I want to say a few more words about the meetings, the interprofessional meetings. And that in the formal meetings, I asked if it was all right if we just talked about what's coming up right now. Confession is an apparent contradiction to that. But the act of confession is not, you're not talking about what you did, you're confessing it. So confession, I think, is an appropriate thing for appropriate practice in these meetings. And it doesn't, when you're in the act of confession, when you say the thing you did, you're not taking yourself away from it. the activity of saying the thing you did. You're not moving away from the present.

[01:04]

You're admitting your activity. So that's an example of talking about something you did in the past without distracting yourself from the present experience of saying what you did. That make sense? And so confession often makes us feel more grounded and more serious about our work clearing away cobwebs. Does that make sense? Another thing I would suggest is that you think of them as a situation in which we are mutually creating a space of compassion. Compassion not being created just from one side, both sides are trying to create a compassionate space, compassionate arena.

[02:14]

And the compassion means, of course, concern for the welfare of living beings, but it also has the dimensions of giving, conscientiousness, being careful of activity, being observant and vigilant of what's going on in terms of activity, being patient, being enthusiastic, and being concentrated. So in this interpersonal arena, both parties are working to develop these, these qualities, these virtuous qualities.

[03:54]

Does that make sense? If you want to take a break now and then and let the other person do it for you, of course that's alright. Another thing I thought I might mention is that my wife told me about this psychologist. She told me several years ago about him. His name is Searles. And he had this patient, I think in a hospital setting. And he saw her, I think, five times a week for 38 years. And then I think the time that I heard that, that was like he kept living and she kept living.

[05:03]

So I don't know how many years they actually met. Five times a week or something. And maybe it wasn't five times a week the whole time. Maybe after a while they cut down a little bit. But anyway, he spent all this time of his life psychotic lady and she didn't exactly stop being psychotic i mean she was a little less psychotic after 30 some years and she was at the beginning but anyway spent a lot of time with this person and she didn't get much better and i just thought wow imagine spending that much of your time and this is uh you know this is a this is a hospital setting where And she's not paying me for this. He just spent all his time with her. But this psychologist, he has come to the, he came to the realization, or the theory, I guess.

[06:07]

He came with the idea and the theory that what's going on in a lot of therapy situations, what's bringing the person to the therapy situation, you think, They're coming to try to cure the therapist. Unconsciously, that's what they're trying to do. And that's what a lot of people are unconsciously doing with their parents. They're trying to cure the suffering of their parents. And then when they fail, they become sick. and then they try again with a psychotherapist. And if they fail with the psychotherapist, it's kind of another tragedy. So it's good if the psychotherapist becomes cured, because that's what the person is trying to do, unconsciously. And now in the case of Buddhism, of course, the teacher is not sick.

[07:13]

But even though a teacher might not be sick, or even though a teacher might be sick, but let's just say maybe the teacher's not sick, but even though the teacher might not be sick, you still might be trying unconsciously to heal or cure the teacher. Now if the teacher's not sick, you're going to be successful. But anyway, I think it's fine to be interested in, and the point is that the curing is happening in a multi-dimensional way. And I just thought I might disclose all this, all these perspectives at the beginning. And then you can go back into the denial about everything. Um, so, is that okay?

[08:20]

May I move on now to some other things? Um, just a, first of all, a wardrobe comment. That I'm, I'm wearing this robe, which, uh, Sister Kiroshi gave me. It'd be 30 years ago this summer that he gave me this robe. Hasn't it held up well? The wonders of modern chemistry. Well, actually, chemistry of the 70s. Well, I guess it's some kind of, yeah, some kind of nylon. But it's held up really well. He gave me another robe at the same time, a silk one, a moquesa, but that fell apart. quite a long time ago. This has held up really well. I just, I thought, you know, I wondered if, I wondered who's going to go the longer, the rogue or me.

[09:28]

And in later meetings, I will show you some other wardrobe where I'm going to beat the rogue. This one's really sturdy. It does, it works really nicely. The two sutras that we've been chanting, did you notice those two sutras? And the paragraph that's missing, have you memorized the paragraph that's missing, Max? I thought maybe at the end of that sutra you could say that last paragraph. Okay? So we'll have a little Yeah, so we'll stop there for a second before the echo and then you can chant that last paragraph about the happy people. Okay? When will that be next that we'll do that?

[10:32]

Tomorrow morning? Tomorrow morning are we going to do it again? We're doing that first, right? That's in the morning, right? We're doing that one in the morning. The turning the wheel. So tomorrow morning, then, at the end, we'll have a little pause. Where's Nino? So at the end, there will be a little pause there, and then Max will say that last paragraph. We'll chant that last paragraph. All right? Yes? Yeah. It's the end of the sutra. And then he's going to do... He's going to do the... You see, it makes sense because that's not the Buddha talking, right? That's a comment, right? It's a narration kind of thing, right? So in terms of what the Buddha said, what the Buddha said stops at that point and then there's this narration of what happened to these people, right?

