I think this is the last class in the series, is that right? Yes. And there's a class scheduled this fall here in the yoga room, and I've already received a suggestion that this study of meditation along the lines we've been doing be continued and going into detail on some things which we haven't gotten to very much. So if you have any suggestions about how that class might go, you could maybe send a note to the yoga room. You know the address of the yoga room? It's over there on those flyers. Or you can send a note to me at Green Gulch if you have any suggestions about the class this fall. week we're having a meditation intensive at Green Gulch.

[01:06]

We'll be practicing these things. I'm sorry I can't invite you to it because it's full. But anyway, I'll be going into these practices there during the Sashin more. So probably this fall, continue along this meditation focus. The Buddha taught many objects of contemplation, but among the many there were four that were pervasive, and one of them is an object described as non-analytic or non-differentiated, non-conceptual.

[02:14]

So three different ways of translating this term. That's one pervasive type of object of contemplation. In other words, that type of object of meditation pervades many specific varieties of meditation topics. The second type of pervasive object of contemplation is an analytic object or a differentiated object or a conceptual object. The third type is basically the entire range of phenomena and the entire range of teachings. And the fourth one is the accomplishment of the purpose of Buddha's teaching.

[03:15]

So those are the four pervasive objects of contemplation. You might work on all four in a single session, but I think what he's saying there is that among the many different types of Buddhist meditation you might run into, these four might pervade all the different types of meditation that you do. So then the question is asked, among these four, which ones are relevant to, you know, tranquility meditation? Which one are relevant to insight meditation? And which one are relevant to both of them or when they're practiced together?

[04:16]

That may be a difficult question, but can you guess which of these four types would be applicable to stabilization or tranquility meditation when it's practiced alone? Number one? Yeah, number one. And which one would be relevant to insight meditation when it's practiced alone? What? The last one was accomplishment on its purpose. So which one do you think, if you're practicing inside alone, which one would you think you would do? Third? No, second. And if you're practicing together, which one do you think you might be focusing on? Third and the fourth. So if you're practicing, when you first start learning stabilization practice, when you haven't really accomplished it before, then you usually study stabilization first.

[05:26]

So treating you as though you haven't become really proficient at this, I taught it first. then you move on to insight. Once you have some insight and some, I should say, once you have some concentration and some insight, then you can start with insight and go to concentration. But anyway, the insight, the concentration practice is to use a non-analytic or a non-differentiated object or a non-conceptual object. So when we talk about focusing on not conceptually elaborating, focusing on that topic, that topic is an undifferentiated topic or non-analytic topic. So you're aware of, for example,

[06:28]

even if you're focusing on breath or if you're aware of breath or piano music or people talking or physical sensations. Okay? Analyze those experiences and you actually have basically an undifferentiated way of relating to them. Non-conceptual way of relating to these different concepts which I just mentioned. differentiated way of dealing with them basically dealing with each one in the same way right whatever happens whatever concept the mind knows you don't elaborate it familiar second please the the mind the the basic cognition or basic knowing in each moment of experience, it knows the bare or fundamental presence of the object.

[07:43]

And with basic cognition there are many other mental factors and they can relate to various aspects or various attributes of the object which is just known, the presence of which is just known. And they can relate to or pay attention to different aspects. And in particular, the mind can relate to the sign of the object. So the mental factors that are associated with knowing can relate to the sign of the object, and the sign of the object is the object as it's grasped particular image. So the basic knowing is to know the presence of the object and then conception or conceptuality knows the thing through some sign or some image of it.

[08:58]

And other mental factors can also relate to other aspects. So the training in stabilization is to train the conceptualization like knowing itself so you're actually trying to train the mind train the mental factors to in some sense being in harmony or congruence with the way the mind just knows the presence of the object withdraw the attention from jumping around among the different signs of the objects which are known. So object after object is just known, but if the mental attention is then noticing all the different signs of the different objects, it creates a lot of, well, activity, disturbance. If this attention can be directed to be very

[10:00]

much like knowing itself, by withdrawing from these signs, not grasping these signs, then the mind is, we say, freed of bondage to the sign. The attention is trained to withdraw from the sign and be like knowing itself. And this process is stabilizing or stabilization. The question that I was thinking about, the mind that discerns. Judgment, just the discerning part. Yes. The discerning. How does it play into what you're describing? And what do you mean by discern? Well, I'm not sure if it's mental or if it's coming from the senses. Discernment is. It's part of your mind that you discern that music's happening. Discriminate? tell a difference? Maybe, or notice.

[11:05]

This is about the concept, even with your eyes. Is it probably sense information that comes in? Well, the other people around me, it's pretty active, and it's in my awareness, picked up there, that I try not to go toward or away from. Trying, training yourself not to go towards or away is similar to stabilization. You know, I thought, someone stopped me and said they'd describe Where is your awareness? There would be some answer. Someone stops you and asks you to describe what's before you, you can do that, but the actual looking at the thing and coming up with a description of it is more... What?

