But still, that doesn't mean the concern wasn't still like knocking at the door, the concern for some kind of self in this causal situation, in these five skandhas, some kind of thing there. So, I need to like go there and find that thing which leads me to feel uncomfortable about things that happen in this extra way, and then leads to greed, trying to make things go different, or avoid things, and leads then to karma based on that. So, when you're sitting and you have pain in meditation or whatever, how can you meet that in such a way, not to deny your sense of self, but to notice what it is that makes

[01:01]

it turn into misery, and how that misery and anxiety and fear all around this that's added to it, how that's connected to this exaggerated sense of self, and then start to hear teachings about how to look at the self in such a way that you can see it's just a conventionality, that you can be convinced that it's a conventionality, it's not ultimately there, and when you're convinced that it's not ultimately there, you have the second level of, you have the first level of wisdom, and then when you can analyze that more and more deeply and become more and more crafty, more and more inventive, more and more creative, more and more scientific, more and more artistic, about ways of convincing yourself more and more deeply, inwardly, that this is a conventionality, this sense of self, which is causing you all this extra misery in life, then you take that into your Samadhi, but the pain in the knees is not really the

[02:09]

problem, it's okay to go into rest posture, if you think it's a good idea, if it seems helpful, okay, but when you're in rest posture, you're still miserable, you're still miserable, if you, on some level, you're still anxious, on some level, if you still haven't looked at that, so in some sense, the main thing is that this afflictive, the source of affliction is being flushed out, that you can feel having pain in your ankle isn't really an affliction, when you sprain it, it's helpful to like sit down, it's not an affliction, but greed and hate about having a sprained ankle, that's an affliction, what's the source of the greed and hate? Well, it's this misconception, so when you feel the greed and hate around your affliction, around your pain, around your pleasure, that gives you a clue that this source is activated,

[03:15]

now can you like gently, listen, what teachings do I have about what this might be? Well, it's probably an exaggerated sense of self, among other things, or an exaggerated sense of reality of the sprained ankle, which is a continuation of the same process of reification, but it's now flushed out, now you've got it out there, now look at it, what it's saying is really there, and now if you analyze it, if you question it, does it cancel the consciousness? And this teaching says, yes, it will be canceled if it's a conventionality, and if it's an ultimate, then it's the way things actually are, so then you're not ignorant anymore, you're looking at the way things actually are, so you're not making things more real than they are, you're making them just as real as they are, so then you may have pain in your legs through this whole process, or you may be in rest posture this whole process, you may be completely

[04:20]

comfortable through this whole process, or rather uncomfortable through this whole process, but no matter how comfortable or uncomfortable you are, you're able to like pay attention, you're able to be mindful through this whole process, you're able to stay awake and practice mindfulness of this phenomenon, and notice sprained ankle, pain in the knee, and anxiety, that's not coming from my knee, where's that coming from? Misery, where's that coming from? What's coming from this greed and hate, where's that coming from? Ah, I see, there it is, there's this like pristine, substantial self, it's just sitting there, now look at it, does it actually hold up to analysis? Well the answer is no it doesn't, nobody's ever had fun when it holds up to analysis, but it doesn't mean there's nothing, there's some things which do hold up to analysis, what? Space supposedly holds up to analysis in this school. Atoms

[05:31]

hold up, and maybe the skandhas hold up, and then how are they actually there? Well, they're there, are they there substantially again? No, the substantiality won't help, how are they there? They're there interdependently, they're there depending on conditions, so when you start to see that, then they get unfolded too, they get unpacked, and then finally all there is, is emptiness, but is that the way things ultimately are? Yes. Does that hold up to analysis? No. But in this school anyway, these things hold up to analysis, and this form of analysis frees the person from misery, and when you're free from misery, then you're free from greed, hate and delusion, and when you're free from greed, hate and delusion, you're free from trying to fix