[11:34]

And then we have their dedication after that. Actually, it reminds me of a story that happened yesterday. I saw a proposed schedule for some ceremonies during the practice period, and one of them was the Martin Luther King birthday. And I wrote an echo for that, for Martin Luther King's birthday at Green Gulch. So when I saw they were going to do it here, I wondered what echo was being done here. So I asked for the echo that Martin Luther King's ceremony here. And when Ina heard about that, she thought that I wanted some response about the ceremony.

[12:36]

You'll get it eventually. Do you understand echo? Do you understand what echo is, Dan? No. Well, neither do you know. Echo is spelled E-K-O, which means identification. But she thought I was asking for an ECHEO. So I wrote a dedication for the Martin Luther King birthday party at Green Gulch. And she thought I was asking for feedback about the ceremony. So the feedback she gave me was that the staff didn't want to do the ceremony. This is some of my dedication. will not be imported to the mountains.

[13:59]

Thank you. But we will have a dedication after we chant the scripture tomorrow morning, which in Japanese is called an echo. See how it all comes together? So we're studying this middle way scriptures, these two scriptures, and so there they are, you know. The Buddha's teaching is like coming out of your mouth, out into the air, you know, and it's written down in pieces of paper. The Buddha's giving you these teachings, these teachings are coming. Right? And then the question is, well, how are you going to work with the teachings? And one way to work with the teachings is you listen to them and recite them and read them and write them. And if you have questions, you discuss them, discuss your questions, and you can have some insight into the teachings in that way.

[15:12]

Okay? Okay. And the next level is you reflect, think about these teachings about the middle way. You think about them in terms of your own experience and whether they hold up to your own experience. And then the next way is you understand them in terms of your actual meditation. And so I thought I'd talk about the actual meditation practice by which one brings the teachings into the body, so to speak, or brings the body into intimacy with the teachings.

[16:15]

Here, last practice period, last winter anyway, we studied this Sandhinirmocana Sutra. And part of the sutra is a chapter on the questions of Maitreya, and that chapter is also sometimes called chapter on yoga, or the chapter on... acquiescence and insight, or calming and insight. And we discussed a little bit, actually we discussed a lot, how it is that the terms calm and insight, or samatha and vipassana, how it is that they don't appear in Zen literature very much.

[17:26]

In Indian Mahayana and also in Theravada teachings, sometimes the full range of meditation practices is sometimes said to have come under the headings of these two types of meditation, of the samatha vipassana. How come in Zen teachers don't talk that way? And we talked a little bit about that. And we also looked for teachings in our tradition that might be actually talking about the same thing, but not using the same language. Do you remember that? Those of you who were last here. And then some of you are here this summer, and last fall some of you have been studying Samatha and Vipassana. They were here last practice period. The...

[18:51]

One of the main places in this scripture where it defines the calming or tranquility, stabilizing type of meditation, shamatha, it says that remaining in seclusion having genuinely settled their minds inwardly, they mentally attend to those doctrines just as they have contemplated them. With continuous inner attention, they mentally attend to that mind which mentally contemplated, which is mentally contemplated by any mind.

[20:27]

So nisamatha is a continuous inner attention where we mentally attend to that mind which is mentally contemplated by any mind. Another translation is then in solitude they attentively meditate on these principles. These principles being whatever has been taught. For example, maybe teachings about the middle way. So they're attending to these principles for careful reflection. Then they attentively meditate meditate on the inner stream of the meditating consciousness. Okay, so this Samatha meditation is to attend to that mind which is contemplated by any mind or to

[21:47]

attentively meditate on the inner stream of the meditating consciousness. And another translation of this is dwelling in solitude, perfectly directing the mind inward, one attends just to the phenomena as they have been brought into consideration. And that attentive mind is mentally, is mental engagement. For it is continuously mentally engaged inward. So the that this type of meditation is to direct the mind inwardly to what?

[22:55]

What are you looking at? What are you attending to? Attending to what? How do you put it? Non-thinking is what you're going to contemplate, or contemplating this way is non-thinking? Right. But what is it that you're contemplating? Are you, are you observing, uh, yeah, you're observing things arising and ceasing, but in particular, you're observing what?

[24:05]

The nature of consciousness? Huh? What? You're observing your capacity to think. You're observing your capability, the capability of your thinking. You're observing the nature of mind You're observing the ability of the mind to be aware of things. You're observing the nature of awareness. You're observing inwardness. Yeah? Is it different from observing moment-by-moment experience? It is to observe moment-by-moment experience by attending to the ability to be aware of moment-by-moment experience.