[12:06]

That would be the process of answering the question, but there's awareness before that. There could be, but there could be an awareness before they ask you to make a description. and the awareness before being asked to make the description, you might not have a description available. Right. That's what I mean by the discerning part, though. There's a lot of discerns, and it's easy for me to get in, you know. Right. Well, when we were sitting before, there was lots of different sounds going on. And there was some piano music. And although the music was, to some extent, murdering itself, some of those tunes were familiar to me. And actually, I liked them. They're two different ones that I like quite a bit, actually, although they were

[13:11]

There was suffering under the circumstances of the class, I suppose. What I was doing in the meditation was I was trying to train my attention to the level at which, for example, the level at which the music was affecting my eyelids. The strongest experience I had of the music was actually in my eyelids, secondarily in my ears. And I was trying to just feel the impact of each sound as my eyelids responded, and just try to stay right with each eyelid response and then each ear response, and then also interwoven with the effects of the sounds on my eyelids. in my ears were feelings in my hands, and of course other sounds, feelings of being seated, feelings of posture, feelings of heat.

[14:20]

But I was trying to tune in to the raw impact of each moment. And there's quite a difference between turning into the raw impact of each moment and being aware, for example, of the melody, which has, you know, it went someplace. Now... But it's still pretty raw, you know, what you're describing, you're involved with it. I was involved, but I was trying to take it just as it was given and not stringing anything together, even though with a melody it's easy to string it together. But withdrawing from the different signs of it being strung together, somehow I felt like I was underneath. the initial superficiality of the sense experience, plus I wasn't being dragged around by the melodies or the conflict between the different melodies wasn't tugging me.

[15:31]

So I wasn't losing my energy from moving around with those different sounds, plus I noticed I gradually moved into a sort of underneath to a deeper place even though the sounds were continuing to go on and I was still hearing them because I was relating to them very much sort of one by one and treating them all the same. There was a change of state. Without modifying the input at all or wishing for anything other, I just pulled right into each moment as it was given and just try to like stay right focused with that without the slightest bit of elaboration. You know, barely able to, although there were differences, I can tell you that, you know, I knew there were differences on some level.

[16:38]

I wasn't into the differences between the different sounds. I didn't care at all whether it was like the same note over and over, different notes, whether there were two different sets of music going or not. And then sometimes the music would stop, and then this whole other thing would flood in, like the sound of owls suddenly would be there. And then again, that just... not indulging in that either. And so that's an example of training my attention to be like the simple knowing of each, of each, in each moment. The basic, the basic, hmm? How about your memory of the melody? If you remember the melody, then How can you confine yourself to the raw impact?

[17:39]

Well, at the point of really being limited to the raw impact, the memory of the music, of where it's been and where it's going, being involved in that is gone. Although I think if I knew how to play the piano, I could continue to play without thinking of what's to come and what just went. But I could feel the difference between when I was aware of where the music had been For example, the fact that I've heard this music quite a few times in my life, and I like it, all that, that can be like elaborating backwards from the impact, and then I can also elaborate forward even before I hear it, or as it comes, ride with my expectation of where it's going to go, and that's part of the reason why I, to some extent, could tell you that

[18:41]

I had these senses that the music was being murdered because of unexpected turns of events. But that's when I wasn't really attending to each moment, and that's when I was more up in the surface. When I come back to dealing with each one as it's given, there's a dropping down below the floor of that surface. And by the way, once below the surface, Because of this training, I can come back up to the surface without getting caught by it. And that's when you can shift, if you want, from the tranquility into the insight. You can go back to the insight and now look at the music. You're still training yourself in this other way, but you can then come up and deal with a wider variety of phenomena. and phenomena that you can analyze.

[19:44]

You can look at different parts of the music and you can notice the quality of it and all that, but you're coming from a different place than you were maybe at the beginning of the session. you shift from training yourself to to deal with each moment of experience like this like consciousness knows things in this bare presence their presence their presence training yourself that shifting into another state and then on the basis of that state then turn you can turn back and look at the same things which you have been treating this way and now you can study them And you can study an analytic image, which means you can study the relationship between the different parts of the music, or the relationship between the music and the street noise, or the auras, or the quiet, or the body sensations. You can start studying these things. You can look at memory. You can look at an analytical, differentiated object then.

[20:47]

And you can study it in a penetrating way because you're coming from this a deeper place, a calmer place, where the, what do you call it, the way things are going on the surface doesn't matter to you really. In other words, how the music's coming or not doesn't really matter. because you treat it all the same. It's all the same to you because you treat it all the same. And by treating it all the same, you not only are training yourself at treating it all the same, but you basically feel fine about the different stuff because it's not getting to you the way it was before. As a matter of fact, you're now in this rather relaxed, pliant state, which also helps you even more go with treating the objects all the same because you're... What do you call it? Once you're able to do this, then you're able to go with each moment more particularly and less get pulled around by it.

[21:52]

Does that make sense? Gene? Gene? This process you're talking about, just for clarification, when you think about noticing the moment of note or all that, were you moving into tranquility? Tranquility meditation, right. Going to that deeper state as the stabilization? Tranquility and stabilization are interchangeable. Tranquility, quiescence, stabilization, calming, these are different words for that one type of meditation, which comes through being, you train yourself to be in each moment. And in that way, you're training yourself, I say. You're training your mind to be in each moment. So it means you're training various mental factors to be the way consciousness is. You're training your mental factors, which aren't cognitive mental factors, but are associated with cognition.