[06:33]

things, you're free from the karma which arises from ignorance, affliction, and trying to fix the affliction, so then you stop cranking this machine of the world, and putting yourself back into bondage by what you just did, creating more greed, hate and delusion, which then you're going to try to fix again. You're going back to the source, and you're starting to cut the roots of birth and death by your vision, by your wisdom vision, and what we're talking about now is working still at the level of me talking to you, you talking to me, and understanding at this level, then the next level you do on your own, and you bring the results of that back to the teacher, back to the scripture, and you keep reasoning and checking on what you're thinking, and you do this kind of reflection, you do this work, this is part of wisdom work, to actually go around thinking like this, until you're kind of like, this is going on in you, you're actually like doing this stuff throughout the day, and this becomes part of what's, you know, instead of just songs going through your head,

[07:37]

and grudges going through your head, you now have this dharma song going through your head, this dharma message, to actually keep looking at what's going on, you actually get to be like that, you start to like, just like having doksan all day long, including having the doksan conversation of, you know, don't be thinking about the next doktan, let's do this doksan, so while you're thinking of the next doksan, before you have your next doksan, in that doksan, in that thinking about the next doksan, in that doksan, the teacher should be telling you, in your doksan before doksan, to stop thinking of the next doksan, and look at this doksan, what doksan are you having right now? What conversation is going on right now? Don't think of the next one, look at the one you've got right now, and if you're not looking at the one right now, then you should have, the teacher should come into the room in your

[08:40]

own personal doksan and tell you to stop thinking of the future, and look at what you've got on your plate right now, and say, I don't know how much on my plate, well, do you remember any dharma messages you'd like to reconsider here? Oh yeah, I might like to see if there are any afflictions going on, and what's the source of the affliction, and yeah, okay, are you back at work now, yeah, or what work are you doing? Oh, I'm doing this, and so on. You are talking to yourself when you're doing wisdom work, you're giving yourself, either you're talking to yourself by talking to somebody else, or talking to a sutra, or reading a sutra, or you're talking to yourself without these other things, and you're actually continuing to educate yourself, that's part of the practice. Another part of the practice is, even after you've done this nice education course, you let go of it. Now, if you're not yet in this education course, if you're not yet having these wisdom conversations

[09:45]

with yourself, it's really okay to let those go too, in other words, all that discursive thought which is just unwholesome, unskillful chatter, it's okay to let that go too, and calm down. But that's not enough, you have to learn how to have wise conversations with yourself, where you're talking to yourself about dharma, but you're not going to be able to talk to yourself about dharma unless you have some examples of how the ancients talked to themselves about dharma, and talked to each other about dharma. So you hear stories of how the teacher and the disciple talked to themselves, and you learn that story, and then you have that conversation with yourself, and then you have new versions of it, and you check those out, whether those are authentic, and if they are, then you feel confident to continue to make new conversations with your dharma conversations in your own head, when you're walking around the world. Practicing mindfulness. So the conversation you're having is, hello, yes, are you practicing mindfulness, mm-hmm,

[10:46]

what are you seeing? Well, I'm seeing my feet, my foot's raising up off the ground, I feel pain in my knee, are you practicing mindfulness? Yes, I am. Are we having a conversation about dharma? Yes, I am. Does this have anything to do with what it says in the mindfulness scripture? Yes, it does. What does it say in the mindfulness scripture? It says, when the monk lifts his foot up, he knows he's lifting his foot up. That's good. Have you checked this out with your teacher to see if you're dreaming about this? No, I haven't. Are you going to? Yes, I am. Have you ever heard a conversation like this before? Yes, I have. In what sutra did you hear it? I heard it in this sutra and that sutra. You're actually talking to yourself about dharma when you're walking around, but part of the way you're talking about it, you've never heard before, because you're being creative. You're giving yourself new lessons. Your teacher's giving you new lessons in your head. And then when you see a teacher, you say, here's the conversations I've been having with you, and here's the questions I asked, and here's the answers you gave. And then you have that conversation, and that evolves it, and you go back and do it yourself.