[25:12]

Separation. Observer. We haven't yet introduced you into the equation. Did you hear yourself mentioned before? Yeah, if you bring yourself into it, there's going to be something extra. We don't have a person here yet. We're talking about the attention being turned around and directed inward in attending to the nature of mind. In attending to the mind which is contemplated by any mind, which is attentively meditate on the inner stream of meditating consciousness. Now, I just wanted to throw out, I think Vicky said that this process could be called non-thinking, and I agree.

[26:43]

There's some other terms in Zen that are about this, I think. One is called learn the backward step, which you hear in the Fukanza Zengi. And it also says in there, turn the light around and shine it inward. Shine it back. This expression, turn the light around and shine it back, is originated with the fourth ancestor of the Zen tradition, Daidoshi or Daoshi. Either one originated that expression of turn the light around and shine it back. Some translations of the Fukanzang Zengi say, turn the light around, shine it back. To illuminate the self. It doesn't say that.

[27:43]

But I think it is true that if you turn the light around, shine it back on the nature of mind, and then if you would study the self, in that context, the self would be illuminated. There's no self being talked about in that text yet. And in the book of Serenity, Case 32, Yangshan says to somebody, reverse your thinking and think of the ability to think. And in another place, Yangshan says, turn the light around, shine it back to illuminate the self. Dai Daoshin actually did talk about Samatha Vipassana.

[28:49]

He's one of the last Zen teachers in our lineage to talk about Samatha Vipassana. But the way he talked about it is different from the way it's often talked about in the Indian tradition, or the Indian and Tibetan tradition. But he did talk about it. Anyway, he just simply said, turn the light around and shine it back. So that's basically what shamatha is, is to turn the light around and shine it back. And, uh, So, how do you turn the light on and shine it back? How do you attend to the nature of mind in your meditation?

[29:54]

By the way, when one becomes able to do this continuously, one gets really comfortable and everything is pretty fine. But I've noticed that people in the process of trying to learn how to do this find it rather difficult to reverse the thinking, to look inwardly. But that seems to be what's being suggested in some of these Zen texts and what's being suggested here in this major Mahayana scripture about... 47th Meditation for the state of life of meditation. Do you have a question? Yes. Yes. So you're asking, is this analogous to attending to sounds?

[31:33]

It would be like attending to the ability to be aware of the sound. So you're hearing a sound. Does it hear the creek now? So you turn the light around and shine it back on the ability to be aware of that sound. So the sound's still there. Because when there's sound, that means that there's hearing. So that means there's awareness. and sound and some interaction between them called, you know, the function of the ear. Now, working together, you have this experience called hearing sound. But the Samatha is to turn around and attend to the ability to be aware of the sound.

[32:42]

Is it tending to the functioning of mind? Yes, it is. But it's, you know, the inner functioning of mind. What's so special about it? Well, one thing special about it was that when you say I, The mind's there. When you say ear, the mind's there. But when you say mind, the eye isn't necessarily there. The ear isn't necessarily there. So mind, the awareness is there for sounds, smells, tastes, touchable, and so on. Awareness is always there. But the eye organ's not always activated when you're smelling something. And the ear organs not functioning necessarily when you're thinking of some conception of how things are going.

[33:48]

But the mind awareness is always there. Pardon? Well, that's another... You say, is it because of that that mind is important? Well, that's another kind of thing that mind's got going for it, is that that's where it's a mental construct. The self comes upside. It's another important aspect of mind. But another thing about mind is that mind is continuous, whereas the functioning of the sense organs... for conscious experience is not continuous. So you, we don't usually meditate on, you know, on some particular sense field as a way to stabilize the consciousness.

[34:57]

Although some people do that because of Tassajara, in the winter anyway, you have this steady sound. But some people actually use the stream which seems to be there all the time, as a meditation object. So, you know, we can put a little tricklet that way, but usually you don't have a steady sound like that to focus on. Some people even play other games with the stream, where there's even one sound in the stream that's even more stable than the other sounds in the stream. Like this kind of overtone there is really, really steady. And they paid attention to that as a way of stabilizing. But it might be that what they did is they discovered by finding that overtone that maybe they actually found some inner quality of the awareness of the sound that they were actually paying attention to. I don't know. But it's not so much that we're saying that mind is

[36:06]

special or better or something. It's just that this particular type of meditation, the shamatha type of meditation, is directing the attention to the nature of mind. And now there are teachings on the nature of mind. Have you heard about those teachings? About the nature of mind? I mean, I know you have, but you just don't want to be the first one to not. You have heard teachings about the nature of mind, haven't you? What teachings have you heard about the nature of mind? Here, like here in Tassar. I'll wait a little while. Yeah, right. The Heart Sutra is a teaching about the nature of mind.

