisdom which arises through or in samadhi. So if you're studying the first two types of samadhi, in a sense, you're doing some wisdom work by studying concentration. But most of the work you're doing when you're trying to, when you're working to develop

[30:44]

mental stabilization or concentration, is actually, fundamentally, you're basically like giving up discursive thought. You're not really using your intellect, you're kind of like giving it away, giving away your intellect, not trashing it, not fighting it, just like some people say, cut your head off and put it next to your eating bowls when you're sitting. And also, even during Keenheen, but maybe keep some kind of guidance device going. Basically, give your intellect away for a while and you'll calm down, because your intellect, bless it, bless the intellect, because it's the source, it's where, you know, it'll be doing the wisdom work eventually. But our intellect, when it's not doing wisdom work or even when it is first learning how to do wisdom work, when the intellect's first trying to learn how to do wisdom work and hasn't learned it yet, or even when it's not doing wisdom work and doing total delusion

[31:53]

work, the intellect, when it's active, when it's working, usually is getting involved with things and usually that's agitating. Usually it makes us not understand what anybody's talking about when they talk about concentration or that we are concentrated. So we kind of give away the intellectual activity for a while, give away discursive thought, don't get involved with thoughts and so on. So that's the training in Samadhi number two. Does that make sense? Okay, so when you start studying wisdom, however, when you first start studying wisdom, you activate your discursive thought again. Now, if you're practicing concentration, which some of you have been doing for quite a while in your Zen practice, and being willing to let go of discursive thought and thereby calm down,

[32:55]

I'm not telling you to stop that practice. Matter of fact, I would encourage you to continue the practice of giving up wandering around in your mind. I would encourage you to give up, continue the practice of not moving around among the objects of thought. In other words, moving around the objects of thought, wandering in your head, discursive thought, these are different ways of talking about the same active mind, okay? I would think still the practice of developing, giving all that up and thereby calming down and realizing Samadhi number two, still good practice, okay? But I'm opening another door now. I'm opening the door to Samadhi number three, and in order to move from Samadhi number two to Samadhi number three, in order to move from calm, in order to move from calm and temporary relief from affliction

[34:00]

to an actual liberation from delusion and suffering, not temporary and not permanent, to move to an authentic liberation from suffering, personal liberation or universal liberation, to move in that next step requires bringing the head up off the ground and putting it back on again for a class on wisdom. So Samadhi number three, so studying Samadhi number three and number four means that you start studying wisdom, and when you first start studying wisdom it's going to like, it might be at the cost of some of your calm for a while, but you can go back to the calm if you want to right

[35:04]

after this talk's over. But while this talk's going on you have the opportunity to have what you call a pass or an excuse to depart from your concentration which you were in prior to this talk, if you are willing to listen. In Samadhi number three and four we are studying the wisdom that enlivens and illuminates all the Samadhis. In three and four you're learning about the wisdom which will illuminate Samadhi one and two. They can even illuminate Samadhi number one, in other words, illuminate the Samadhi before you even know that you have Samadhi. Studying wisdom, or studying the wisdoms that are joined in blissful union with these Samadhis.

[36:12]

Samadhi three is Samadhi two, united with wisdom, which, a wisdom which sees the selflessness of persons. Was that easy to follow? Anybody have a hard time following that? No? Samadhi three is Samadhi two, united with wisdom that sees the selflessness of persons, and also then the selflessness of others, persons, of your personal person and your non-personal person. Or you could say, if you excuse the expression, I don't want to actually, I'll take it back,

[37:16]

I was going to say this but I don't want to, this is, after I say this, disregard the witness's comment, okay? What I wrote down was Samadhi three is Samadhi two, improved by wisdom, it's not improved, I should say it's transformed, or it's illuminated. Samadhi three, and then I could also say that wisdom number three, the wisdom that arises from Samadhi, is Samadhi, the wisdom which arises together with Samadhi, is wisdom number two, which has been united with Samadhi number two. So, Samadhi deepens wisdom, so there's wisdom number one, wisdom number two, and then wisdom

[38:21]

number two is deepened by Samadhi into wisdom number three, and wisdom illuminates Samadhi. Samadhi deepens wisdom, and wisdom illuminates Samadhi. So, do you get the relationship now, about sort of the overall relationship between the working with wisdom and working with Samadhi, and the reasons why we need to do both? You can have some wisdom without Samadhi, but to deepen the wisdom we need Samadhi, and you can have a lot of Samadhi without wisdom, but to convert the Samadhi practice into liberation, you need wisdom.

