Some people are starting to get sick, right? But still, I think it's been pretty fortunate. The Zen has been quiet. It still is pretty quiet. And I was thinking maybe tomorrow morning, not having required sitting, so everybody can, if they want to, get extra, a lot of extra rest tomorrow before Sashin starts. And also I had this little photo album of sort of the last days of Suzuki Roshi's life. and I'll put it in the library on the table for the next day or so if you want to look at it.

[01:03]

I wanted to draw your attention to that question of Maitreya to the Buddha where he says in Chapter 8, Actually, I wasn't going to say this, but this translation where it talks about when you're practicing attending to an image without any conceptual elaboration, but you haven't yet attained physical and mental pliancy. What is that?" And Buddha said, that's not shamatha. It is... it resembles intensified effort concordantly with shamatha.

[02:35]

And another translation is, it is a reflection concomitant with the commitment to quietude. Another translation is, it is an attention involved in application to quietude, to tranquility. And another translation is, it is practicing with trust, with the trust guiding one to And so sometimes that's what we're doing. We're practicing in a way that reflects commitment to practicing tranquility, but we haven't yet attained tranquility. And then the same would be the case if you haven't attained this prashrabdhi and you're contemplating an image together with

[03:41]

images for reflection on that image, but you haven't attained prasabdhi. What is that called? That's not vipassana, but it is, it is this practicing with trust, with a trust that will guide you to that practice. And in the next part, which we didn't discuss too much, we just read it, was, is, is, is are the paths of Samatha and the path of Vipassana same or different? And then the Buddha says they're neither different nor non-different. And they're not non-different because one is contemplating an image without accompanying, without other images for reflection on the image. and the other one is accompanied by images for reflection on the image.

[04:48]

That's why they're not non-different. But they're not different because they both contemplate mind. And so in practicing tranquility, one is contemplating and training in tranquility, you're contemplating mind. And people sometimes think, I'm concentrating on my breath or I'm concentrating on my breathing. But this says you're contemplating mind when you're training in tranquility. So you're not actually contemplating a physical phenomenon when you're practicing tranquility. We say the breath, And we let it go at that for 99.9% of the people who are practicing shamatha.

[05:52]

We say concentrating on your breath, and they think they're concentrating on their breath, but actually, if they're training in tranquility, they're actually contemplating the mind. It's not to say you can't be aware of your breath. experience your breath in direct awareness of the physical phenomena. It's just that you don't train your attention to the direct physical awareness, the awareness of the physicality. That's not where you train in tranquility. As a matter of fact, I propose to you that research has demonstrated that if you actually try to look at a physical phenomenon, focus on it, you can only do so for about three seconds maximum. Some people, they say ten seconds. If you're actually looking, if you're actually trying to focus on a sense data, you can't stay focused on a sense data for very, very long.

[07:05]

However, you can meditate on mental images. You can learn to do it for a really long time, steadily. And the mental image is quite stable. The physical image is changing very rapidly. The mental image, for example, the mental image for or shamatha, is letting go of discursive thought. And letting go of discursive thought doesn't change. It's always this thing. It's always the same thing. It's letting go of discursive thought. The discursive thought you're letting go, of course, varies endlessly. The imaginations which you're not getting involved in, there's no end to the imaginations, but the not getting involved is always not getting involved. So you're focusing on not getting involved.

[08:08]

So the object is, it's possible to actually watch it steadily. It's not jumping all over the place. And Vipassana, you're not really focused on Vipassana because you're using discursive thought there. You're using it, so you're actually moving around when you're practicing vipassana, and when you're practicing insight, when you're practicing wisdom, you're thinking about things. However, you're in a state of tranquility which has arisen from not thinking about things. Now, by virtue of Mahin's question yesterday, we're ready to look at something which I mentioned before we might look at, and that is that rather difficult paragraph where it says, having attained physical and mental pliancy, they abide only in that.

[09:43]

having abandoned certain aspects of mind, they analyze. I'll just stop there. Having attained shamatha, physical and mental pliancy, they abide in that, in that state. Does that make sense? Any questions about that? And then it says, another having, having abandoned aspects of mind, having entered this monastery, having followed the precepts, having served the community, you are now ready to practice giving up certain aspects of mind. But don't go to the marketplace yet. You're ready to abandon certain aspects of mind. And what aspects of mind are you now abandoning?

[10:52]

What? A little louder, please. Take it back. That's one way of saying it. You abandon what? Non-discursivity. Yeah, you're abandoning non-discursive silence. You abandon that non-discursivity, that aspect of mind. The non-discursive aspect of mind you abandon. You get back on the thinking wagon. When you're on the wagon, you're not drinking anymore, right? Is that it? Or when you're off the wagon, you're not drinking. Which wagon is it? Anyway, abiding in tranquility, having attained tranquility, you abide only in that. In other words, you're not going to do the tranquility practice anymore. You're just going to abide in the state which you've realized.

[12:01]

And then you abandon those things you were doing before, those practices you were doing before, which launched you into this state. And then it says... They analyze. Huh? 151? And then it says, now that you're in this state and you've abandoned the shamatha practice, you analyze, analyze, and inwardly consider, analyze, consider those very doctrines in the way that they have been contemplated in the way that you've been studying them before, now as images which are the focus of this state of tranquility. Any questions about that?

[13:03]

Any questions about that? What? I didn't understand the last sentence. you're now going to contemplate, you're going to analyze, you've heard some teachings and you've been contemplating them in the past, like, for example, this big teaching about, well, for example, these teachings about Vipassana, this one itself, and also teachings about, that occurred in the previous seven chapters, those teachings, and others that you've heard and contemplated. Now you're going to take some of those teachings and you're going to analyze them. And you're going to analyze them in the way that they were contemplated, but now as images of your state of concentration.

[14:09]

Before you were studying them, but they weren't looked at in the medium of concentration. When you look at something when you're not concentrated, it looks one way. When you look at it in concentration, it looks another way. Sometimes when you look at something and you're not concentrated, the thing looks like it's kind of saying, I'm what I appear to be and that's all I am and leave me alone. And you feel like that too when you're not concentrated. When you're concentrated, the things you're looking at are kind of saying, go ahead, analyze me. Go ahead, take me apart. Here I am. Analyze me, examine me. And you feel like that too. So you're vulnerable to

[15:13]

consideration and examination when you're relaxed and concentrated. But the world looks like that too. You know, leaves on the trees and seem to whisper Louise. Everything's, you know, like... Everything starts opening up, you know. Things become more porous and your sensuous relationship with the world starts to become more... starts to wake up. So you analyze, you inwardly consider these doctrines, but now in the realm of samadhi. And then it says, the differentiation, the thorough differentiation, the thorough investigation, the thorough analysis, forbearance, interest, discrimination, view, investigation of the objects that are known with respect to the images, that are the focus of samadhi is vipassana.

[16:17]

And I related this to Mahin's question because the examination, let's see, the first one, the discrimination And the thorough discrimination... Yeah, the differentiation and the thorough differentiation is vichara and parivichara. So remember we're talking about these mental factors. First you use them... First you use them to develop concentration. First you use them to develop... and then you use them actually, when you push them all, when you push them to their limit, you enter into these jhanas. Okay? Vichara and vittarka, vittarka and vichara. Do you remember that?

[17:18]

Applied thought or sustained thought. Then when you're in the state, but you're using them, you're using them, you're applying them to a non-discursive object or non-discursiveness. Okay? Okay? Once you're tranquil, you stop applying them to non-discursiveness, and now you look at the object in terms of ways to reflect on the object, and you use the same mental factors. Now you reactivate them. That's why I say that if you're in too deep a state of concentration, you can't start Vipassana, because Vipassana, you see, when you start to analyze the phenomena, you're actually going to use the factors which you have exhausted or almost exhausted before, or that you were... or that you're using on a different object. So you're going to actually use the discursive thought. See, it says right here in this paragraph that you're going to reactivate discursive thought, vichara.