[37:08]

What does the Heart Sutra tell you about the nature of mind? Hmm? Huh? Yeah, it's empty. The nature of mind has its empty nature, ultimately. But now that you've heard that teaching, this shamatha meditation is a is a stage towards trying to take that teaching in in a meditative context. So you're not attending. You've heard the teaching about the nature of mind. Now, if you're going to contemplate that, it's saying, well, first of all, turn the light around. Shine it back. And if you can be steady at that, then you've established the situation in which you'll be able to really deeply understand this teaching about the nature of mind.

[38:11]

In the meantime, you're going to be actually focusing on not the ultimate nature of mind, although you could, but more like the functioning nature of mind, or the capacity of mind, or the active ability of mind. Yeah, I think in the Chinese, when Yongshan says, think back, reverse your thinking, and think, I think one translation is think of the thinking mind. But another translation could be think of the ability to think. Because it has this character for think, and then it has a character which makes, which means ability, or makes something active. You can have another, put a different character there, which means passive. You have thinking with this character, it means the ability to think, and you have thinking with this other character, it means that which is thought of.

[39:12]

So, you can have that which is thought of, and that which is can think of. So, in Samatha, you're looking back at that which can think of things. You're looking at that which can hear things or be aware of sounds. Yes? Is it become subject oriented? Well, let's see, subject-oriented, object-oriented. Well, the word that appears over and over is inner. Inner, inner, inner.

[40:14]

Not necessarily subjective. In this book, Bridges to Quiescent, I ran into something I thought was really interesting, which I hadn't seen before. In two Mahayana commentaries, the Bodhisattva Bhumi and the Prajnaparamita Padesha, it says that Samatha and Vipassana, both of them, may have the real nature of phenomena and the diversity of phenomena because they're meditative objects. Both shamatha, both this inner stabilizing meditation and the Vipassana, the insight meditation, can have the real nature of phenomena and the diversity of phenomena as their meditative objects.

[41:36]

In other words, When doing stabilizing meditation, turning the mind back and looking at the ability of the mind to think, one could see the true nature of the ability of the mind, or one could see the diverse nature of the ability of mind. One could have insight into meditation, if I have insight into emptiness of the mind, see the real nature of the mind while focusing on the mind to stabilize the mind. I think what a lot of people think is you do this shamatha meditation of turning the light around and shining it inwardly to stabilize your mind, and then once your mind is stabilized, then you can use insight to see the true nature of things. I must say I kind of thought that. Except there were some contradictions to that, which I had noticed.

[42:48]

But now I see that there are contradictions that actually that's not so. Now, it can also be the case that insight, which is, you know, looking into... Insight, which is looking into, in some sense... otherness or thatness. One is looking inwardly at the ability, at the nature of mind. The other one is looking at sort of delving into the marks and signs of things. And that insight, now people aren't surprised that insight would be able to have its meditative object, the real nature of things, right? That's what insight's supposed to be about, right? But insight can also be about the diverse, you know, not real quality of things. So like san-do-kai, you know, san is the diverse quality of things, and do is the same quality of things.

[43:57]

The real quality of things is the way all things are the same. They're emptiness. But they also, things vary. Things are the same, but also they're different. Phenomenon are different and also they're the same in their ultimate truth but quiescent Can also have as a habit a meditation object in other words it can see while looking at the mind and using looking at the mind as a way to stabilize itself You could also see the nature of mind before even turning the insight you practice and And I remember one time I heard this story about this yogi who went into a cave to practice Samatha. And he practiced, I think he practiced for 18 years. And he didn't get very far in the Samatha practice.

[45:00]

So the Indian presentation on Samatha practice is often in terms of nine stages. And after 18 years of practice, he got to stage five. You might be able to get stage five faster than 18 years, but anyway, this guy only got to stage five in 18 years. But even though he didn't quite get all the way to Samatha, somehow he heard the word emptiness, or something happened to him about emptiness while he was doing Samatha practice, and he He understood. Anyway. So if you're saying that the subject-object thing is not quite like that, because in a sense, the nature of the mind is the object of the attention.

[46:06]

Attend to the ability to be aware. Like, you know, there was a Zen master, his name was Hui Nung. Nung. Hui means wisdom and Nung means able or capacity. So again, in the Chinese it says, reverse your thinking and look back at the Nung of thinking. Look back at the ability to think. Can you see the ability to think? Can you focus on the ability to think? I mean, most people, I guess, could conclude that we seem to have the ability to think. Where is it? Where are you going to find it? Samatha is saying, Samatha practice is actually to look at your ability to think, which I guess you think you have, but you don't look at it very often, do you? Most people don't. Samatha is saying, yeah, go ahead. Actually, try to be continuously focused on your ability to think.