[22:56]

You're training them to be like cognition. The mind itself does not grasp the objects. conceptualization grasps the objects. You're training your grasping side of your mind to be like the knowing side of the mind. The knowing side of the mind just knows. It doesn't grasp. It doesn't elaborate. But you have other facilities which can grasp and elaborate. You're taking these facilities and training them into this simple way of being in accord with basic, pure, presence of the object boom [...] and then in that way of being you shift into a calmer place even while the stuff still going on you're kind of like i said i felt like i was below it and the the impact is reduced you know the impact of my eyelids was somewhat reduced it wasn't jangling me anymore and also if you try if i tried at all to get down there

[24:00]

That's antithetical to the practice of just accepting each thing as it is. By accepting each thing as it is, by accepting the surface, you go deep. By wishing to go deep, you're fighting the surface. And then also to elaborate the surface and Now modify the surface also keeps you on the surface, but letting the surface moment by moment just be the surface just the way it is You go you settle down Iran You work if you're going to concentrate on the breath Then you would you would whatever whatever way your whatever way the breath is coming to you you would treat the breath as I just said you try to Have the present The present presence of the breath would be all you're working with and then if you heard the piano music You would deal with the piano music that way too, but you wouldn't be focusing on the piano music so you might choose the breath as a topic, but the pervasive topic is the way you're treating the breath and

[25:19]

will apply to other phenomena which aren't your topic of concentration. But your pervasive topic of concentration, your pervasive topic of stabilizing meditation, is the way you're training your mind to pay attention to the breath. That's what you're really always doing. And you do that training when the breath is appearing, but if you temporarily can't find your breath, you do that same training of your attention with whatever you are aware of. Many people find that by focusing on the breath it helps them train the mind this way, train the attention this way. Insight then is when you turn the contemplation to the analytical or a differentiated object namely you you widen the sphere now and now you can start looking if you wish at the melody or at the characteristics of each moment rather than just focusing on the way you deal with each moment you can look at what is the characteristics of this particular impression

[26:36]

And Sarah asked last week towards the end, she said, well, I think you were talking about insight. I think he said something like, well, what do you do? What should we do? And I would suggest to you that when you first start practicing, start turning your attention to look at what the object is. In other words, the attention is turned, in a sense, not exactly outward, but more to the object and what is the nature of the object. So now something's coming to you, and you just try to treat whatever comes to you in this very basic way, treat everything the same. When you're stabilized, then you now turn and look to see what is it that's coming. See the difference? Whatever's coming, you treat the same, and then you turn and look at what it is that's coming. start to notice, for example, that maybe what's coming has different aspects. In other words, it can be analyzed.

[27:40]

In other words, it presents its analytic side to you, which you weren't going to get into before. Even if it presented an analytic image, you would relate to each element in the analysis the same way, because you're training yourself in this same way of dealing with whatever is coming. Linda? So if I react in that manner... In what manner? In the manner of just observing what's presented to me without a great mind, are you surprised to respond to that manner? As long as you're practicing the... Right. Right. So I don't have to beat myself up more that I'm not following my breath than I am observing something. Right. Good. And even if you are not following your breath and you're observing something else, and now that you're observing something else, you're elaborating on that thing and not taking it in its moment-by-moment presentation to you, even if your attention is not trained into this very simple, going-like way of being, you still don't have to beat yourself up.

[29:02]

However, if you do beat yourself up, it is possible to experience the beating moment beat by beat. And as you experience the beating beat by beat, you drop to a level of calm underneath the beating. The beating doesn't really reach you anymore. And then, when you feel fairly stable, you can like then... turn your attention to see what is the nature of beating what is the nature of this punishment that you're doing to yourself about your meditation it has a you know it has a shape it has a structure it has a it you know has certain conditions and you can see them and as you understand them you understand the nature of the phenomena of punishing yourself or whatever you can understand its nature and what you understand is nature you understand that its nature is exactly the same as the nature of not punishing yourself.

[30:07]

In some sense, as I mentioned earlier, when you train yourself at stabilization, you're not moving among the objects. You don't move among the different objects. There's different objects, but you're not moving among them. Because whatever object comes to you, you're basically unmovingly present with each one and treating each one the same. And when you do that, you become stabilized. And when you stabilize, then you can turn around and look at these objects, and you gradually realize that there really isn't a difference between the objects. When you're practicing stabilization, you do not get involved in the difference, but you still think there is a difference. Once you don't get involved in them, you calm down, and based on that calm, then you can look at the differences and see the differences and understand that there is no difference. You become free of the difference. See the difference? The stabilization, as soon as you come out of it, you still think there's a difference, and you are somewhat affected by the difference.

[31:17]

when you train yourself almost as though there weren't a difference you become calm and that calm becomes the basis of looking at all the different things and realizing that there aren't really any differences because everything has the same qualities everything is impermanent selfless and so on everything depends on everything else nothing stands The different things are not really separate. They make each other. So you don't really see any difference, so you're free of the difference without changing anything. All the structures by which things are different are still there. You can still see one person and another person, but you're free of the idea of that they're different. Yes, so I'll just take the music again. I hear this music, and whatever kind of music it is, and it's affecting, you know, I don't know if the music is really affecting, but sounds are affecting, these mechanical waves are affecting this body, and the body is impressed.

[32:33]

There's a basic raw impression every moment of these waves hitting me. They hit my ears, they hit my eyes. okay and then there's other things happening to me too but let's just say the music for one and uh if if my mind is not in training then when these things come my mind tends to like connect them you know elab elaborate one into being connected or not connected with the other one so the sounds of music go together separate from the sounds of the street noise That's an elaboration, you know. Actually, it's like, don't get off on this one. Stay away from that. This is, I'm telling you, about my grandson, right? He's always developing. But anyway, babies are like, in some ways, like we are. Actually, the sound of the music, a music sound comes, a street noise sound comes, a feeling up from your seat comes, a temperature thing comes.