[11:51]

You do all this, and you get more and more wise. And when you're really quite wise, and you feel like, I finally understand, I finally can see conventional truths and ultimate truths all day long, that's all I see, is conventional truths and ultimate truths. Then you give all that up, let go of your discursive thought that you use to be able to see wisely, then you go back to giving it up, enter into samadhi. Then, because your mindstream has just been immersed in, or all these teachings have been immersed in your mindstream, after you're relaxed, without any discursive thought, this stuff just comes surging up, and we have great revelations in this new context. But there needs to be some education. We need to hear the Dharma and bring it into the just wholeheartedly sit and thus drop away body and mind. So at noon service, you hear what it's like in that samadhi, and then you maybe ask questions

[12:59]

about what that book is about, what that text is about, so you understand what it's about, and this is what some people do, they come and say, well, it says that what meets with recognition is not realization itself, what does that mean, you know? What does it mean that stillness, mind and object merge in realization? You talk about that, you understand it. And then, you forget about all that, and you just wholeheartedly sit, drop away body and mind, and then that understanding comes up in your samadhi, and then you understand directly. And we're heading towards a place where we directly see, all day long, truth, [...] but not just ultimate truth, ultimate truth, but conventional truth, ultimate truth, conventional truth, ultimate truth, and finally, at the same time, we see all the conventional truths, hi, and all the ultimate truths, hi, and they're right there together. We're seeing conventional truths, and we're seeing the truths which liberate us from ignorance

[14:02]

at the same time. But when we see a conventional truth just as a conventional truth, we don't have much of a problem, because we're not misconstruing it, we're not making it into too much. So, actually, I thought, you know, that I had this idea that we're going to get through this Vaibhashika thing in two sessions, but I don't know if we're going to be able to, let's see, I thought to, you know, so if I do another one tomorrow, this is the fourth day, right? Tomorrow is the fifth, so that leaves only two days to do three more schools. So I'm sorry, we might not be able to learn all four schools in this session, but maybe we can at least get more on the first school, and maybe into the second school, and then

[15:09]

the third and fourth of this school, right? No, third and fourth, but maybe not during the session. So I accept that, do you? You don't accept? That's good, I'm glad somebody doesn't. It may not be necessary. Okay, anyway, I'm sorry to have this go on so long, and I felt, it seemed like on the second day a lot of people were having a lot of pain, somehow we were able to have a lot of pain on the second day, but then last night it seemed like you settled down a little bit, we settled down a little bit, I don't know if the pain didn't necessarily go away, but it seemed like people were more subtle last night, it just seemed like that, and this is the fourth day, so someone asked me, why do we have to sit cross-legged?

[16:14]

And the answer is, you do not have to sit cross-legged, you do not have to sit cross-legged. In Japan, in certain Zen monasteries, if you don't sit cross-legged, they kick you out, but in America you can raise your knees up like this, go ahead, if you want to. You can rest, you can raise your knees up and be in rest posture, you can rest from this effort of sitting cross-legged, you can rest, rest is part of practice, sometimes when you've done something long enough, it's time to stop and rest. So you can rest, and also you don't have to sit cross-legged in the first place. So what reason is there to sit cross-legged ever? Well, part of the reason is that there's a certain element in Buddhism called copy the teacher, and you see those teachers up there, see Buddha up there, Shakyamuni Buddha

[17:27]

and Manjushri, their legs are crossed very nicely, their cute little feet there, see them, their feet up on their thighs, yeah, really nice, so you copy the teacher. Now you don't have to copy the teacher, but there's a tradition, Buddha sat cross-legged, I'll sit cross-legged, but you don't have to. You can meditate standing up, you can meditate walking, you can meditate climbing, you can meditate reclining, you can meditate in lots of other postures, you can meditate in a chair too, it's okay, all postures are possible. So what's good about cross-legged? Well, I don't know. But all I know is that up until I was about 21, I sat in a lot of chairs, and I stood on the earth, and I walked on the earth, and I reclined on the earth, and I went swimming in the earth, and I did flips on the earth, but when I sat down on the ground and crossed

[18:29]

my legs, suddenly, for me anyway, it was kind of like, whoa, this is really something here. I never was in a place like this. And this is the place that these Buddhist people sit, they sit in this cross-legged posture, this is intense, wow, I would like to be able to be in this place for a while sometime, I would like to learn how to like be in this intensity, that's the way I felt, I felt like it was the most alive, real way for me to be. But you don't have to sit cross-legged to feel that way, but for me it was like tuning, really tuning in to having a body, and really being challenged by having a body, and to hear that people would learn how to like being in this challenging situation for hour after hour, day after day, I thought, whoa, how do they learn to do that, I would like to learn that, that was my take on it.