[47:46]

The Zen teacher Yangshan recommended that the monk reverse his thinking. Rather than just think forward, just go ahead and just operate your thinking machine. Turn the light around and shine it back on your ability to think. Rather than just be aware of things, look at your ability to be aware of things. Okay? So there were some hands and some feet. Yes, Adam? Would you say that again? No. It's a little bit more than that, in a sense. Like I said, you know, the arising of the sound and the ceasing of the sound. So, again, look at the sutra, you know, of watching the arising and ceasing of phenomena, right?

[48:53]

That's what you're doing. And the shamatha aspect of watching, of that process of observing the arising and ceasing of phenomena, would be to look at the ability to be aware of the arising and ceasing of phenomena. So, if you want to, you know, just forget about Samatha practice and just watch the arising and ceasing of phenomena. Because, in fact, that really is what you're watching all the time anyway, and it'd be good if you were mindful of that. Samatha is saying, okay, now, can you now look at your ability to see the arising and ceasing? You have an ability. So, first you can watch arising and ceasing, then can you now... focus on the ability to watch that arising, your ability to be aware of that arising, that's the samatha. And that way of looking at that function of your mind creates this stabilization.

[49:53]

Okay? But it's not different from the arising and ceasing phenomena, and it's not different from watching the arising and ceasing phenomena. It is turning to the inner dimension of the arising and ceasing of phenomena. Were you next, Troy? I don't know. I thought you were just scratching your nose, I guess. Rosie? Sounds related, yeah.

[50:59]

Except it's kind of like the inner part of the space around them. The inner space around the thought. The around a thought, part of what's around a thought, part of the dependent arising in a thought is that there's an ability to be aware of it. So can you notice that? It's not that easy to notice it, but that's what this is suggesting, is that you see if you can attend to your ability to be aware of a thought. And it says, this one, the translation by Powers says, attend to that mind which is mentally contemplated by any mind. that mind which is mentally contemplated by any mind.

[52:00]

So that, no matter what mind you've got, you could, that there is a mind that you can mentally contemplate, namely that mind, or that ability of mind is always there. That's why it's continuous, that's why it's the continuous stream, the inner stream of the meditative consciousness. So it's stable. It's continuous. Is there another hand over there? Yes? Who is this person? I just, I'm pretty tired of re-directing out what I'm supposed to do at the moment. Don't worry about working on it, it's worth doing now. It's just that it's, it's just that it's just, [...] it's

[53:17]

Well, you just said, if I add this. So, yeah, of course, if I add this, then I'm adding it. but you don't have to put it that way. That can just simply be whatever. There's watching the arising and ceasing. You don't have to say, I'm watching the arising and ceasing. Okay? Arising and ceasing, observing, arising and ceasing. Can you say that sentence? Observing, arising and ceasing. Is that a sentence? Sorry. Has to have a subject. Too bad. arising and ceasing, being watched, observing arising and ceasing.

[54:28]

Okay? That's that. So then there can also be the sentence observing the ability to be aware of arising and ceasing. But, you know, part of the difference in the presentation of the Zen meditation and the Indian meditation is the Indian meditation system of teaching Samatha. Although the basic instruction seems to be the same, the Indian system has nine stages and then a set of five obstacles and six antidotes that work together in various powers and so on that you use to overcome the obstacles to attain the nine stages. And, in some ways, Zen meditation is trying to practice without backfiring the whole process from the start, by getting into gain, which is, as you may have noticed from the Katye Anagota Sutra,

[55:48]

sort of pivotal expression of ignorance. You know, thirst, right? Craving. Let's get something out of Buddhism. So, the Zen school is trying to have a meditation that's pure, but not something that is another form of karma. It's not another gaining trip. So they say, can we say, turn the light around and shine it inward? Can we say that without them getting on some kind of gaining trip about this? We wouldn't dare be able to say, because then they'll see those Indian texts, and they'll see nine stages, and when they get to the nine stages, they're going to really get into attainment. So the Zen school, partly, because it just didn't think that, you know, Chinese people were just, you know, they're so greedy.

[56:57]

And when they hear about nine stages, you're just like, there's no way that they're not going to, like, turn this into another power trip. They say, just forget about the whole nine stages thing. Just hide that, you know. There was a monk in China. Can you believe this, you know? The Chinese... after a few hundred years of having Buddhism, they came up with this guy named Jiri, who lived from 336 to 397. And he, I don't know, he was a regular Chinese guy. And he just learned all about Buddhism. After Buddhism hardly had even arrived in China, he just knew everything. And made this great system of teachings. And his teaching was, he taught a lot about Samatha and Vipassana. And then, a little while after that, these Zen people tried to make a school that wasn't going to use all the power of his system.