[33:36]

These things are coming, boom, [...] right? They're not coming like in these... The music sounds aren't actually coming all together in the package. Our mind is stringing them together. So you have a music sound that's elaborated and by that elaboration you connect it to the other music sounds. Some minds don't do that. Like a baby's mind does not connect the different music sounds together and the mother's voice together and the feeling on his fanny together. But by conceptual elaboration you can connect all the music sounds together, right? I know I suggest that to you. So anyway, The conceptual, when you first started hearing the music, you hear the tune. That's the conceptual elaboration of this information that's coming to you. Now you could have just a concept of the type of, you could snap into and like name the music and that might be one concept. But also the different patterns of melody are elaborative process and that's the superficial level of it, which might be pleasant or unpleasant.

[34:39]

In this case it was somewhat mixture between pleasant and unpleasant for me. Partly because I didn't want to listen to the music, but I do like the music. So anyway, on this level, I withdrew from the signs of the different notes. I withdrew my attention and brought my attention back from the signs of the different notes to dealing with the raw impression of each note. my attention and training my attention that way and also train my attention not to try not to elaborate into the idea of getting myself calm that was a fleeting little melody that went through at a certain point but didn't get involved in that one either but I did notice that when I didn't try to do that I found myself dropped down and into this different way of being with the music and my body and the room and everything. However, I continued to do the same thing, although the impact was softer.

[35:47]

I kept dealing with this softened, less disturbing impact of the same information. kept doing the same. Now, I didn't actually move into insight with the music. But if I had, then if I felt calm enough and the music was going on, then I would turn the attention back to look, well, what music is this? You might even identify it or see how the melody is going and start to analyze the music. Start to notice how the different signs of the music are operating and how your mind is apprehending them. And start to notice the impermanence of the music, for example. To start to feel the fleeting quality of it. At first, if you do notice the fleeting quality, it's the fleeting quality woven together with conceptual elaboration. So you're noticing the fleeting quality, but you're building a conceptual network on top of it so the fleeting quality is not tossing you around.

[36:54]

If you're calm and you don't get back into elaborating but analyzing, the different notes, then you start to realize the impermanence of the music. So rather than getting pushed around by the melody, you're somewhat transformed by seeing the impermanence of the melody. You tune into the fleeting, impermanent nature of what previously seemed to be this chunk of music, which, you know, like when the music's changing, it feels like it's a piece of music, right, rather than it's a fleeting, rather than you getting exposed to the fleeting phenomenon of sound. So then you have developing insight into the nature of the music, which is also showing how this music is basically the same as all music. And when you tune into the impermanent quality of the music, differences in the notes are relatively irrelevant.

[37:57]

because you're tuned into the fleeting nature of the music, the fleeting nature of the sound. You're having insight. And this way of relating to the sound or the music is a different way of being with it, based on the calm, which is also a different way of being with it. But there's two different ways of being with it. When you tune into impermanence, again, you're free of the difference between good music and less well-performed music, and the difference between one piece of music and several pieces of music being played at the same time. And you're free of that difference, but you're also free of the difference between meditating when there is silence and meditating when there's noise. when there's frog sounds or surf sounds or cricket sounds or trucks or whatever become through your insight into the way things are you become free of the suffering that comes from being bound to the marks to the signs of things

[39:16]

possible to discover the impermanence of things without being taught about impermanence before you enter into meditation. It is possible. However, you might misinterpret the impermanence. For example, that things are annihilated. percent maybe whereas if you get education in impermanence on the intellectual level before you enter into meditation you actually get the direct experience of impermanence you've already been educated to know that that doesn't mean that things are destroyed so that's why i said the the third topic is all the different buddhist teachings which you have received but through hearing or reading or whatever and discussing before and you had some insight into what impermanence means by hearing the Buddha's teaching about impermanence although you've received that information you haven't necessarily like seen it yourself in its actual form the way it looks when you're not getting pulled all over the place by a disturbed mind when you see impermanence after realizing calm

[40:41]

it impacts you and transforms you more deeply than the way it transforms you when you hear about it in a class or discuss it or read about it. However, you can be transformed by the teaching at the intellectual level, the reflective thinking level. These also can transform you, but you're transformed more deeply when you have Tranquility and insight combined and then you look at the teaching So I gave an example of where you would be looking at something like music Treat it in this this train yourself to receive the sounds in such a way that you calm down One calm then turn back and look at the music or listen to the music Seeing it as an analytical object By seeing that way realize it's It's impermanence and now you understand the impermanence in a state of calm and it impacts you and transforms you at another level over the way it's transformed you before.

[41:55]

You know, I've heard many Buddhists say, you know, the Buddha really did have an excellent teaching there when he mentioned to people that things are impermanent. That really was a great teaching. It really is useful and comes in handy all the time. But that's true at the intellectual level, that's true. But then if you actually see it from the state of calm, when you're actually witnessing the way things happen, it's deeper. All the different Buddhist teachings would eventually be studied by combining these stabilizing, calming practices together with insight. And this meditative mind, which has these two dimensions, one a very focused one and one a wider one, these two aspects of the meditative mind applied to all the Buddhist teachings, which you had previously, many of them, studied in classes or lectures or books.