[39:25]

Does that make sense? Some Buddhist people actually de-emphasize Samadhi quite a bit, and the traditions which have de-emphasized Samadhi and emphasized wisdom, because wisdom is really the cure for our disease of ignorance, not Samadhi, not Samadhi in the sense of Samadhi number two. They actually mostly teach wisdom practices and not much emphasis on calming practices, partly because I think people have so much trouble giving up discursive thought, which is necessary for like the fruit of mental stabilization, but even people who aren't willing to give up discursive thought,

[40:28]

well they can use the discursive thought to practice wisdom, so for some people who are very into discursive thought and just can't dare to give it up, you can just work on wisdom with them and they can get really developed wisdom. Of course it will get deeper if they connected it with Samadhi, but they're not into it, so they do pretty well with wisdom without Samadhi. I'm trying to bring them both together for the deepest realizations. So I've been talking today and you've been listening to me and whatever understanding

[41:40]

you're developing here through listening to me talk about this, you're actually hearing teachings about Samadhi and teachings about wisdom and teaching about the relationship between them and as you listen, this is the kind of work that develops wisdom arisen from hearing. It's also sometimes called wisdom which arises from learning and it's in a situation somewhat like this where you're receiving teaching and eventually you understand it. The next level of teaching is a teaching where you start to use even more of your intellect and more of your language skills and more of your discursive thought more intensively and you start analyzing and pondering and debating with the material inwardly and go even deeper and so when that state reaches its culmination

[42:42]

then you give up the discursive thought again. So even you use discursive thoughts to look to follow what I'm saying today to some extent and then that's the first kind of wisdom, then the next kind of wisdom you even go deeper using discursive thought more intensively going beyond what you learned and learning well what you didn't learn well and when you understand the teaching well then you give up the discursive thought by which you understood the teaching well. Giving up the discursive thought and putting aside the teaching and putting aside understanding the teaching and just giving it all up then you go back to calm. Then with that calm then you turn back not to discursive thinking so much a little bit but not so much at first you just turn back to what you understood but what you understood is now occurring in samadhi is occurring in a different world than it originally arose and

[43:51]

so it has another it has all the previous meanings but now it's illuminated by the tranquility of giving up the tranquility of the tranquility of renunciation the tranquility of non-attachment so you you understand even more deeply what you already understood and that's the third type of wisdom and things go on from there but I'll stop at that point now the next step in what I thought would be reasonable would be now to start opening up for you some teachings in addition to these some teachings about well first of all some teachings about what buddhist teachings are

[44:57]

and then to teach and then give teachings of various teachings about what the objects of wisdom in buddhism are but it seems like that would be enough for today and I'll start that tomorrow but perhaps you have some questions about what's come up so far so I see two hands one is Jackie's yes wisdom number three wisdom which is arising in samadhi it could be three or four depends on what the wisdom knows if the wisdom sees the selflessness of person then it's wisdom number then it's samadhi number three

[46:02]

if the wisdom sees the selflessness of all phenomena it's samadhi number four does that make sense your [...] eyebrows are furrowed so I can't tell if you understood that um you mean samadhi number three could be samadhi could be wisdom number three could be number two well you know saying that using samadhi three to mean wit to mean a samadhi a state of concentration that's joined with wisdom of a certain type of wisdom okay I call that samadhi number three but when I said samadhi number two I meant the kinds of samadhis that are not joined with wisdom

[47:11]

which sees the selflessness of persons in other words it's possible like this runner I saw okay he was he was probably in samadhi number two but I don't know if he understood the selflessness of that gold medalist that he was but he was that person but I don't know if that if his samadhi was conjoined with understanding the insubstantiality of his of his personhood if it was then he was in samadhi number four but that's my number three but samadhi number three means you've attained the samadhi number two and also you everybody's attained samadhi number one in other words everybody's basically cool but in samadhi number two you understand that pretty fully and the fullness of your understanding can basically can grow greatly through practice of that kind of samadhi but I mean by number two the samadhi which the buddha and other yogis have attained prior to

[48:17]

joining that samadhi with wisdom samadhi three number three this is is the samadhi of joining samadhi number two with the buddhist wisdom of understanding selflessness of persons there could be also a samadhi number whatever number you want to but there could be samadhi number three a which is the samadhi can join to some other kind of wisdom there's other kinds of things that was that you can know besides the selflessness of persons I'm not mentioning those I mentioned the one that's most important for buddhism which is the one that's most important for liberating people from suffering but you could it's possible that you could that you could enter a state of concentration and join that concentration with a wisdom which understands the nature of the atom or the nature of the heart or the nature of cabbage you know but that wouldn't