[18:21]

You're going to use it now. And then it says pari vichara, exhaustive, thorough, pushing vichara really thoroughly, using your discursive thought energetically on the object. And then it says, yeah, so vichara, parivichara, differentiation, thorough differentiation. And then it says, and then you get, somehow I lost my notes here, but the, I think thorough investigation is parivittarka. and thorough analysis. I forgot what that was. But anyway, you use these same mental factors which are used for concentration, you now use them for insight. So this paragraph is a clear demonstration that you're really starting to think again after attaining tranquility.

[19:34]

And another thing I was talking to someone, another point I would like just to make is that another characteristic of developing tranquility in this sense of getting more pliant is that when you're not tranquil, your body and mind are a little tough. Like Suzuki Roshi says, zazen is a tenderizer. And as you practice, particularly as you practice shamatha and you become more tender, you become more tender. And so something that's irritating and under ordinary circumstances, If you experience in a state of tranquility, in a way, it's more irritating because you're more sensitive and more tender.

[20:43]

Just one second, okay? That's why often when people leave retreats, they often say that it's hard for them to go out into the traffic and so on because that situation is sometimes very harsh. very stimulating anyway. But if you toughen yourself, you can go out in the street and get from one place to the other somehow, but you have to toughen yourself sometimes so you don't feel the irritation too much. But when you're in tranquility, you're more vulnerable. So the funny thing is that as you become more tranquil, things hurt more. So then even though you were tranquil in an environment that a milder environment, when you go back into an environment which ordinarily you can get through without a freak out, now you maybe freak out because your tranquility isn't deep enough.

[21:52]

It's deep enough to make you more sensitive but not deep enough to handle the increased pain of the stimulation. Now if you then can be patient with that stimulation, And you become more calm, so then you're calm with that stimulation, but then you're more sensitive to that stimulation, the same stimulation, so then it even hurts more. So you never can get calm enough not for it to hurt. That's why you need Vipassana too. Because the reason why it basically hurts is because you think it's not you. So the more calm you get, the more sensitive you are to the fact that not understanding that the objects of awareness are really cognition only, because of not understanding that, the more calm you get, the more bug you are by not understanding that. So you have to practice understanding the emptiness of the separation between mind and objects, or between self and other.

[22:59]

So it's somewhat difficult. There's a difficulty, sort of like a danger on the path is becoming more and more sensitive as you become more and more calm. But you need the calm in order to let the teaching, which will cure you of this fundamental problem, in. If you keep protecting yourself, the teaching can't get in, the teaching which will eventually someday cure you of being irritated by other people. There are other people, but they're not separate from you. You think they are, and because you think other people are separate, you have, I have, we have, people have people have problems like that. Okay? April? I have two questions. The second one, James, to what you were just talking about, and the first one is about what you said before.

[24:02]

You said that if you are in too deep a disdain of consecration, you can't practice Vipassana. You can't get started on Vipassana. Okay. Okay, I want to clarify that. It's not that you can't practice... Well, actually, I still think you say too deep. You sort of surface somewhat in order to start practicing the passage. Either you have to surface somewhat or you have to stop when you're concentrated enough. To start practicing Samatha Vipassana, you have to be able to contemplate a teaching. And as it says here, when you start analyzing a teaching, you're going to be using thinking. Excuse me. Got to breathe with me, okay? I'm breathing and you're here to take turns. So you're switching from giving up discursive thought, now you're using discursive thought.

[25:03]

Now if you have no discursive thought, there's no discursive thought in the deep trances, you won't be able to analyze. Once you finish analyzing and you actually have insight, then you can get rid of discursive thought again. And then you can actually deepen your insight without using any more discursive thought. Yeah. So, well, and then what? So... Then what? Then you just keep doing that. Hypothetically, if you were working on... you know, increasingly deepening your concentration, is there another aim besides vipassana? I mean, if you're... No. If your whole practice is shamatha, and you're so advanced in that that you can't practice vipassana, don't practice vipassana, is there...

[26:08]

Say it again. Can you say it again, please? If you're a whole what? You just continue with shamatha. Yes. And you don't manage to approximate. Yes. Is there a benefit in that? Or where does it take you? Or is it not a good thing to do? Is there a benefit in it? I would say so, yeah. You get more and more skillful at shamatha. And the benefit is that it's a worldly benefit, but you get more and more intense and wonderful states of bliss. You might, but when you get more wise it's because you flipped out of shamatha into vipassana. But to develop this skill is very beneficial and also it's quite pleasant to be in the states that this skill gives rise to. Can we spend more time on your first question?

[27:17]

Pardon? Yeah. You can. My second question relates to my first question. Would you like to ask it before I talk more about your first question? You would? Yeah. Okay. My second question was not having told you before. Actually, you asked a third question in the middle between your first question and your second question that I wanted to answer while you were trying to find your second question. That was something about the goal? The purpose? The purpose, in this chapter anyway, the purpose of this Samadhi Vipassana, the purpose of it is to attain enlightenment and teach the Dharma. That's the point of these two meditations, is so you can teach Dharma to people. And that's how you help them. The second question was, you first, you said, and this is more in court, well, I have different experiences, but anyway, one thing that can happen when you deepen your concentration, you thankfully, is what you do.

[28:48]

Well, use of things can be more irritating. And that is not so much my experience, because I think of being irritated as being reactive. But it seems to me that things can be more painful. That's what I mean. And that you can feel more sadness. But I don't. I don't really see it as irritation. And then relating that to what you said before about if you partner deep in your concentration, then you experience a lot of bliss. But wouldn't that be while you were meditating, you would feel a state of bliss, but then when you came out of it, and you're still in a state of tranquility but you're not completely concentrated, would you then be on a state of bliss or would you be that much more vulnerable and would you be more painful?

[30:01]

Fortunately, your question has been taped because I think in your question you show some of the ways of using the word meditating and so on. People use meditating to sometimes be the things you do to become concentrated. When you're actually concentrated, you do not need to meditate When you're concentrated, when you're concentrated, you don't need to practice concentration meditation anymore. Anyway, you did use it that way, and that's the way people a lot of times use meditation, is they use meditation for what you're doing when you're not concentrated to be concentrated. And then sometimes they don't understand that when you are concentrated, you don't have to meditate anymore.

[31:07]

You actually are in the state of concentration. So concentration is both used to get concentrated and to be concentrated. And when you are concentrated, you can use the concentration to do things. So once you're concentrated, you can talk in a concentrated way, you can walk in a concentrated way. But when you're training in concentration, sometimes you're not yet concentrated. So even though you're training correctly in concentration, you're not concentrated. And you can't respond in a concentrated way to things because you're not yet concentrated. So there's some confusion there that keeps wafting in and out of the situation. And this thing about... I think when you're concentrated, you feel more deeply. So it isn't that things are more irritating, but you're more deeply touched by things. And if you're in a state of training your mind away from discursive thought and you're actually in that mode and then some painful thing comes,

[32:17]

you're actually in the mode of training such that you will give up any stories you have around that painful experience. So if somebody comes up to you and spits in your face, you're training yourself not to think about that. So that training will actually, in some sense, might protect you from a story about them, about the person who's spitting in your face, which might be useful. That might be helpful to help you not be reactive. And if you're calm, and then they spit in your face, it'll maybe penetrate you even more. The spit will go deeper into you. And so in some sense it will hurt you more in a way, or not hurt you, but you'll feel it more deeply. And you'll feel all the sensuousness of that, more of the sensuousness of the spittle. But you're not going to be as reactive.

[33:23]

Like I said, the first example, when you drop a rock in a serene lake, it has a response, but it's not reactive. It's just the natural response. It isn't like the lake blows up. It just makes a splash, and the splash goes out. It's just a natural causal relationship, and it's actually, it's like, wow, they spit in my face, and it's like, it was just like, it's just rolling down my cheek. wow, this is great. So you're still happy even though people are spitting on you. It isn't exactly that you like the spit or don't like the spit. It isn't that you like the feeling of it. It's that what you like is the fact that the spit just makes a splash and makes these beautiful rings around it. It's just beautiful, you know. But it hurts, and it hurts more than usual. So you might be surprised by that.