[57:59]

So, it would be a real test to see if you could possibly consider practicing Samatha without making it into a gaining thing. But, I'm experimenting to see if it's possible to introduce these traditional Zen practices, which I think are Shambhata practices, into a traditional Zen practice community to see if people can practice these things without becoming greedy about these practices. Now, people seem to be greedy about the other practices they're doing, so let's get over the greed about those too. All right? But if we get over the greed about those other ones, maybe we could practice shamatha with that greed also. If we could be pure about our other meditation practices, maybe we could get pure about the shamatha practice.

[59:06]

Yes? Yes. Because I think that we follow We don't want to mess around with the differences that actually develop with food-making and ecology. I think that's where I find my particular interest. And I think that other people have talked about this at times that they've had to because when we had a, when we had, but when I had gone to school, back at the college, we had to wait for the kids to go to school.

[60:23]

I chose to go to college. I chose to go back. I chose to go back to the charter school because it's a real difficult school to go to. I didn't quite understand what you said about I didn't quite understand what you said. Because what's... The way I understand this is that when you go sit in the zendo, you're dwelling in solitude. Is that different from what you're talking about? Right.

[61:28]

So that's an example of an opportunity to practice shamatha, right? So any problem with that? Is that okay? So, where does the problem arise if we found a situation where we can dwell in solitude? It's called during a period of meditation in the Zendo, right? Now, where does the problem arise? When I'm not so concerned with having times when I can go and check on myself. What I really want to do is to understand how you guys feel about this.

[62:30]

And I find that my favorite thing about the game is, you know, you want to be able to get to the game with calmness or fitness without needing to find yourself in a situation where there's something that makes you want to do something else. I think now is a good time to talk about it. Okay.

[63:34]

So one possibility is that one would... I've just been talking about samatha so far, right? But there's this other dimension of meditation which is called insight, or vipassana. And once samatha's been realized, then based on that, one can then... actually start studying the material. You can probe it and become interested in it. And that brings another dimension into the meditation. Are we getting beyond our level of being able to pay attention? Your eyes look sort of glassed over. Yes? The sound.

[64:38]

It's hard. Uh-huh. It's hard. It's hard. Okay. Does that help? Is that better? Okay. So anyway, these meditation practices, what I got clear so far is that Vicky says there's some situations when she sees an opportunity to practice, and she would like the practice to be throughout her life. Is that what you're saying? To pervade your whole life. Is that right? And that seems reasonable that you'd want that. And then you're also saying maybe you're, you're, did you say in a hurry or something?

[65:49]

Is that what you said? Yeah. You don't want it... Do you mean we or they? Do you mean we don't want to or they don't want to? Well, but I thought you said we, namely you, do want to extend it throughout your daily life. I thought that's what you said. ... Okay, can I say that what I understand so far is that there's some situations in which you feel some opportunity to practice this kind of

[67:25]

calming and insight meditation. And you would like to extend this meditation practice throughout your life. Is that right? But then, in certain situations, you have trouble extending it throughout your life. Is that right? You just forget sometimes that you'd like to extend it throughout your life. And when you forget, then you don't feel like it is being extended throughout your life. Is that right? Yeah. Right. That's quite normal. And you would like to get over forgetting it. Is that right? And remember. Well, you're already acknowledging that you forget. Right? But what you'd like to do actually is stop forgetting and you remember. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Remember and continue this practice all the time.

[68:28]

So I think I do too. And it's hard, right? It's hard. But nobody said this wasn't hard. This is hard. And at least you've got to see an opportunity to start. I think most people in the room look at their head and can't figure out how to start. Uh-huh. Oh, so you think that if the prerequisites were satisfied, that that would promote the practice.

[69:30]

I'm looking like I'm stuck. I'm looking like I'm stuck. I'm looking like I'm stuck. Excuse me, but I was wondering if there's some situation where you don't lose your sense. And I thought we found some situation where you thought you could practice. Right. Okay. In those situations, at least you have some foothold in the practice. In other situations, part of the reason why you have difficulty is you lose being convinced that you have the prerequisites to do the practice in those situations. Is that what you're saying? And I was saying that at least you got to start there and some other people don't even know how to practice the situation when you can.

[70:33]

So, okay? And so quite a few people are at that stage, sort of behind you in that way. So maybe they could catch up with you first before we move on to extend the practice beyond the situation where you had some success. Yes? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how you do it. I don't know how you... Yeah. Well, sorry. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. I just said, you know, I'm just saying turn the light around and shine it back inwardly. Just look at the ability, look at your ability to be aware.