[49:22]

necessarily uh liberate you from you know suffering it depends on the type of wisdom okay yes all three come into play the wisdom that comes through hearing is still the basis of the wisdom which comes through critical analysis and the wisdom which comes as critical analysis is actually the wit the wisdom that that you're working with when you bring in in the wisdom which arises from samadhi so the third type of wisdom takes the second type of wisdom into samadhi so it's the basis of the third type and the first type is the basis of the second type so you need all three in other words the teaching which you finally realize in samadhi is a teaching which you heard

[50:24]

from the buddha and the buddha actually heard those teachings from buddhas in previous lives he said so we do originally need to hear the teaching of the buddhadharma from a buddha it's part of the deal you may not notice it because we don't you know you don't see the buddhas around so much so mostly it's hearsay at this point buddha said i heard buddha said this i heard buddha say that you know so we're hearing indirectly what the buddha said but you most of us did hear some teaching along the way and we're now working on understanding these teachings but in a lot of zen centers people are not working on understanding the teachings they're just practicing samadhi which is great now i'm talking about understanding these teachings i'm talking about not just hearing about these truths which is the beginning of wisdom but after hearing these truths to actually examine them and become very intimate

[51:29]

with them and then understand them really well and then take that understanding into samadhi where you will have a penetrating vision and you actually see the actual thing that the teaching is talking about you will see the truth rather than just hear about them you will see the truth rather than think about them that was another kind of cute way i thought of this is to say that samadhi takes us from thinking about being to being itself samadhi takes us from thinking about the dharma to the dharma itself for example samadhi takes us from thinking about sitting to sitting itself samadhi training is to take us from thinking about sitting to just sitting to thinking about dharma to just dharma because when there's thinking about

[52:39]

dharma there's me thinking about dharma but samadhi takes us to one-pointedness where there's no more me thinking about dharma there's just dharma in mental one-pointedness with you know if if you're hearing dharma and knowing dharma in mental one-pointedness there's just dharma there's not the knower separate there's just dharma there's not knower separate from sitting there's just sitting so samadhi takes us into that into that then to bring then we have but we have to bring the dharma down there to get converted into being we have to have an understanding then then you move from thinking about the teaching to just the teaching i thought maybe so you're welcome yes

[53:42]

i'm not sure i answered yours but i was pretty sure i answered his oh he looked like he got over that thing yes on the practical level if someone is practicing samadhi at the second level and is practicing kind of dhyanic or jhanic samadhi yes and then could you hear the question okay then you're you're getting some of these wisdom teachings now you're trying so you're talking you said now we're you have a person who is practicing jhanic jhanic meditation okay yes okay you're going to the third level it's kind of discursive level of getting some kind of wisdom teachings and you're going to try to bring this into the jhanic practice you're going to you're right you're going to have some so you put aside the jhanic practice for a moment okay let's say you're you're you're you have the jhanic uh okay uh this is the practical get now how when you're doing the jhanic oh i see you come out yeah get these wisdom teachings so practically speaking how do you do that well you do it like

[54:47]

this first of all you do it like this if you're doing jhanic practice okay then you stop doing jhanic practice you don't get heavy about it but you kind of stop it because you know and you walk into the and you and you get involved in discursive thought in order to arrange for yourself to go into a classroom on wisdom teachings or a person comes into the room where you're practicing jhana practice and you start talking to you about wisdom okay and you you start to like let your mind move over to discursive thought so you can understand what he's saying because if you don't move into discursive thought you can't understand what he's saying then how do you bring this back in your sitting practice okay that's the next question so did i follow that part let's say you're sitting here and you're practicing jhana and let's say you're successful you're happy you're a happy meditator you're a good little yogi you've given up discursive thought you're cool you're you're and you're great right somebody comes in here and starts talking about wisdom you know for example

[55:52]

the four noble truths or something and then somehow your mind decides okay let's do a little discursive thinking here because again you cannot understand the words without getting involved in discursive thought so you so you so you do that during the talk okay you hear you start hearing wisdom teachings and and if you do that long enough you get the wisdom some wisdom arises you're not just after a while you're not just listening to the wisdom teachings some wisdom arises you understand what was said to you you understand the teaching including you could understand teachings about how to give up discursive thought and you have a wisdom about samadhi practice okay so then you got that understanding let's say just the first one you've got first kind of wisdom lectures over okay and you say well i'm gonna