[34:27]

So anyway, this is part of the landscape of concentration work. If you're in a situation where you're actually able to give up discursive thought, those are usually situations where also you're not getting stimulated so much. For example, most people are not talking when they're giving up discursive thought because it's hard to talk and give up the mental factors which make the talk possible. It's not impossible, but it's hard to use discursive thought while you're giving it up. So if you're in a conversation in normal situations and moving around, it's a little harder to be training in tranquility. That's a fact. And I often tell the story of early days of Zen Center. People would be working in the office trying to follow their breathing, or even worse, trying to count their breaths while answering the telephone. And so the people who called had sort of, you know, there was a difficulty there.

[35:31]

And the practitioners who had not yet attained tranquility were quite irritable that these people were bothering them and not being patient for them to finish their exhales. And it was rough. So then we hired a bunch of people who weren't trying to practice shamatha, and everything worked out. What are they training them in? I'm just kidding. Amy? I'm going to use the taboo word goal because I know there's no real goal. There is a goal. The goal is supreme perfect enlightenment and teaching the Dharma to people to relieve, to set them free. That's the goal. Okay, a mini-goal. It seems like the higher goal beyond this step would be to recognize our true awareness and the openness.

[36:44]

And so is this leading us there? Yes. Okay, so this is like step one and step two. I don't know if it's step one. It's like there's probably a lot of steps before that one. What you're talking about could be seen as understanding that the object of concentration is cognition only. That's kind of pure awareness, when you understand that. And then you can use that pure awareness to then practice with people for a long time. No, not necessarily the practice of dhyana, yes, but also the practice of giving, precepts, patience, and diligence, working in the kitchen, working in the office, but in a state of pure awareness where you've purified your mind of any belief that mind and object are separate. So that pure awareness, or that awareness of suchness, as it says here,

[37:49]

then once you actually have that awareness of suchness, of understanding this teaching, then you just keep using that, you keep tapping back into that meditation on suchness while you practice all these Bodhisattva practices, while you praise the Buddhas and while you assist beings, while you practice the precepts, while you teach the Dharma, while you study the Dharma, while you practice confession, while you work in the kitchen, while you work in the garden, while you answer the telephone, while you donate this and donate that while you receive this and give that all the many bodhisattva practices you do them but now you're doing them together with this wisdom and then it just deepens and deepens and deepens and you evolve in that way endlessly to the big goal and again this complete perfect enlightenment is not my complete perfect enlightenment or yours but it's the enlightenment of all of us together and all of us together teaching the Dharma and learning the Dharma.

[38:52]

That's the goal. But to accomplish that, there is this big step where you actually start to see the truth. The truth that the objects of cognition are only cognition. And that's a huge step. and then we use that step as the basis to keep putting our foot back on that step as we do all the other practices. Does that make sense? Yeah. Jeremy? What about no steps and stages? Well, sometimes people say no steps and stages, but in the In the conversation that I think it was that Sagan had with somebody, it's how do you avoid falling into steps and stages. It's not no steps and stages. If there were no steps and stages, they wouldn't have brought it up.

[39:53]

There are steps and stages, but how do we not fall into them? So that was the guy's question. Then the person says, what have you been practicing? He said, I haven't even been practicing the Four Noble Truths. Now, studying the Four Noble Truths is a huge, important stage. That's really the, in traditional presentation, that's the actual initiation. in the early teaching, which is comparable to the initiation in this chapter into Vijnapti Maitrata Siddhi, seeing this nature of mind and objects is a parallel initiation to Four Noble Truths. The guy says, I haven't even done that yet. So he says, well, what stage have you fallen into? And he says, if I haven't even practiced the Four Noble Truths, how could I fall into any stage? So he asked, how can I avoid it? But then In the dialogue it appears that he hasn't fallen into steps and stages. And then if you would continue that way of practicing, even when you attained the Four Noble Truths, then you wouldn't get stuck in them.

[41:00]

So we don't want to get stuck. We always want to be able to be a beginner. So, And also, stepladder Zen is the thing that Suzuki Roshi said, we don't practice stepladder Zen. And stepladder Zen also means not just steps and stages, but also means the various stages of jhana. And in fact, you don't find too many Zen people practicing the stages of jhana. But I think it might be okay if some of you people practice the jhanas. But I think you should talk to a Zen teacher about it before you launch on that path. Gil Fronsdale is a Zen student, but he also teaches Vipassana. And in the Vipassana groups, somebody said, do the Zen people practice concentration?

[42:03]

And he said, yeah, they do, but they can't have it. Yeah. So as long as you don't possess these wonderful states, it's okay to practice them. And same with stages of insight, as long as you don't get stuck. If you're going to get stuck, it's better to get stuck down low because it's easy for people to help you because, you know, they don't like you when you're stuck low. But if you're stuck high, some people say, well, what can I say? She's so great. How can I criticize her? So you can get stuck up high more easily than you can get stuck down low. Although it's hard to get up high, it's worse when you get stuck. Let's see, Okidoki Tova? You said when you're concentrated you feel more deeply and you're more deeply touched by things.

[43:06]

Actually, excuse me, I said that, but it isn't that you're more deeply touched, it's that you feel more deeply touched. You're more deeply aware of being touched. So, and you said someone, you talked about someone spitting on you, and that you notice all the qualities of the spit. You also might feel the hurt, but I'm wondering, what if someone spits on someone else, or instead of spitting on you, it insults or threatens someone else? and you notice it and you feel pain about it, what is an appropriate response? An appropriate response? Would appropriate, apropos to what? Appropriate means to the point. What's the point? Tell me the point. That someone is hurting someone else. Is that the point? Well, then the response, if the point is that someone's hurting someone else, the point has already been realized.

[44:10]

So no response is necessary. I don't understand that. You said, I think you got the point, but you don't know you got it. I asked you what's the point, and you said the point is the person is hurt. So if that's the point, then the appropriate thing, the thing to the point is just what's happened. Maybe the point is that I noticed that somebody hurt someone else. Well, that's also been accomplished. The point... Let her do it. I think there's a danger in that, because I wouldn't feel comfortable just watching it and not responding. Well, you will respond. Don't worry about that. You will respond no matter what happens. you will have a response.

[45:18]

But you said, what's the appropriate response? And sometimes your response might not be appropriate. Might not be appropriate to what? Appropriate means to something. If you want to be mean to people and somebody's being mean to someone, then the appropriate thing to do would be to join in the fun and be mean to them with the person. What's the... If you say appropriate, that means to the point. So you tell me what the point is. You ask me what's the appropriate response. So then I want to know what's the point. You tell me the point and I'll tell you the appropriate response. It's a very good word, but you're not used to using it. What's the compassionate response? So the compassionate response, would be that you feel that you'd like everybody involved to be free from suffering.

[46:24]

That would be a compassionate response, that you have that desire. That would be a compassionate response, that you'd have that desire. You'd feel that way. And then Having that feeling, some action would... Having that feeling, some action will occur. Some action will follow. And what it will be, I do not know. It might be, excuse me, may I ask a question? You know, and then something will come out of this feeling of, I want these people who are having this apparently unhealthy relationship, I want them to be free of suffering. So then you might say, I have a question. And they might stop what they're doing, and they might respond to you by stopping for a second and say, what is it?

[47:26]

And then you might say, are you guys being kind to each other? You know what you might say? Or you might say, you guys want to make some money? Or you might say, I've got something really interesting for you people to do. Or you might say, I'm in pain! Or you might say a lot of things. I don't know what it will be, but you will respond. And you will respond with compassion or not. And if you respond with compassion, that's a response. And then they will respond when you respond. And then from that, another response will come. And if that response is also supported by that compassionate feeling, then you'll see how that goes and so on. And if you're staying in tranquility, your compassion will be more readily facilitated. For example, when you see somebody

[48:29]

being cruel to somebody, that will deeply affect you. And then, you know, the pebble will hit you. It'll make a splash in you. And that splash that it makes in you, a combination of your tranquility together with your compassion, the splash it makes with you, the people may see the splash and say, what a lovely splash. Now, if you have compassionate feeling and not tranquil, which is possible, to really feel compassion for someone but be very tense, then when that pain and concern for them comes up, you have a somewhat different response than you would if you were tranquil. You might be more explosive. You might even explode into anger and try to hurt one or more of the people involved.