[42:58]

Now you take them into this meditative place and now they transform you more deeply. You know, we can say, you know, that they transform your body. They transform your... We go so far as to say they transform your DNA. they make you into a different, they make your body different so that you're actually, your body now responds differently than it did before you're meditating. So a certain kind of like instinctive selfishness is actually taken away out of your body. They're a little selfish, but they got that thing called the selfish gene, right? You know that book? The selfish gene is like turned upside down, turned into a altruistic gene. your body actually gets changed through this meditation process. Amazing, but that's being proposed. Now, I just wanted to mention, there's not much time left, I just wanted to mention that I think I said something in this class about, did I say something about the hidden teaching?

[44:06]

Did I say anything about that? No? No, that was a different class. But anyway, I sometimes have offered these teachings in terms of how this this traditional meditation presentation is hidden in Zen practice. Tatsuhara had the title, right? Didn't he? I don't even remember. I don't know. Anyway, I feel that this process is actually... You can't get away from this process in meditation, but in Zen teachings you almost never find them talking about stabilization or tranquility and insight. And... There's a number of reasons, I think, both political and compassionate, why I think in Zen teaching, you don't find this present first. And maybe some other day, the political ones The compassionate ones, I think, are that a big part of Zen practice is around not practicing with a gaining idea, not practicing to try to improve yourself, which is closely related to a deep, anyway, a complete faith

[45:35]

you actually are fully possessing Buddha's wisdom right now. That your actual nature is that you fully possess the wisdom and virtues of the Buddha right now. It's not something that the Zen school made up. This is something that the Buddha said from right off. in a number of the great vehicle teachings the Buddha says in those scriptures now I see that all living beings fully possess the wisdom and virtues of the Buddha but because of attachment and erroneous conceptions they don't see it I want to teach them I want to help them see this but The Zen school has been quite careful to not give teachings which basically say, you know, you're not already a Buddha.

[46:44]

You're actually, you know, you've got to like improve, [...] improve until you're a Buddha. That approach has some drawbacks. So one way of practicing Zen is actually to stay away from these meditation practices in a sense and first of all try to help the person, try to awaken in the person a faith, which is actually we already have, but it's kind of like a sleep. So one approach to Zen is to wake up that faith that actually you are perfect. Not just you are perfect, but you are part of the perfection of all beings. And we're not going to improve at all. We're just going to understand that someday. We're not going to get to be better. We can't get better.

[47:45]

Life doesn't get better. But you wake up to that, which someone might say, well, that's better. But Buddha doesn't think it's better. Buddha doesn't think it's better after you wake up. Buddha wants you to wake up, but Buddha doesn't think you'll be better afterwards because if you'll be better afterwards, then you're not as good now. And Buddha doesn't think you're not good now. Buddha doesn't think you're not good now. Buddha is very happy about the way you are now and wants you to understand why Buddha is so happy about the way you are now, which you don't get. If you think somebody's going to improve, there's a waste product that goes with that. There's a backlash. So in Zen, if you stay away from this meditation instruction, you kind of avoid getting people in this idea that they're going to get better at concentration, they're going to avoid all these hindrances, they're going to eliminate all the defects in their meditation, then they're going to get into all these different stages and aspects of insight, and then they're going to be a Buddha.

[48:53]

It's hard to learn this stuff without slipping into that. So some Zen teachers say, just stay away from the whole thing. You can talk about it, but don't teach it in such a way that they notice that there's stages. Because if they notice there's stages, they're going to get into like, well, when's the next stage? And when are you going to give us that next teaching that will eliminate that problem? So a big part of Zen is to avoid falling into steps and stages and trying to improve. So that's part of the reason why I think that's a compassionate reason for not exposing people to a graded course of meditation. I'm exposing you to a graded course of meditation here to some extent, but not fully because I don't want you to get brought up about this because that's antithetical to the whole project. Part of the reason why like in Zen, to avoid this getting involved in stages and improvement, the Zen tradition doesn't present these teachings because these teachings in the Indian tradition were presented in terms of stages.

[50:11]

Like there's nine stages of mental stabilization. There's the five hindrances. There's six defects in the meditation and stabilizing meditation. There's eight antidotes to the six defects. which I, you know, probably bring up this fall. But I bring it up in the context of that you're not going to improve. If you think you're going to improve, I'm not going to tell you how. But if you don't think you're going to improve, I'll tell you how to wake up to that you're unimprovable, which you might think, boy, that would be a big improvement. but then if you do you have to take two steps backwards so a faith in your buddha nature protects you from being greedy about learning to be a good meditator so you don't beat yourself up when you're progressing slowly and also your teacher doesn't beat you up if you progress slowly because in some ways what people have to find out most of all is that their teacher

[51:17]

will never abandon them and never be discouraged even if they take eons to learn the first thing about meditation because in some ways people want to most learn that buddha loves them no matter what their level of learning is and when they have that confidence then they can really go to work on their meditation which is It's a wonderful way to practice, but it isn't because it makes you better. It's because it helps you realize fully what you are and what everybody is. And it sets you free. But being free is not better than being in bondage. If you think it is, then you've got to go take a class on how bondage isn't worse than freedom before you can learn about how to become free because if you try to get freedom, you stay in bondage. So this is some of the reasons, a little bit about why I think Zen is hidden, this practice, because this practice is like steps and stages.