[56:54]

go back to jhana practice lectures over i go back to jhana practice you go back to jhana practice okay that's it you're back in jhana practice however you did have some your wisdom grew a little bit during the lecture okay everybody following this okay let's say then that sometime while you're sitting you a little you know get a little knock on the door to let you know hello who are you i'm a representative of the wisdom practice and then you say how do i know your wisdom practice well i'm because i'm going to tell you what that wisdom or bring up that wisdom that you got about that teaching and you say what do you want say well i want to know if you'd like to like ponder this a little bit like to know if you'd like to examine this and you might say well i don't know how to examine this and then they say okay maybe in the next lecture they'll teach you

[57:56]

how to examine this so then in the meantime since you don't know how to examine this forget it because you don't know what to do with it you don't have teachings about how to do the next kind of wisdom you already got this first level of wisdom which is available to you whenever you need it including in samadhi practice so then you can like have a little discursive conversation say see you later it's not time then you get in further instruction about how to do the second kind of wisdom and then and then you then you at that point the practical thing is then at that point you need you will have to decide when you're going to do jhana practice concentration purely and when you're going to spend part of your time critically analyzing the previous teaching according to ways you've learned about how to analyze it to take it deeper and understand certain points that you couldn't understand before and that you'll be spending part of your time doing that and you could do that with a book in front of you or you could do it with some text you've memorized or you can do it and you can do it without the text if you've memorized the text

[59:01]

you can do without the text just sitting and thinking of the text and going over your mind or you could also do it by writing poetry you can also do it by making an outline of what you said you can also do keep teaching classes yourself on a topic and you get a better understanding okay then when the class is over your study period's over which you have set some time for okay period and you go back to jhana practice okay and then again while you're doing jhana practice sometime or we can do it this way that you could say either while you're doing jhana practice get a knock on the door again the knock is from the wisdom which you which is the second type of wisdom is knocking on the door and saying would you like to now move from this jhana that you're in and look at the wisdom which you attained before and you might say yes so then in the jhana state you turn over and you now you switch from like giving up discursive thought and withdrawing from what's happening

[60:03]

to this inner nature of mind one pointedness of mind and you turn you start to observe the truths that you learned so now you're actually observing these things but you're observing them in samadhi so they look different they're much more illuminating they're kind of like taking their clothes off and say this is what i look now so you go deeper and deeper and deeper there's more space there's more time around these things now because they're in this new world okay so then you get the third kind of wisdom and then the third kind of samadhi or the fourth kind of samadhi so practically speaking you have to be practical you have to say now i'm going to stop jhana practice and do study and learning i'm going to study and learning and then once you attain that on some topic now i'm going to ponder and i'm putting aside jhana practice i'm going to ponder i'm going to examine i'm going to analyze i'm going to compare this to

[61:05]

other understandings of whatever the topic is i'm going to criticize i'm going to interpret i'm going to innovate i'm going to be creative because that's part of it if when you're first learning a teaching you take it literally you know you don't argue with it second level you get creative you get interpretive you get innovative you get poetic and in that poetic realm you understand more and more and more then that reaches its limit though and you feel really good that you've got this much deeper understanding you feel like you understood as well as you can then you go back into samadhi you give up all this wisdom work for a while and you go back to samadhi and then in samadhi because you've been working on this it will come up or you can decide i'm going to go into samadhi and after i get to you know fairly stable i'm just going to turn and look at it but you don't have to make that decision it'll come up naturally because you've

[62:05]

been working so hard at it it's like your life just like if you have some person you're taking care of that's sick or some teacher you're devoted to that's sick or some teacher that you're devoted to that's well or some person that you're devoted to that's well it's because you're working on this these people and these teachings they naturally come up all around you all the time but when you're practicing shamatha or stabilization or jhana when you're practicing these things you're like not getting involved in all that stuff you're letting it all go and you're calming down you're going in you're inwardly you're in you're settled inwardly in samadhi and then once you're settled you say i'm happy i'm settled and then that settleness you naturally without you don't have to make any big heavy decision that settleness naturally opens it's nice work now you're now you're ready to be open without getting agitated then all these

[63:10]

all these wisdoms all these things you've understood in a previous level of wisdom they've resurfaced to you and now you go very deep samadhi penetrates settles into and also the wisdom teachings illuminate this samadhi does that sound practical yeah yeah so it's kind of it's a practical consideration is that enough for today oh is that enough there was a hand but he gave up he said it was enough did he yeah okay so i'll just uh i'll keep working on this and and thank you for your question thank you for your question and thank you for your question may our intention

[64:05]

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