[49:39]

Even though you actually felt compassion, because of not being tranquil, you might have a somewhat different response. That's helpful. So it can be tranquil, and out of the tranquility and the compassion, respond in a way that meets the situation. Yeah. So like, you know, Some people train in martial arts. you know, they're, like I was talking to somebody, they're having tea or something and cookies and they're like, they're in the present and they're relaxed and somebody comes over and attacks them suddenly. But they're not, they're practicing. They're present, they're relaxed, they're calm and the sword comes at them and they just reach up and take it out of the person's hand. and protect the attacker if they can.

[50:41]

If they're skillful enough, they can take the sword away without hurting the person who's got the sword. Or sometimes, you know the story of a number of Zen teachers who are being attacked, and as they're being attacked, they come with a response, and they get the attacker's attention, and the attacker stops. The Buddha did that, yeah, more than once. Get the person's attention in such a way that they're just stopped, they're disarmed. You still have the weapon, but they're just stopped. So that, you know, if they have a story about the samurai who comes to the Zen teacher, and says, please teach me, Master, about heaven and hell. You know that one? No? I'll tell it to you sometime.

[51:42]

Anything else? Yes. Yes. On the same line, the last few days I've been learning how to juggle, and I notice that what gets in the way are thoughts that are from yesterday or the future. Right. So once I'm lucky enough to be in a state where those thoughts aren't there, guess what? I'm juggling. And then after that, I see that I become very relaxed because I'm laughing because there's more time that I... actually thought there was. Right. Is that Samatha? Or it feels trite? Yeah, I think that sounds like a state of Samatha. Right. And that there's more time than I thought there was, one way to hear that is I'm having lots of experiences which I'm not aware of.

[52:47]

So like I told you yesterday, you're having gazillions of sense experiences, direct sense experiences, but you're barely aware of them. And it was William McCovey, I think, I'm not sure, who said when he was in a certain state, when he was batting, when the ball came, it looked like a pizza. It's almost impossible to miss it because it's so huge. just swing anywhere in that area and just hit it. You know, like some of the microbes that are out in the air, you know, they have no trouble hitting that ball. Because it's like, to them it's like the whole ballpark. But to us, it looks kind of small sometimes. When you're concentrated, it gets very big.

[53:50]

So juggling and tightrope walking and skiing on a ledge of a mountain, these are situations where you realize that the problem is if you think about anything other than what you're doing, it really has consequences. And tea ceremony, too, sometimes is that way. Put yourself in a situation where if you think of something else, you'll get immediate feedback. Something will go off. But in Zen practice sometimes we're in a situation where you do not get immediate feedback. We let you, we're allowed to find that place without something hitting us right away. But in some temples, in some Zen temples, As soon as you veer off, they hit you. Or as soon as they see you veer off, they hit you.

[54:55]

So after a while, you stop veering off. So they get the monks to be quite concentrated in that way by hitting them with a stick. You can kind of tell when somebody is thinking. the eyes move in a certain way, like my eyes move in a certain way when I'm thinking. If I'm talking to certain people, they say, what are you thinking of? My eyes start moving faster when they're talking to me and I'm like this. And then they see the eyes, the eyelids, the eyes start batting and they say, what are you thinking of? And they're right, I'm usually taking notes for a lecture or something. Boy, that's a good example of such and such. So then if that person had a stick and they were carrying his gun, they would hit me. Wouldn't you then associate pain with... You'd associate pain with thinking, right.

[55:58]

It's old-fashioned biofeedback. And I did that on myself in early days of meditation. I would threaten to punish myself if I veered away from my meditation object. And then I would do the punishment, if I did. And then I would up the ante on the punishment. And then I got to a place where I was not veering away from the meditation object because I was going to hurt myself so much if I did. And I was successful at not veering away from the meditation object. Would you recommend that for us? No, I wouldn't. I never had to. I quit. I stopped that. Because when I got into meditation, that way, because of that coercion, I wasn't happy with that state because it had this coercive neighborhood. It was too harsh. So I was successful, but that wasn't what I was really trying to get.

[57:06]

So I wasn't veering away, but it wasn't shamatha because I think there was still this big discursiveness of the punishment that I was going to get. So I still wasn't veering away from what I thought was the breath. It was my meditation object. And counting one to ten. And I had ways of checking to see that I was actually counting one to ten, not just dreaming of counting one to ten. And I was successful at not veering away at all from counting for whole periods. But it wasn't producing shamatha because I was still being discursive. So I wouldn't encourage that. And that's why I think our practice in some ways is better than tightrope walking and juggling and things like that, because there's no pressure on you to do this.

[58:10]

from the outside, you actually, this is an inner thing, which you do because you're enthusiastic about it and you want to do it. And it's in accordance with your values. And you're, what do you call it, you're a responsible person. You're an adult. You're not a little kid. But someone might say, well, for kids it's different. Like I know this guy, he's a very nice guy. And he's got grandsons. And they came to his zendo in Wales. And somehow the idea of meditating came up. and they wanted to meditate for a while, but they didn't want to meditate for very long, so he said, well, I'll pay you for sitting for five minutes. You sit still for five minutes, I'll give you, you know, 50p, which is half a pound, more than 50 cents. So he paid them to meditate, and it worked pretty well. We don't have to care for that. John, we just don't get paid.

[59:19]

We have that practice here. We just don't get paid as much as those kids. What did you do after you gave up counting your breath? I think I just sat and just gave up discursive thought. I mean, tried to. And sometimes I would count my breath. It isn't that I wouldn't count my breath, it's just I stopped coercing myself. I stopped threatening myself with consequences if I wasn't successful. I took away the stick. But I still sometimes, even today, pay attention to my breath and enjoy it. Right now, as a matter of fact, I just inhaled. It was really swell. object became the observation of the arising of discursive thought, would you then say it shifted from your breath, in other words, to a kind of non-condition in which you were watching for the incipient thought?

[60:41]

Yeah, and watching for it, but also letting go of it. Because sometimes it doesn't stay incipient. Sometimes it gets residential. And then not get involved with it. Like that other example of, what is it, Sikoreshi said, when thoughts come, when guests come or thoughts come, just serve them tea, but don't give them cake. And then that story got retold in other ways, like serving tea and cake, but blah, blah. But anyway, he said, so another version is when they come, don't serve them tea. Just let them come, but don't give them tea. But that relates, I think, to that story of Zhaozhou. A monk comes and says, what's the meaning of Buddha Dharma? He says, tell them to have a cup of tea and leave. But anyway, let the guest in. If it's knocking on the door, say, okay, welcome.

[61:43]

That's it. Don't get more involved in that, and then let it go. That became my practice, and still is. Part of it, anyway. Yes? This goes back to something, a comment you made sort of offhand. You said that you had a way of checking Are you on your day? The biggest problem I have, to take a juggling example, if I were to be juggling and give up this cursed thought, which I actually can do fairly regularly, then immediately my brain wants to check whether or not I did it. It tries to look and see, am I thinking? Which of course means, yes, I'm thinking, because I was thinking that. You see what I'm saying? So I get... I can't stay away from discursive thought for more than a fraction of a second because I immediately try to check whether or not I was successful. Staying away from discursive thought is discursive thought.

[62:44]

You know, again, that vichara, it's kind of vibrating around the object. So checking is discursive thought, but also staying away from checking is another vibration. Well, when there's that vibration, I think Astrid talked about this buzzing, that you don't just relax with it, don't get involved with it. Or somebody else said, Susan said, I like no. So if you can say no without pushing away, if you push away, as soon as you start pushing away, there's discursive thought. This pushing away motion, there's discourse there. Discourse. Discourse. So pushing away or staying away or backing away or come back. People say, I come back to my breath. They say, if you say come back, it's a little discursive. So I sometimes say, if you go away from your breath, rather than pull yourself back, which is discursive, when you go away, just be there, be away from your breath, if that's where you are.