[52:25]

It looks like a nice program. Zen is very much about there's no program. We're not going anywhere. We're not going anyplace. Yes, Dave? How do you learn to play the piano? You know, I mean, I understand what you're saying. I think about, you know, when we're listening to the piano player, we're all reacting to it a certain way. Like, we have a tune that we've done. Right. We have a most reactive piano player playing the tune, and he or she knows what the last notes were, knows what the next notes are. So it's not like, they're not deceived by the music. They're not, like, falling into this trap of... knowing what the future is or something. They're playing music, right? They're progressing here. I mean, if you were to start studying the piano, you would progress. You would not know the tune. Right, well... First, and then after a while, you would start thinking, oh, wow, I know. I know what's coming next. Well, you might do that.

[53:27]

It's certainly possible because even in meditation practice you get into, I know what's coming next. You sit down and your mind's all jangled and you say, okay, I'm going to deal with, I'm going to do this training now and I know what's going to happen next. In a few minutes I'm going to drop down there and it's going to be groovy. You can get into that. But that slows you down. But in learning to play the piano, it doesn't slow you down. Well, we don't know. We don't know. If you take an adult, like you or me, and have us play the piano, and you would practice meditation with the piano, and I would be into getting something out of it, you might continue for many years, and I might quit after a few weeks because I get so frustrated because I'm not progressing. And also someone might come in the room and tell us, you know, Reb, you know Dave, Neither one of you are ever going to be any good. You started too late. So in some ways, if we start learning the piano in our later years, or our middle years in your case, we know we're not ever going to get very good.

[54:38]

So in some ways, we might not even be trying to improve. And in fact, I did start playing the piano when I was about 35 with my daughter. And I was not trying to get good. And I just did these scales and stuff. And I found that when I did them, something happened in my brain, which was very interesting. And I never did get good, but I really enjoyed the practice. And I didn't really improve. I mean, I did improve, I guess, from some standards. But it's fun to learn. Well, I'm not sure. But I don't know if I was grasping. I was really just doing the piano to be with my daughter. Well, I could be grasping after that. But I didn't really feel like my relationship with my daughter was improving. I was just being with my daughter. And she was under the piano while I was playing.

[55:43]

But I'm just saying you can learn these things without a gaining idea. And it's hard to say whether we don't have two Daves, one that does it without a gaining idea and one that does it with to see which one enjoys the piano more or which one gets better. It might be that the one who's grasping learns more tunes and can finally be a performer. That's my question, I guess. We're just talking specifically about learning the piano, but the person who's grasping and always being, you know, kind of leaning towards the future is the person who's going to technically learn the piano. Well, that's your hypothesis, but this is a kind of unscientific statement on your part because... Huh? Huh? I know, but we don't have two Daves to see which one would learn faster. So he's a carpenter, right? And in Japanese carpentry tradition, what they often do is they have the apprentice just sharpen blades for years.

[56:49]

Now you could say that the reason why they do that is so he'll learn how to sharpen the blades, but another way to see it is the reason why they do that is he'll stop trying to learn how to be a carpenter. And after he stops trying to learn carpentry, he enters into a state where he cannot learn carpentry because he's If he was trying to gain something, he would be very frustrated not learning virtually anything for a long time. So that's kind of like an influence of Buddhism on carpentry in those cases of where they get the apprentice to basically give up his idea of what he's going to learn when. You said the same thing about the Marine Corps. I don't think so. I don't think you can say the same thing about the Marine Corps. I think they learn how to kill really fast there. I think they satisfy their gaining idea in the Marine Corps, as far as I know, quite quickly. They don't get them to do something that has nothing to do with learning how to be a killer. They want them to learn that fast.

[57:52]

But the carpenter is, I think, the apprentice. I think the apprentice, in some cases anyway, in some cases, he's basically giving up his idea of what he had in mind learning. And the Zen stories are like that too. The guy comes to learn Zen and the teacher says, okay, well, you know, help me cook lunch. I didn't come to learn cook lunch. And the teacher says, well, get out. You know? And the guy comes back and says, okay, I'll, you know. So, anyway, I don't really know which promotes learning the piano or carpentry. But in meditation, those who are trying to learn it, they progress more slowly than those who, you know, are not trying to learn it. We have two people, both of them are sitting, going into the meditation hall and sitting there. One's trying to learn it, the other one's not. They're both spending their time doing this. One's trying to get something, the other one isn't.

[58:55]

The one who's trying to get anything has basically already practically got it. And it's hard for them to stay in that place because since they've got it, now they can invite You know, they're going to have a tendency to want to hold on to that because they're very happy. This other guy, he's trying to get it. He's totally miserable, banging his head against the wall. Because, in fact, he's going against the process. now if he's very clever you know and musicians that come to practice zen are very clever they they sometimes get themselves into learning the techniques really well and then they have sometimes a big crash later because they get really good at this kind of fake practice which is based on the idea that they're doing it which is another big thing that we have to get over because this whole thing is not something you're doing The whole practice that's happening here of this, you know, hearing this teaching and learning this stabilizing and insight thing is not something you're doing by yourself anyway, which you will someday realize.