[19:32]

And then the fact that a lot of the yogis did that, it's kind of like, well, maybe there's other things besides it being intense and very vital that's good too. So I kept trying it, and basically I found it to be a very good deal for me, but you don't have to sit cross-legged to practice the Buddha way, you don't have to. If you have legs, and they will cross, you might find that there's some virtues in that practice for you, but if you don't find that it's helpful, you don't have to do it, you can still practice samadhi, you can still practice generosity, you can still practice patience, you can still practice the precepts, you can still practice enthusiasm, and you can still practice wisdom when your legs are not crossed. But crossing your legs might be helpful. Actually if we stood we could get more people in the zendo. But I'll tell you, if standing was the practice, I couldn't do it.

[20:37]

I cannot stand all day long. I can't. Some people can. It's not possible for me. I can sit almost all day long with some breaks, and even before I broke my leg, I could sit long periods for day after day with short breaks, but I can't stand all day. So if that was the practice, then I would say to you, why do we have to stand? And I hope the teacher would say, you don't have to stand. That's what most of us are doing because we're trying to get more people into the zendo. Whereas if everybody has their own little seat, you know, it takes up too much space. But if you want to sit outside cross-legged, it's okay. You do not have to be in some particular posture, it's just that it is a good opportunity. But standing is a good opportunity, too. All the postures are good opportunities, they all are.

[21:39]

And for me, cross-legged is good, so I'm in this cross-legged department here. But some other people, cross-legged is not good, but they can still practice the Buddha way. And, you know, in their next life, they might have a body that likes to sit cross-legged, so then they do it that way. But you don't have to sit cross-legged to hear the Dharma. You can hear the Dharma when you're swimming in cold water, you can hear the Dharma when you're lying in a bathtub, you can hear the Dharma wherever you are, and when you hear the Dharma, you can understand, and if you understand, then you can analyze it, and if you analyze it, you can give up discursive thought and bring that understanding into your Samadhi, and you can understand and become the Dharma. So if you somehow got into the session, and a lot of people around you are sitting cross-legged, and you're sitting cross-legged and it's hard, it's okay to rest, it's okay to raise your

[22:48]

knees up and rest, until you feel like you want to sit cross-legged again. And when you raise your knees up, it's polite to do it quietly, because some of the people around you are trying to sleep. So then when you've rested long, then quietly put them back, and don't disturb your neighbors, put them back in the cross-legged posture when you want to, when you think, I want to sit cross-legged again, and then sit cross-legged as long as you want to. And sometimes it's uncomfortable, but you say, it's uncomfortable, but I kind of like

[23:52]

sitting still actually, it's kind of nice, it's uncomfortable, but it's also kind of good just to sort of sit here, and feel that stillness, but sometimes you say, I had enough, so I'm going to carefully, gently, quietly uncross my legs, because I think it's a good idea to do that, and now I uncrossed them, and it was good, I'm glad I did it. I like this Zen practice, this is kind of nice, it's a little bit stressful sometimes, a little challenging, but you know, you get to rest sometimes. Now I've heard of some temples where they won't let you rest, well, this is not one of those temples, you can rest here. But still, I would encourage you to try to develop a sense that no matter what's happening all day long, there's this continuity in the mindfulness, you're always paying attention,

[24:57]

you're always aware, you're always awake, you're always gentle, you're always honest, you're always relaxed, no matter what happens, there's continuity in this steady, awake, gentle presence, and you're always listening to the Dharma, listening to the Dharma, you're always asking Buddha, please Buddha, teach me Dharma, teach me Dharma, I'm listening, I'm listening, I want to hear more Dharma, so I can understand the truth, you're always in that mode all day long, and if the pain is so intense that you can't remember what you're doing, then rest, and say, now what am I doing, well, now I'm resting, and where am I resting? I'm resting in a meditation hall, well, how did I get here? I came here to learn about meditation, what kind of meditation? Meditation to realize the freedom of all beings, and meditation to realize, become aware and