[63:52]

And then if you go away from being away from your breath and come back to your breath, if that happens, that's discursive thought. Going away from your breath is discursive thought. Coming back to your breath is discursive thought. But if you've already gone away, then don't pull yourself back because you just added to it. If you go away, just be there. And then if you come back, just be back. So the discursive thought can still occur, but if you're giving it up, you're just riding it back and forth without being involved. You're detached, you're letting go, you're not trying to stop it. They sometimes say stop discursive thought. But I don't think you have to just stop it. Because again, if you stop it, you can't flip over into Vipassana, if you actually would suppress it. But again, suppressing it is a special kind of discursive thought. So this is the skill, there's a skill here in terms of ways of working with discursive thoughts such that you just don't get caught by it.

[64:59]

And not getting caught by it is sufficient to train yourself not using, not reflecting like... away from something, not reflecting on that away. Coming back, not reflecting on that coming back. Not using anything to reflect on what's going on. And if you notice a phenomenon which seems to be called reflecting what's going on, don't reflect on that. At some level, stop reflecting. Stop checking, stop gauging, stop measuring. Like it says in the Pukanza Zengyi, give up all gauging of thoughts and views, all measurements, Well, you could say it requires a skill or you could say working in this way you develop the skill of not getting caught by thinking. And again, if you try to stop thinking, thinking's got you. Like they said, the devil, you know, if the devil comes up and says, and you say, gotcha.

[66:07]

Any kind of thing that you that you get discursive with, basically, temporarily, at least it's got you. And also, I'm not going to say much about this right now, but practicing the precepts is a big part of what will allow you to feel okay about relaxing with discursive thought. Hear that? practicing with the precepts makes you feel more comfortable and feel okay about giving up your thinking, particularly if your thinking is, I should do this and I should do that, I need to do this and I need to do that, and I can't not think about this because I did that and I have to not do this. So, yes? I don't know who's next. Yes? I noticed when I'm trying this practice of giving up a discarded thought, normally there's no no or give it up or discarded thought kind of comes in.

[67:15]

I just, as soon as I notice that the next breath is gone and then the next breath another thought comes in. But I'm not sure how to, I'm not sure if that disappearing is me trying to give it up or if it's just noticing it is allowing it to drop away. So what I'm saying is I'm not sure what the difference is between giving up the scarcity clause and trying to get rid of the scarcity clause. Yeah, I think trying to get rid of them, at least if it's happening and at that moment you're trying to get rid of them, that's different from just letting go of them. I don't know what I'm doing, personally. Oh, okay. Well, that sounds pretty good. But anyway, when something appears there... Letting go is, I think, different from trying to get rid of it. Letting go doesn't require anything. If it stays, if you let go of it and it stays, that goes with it.

[68:21]

If it leaves, that goes with it. If it doubles its size, that goes with it. So whatever it does, however it functions, is in accord with letting go of it. But pushing it away or trying to get rid of it, that seems like that's a discourse. I can't ever remember a time of noticing a thought or noticing that there's thinking going on without that thinking stopping. You can't remember noticing a thought without what? Without the thought stopping. As soon as I'm sitting in meditation, as soon as the awareness is kind of... Noticing a thought or noticing discursive thought? Discursive thought, yeah. As soon as I notice discursive thought going on, it stops. Yeah. Are you noticing it now? I wasn't there. Are you noticing it now? No. As soon as you ask the question, are you noticing it now?

[69:22]

Well, that's exactly... The thinking in itself, that's the awareness. Right, well, I'm asking you, and if you look at it, there'll be discursive thought there, and then if you look at it, then you won't be able to answer me when I ask you the next question, because it'll be gone. So I think we're trying to apply discursive thought to letting go of discursive thought. See what it sounds like? You're using discursive thought, applying to looking at discursive thought, and saying that when you do look at discursive thought, it stops. That's discursive thought, which is fine. And then let go of that, which will be fine too. Does that make sense? Did you get that part? Yeah. I've got to ask the question again. Well, just so that you get enlightened like you just did. Got a little bit of enlightenment there. Yes? This is a qualitative question.

[70:27]

Is it better to do an activity that has some time urgency around it and just do it even if you're not tranquil? Or is it better to Not get an activity done, but be tranquil. If some work needs to be done, and people are asking you to do some work, and it's good work, and you're not tranquil, and you feel you couldn't do the work to benefit them, and that if you were tranquil you might even be more effective at it, you might say to the people, I think if you let me enter into a state of tranquility, I'll be able to do this work better in about half an hour than I can do it now.

[71:31]

But if you're not going to do the work at all, you might say to the people or the situation, I can't do this work at all because I have to go do tranquility work now. And they might say, well, no, we'd prefer for you to do it less effectively in your state of not tranquility. and you say, no, I don't want to, I want to go practice tranquility, and you notice some greed in you for tranquility, then probably you wouldn't be very successful at it anyway. So it might be better just to go ahead and do the work so that you really fulfill support to practice tranquility. But sometimes you can say to somebody, you know, you want me to do this work and I feel kind of agitated. I think if I sit down for a little while and meditate, I'll be able to come back to the work and do it more effectively. So postponing the work to put yourself into a better state to do the work, I think that's fine. And people do that all the time. They say, can I sit here for a little while before we start this thing? And they enter a better state of mind, you know, more flexible and tender and tranquil state of mind, and then start the work.

[72:38]

So you're postponing it, but it isn't necessarily better to try to practice tranquility, which may never be achieved, than to do some other wholesome work to help people. But sometimes you do want to do the work. You have no problem doing the work. You think it's good work, but you don't feel in a good condition to do it. And you tell yourself or whoever that you want to put yourself in the best possible, practically best possible state that you can arrive at before it becomes that you can't do the work at all. So like if somebody needs some medical procedure done on them and you're hysterical, you might say, I'm not ready to do that. I have to calm down first. And they might say, okay. And you calm down, and then you do it. So in that case, it would be a good idea to calm down first because you might not be able to do it skillfully if you didn't. That make sense? Okay?

[73:44]

I'm calling on people who haven't been called on yet. So Patty, yes? Yes? So sometimes there's the experience of thinking that I'm uninvolved in. Yes. Sometimes you feel you're not involved in discursive thought? Yes, sometimes there's an experience of thinking that is non-discursive. It's some... I don't know... No, I think I would like to work with that vocabulary. Thinking is discursive. But you can be aware... There can be awarenesses that aren't discursive. Matter of fact, there's always nondiscursive awareness. And thinking is common, but not always there. But thinking and discursive thought I would use as synonymous. In other words, there's some movement here. that it's not, there's no kind of involvement with it. Okay, yeah, so there is discursive thought, but there's no involvement with it.

[74:49]

So my question is, what is that? Well, that's training, that's the kind of working with discursive thought which will come to fruit as tranquility. And once you're tranquil, you might not be involved in discursive thought then too. Okay, so if you're tranquil and then discursive thought arises and you continue not to be involved in it, then actually you're continuing to train in tranquility. Because sometimes it lasts, you know, it's not like it just goes away. Right. It's just there's an involvement and it finishes and something else. Yeah. So at first you might train yourself to give up involvement. in discursive thought. Then you give it up for a while, continuously. Then you become calm and you might just continue to not be involved in any further discursive thought arises. But at that point, maybe you're not even training yourself anymore. You just don't, you just spun, it's, you would call it effortless. Okay, and that can happen.

[75:51]

Sometimes you enter in a state of tranquility and the discursive thought seems to almost, it gets more and more attenuated, gets more and more quiet. So then after giving up discursive thought and becoming calm, sometimes it's almost like there isn't any. So when there isn't any, of course, then too you don't, no problem of getting involved, right, if there isn't any. However, if there wasn't any, then you can't train in tranquility if there isn't any. So like in direct sense perception, there isn't discursive thought. There's not discursive thought there. But then you can't train in tranquility. But when there is discursive thought, you can train in it by giving up involvement in it And then you might come to a place where you're not even trying to not get involved, but you don't. And I think we all have a taste of that. Like sometimes you hear some people chattering over in the neighborhood nearby. But you're just not involved. Like traveling in foreign countries is nice that way because you hear these lovely sounds and you don't get very involved.