[60:00]

You're doing this because all the Buddhas are practicing with you. And they're not doing it either. They're not, you know, you're not just a puppet that Buddhas are running to practice meditation. Just like when you learn the piano, you're not just a puppet being run by, you know, Bach and Beethoven. But in fact, Bach and Beethoven, they're helping you, and you wouldn't be able to practice the piano without them. And you're not practicing the piano without them. And you're not practicing the piano without the piano makers and all those Italian guys and those German guys and those French guys. You cannot practice without them. And you're not practicing. They're all with you. So you're not doing it by yourself. But this is another approach, which is, this is often the approach of Zen teaching, is to start making the point right away that you can't do this practice by yourself. It's only us all together doing it. But this presentation of meditation sounds like you're being taught in such a way that you're going to do this, which is, again, it's antithetical to what you're going to learn.

[61:13]

is that you're not doing the practice by yourself. Yes? But you do have to make a commitment to sit, so if all the Buddhists are practicing with you and you're never sitting on your cushion and just letting them practice for you... No, no, no, wait, [...] wait. You said you switched from with to for. I switched from what? You switched from the Buddhist practicing with you to for you. Right. Okay? I didn't say for. Yes, you said with. With. But that means you have a commitment to practice. That much you have to have, right? That's kind of a learning commitment. I know, but the commitment is not something that you make on your own. The commitment to practice and the commitment to live for the welfare of other beings is not something that you do yourself. And it's not something that Buddha does to you. It's something that happens because of your relationship to Buddha. And your commitment to practice happens because of your relationship to Buddha.

[62:16]

You can't make a commitment to practice, you can't do anything good all by yourself. But in that commitment, would there be a desire to learn buried in there? Isn't that buried in there someplace? Because that's what we were talking about. There can be a desire to learn. There can be an enthusiasm to learn. There can be, yeah, an inspiration to learn. All those things can be there. You can have an inspiration to learn carpentry, to learn piano. All that stuff can happen. And I would just parenthetically mention that you cannot yourself produce your inspirations. You can't make yourself inspired. And nobody else can make you inspired either. But inspiration happens because of your relationship to everyone. Inspiration can arise and a lot of people are going around banging drums and yelling and screaming and singing and dancing to inspire us, but they don't inspire us.

[63:18]

relationship between them doing all this stuff and us that in which the inspiration arises and there's the inspiration but you don't make it happen and nobody else can do it you can't do it alone and nobody else can do it for you that's a true that's the case of all the meditation practices part of the problem of presenting them the way that you know looks like you're doing them on your own is misleading In the end, I'm telling you that I've been presenting them in such a way that you might have been misled. So Diana and Lucy? Well, I was at the beginning of this class talking about the meditation is purified of compassionate sentiment, but built with compassion. thoughts of myself were self-referenced thoughts. So through the sounds like you made, through the stabilization practice, I could selfless, and then I could look into whatever situation.

[64:30]

Well, I would put it slightly different. You said that when you maybe first approach life, or at some point in your life, you started to notice that you felt some compassion. And then maybe you noticed that your compassion was somewhat defiled by self-interest. So then you heard maybe about, you know, a teaching of Buddhism which proposed to help you clarify and purify your compassion. And then you said that you thought that tranquility or stabilization would... I forgot what you said, it would do to the... Yeah, so the stabilization temporarily subdues or eliminates temporarily your self-centered approach to meditation and your self-centered... It might also, in a state of calm, reduce or alleviate your self-centered approach to compassion.

[65:40]

However, the actual purification occurs through insight. When you understand your relationship to other beings, your self-centered approach to compassion is eliminated because you understand there are actually nobody, there's nobody out there on their own separate from you. purifies your compassion. So it's insight that purifies your compassion. It's understanding the nature of yourself. When you misunderstand yourself, you think there's you and other people. And thinking that there's you and other people introduces an impurity into your compassion. So if I have the... So it was what you were saying a few minutes ago that if I have the aspiration to... That's the gaining part that's then... No. I mean, it sounds like that, but you could have an aspiration to purify compassion without thinking that that's an improvement.

[66:44]

I often use this example of teaching my daughter how to ride a bicycle. I wanted to teach my daughter how to ride a bicycle because I thought it would be wonderful to be there when she learned. I heard about from my wife about the wonderful moment when she learned how to ride a bicycle and her father was in attendance. And I know also that being around Buddhist meditators when they learn how to meditate is wonderful to be there when they learn. It's wonderful to share the learning experience. But in teaching my daughter how to ride a bicycle, what it involved was offering her the opportunity to get a bicycle riding lesson and her saying, no thanks, Dad. And offering it again, her saying, No, thanks. And saying, would you like to know how to ride a bicycle? No. Buying her a bicycle. Thanks, Dad. Thanks for the bicycle. You want to learn how to ride it? No, thank you. And the day came, one day she came up to me, maybe out of pity, and said, you want to teach me how to ride a bicycle?

[67:56]

And I said, yes. And we went to the park. And I taught her how to ride a bicycle, or I helped her learn how to ride a bicycle. I held the seat and the handlebars and ran alongside of her. And then at a certain point, I felt like she was steering on her own. I wasn't really steering much. I let go of the steering wheel, the handlebars. And I was just balancing her by holding the seat. And at a certain point, I felt like I wasn't really doing much with the balancing. And right about the time when I felt like I wasn't doing anything, she said, you can let go now, Dad. And I did. And off she went. It was wonderful. As wonderful as I thought it would be. However, it was not an improvement in my daughter. She didn't get to be a better person. And if she had never learned how to ride a bicycle, since I had practiced Zen for a while, I was protected against thinking that she was an inferior daughter for not learning how to ride a bicycle or not giving me the chance to be here with her when she learned this.