[26:02]

mindful of my ignorance, and then to look at my ignorance and give it up, and to look at the truth rather than ignorance, that's what I'm here for, and I'm happy to be here, and I'm happy to be with other people, and I wonder if they remember why they're here, although I can't ask them right now, I still wonder, and I would say we do sometimes forget what we're doing here, so when we forget, then we hopefully notice, hmm, I forgot, now what was it again? Relax, and it'll come back to you, and if it doesn't come back to you, maybe you go again to practice instruction or doksan, you say, now what did I come here for again? And the teacher may say, I don't know what you came here for, you tell me, and you say, I can't remember, and you say, well, maybe we should just quiet down now and see if we

[27:02]

can remember what we're doing here, what's our motivation, and you get back to it and start over, get back on track, okay, one, two, three, oh yeah, Buddha, Buddha, okay Buddha, yeah Buddha, okay, and then how do you practice that, and so on, you do not have to sit cross-legged though, but like that very popular poem by Mary Oliver, you do not have to walk across, you do not have to be good, or something like that, you do not have to walk across the desert on your knees, you do not have to be good, you do not have to walk, but still, being good is sometimes very helpful, and walking across the desert on your knees sometimes is really helpful, so you may want to. We don't do the walking across the knees thing here, we bow on our knees, we sit on

[28:03]

our knees, but we don't walk on the desert, we walk on the floor on our knees, that's our style. But you don't have to do it this way, and if you don't want to do it this way, don't feel like you're missing out, you get to choose how you want to practice, and you can choose who you practice with, pretty much, but you need to take care of yourself, and if you enjoy this session, then you're going to want to do another one, and if you push yourself too hard, then you're going to say, I don't want to practice anymore, but it's not because the practice isn't good, it's because you push yourself too hard, and if you don't push yourself hard enough, that won't work either. So sometimes you don't push yourself hard enough, and you'll feel that's not right, and if you push yourself too hard, that's not right, so we have to find this middle

[29:05]

way, avoiding indulgence in sense pleasure, and avoiding self-mortification. So in this context, what's indulging in sense pleasure, and what's taking care of your body, and what's self-mortification and hurting yourself, and what's being diligent and trying to learn what it means to practice patience, and joyfully learn how to relax with difficulty, what's that, and how's that different from self-mortification, we have to learn this. The founder of our church struggled with this and finally found what he thought was a balance, he went from eating practically nothing to having a little milk and rice, and now more and more we don't even have the milk, so we're getting more ascetic here. But you know, in India, they used to be nice to the cows,

[30:09]

but we're really mean to the cows here in America, do you know about that? Yeah, like for example, you know, they feed cows grain here, right? Which you know, it's nice to give them grain, but cows are not built to eat grains, they're not grain-ivores, they're supposed to eat herbs, right? They're grass eaters, not grain eaters. They don't just eat the grain off the top of the grass, they eat the whole grass, right? And they have a big grass digestive system, and I think it's a 45-gallon grass processor, and when you put grass in there, in the process they produce lots of gas, and they have a way of passing it out into the world. But if you feed them grains, what I heard is this kind of sludge builds up in this processing unit,

[31:19]

and it blocks the gas release process, and also then you have to, you have to like, so they get very uncomfortable, and also then you have to give medication, because the sludge is likely to get infected, so you have to give them lots of antibiotics, so that this infected processing unit doesn't do them in. So anyway, it's very painful, and then they have to poison them in order to stop the infections which are built up from feeding them grains. And then in order to feed them grains, we have to cut down the forest to grow all their corn. So we cut down the forest to poison the cows, so we can eat these cows, so we can take that beef and slam it down on the table and say, this is the greatest country in the world, and we're beef eaters. That's what they do on TV. They get these guys there with their SUVs