[71:40]

And again, if you say, how does one do that, then you get back into what Noah was worried about. Now Christina's going to be doing this. You're not going to do that. You don't have to get in there and do that. There's just the instruction, turn the light around and shine back on the nature of mind or the ability of the mind to be aware or the ability of mind to think. Now, when you watch ordinary events arise and cease, those are good practices too. Just watching the arising and ceasing of your breath is a perfectly good practice. Okay? This is something now saying, look at the inner dimension of the process of watching or being aware of the rising and ceasing of the breath.

[72:40]

Well, yeah, certainly, except that the realm, I don't know what the realm of concepts is, that's another concept, but anyway, it's not like there's no concepts anywhere. It's just that you're focusing on a particular aspect of mind, namely its ability to be aware, its continuous nature. Yes? Watching whatever it is, yes. Watching the rising and ceasing of whatever phenomena is arising and ceasing, yes. Definitely. I didn't follow what you just said about allowing everything to arise and cease.

[74:01]

I don't understand what you mean by that, because isn't that... Yeah. So what do you... Uh, well, I'm... I'm kind of sick. I don't know. Anyway, I can follow that we're watching the arising and ceasing of something that's happening. Okay? I'm with it so far. Are you going something deeper than that? That's all I know to work with is what's happening. So what are you saying? And what's more specific than what's happening?

[75:03]

I don't understand. Hmm? Right, but that's... But that's not... That is what's happening, right? So I don't understand what you're talking about still. Yeah. What's the decision? You're... She's clarifying. Yeah, like I said, sound, the ability to be aware of sound. Smells, the ability to be aware of smells. Taste, the ability to be aware of taste. Feelings, the ability to be aware of feelings. various emotions, the ability to be aware of them, thinking, the ability to be, the ability to think. So there's always this... That's a continuous stream of the meditating consciousness.

[76:10]

So whatever's happening, when something's happening for us, when we have an experience, there's some awareness. And... So that's fine, and that's good, to be aware of what's happening for us, to be attending to what's happening. Seems like that's a good deal, isn't it? Does anybody have a problem with that? Hasn't that always been a good thing? Right? I think so. Some people say, well, actually, I wish I hadn't been aware of that pain that I had last Tuesday. I don't know if anybody really says that. Like I said, you know, to me, I feel grateful that I could be aware of whatever I've been aware of in this lifetime. I'm not so much grateful in senses for everything that happened, I'm just per se, because like I said, you know, like that snow-covered parking lot, it could have been, you know, a parking lot in Africa.

[77:16]

I don't care what the situation is so much, but what I really value is that I could have been aware of something That's really what's great. And now, Samatha practice is to be aware of that ability, not just attending to what's happening, but be aware of your ability to attend to what's happening. This is a new thing to learn, a new meditation practice for a lot of people, is to try to see I mean, you understand, I think, that you have that ability because you're living. Your life is based on that being one of your abilities. The mind can be aware of, and the mind can be that which we are aware of. And the mind can be all kinds of thoughts, and the mind can be all kinds of concepts, the mind can be all kinds of feelings.

[78:18]

The mind can be all kinds of pictures of what's going on with our body. But we're not being asked to look at the inner quality of the mind as a stabilizing trope. It's not so much the essence of mind. But anyway, looking at the ability of the mind to be aware. It's kind of mindy, or mind-like nature. No.

[79:41]

Well, it wouldn't include that. I mean, that would be great. So as the thought arises, at that very point where the thought arises, that would be good if you could see the actual arising of the thought. OK? That's a good place to observe a thought when it arises. And then be aware of the ability to be aware of that arising of the thought. And then also be, as the thought arises and reaches its fullness, be aware of the ability to be aware of the fullness of the thought. And as the thought ceases, which people have a harder time noticing I've noticed, to be aware of the ability to know that the thought has ceased. So it's not so much that catching the thought at the beginning is the point, but that is good. Catching at the beginning, middle, and end of its life That's good, but then can you be aware of the ability or tend to the ability to be aware of the arising and ceasing of that thought?

[80:45]

That's the Shalmukta direction. That make sense? Yeah, kind of be aware of the awareness, right. Sort of like knowing the knowing, yeah. Or maybe attending to the ability to be aware of what you just experienced. Sort of what?

[81:50]

Dwelling? Yeah, kind of. Sometimes it's called calm abiding. This kind of meditation is called that you rest or you abide in the nature of mind. And nature of mind means like this kind of like the most typical kind of like thing that the mind does, you know, among all the different things that the mind does. What's the thing the mind's always doing? Well, it's always aware. It's got all these other trips. I mean, mind is like a big complicated topic, right? But it's always aware. So that's not really its essence, you know, or its true nature, but it's kind of like the mindy part of the mind. So you kind of abide or you dwell in that quality of the mind, which is characteristic of all minds. Or, you know, it's the inner stream of the meditating consciousness Or like they say here, it's that mind or that aspect of mind which is contemplated by any mind.