[69:01]

Because, you know, her mother got to teach her a lot of stuff that I didn't. This is one thing I thought I could be there to learn with her. And I was. But it wasn't an improvement. If I think it's an improvement, then what happens, ladies and gentlemen, is stuff like this. After many years of offering my daughter the opportunity to learn how to ride a bicycle, finally she came up to me and said, would you like to teach me how to ride a bicycle? No, I wouldn't. I don't want to teach you how to ride a bicycle. Why? Because all those years I thought I was an improvement, and I got angry and hurt that she didn't do this thing with me, and now I don't want to have anything to do with her. And the same thing applies to you and your meditation practice. If you think it's an improvement to purify your compassion, you're going to trash your compassion and say, forget compassion, because hatred doesn't need to be purified. And I can hate people really well in a really impure way, and it makes it all better.

[70:01]

So forget compassion. You'll abandon beings, including yourself, if you get into improvement. But if you appreciate things the way they are, you still can want to learn how to purify your compassion of what you can see as a fault. So Buddha wants you to wake up, but Buddha doesn't think you're going to improve. And if you practice compassion, you can notice the faults in your compassion, and you can see how your self-clinging and your misunderstanding of yourself interfere with things that you want to do. You can see that, and you can want to, like, get over that, but you can learn to do that without thinking there's something wrong with you the way you are. and that you're going to be better later because that better way of thinking is exactly the same as your misunderstanding of yourself namely you're not something over here all by itself everybody in the universe makes you the way you are everybody in the universe supports your present level of understanding not an accident that you're at this kind of form that you have is not an accident it is a wonderful thing it is the way

[71:11]

universe is manifesting as you right now. It's not an error. And you fully possess the wisdom and virtues of Buddha, and if you think you're going to improve, you're basically slapping that idea in the face. You say, yeah, I do, but, you know, basically I don't believe it, so I'm going to get better, then I'll believe it. And Buddhist teachers are flexible supposedly so somebody says comes to them and says I'm no good you know I have no Buddha nature and I can't practice then rather than try to argue with them and say oh yes you do we give them a course of things that they can do and if they do those things then they'll think they're better and when they think they're better then they can open up to the idea that already booed in the first place but sometimes people you have to play along with this improvement thing for the person to have enough confidence to open up to the idea that they don't need to be improved so that's one of the famous stories in the Lotus Sutra it's about this guy who was a total wreck but actually he was the son of a multi-billionaire when he saw his father his father saw him his father loved him

[72:42]

this is his son he sent a messenger down to his son and his son fainted because he thought the messenger was coming to kill him in his despicable emaciated desperate state and then the father realized that the son couldn't believe that he was his son this couldn't handle it so then he hired his son to shovel shit elephant shit And that the son believed he could do. That was seen appropriate to him. And he got paid for it and got some clothes and housing. And he did that for 20 years. After 20 years, the father came to him dressed in rags and said, I'd like you to be in charge of the shit-shoveling crew. And the guy said, okay. And gradually, through this gaining idea, finally the son could come into the house. And the father could say, you know, you can learn about the house. And after doing that for a while, the father said, well, I'm getting old now, and I'd like you to take over the business. And the son said, OK. And then he called in all the people in the neighborhood and said, I'd like you to see that this young man's going to take over.

[73:52]

I'd like you to know that he's just like my son. Matter of fact, he is my son. And then he could understand that, you know, he always was his son. So, sometimes you need to be catered to in your lower opinion of yourself for a while. So, it's necessary. If you're bound and determined that you're no good... Then we'll think, now, what could a no-good person do? And then give you something that a no-good person could do. And then after a while, you can maybe finally accept that you're not going to get better. You're already perfect. And now that, one of the most wonderful things about your perfection is that your perfection can be endlessly unfolded. and it can blossom endlessly through practice. But the practice doesn't improve you. It just unfolds your Buddha nature. It doesn't give you Buddha nature.

[74:54]

It blossoms it. It brings it into realization. So be careful. in that way. And that's part of the reason why Zen is careful not to present teachings which sound like they're going to make people better at something. They don't make you better, they just unfold your perfection. They unfold your completeness. They unfold the wonder of life. They don't make life better. You see? Yes, they do. Say, okay, okay, okay, okay. They do. But anyway, that's part of the reason why I think you don't find these teachings in Zen because they're so susceptible to thinking in terms of better and worse and gain and loss and stimulating greed and hatred and punishing yourself and stuff like that.

[75:55]

A lot of Zen teachers don't have very many students because they come and they just don't give them anything. So there's no way for me to fail. There's no way for me to beat myself up and all I have to do is just sit there and not do anything. How am I going to fail at that? You'll find a way. So thank you for your perfect attendance. And thank you for, you know, of course, your gaining ideas, which I also, you know, understand and slip into every now and then. I hope this is a good start for you in learning this stabilization and insight practice. And like I said, I think probably this fall... keep working on it for another, for the rest of the year.

[76:59]

So you can get, you know, more and more skillful at it. Okay? Thank you for your teaching. It's not mine. Huh? Thank you for not leaving. Yeah, right. It was hard. But with your help, I was able to accomplish nothing.

[77:24]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_88.03