[32:25]

and their chainsaws, literally, they're driving their SUVs and their chainsaws, and then they take a big slab of beef and they throw it down, and they say, and we're beef eaters, and this is the greatest country in the world. But they don't say, you know, and this beef is range-fed beef, so if you're going to eat beef, make it range-fed, because range-fed beef eat grass, you know, and they don't have this terrible disease in their stomach from eating grains. And don't throw the beef down in the ground and raise your hand up and say, this is the greatest country in the world. Say, I eat beef, but at least I'm trying not to be cruel to the cows, and I know that's kind of wimpy, and we might not be able to conquer the world with people like me in charge, but maybe I should stop eating beef entirely.

[33:31]

What about cheese? Well, cheese and milk are part of the deal, right? If we have dairy products, then we have a different problem, because the dairy cows are not raised for the beef, right? But they also, they're somewhat uncomfortable, but the problem with dairy cows is they have to keep having babies in order to have the milk, and half their babies are males. Now, if we could just have just females born, that would make things simpler. So maybe we can program it so that only one out of a hundred babies will be males, but you have all these males, so then they have to be killed, and then they get tortured somewhat during their life in order to be of a certain type of meat. So that's a problem with dairy. Even if the dairy cows were treated nicely, you have all the little baby boys, the baby bulls, and they don't want to just have them live a happy life and feed them their whole life.

[34:38]

So they make them into veal, right? So veal is an offshoot of cheese, I guess, isn't it? So that's a problem with the cheese. So, anyway, just constantly think about this kind of stuff. So, what'd you say? What about lunch? It's lunchtime. But I just want to say something about pigs.

[35:40]

I think pigs got a lot going for them, because a lot of us are becoming more and more pig-ish, like we're using more and more pigs to put into the humans. So although the pigs are being killed, they're inhabiting us, you know? So I think that there's the possibility that we'll start to realize that eating pigs is getting closer and closer to homicide. Pigs are really smart. Pigs are really smart, and killing a pig is almost like killing a gorilla or a chimpanzee. And killing a gorilla or a chimpanzee is very close to killing a human. So as we start to realize how intelligent pigs are and how much they hate to get killed, and they know we're going to do it, they're smart enough, you can't trick them.

[36:49]

As you start to meditate on how smart pigs are and how close they are to us, how similar their organs are and how much, you know, it becomes really, really, really, it's so close to murder to eat pork. Now cows, you see, you can make a case, well, cows, they don't really, you know, they're not so, they don't even know you're going to kill them sometimes. You can kind of trick them and just bop them, you know? And they die happy, you know, especially if they've been eating grass the whole time. But certainly with pigs, you know, it's a tremendously violent thing to kill pigs. They really fight. So it's just horrible. So if you think about that, I think it's pretty easy to get off pigs. They don't produce milk, right? We don't need their milk. So it seems like almost everybody can give up pork, right? Right? If you think about the pigs, they're really smart, they're really nice creatures in a lot of ways, they're not that bad.

[37:55]

So with the beef, at least we could like not be so proud about the whole thing. And I don't know, just we're so arrogant. Do we have to be so arrogant? And if we're not eating beef, and we're not eating dairy, and we're not eating pigs, do we have to be arrogant about that? And do we have to think we're better than the people who are arrogant and proud that they're beef eaters? Do we have to think we're better than them? Isn't there some way we can like not get into that either? This is like possible if we understand who we are, I think. But that's enough, I guess, on the pigs. I'm sorry, I guess we need some time to have lunch, right? I mean, we need some time to get ready for lunch.

[38:58]

So I guess we could have service and then have lunch. So why don't we just stand up and go have service and then the lunch serving crew can go, okay? So we just go right into service now. Does that seem reasonable? We should put up the dividers. Do we need the dividers for lunch? Maybe not. Some of us need to use the restroom a little bit. Oh, yeah, yeah, so we have some people go to the restroom and some people go to the serving area and the other people can do service. How's that? Does that seem reasonable or do you want to put the dividers up? We'll put the dividers up after lunch. Okay, so it just goes to do service.

[40:00]

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