[76:54]

So you're walking down the street hearing Spanish or something and you're listening to the Spanish, but you're not speaking English to yourself. So you're giving up your discursive thought. You're hearing other people's discursive thought, which you don't even know what they're saying, and you're not involved, and you don't care. You just think, fine. Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. And as you walk like that, you get quite tranquil. And of course you're doing it with the scenery too. You're not getting involved in the discourse of the visual images that are going by. However, if you don't switch back to getting involved, then you're just practicing tranquility, which is fine. But when you switch back and get involved in the discourse of thought again, then you switch to if you've attained that non-involvement, that spontaneous non-involvement and ease and relaxation and buoyancy and pliancy with all the discursive thought, or with the no discursive thought, it's been suppressed or dropped away for a time being, yet that's a state of shamatha.

[77:59]

And so people are in that way sometimes. Okay? Barbara? I would like to go back to your conversation with Matt and your instruction. It seems very compassionate to me to invite your discursive body for tea, but no more. And I was wondering, we haven't really talked about the compassionate piece, but are we also developing our compassion as we develop the shamatha or the consciousness? Shamatha is a compassion practice. So the instructions are also about learning to be compassionate with yourself? Yes. Well, if people want to say, how can you be compassionate with yourself and others? One of the responses is, practice shamatha. Shamatha is a compassion practice.

[79:03]

Strictly speaking, vipassana is not a compassion practice. but it purifies your compassion of duality eventually. So some people are practicing giving, precepts, patience, diligence, and tranquility, which are all compassion practices. They're all good ways, they're all ways to take care of yourself, and they're all ways to take care of your relationships with others. But there still could be some dualism in them because you haven't yet realized that all these people that you're being compassionate towards and all the things you know you haven't realized that they are cognition only. So there's still stress in the system because of lack of wisdom. So in a sense, wisdom is different from compassion, but it actually is what purifies the compassion of dualistic consciousness. Compassion can thrive a lot while still under the auspices of dualistic compassion. But when it is under the auspices of non-dual cognition, it starts to become purified of all kinds of obstructions.

[80:16]

Let's see, who is next? Yeah, but you're a second-time guy. There's some first-time people. Oh, Elizabeth. Huh? I haven't said anything yet. I want to say one thing. It was a comment. Oh, I see. Just so you know, I don't know if that's still up there. Comments count as questions. Okay. Is that for the varied or just today? It's just for this one little time right now. Did you have something to say? I was just wondering about the word forbearance. Oh, you want to know about that? Yeah, with the thorough, it says differentiation, thorough differentiation, and forbearance is one of the, in that list. I was just wondering if you can maybe just explain the forbearance part. Okay. I will eventually. Okay. Can I wait a little while? Yeah, I can wait. I've got lots of patience. Is that it? Is that it? Forbearance? In this case, okay, in this case, forbearance does not mean patience.

[81:23]

No, I didn't mean that, yeah. No, in this case it doesn't mean patience. It says kshanti, but kshanti doesn't just mean patience. It also means, in this case, a cognitive capacity is developed. So in this case it means a kind of knowledge that develops in this process. It doesn't mean patience in the sense of forbearance. So I did it. I didn't want to, but I did. And we can do more later. Let's see, Elizabeth. I said some big stuff about when it's my turn, and that was just a perfect example of it. So, and that came up a bit with April about rewinding. So I feel a few things will, a pin will drop and I'll explode in some way, and one would be over, hearing the word reactive, don't be reactive, makes me extremely reactive.

[82:29]

So how to work with that. And then the idea of when it's my turn, same kind of thing. And the questions past those were, so there's a difference between noticing a thought and discursive thought. Thoughts just arise. Getting involved is discursive thought, so it's not about getting rid of thoughts. It's awareness of thoughts without reflecting on them. Thoughts sometimes mean just a concept that appears. So, blue. No, blue. pain, pleasure, bell sound, you know, smell, polenta, whatever, you know. And then the vichara, you know, the buzzing around it, the vibrating around it. There might be some vichara, some discursive vibration around the color or the smell, like burnt smell.

[83:40]

pleasant sound, unpleasant sound. Those things happen. But also discursive thoughts, the vichara, the mental factor vichara can be there, that vibrating around everything. And you could notice that. And you could notice it, and noticing that, where you could like, you know, now that you know vichara, you're Abhidharma people, right? So you say, oh, there's the mental factor. You don't even say it, you maybe just say vichara. But you don't have to say vichara, it just feels kind of this buzzing, vibrating. I could also use the image of vicharka is like when the bee lands on the flower and vichara is when the bee is hovering above it. So sometimes you notice this hovering around the blue or hovering around the yellow or hovering around the burnt. But you don't get involved in it. you don't identify with it. You let that be, so you don't let that vibrating get associated with the blue, or the blue get associated with the vibrating.

[84:48]

So you don't get involved in activating your mind around things. So the mental factor of getting activated around things, you just don't get involved in that. Or if you do get involved, you just Let it be. You don't get involved in getting involved. At some level, you just kind of like relax with it and let it go. Would it be the passion that you would get involved? Yes. That's what it says here, you know. When it describes the passion, the first, it started to say, you do the differentiation. You bring in the vichara. the vibrating is like here, then here, here, then here, [...] there, here, there, here, there. You start vibrating with things. You bring back in vichara and start exercising it when you start vipassana. And then it says, what is it, vichara, and then it says pari vichara. Pari means completer, you know, really working the vichara, working the discursive thought. So that means mental pliancy?

[85:52]

No, when you're in mental pliancy, If you're in mental physical pliancy, then if you get involved in discursive thought, it's insight. Could you say more about mental physical pliancy? Say more about it? Sure. It's when you feel flexible, at ease, soft, tender, buoyant. Like your body just wants to like, you feel like you're inflated on your cushion. You're kind of like, your body just wants to sit up straight. You don't have to force it up. It's like, this is like, yeah, gravity is like my friend. And also, when the bell rings and they ask you to stop practicing sitting, you're happy to get up and go. Even though, like Suzuki Roshi said, sometimes I'm sitting, I feel like I can sit forever, but when the bell rings, I get up.

[86:53]

So you're enjoying the sitting, but you're happy to go do walking or go talk to somebody or serve lunch or whatever. You're happy to move to do some other wholesome activity. You're enjoying this wholesome activity. Let's do another one. Okay. And you're alert and you're ready to do any good thing. You're happy to do it. you're also willing to continue to do this. And if you decide to do this, you can do this as long as you want. And you don't get distracted unless there's some reason, you know, some good reason. It's not just distraction for distraction's sake. You don't think about going to Hawaii or something while you're sewing your robe. Unless it would really be wholesome. And, you know, probably it's not usually. Probably more beneficial to people for you just to concentrate on your sewing unless somebody comes up to you and says, Elizabeth, we want you to think about Hawaii. And we'd like you to put down your sewing while you think about it.

[87:55]

And you put your sewing down and you say, okay, how do you want me to think about it? Say, well, I want you to plan our itinerary. Okay. And so on. You're just totally up for wholesome activity. And then you do that until it's time to stop and you have no problem concentrating on it because you're in a state of concentration. Is that enough? And you feel the body feels that way and the mind feels that way. They're both kind of like, okay. In your mind you go, okay, and your body goes, okay. It's not just mental. It's not just physical. And some people tend to be a little bit more shamatha in the body than in the mind. You know, I can see their bodies are kind of like pretty good, but their mind's lagging behind. Kind of like, oh, I don't know. But sometimes people, their mind's very flexible, but their body's just like, bleh. So it's both. It's physical and mental. We want both. Huh? Yes, of course.

[88:58]

Which also says, you know, that the insight work is physically involved. It's not just up in your head. If your body's not, and that's why We have these practice periods where all these old people come and sit, you know, and go through this physical part, you know. The physical, you physically put your body, get it up out of the bed somehow, move it into the room, get it down there. You know, it's like, can't we like when we get old not have the physical part and just think about Zen together? And that's one of the things that attracted me to Zen. I thought, now here's a practice I can do maybe till I die. And the example is of the old people, the old practitioners who are like, you know, that's why people love Lou Hartman because he's 90 and he still goes to the Zen Dots. So you can keep doing the physical part even when you're old.