[82:54]

No matter what mind you've got, no matter what's going on with you, you always have this ability. So that's why it's this inner stream. But this inner stream is then all the time relating to the various arising and ceasing. And it's good to pay attention to those too. In fact, that's our life. arising and ceasing. But no matter what's arising and ceasing, and if we're attentive to it, mindful of it, good, there's still always that awareness there, awareness aspect of the experience. And so Samatha is to turn around and shine back at that awareness aspect. But usually we're turning out and we're aware of the phenomena of arising and ceasing, which is good. And now to stabilize and deepen that awareness, Turn back and look at that ability. Barrett? Huh?

[84:05]

Uh-huh. Yes. So he said something about when he hears this instruction, he thinks, oh, there's a danger there that I might try to make this meditation into a fundamental to rely on. Is that what you said? Oh, that I would try to make this awareness into a fundamental to rely on? That you might try to do that? That would be a danger for you? Yes, that would be a danger to you.

[85:26]

And I think your concern for that danger seems related to Noah's concern about another danger, of getting it to gaining ideas vis-à-vis this kind of awareness, right? So these are dangers on the meditation path. So the danger of trying to make whatever's happening into a fundamental to rely on That's an omnipresent danger to a karmic consciousness. So you've got this karmic consciousness, and when there's some teaching being pro-offered, or anti-teaching pro-offered, no matter what's pro-offered, the karmic consciousness is thinking, how can I make this into a fundamental to rely on? So that's a danger you're going to have to live with. You're not the only one. All beings with karmic consciousness are going to try to make anything they hear into something that they can get a hold of and, you know, go to town with. So that danger is going to... You can't get rid of that danger.

[86:34]

But you can notice it. Like there, you just noticed it. Didn't you? That's good. This is called the karmic consciousness police. This is a riddle. I'm going to talk about riddle in a minute. I have this here. I'm telling you what this is reminding me of because I might forget. This is riddle. So you have a riddle. This mind is murky.

[87:47]

Karmic consciousness is murky. All sentient beings have karmic consciousness. It's murky and all-pervading and has no fundamental to rely on. And it's working real hard to get a fundamental to rely on and clear this murkiness up. Karmic consciousness notices sometimes how murky it is and wants to get rid of the murkiness and get some fundamental so it could have clarity and get this whole situation cleaned up here. part of the riddle? Well, there may be nothing but karmic consciousness, but karmic consciousness is an illusion. So it's not like there's something else which is all spiffy and clean and un-murky.

[88:55]

It's just that when you understand that there's nothing but, you get liberated from the murkiness. And you can be perfectly clear, somehow it seems possible to be clear about the murkiness. But the clarity about the murkiness is not something in addition to the murkiness. But it is clarity. Pure, crystal clear clarity, which is not the slightest bit of an addition to the murkiness. So there isn't anything more than murkiness. But clarity is not something more than murkiness. If clarity was more than murkiness, then clarity would be this kind of like little barnacle on top of murkiness. Clarity is like just clarity. It's like, got murkiness? Okay, we got murkiness. See, if clarity was something in addition to murkiness, if there's something more than karmic consciousness, then guess what?

[90:08]

What would that be? Would that be a fundamental to rely on? I don't know. What would that be? Something in addition to karmic consciousness. Isn't that what karmic consciousness is all about? Is something in addition? What it's about. It's like, let's make more of this. Let's get this cleaned up here. It's not about actually the way things are. So, there's this somehow... And a lot of people say, you know, the riddle is how could beings with karmic consciousness ever get out of karmic consciousness? How could beings who are so murky and so greedy and always trying to get something that they can't get and always frustrated, how would they ever be able to like change their nature, you know, and be transformed into being of clarity and wisdom?

[91:16]

How could that possibly happen? It just seems like it's kind of a riddle. And so it's being proposed that it's possible to become clear and calm with this murky situation of human existence in such a way that one realizes clarity and wisdom and compassion right in the middle of it without actually trying to fight the system. Because it's a well-established system. And even the whole process of trying to understand it is totally in the context of this system. So then it seems like kind of a riddle about how you could ever get free while you're in the middle of this mess. And yet the Samatha's Vipassana system or teaching is actually giving it a try as a mode of study to realize this middle way.

[92:26]

Yes. Yes. Well, one way, first of all, First way is memorize them. That's the way to sort of like first level of understanding. And if you have any questions, we can talk about it. The other aspect is, you know, can think about them. How do they apply to your daily life? And the third way is practicing Samatha Vipassana. Actually enter into the nature of of this process by which your mind becomes stable and clear. And then all these studies you've done in these scriptures will be in that context.

[93:30]

This is kind of like, in a sense, a little bit like...

[93:33]

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