[90:08]

And you have to do the physical part. You can't be wise with your body like not involved. So the yoga part, and this chapter is the yoga part, where it's physical and mental is in this chapter. And all this fancy insight work has to be based on this physical softness. and mental softness. Physically, your body is willing to change and accept new teachings. Mentally, too. But like I say, some of us are sometimes more advanced on one side than the other, so the shamatha isn't really balanced yet. I think Carl was next. Weren't you, Carl? it seems like if it so happens that it involves some sort of non-dispersive silence that deepens it seems like

[91:24]

the self is in large part constructed out of discourse. And that if you're dropping the discourses, the self also drops away. So my question is that through that practice, can that simply lead to the realization of cognition only? because it wouldn't be a self, an object, it would just be the awareness type. Well, as you become more calm and then you experience mind-object relationships, that interaction and seeing that interaction can lead you to understand this teaching that the object that the mind is relating to is cognition only.

[92:32]

But you the sense of the attenuation of the sense of self or the sense of the attenuation of the sense of separation, that isn't the same as being convinced that even when the sense of separation is there, when it's not attenuated, that you actually realize that actually that experience of separation that you know it's not, you can see it even when it appears, it's actually, you're sure that it's actually an illusion. If it attenuates and you can't see it anymore, that's, of course, quite pleasant. That's the way it is in shamatha. The sense of self-other separation is attenuated because you're not whomping up the images so much. So the attenuation is part of the process of getting over believing the thing that's attenuated, the sense of separation.

[93:43]

But what we need to be able to do is when the sense of separation is very clear, that we actually can say, I don't believe it. That it can come up and slap you in the face and you say, well, can I ask a question? You know, you're not caught by that sense of separation, even when it's quite clear. And you know, you're confident that although people can be caught, and you're not confident that you'll never be caught, but although you know that people can be caught and you know that people do believe it, you do not believe it anymore. You know for sure it's an illusion. And you can know that nobody can actually verify this thing, this separation. And this way you verify that there isn't a separation. But the attenuation of the separation, the actual feeling of that attenuation, then can be combined with the certainty that this thing is an illusion. So the feeling of attenuation goes more with the tranquility.

[94:46]

And that feeling of that experience of attenuation, or that there isn't a separation, to bring that together with the understanding and the certainty and the knowledge that there isn't separation. So the feeling that there isn't isn't the same as the understanding that there isn't. A lot of people sometimes feel it, that there's no separation. They feel like, you're my brother and I'll give my life to you with no problem. You know? No matter what you do, I'm always with you. This is a feeling you can have. But still, if suddenly the specter, the impression of separation arose, would you know that that was an illusion? Would you have refuted that? Would you have verified that that's an illusion? And you have to work with the illusion to verify that it's an illusion. So I think that they work together, those feelings. The feeling goes together with, the feeling or the state, which is like that, goes together very nicely with the understanding. And in the end they should be joined.

[95:48]

Because when they're joined, I would say, that then you can let go of the means, the images by which you came to understand. and verify that there's no separation. Then you can drop the signs or the images of that and you're supported by the actual state which is like that. So this is, you know, a very subtle process, but... Okay? Okay, now... Now, yes? Do you think that what you were just talking about is partly why Zen sometimes is accused of being just the shamatha practice? particularly by Tibetans, maybe because it actually looks like and it's described as a kind of calming, give up discursive thought practice, and the insight instructions aren't so obvious. But because the shamatha and the vipassana can look almost the same, it's just combined with this understanding or conviction.

[97:00]

that actually Samatha becomes the persona. Yes, and another reason why I think it may be difficult for some people to see the Zen uses wisdom work is that our wisdom instructions often come in the form of stories. And in Vajrayana, you don't see quite as much storytelling as, you know, there isn't so much analysis of, you know, philological and etymological analysis of stories, of course. In Zen, there is some of that. But we, the Zen tradition is to use the examples of the stories as the templates for the insight work. So there is a lot of studying of the stories, which is our traditional mode of insight work. And other traditions, both Theravada and Vajrayana, aren't used to using stories as the object of insight work as much as in Zen.

[98:05]

They use more analysis. Well, analysis of sutra teachings and commentaries So they study sutras like this and commentaries on these sutras and then do this kind of vichara, vitarka thing and all this stuff and work with that. And this language is very familiar to them as the language of the sutra and other commentaries which talk about how to practice vipassana. So it sounds very similar to Indian Buddhism. Zen sounds somewhat different from Indian Buddhism, but also there's very little, there's some nature imagery, but not as much. So you'd be surprised, maybe not so common to hear in Vajrayana and Theravada instructions like, you know, eastern mountains moving over the water. So that's a particular characteristic of Zen, too, is that

[99:06]

the dialogues between teachers and students became more important than the traditional scriptures. So people would attain tranquility and then turn their tranquil minds to these stories of dialogues, stories of menju. But these stories of menju are narrative versions of what put technically in Indian language is vijñaptimātratta-siddhi. So the teachings in this chapter eight in narrative form are what the Zen tradition often studies. But I'm proposing to you also that this teaching coming out into Indian language and written down in these Indian texts in Sanskrit and Pali, but particularly the Sanskrit texts, is emerging from a relationship between human beings and Buddhas, that the relationship leads to this type of speech.

[100:14]

So in Zen, instead of the kind of speech that emerges from the relationship is speeches about the relationship between the humans and the Buddhas or between the human beings and nature. So Zen puts a big emphasis on how nature and and humans are interacting as a way to convey the teaching of mind only. And there's less emphasis in Indian Buddhism on just talking about the relationship between humans and nature or mind and nature, particularly between humans and the non-human world. There's less emphasis on that as a demonstration of the teaching. But it's there, as I said, you know. It's there in this Avavada teaching. So the idea is that the actual coming into the world of the Buddhas interacting with humans gave rise to this teaching, that this Vijnapti mantra comes from divinely inspired human beings who are articulating in speech,

[101:36]

the relationship between themselves and Buddhas and bodhisattvas. And Zen tells stories more. So if you're coming from something like the sutra, you might not be able to see it. The stories are actually taking, in some sense, a step back to the source of the sutra, but still telling a story about it. So these teachings are a way to get back to this relationship. These teachings are not so easily recognized as a story, but they actually are like a story about the actual relationship between Buddha and Maitreya. So Buddha and Maitreya are talking, and this is what comes out of their conversation. This speech actually comes from their relationship. I just wanted to note that this is our last class. No class during the session?

[102:43]

Yeah, during the session we won't have classes. We'll have Dharma talks. So it won't be in this format. So they're a little different. So this situation is kind of a unique thing that we have during these January practice periods. I just wanted to feel that with you. Thank you for giving the gift. Thank you. You're welcome. It was from Carl's question about, I think it was Carl that asked about the physical and mental appliances. And I realized in that time while you were responding, and I think I've had this associated with being without physical pain and completely flexible in a very specific kind of physical hatha yoga kind of way.

[103:51]

And then, as you were answering, I thought maybe that was a misunderstanding of the physical pliancy and that perhaps the physical pliancy has more to do with a complete relaxation of the body, whatever the body's presenting, even if that's pain or a hip that won't move or a knee that won't. Yes. Now, if you do enter into some of these trances, then there is no more negative sensation you'll be interested to hear. So in very deep states of trance, or in the deeper states of concentration, there is no negative sensation. But negative sensation could return when you are not in the trance. Yes. But you get into those trances by being equanimous and relaxed with negative sensation. So the people who enter those trances can still feel pain.

[104:55]

And the Buddha himself actually was in quite a bit of pain, particularly towards the end of his life. He was having some real strong pains in his body, but he could easily have gone into a state of bliss, which is, you know, some of those trances are states of bliss which are I don't know if any of these people who have attained these states have ever taken heroin or anything like that, but they say it's the highest state of mundane bliss is in these high states of concentration, or these profound states of concentration. And when he died, when he was still in pain, he zipped around in those states of very blissful states. He zipped around in there for a while. And he could have gone and died in those states. But he came back down from those high states into the ordinary world where he still could feel pain and kind of winked.

[106:00]

And then he went back up through states of bliss into a state of equanimity. Now, a state of equanimity, there isn't pain, but there's equanimity towards pain. And there was, just before you enter into the equanimity, there was a feeling of bliss, but you let go of that state. So there really isn't bliss or pain in that fourth jhana that he died in. But if bliss or pain arose, he was emphasizing being equanimous with that. So the emphasis is on being equanimous with pain and pleasure. And in a way, you know, from the bodhisattva point of view, it's a little bit more, what do you call it, central, or a little bit more at the core if you're physically having a hard time.

[107:03]

It's a little bit more bodhisattvic, although not actually necessary. Bodhisattvas don't have to be in pain all the time. Yeah? It's more central. It's like headquarters. It's not necessary to have pain all the time, but it's necessary to be in the pain realm. And so if you're feeling pain, you're probably downtown, so to speak. So... So there's these different realms, right? There's divine realms and then there's these really torturous realms. There's the human realm. The human realm sometimes is described as a state of sort of ongoing nausea.

[108:03]

You know, it's... No, no. It's not necessary to be in pain all the time. The human situation isn't always non-stop pain. And it's not non-stop pleasure. In the divine realms, some of them, it's non-stop pleasure. In some of them, it's like no negative sensation. But the human realm is sometimes painful, sometimes not. In other words, there's lots of opportunities to practice patience. And that's where the Buddha's headquarters is in the human realm. It's the world where you can practice patience. It's hard to practice patience in the divine realm, and it's really hard to practice also in hell, hell in torturous states. In the human realm, there's lots of opportunities. So when you're in pain, you're kind of like more in a central area. So we're not really looking to get away from the pain as bodhisattvas, but we don't want it to be too much, do we? Yeah. Is that enough for this lifetime?

[109:09]

Did you want to say something? I think, I don't remember you saying yesterday to Avavada that... Avavada? Yeah. I don't know how to etymologize this, but it means receiving and delivering or receiving and giving. And this is related to another term. Actually, I spelled this wrong. There's not an A in here. And this funny thing here is an H. So this is the jnana. It's a non-dual knowledge. It's a non-dual awareness which has with it the wish to teach

[110:27]

And this kind of knowledge is the knowledge that the Buddhas manifest in the world of samsara. Enlightenment manifests in the world of samsara in the form of knowing about sentient beings, wishing to teach them, and feeling non-dual with them. Sentient beings are receiving this or when sentient beings are receiving this, this is their relationship with the Buddhas, is to receive this compassion from a being who does not feel separate from us. From a being who doesn't feel separate from us and a being who is completely free of any kind of conceptual grasping. And they want to help us. So avavada, it describes a relationship where they're extending themselves to us and we're accepting it and we're requesting them, we're inviting them to come into our life and bring this compassion and this knowledge which is free from any kind of conceptual clinging.

[111:42]

We're asking them to bring this to us. So they're invited, we're receiving, but also we're extending and delivering an invitation That's the avavada. It describes that. And that's related to this Chinese term of khano doko, which means inquiry and response crossing. And it goes both directions. The Buddhas receive us, too. They receive our suffering. They listen to us. They hear our implicit and explicit request that they bring enlightenment into our world So the avavada goes in both directions. And then out of this relationship of where those who are free from grasping the separation between self and others interact with those who are still caught by the grasping separation of self and others, that interaction leads to this teaching which tells the people

[112:46]

that there's another truth besides that we're separate. There's another truth besides that we're not helping everybody and we're not helping some people and some people aren't helping us. Teaching is that the Buddhas are, without any conceptual limitation, extending their compassion to beings in samsara. And beings in samsara are receiving that. And beings in samsara are delivering a request to Buddhas, and Buddhas are receiving that and delivering this compassion and wisdom teaching to us. This is avavata, and this is this type of knowledge. Is that the way-seeking mind? Is it way-seeking mind? I think way-seeking mind is a translation of, is one translation of bodhicitta, Bodhicitta refers to something that happens to a sentient being, and the sentient being who has this feeling or has this attitude or this spirit gets to have their spirit named the same thing as the Buddha mind.

[114:06]

The Buddha's mind is Bodhicitta, Bodhi mind. Enlightened mind is the Buddha's mind. But when a sentient being is struck in their relationship with the Buddha, when the Buddha extends herself to a sentient being and the sentient being receives that, in that communion, in that avavada, a sentient being can feel, I would like to become a Buddha to help people. When a sentient being actually feels that and actually wants to attain supreme perfect enlightenment for the welfare of the world, this is called bodhicitta. And that arises in this avivada way. I don't make up my own bodhicitta. You don't make it happen to me. And Buddhas don't make it happen to me. I have to receive it. So in the actual relationship where I help the Buddhas help me and the Buddhas help me help others, that is where bodhicitta arises.

[115:10]

But the avavada isn't the same as the bodhicitta. The bodhicitta is used to describe the way a human being who is experiencing this avavada, who is in this avavada, feels. The Buddha doesn't exactly have bodhicitta because the Buddha has realized this state. We aspire to it. We devote ourselves to it. We're happy about this job we have to do. The Buddhas have realized it and they also realize that they're not separate from us. But we have not yet fully realized that. Does that make sense about bodhicitta? So bodhicitta isn't the same as avavada, but it arises from avavada. It's not the same as kanodoko, but it occurs, it arises in kanodoko. And all really meaningful, all the practices that we do, sitting in the zendo, doing service, receiving precepts, practicing confession, getting ordained, you know, all the ceremonies and rituals and work we do together

[116:28]

The full meaning of it occurs in this avavada, in this relationship. And in the teachings are stories and expositions, basically, of this relationship, of the relationship, of the process of our relationship with the Buddhas, which totally includes our relationship with the entire world, because the whole universe is kind of like working us to wake up. Oh, by the way, I told you about this Chinese character for crisis, the Chinese expression for crisis, and I had this nice kind of, you know, kind of a personally touching experience with it. Can I erase this?

[117:31]

So I had this greeting card, which has has these characters written for crisis or turning point. And this character, if you look it up, it means in the Japanese dictionary it's said to be afraid or to mistrust. But the Chinese dictionary said danger, but it also says lofty. It means lofty also. Lofty or danger or dangerous. And then this character on the greeting card said it was opportunity, so I wanted to look it up to see what else it meant. And I looked it up, and what I found it meant was desk.

[118:42]

It meant a desk. But somehow that didn't seem right. So then I went to the Chinese dictionary and looked up this character and see if I could find this character with this character. But I couldn't. But I did find it with this character. This is character Ki, which is my name, Zenki. I found it with that thing. And this character Ki, together with this character Ki, Kiki, this means crisis. It turns out that this was, I looked at this character, this thing actually, the person who wrote it didn't write it right. It should have gone up like this. And then it doesn't mean desk. Then it's an abbreviation for this character.

[119:43]

So actually in the word for crisis it uses that character in my name, Zenki. And one of the means of ki in Zenki is opportunity. But another meaning of it is, which is related, is the power of the universe. The way the universe acts on us is also ki. It's not just the energy of the universe, it's the way the energy of the universe acts upon us. The power of the universe. But the word danger also, basically, the root of the word danger is power. Ki and Aikido, but then Aikido. No, the key in Aikido is key of energy. So Aikido means loving energy path. But anyway, it's danger together with opportunity, but also danger together with the forces of the universe.

[120:50]

And the forces of the universe working on you is this great opportunity, but also there's danger. I was interested to find out that. We already chanted, did we? No. No? Can she do it now? . that we are no longer in your heart, but rather in this way, beginning in the heart of our young brothers. I beg you, I beg you to say it again. I beg you to say it again. I beg you to say it again. Thank you. We have ten minutes because I'd like to take the chairs back and put the big chairs away.

[122:05]

Well, let's have a Han today. Okay. So Han will start in five minutes. She just said it'd be ten because the chairs need to go back to the zendo and the pink ones need to be put away. You want it shorter? No. I want it to wait a minute. Ten minutes plus fifteen. Oh, until it starts? Yes. Then fifteen minutes after that? Up to you. That's what she's asking. That's her request. Okay, so twenty-five minutes till Zazen's? Okay. So could people please take the red chairs back to the Zendo and the pink chairs to the closet, Peter? Will there be service tomorrow morning?

[122:43]

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