Someone said to me, I'm glad you'll be talking about concentration. There was a suggestion that that might be discussed later in the day, and here we are later in the day, so maybe there's enough time to begin discussing this. In the Samyana Nirmacana Sutra, which I've been talking about for so long, it teaches that there's a basic bodhisattva training program, which has six or six basic training methods, and I've talked to you about them, right?

[01:06]

Giving, ethical discipline, patience, and so on, up to the perfection of wisdom. These are the basic methods. One becomes Buddha. Buddha is the full maturity of these training methods. Buddha is a thoroughly trained... living being who does the training in order to benefit all beings. And in the sutra it mentions that there's three subdivisions of each of these six. So in particular I've talked a lot about the threefold sattvas. In our bodhisattva precept ceremony, we give three pure precepts.

[02:10]

So these three pure precepts are the threefold bodhisattva ethics. And these are taught in Indian great vehicle teachings. that the bodhisattva's ethics is threefold, that the Buddha gives bodhisattvas threefold ethics. One ethics is called ethics of the first one. And based on the first one, we practice the ethics of developing all wholesome qualities which means, again, to do these six basic training methods. And the third aspect of ethics is to develop, to benefit and mature all living beings. So first is ethics of restraint, next ethics of all good qualities, next ethics of benefiting beings.

[03:14]

Those three. And then I was looking at the same scripture. He was talking about then that the practice of samadhi, the practice of concentration, is also threefold. And I saw that the practice of samadhi seemed to be related to the threefolds of ethics. So the three aspects of samadhi that are first mentioned our samadhi, which is a state of bliss, without discriminating thought, silent and still, extremely tranquil and impeccable, curing the pains of affliction.

[04:19]

That's the first aspect of samadhi. So being calm and peaceful and still and blissful, that might be a familiar description of concentration. But it says a little bit more. It says that the concentration is in this case, without discrimination, or you could say non-conceptual. I wouldn't say therefore, but I would say because it's without discrimination, because it's non-conceptual, it is impeccable. again relating to what I mentioned this morning, when we arrive at sitting in this immeasurable, inconceivable, imperceptible world, when we are sitting there, that state is mistakes.

[05:41]

And this goes with the first pure precept, which is the precept of restraint of mistakes. And this precept of restraint of error that is impeccable about all actions and restraining being impeccable, that precept gives peace of mind. When we're able to do that first pure precept, that first ethical precept, mind and the first aspect of Samadhi is a peace of mind without discrimination so it's not just that you don't make mistakes in the gross sense you don't make mistakes in the subtle sense of discrimination you perform actions without discrimination

[06:47]

in this concentration. For example, without the discrimination between actor and action, or self and other. There's not that discrimination. And in the samadhi there is, this discrimination is dropped for the time being. Mind and object are one-pointed. There's not discrimination between, within one point. are one-pointed. There's no discrimination between self and other. The concept of self and other has been collapsed into concentration. So that concentration goes, I feel, with the first ethical point in Bodhisattva practice. The next kind of concentration is a concentration which manifestly achieves good qualities, which brings forth these good qualities.

[07:55]

It's a concentration of practices which we just talked about, generosity, ethics and so on, but it's practicing them in this context of restraint, of discrimination. You practice giving... Yes? Can I ask a question? Yeah. Do you understand it to mean that there's no discursive thought in that absorption, or is it that as discursive thought arises, there's no discrimination in that and other things? I would say that by attending to giving up discursive thought, one arrives at mental one-pointedness. And if discursive thought arose after giving it up for a long time, if it continued to arise, that discursive thought would arise at mental one-pointedness.

[09:01]

So the discursive thought would be understood as not other than that which is aware of it. That the discursive thought you would understand is none other than consciousness itself. So there will be no discrimination between the awareness and the . To get to that level of non-conceptuality, one would have to practice letting go of the discrimination and treating all the different discursive thoughts in the same way in order to be able to practice non-discrimination towards non-discrimination towards the thought, towards the discourse, and non-discrimination between the discourse, the discourser, the courser, the discussant, and the consciousness. That there all be one point. Therefore the mind is tranquil, tranquil, very still, and blissful, and impeccable.

[10:09]

which brings that impeccable together with the ethical training to be impeccable. So the ethical training helps you be impeccable about your concentration practice, too. However, until you're one-pointed, it's probably not possible to be impeccable. Once you're concentrating, it's impeccable. And the second one, the second aspect of the concentration, is concentration which is bringing forth the good qualities. That's exactly the same as the second aspect of ethics, which is to gather together, to gather, to concentrate all the good qualities, all the training methods. They're all gathered together and developed. That's the same as the second kind of samadhi. And in both cases,

[11:12]

you can develop these if these gathering of the wholesome qualities in ethical practices on the pure practice where you're working to do various forms in such a way that you don't try to gain anything from them that you notice your resistance to them, both in terms of being holding back and overdoing it. By noticing these ways of falling down with the forms, with the regulations of the practice, with the ceremonies involved, you realize an impeccability there which is as far as you can go before you are mentally one-pointed about that. And that makes it possible to do the next practice, both coming from samadhi and ethics practice, to do the next practice well.

[12:21]

And then the third aspect of samadhi is a samadhi which manifestly achieves the welfare of all beings, which sounds just like the third aspect of bodhisattva ethics. So what's the difference? Well, the difference would only be So the samadhi, you would be one-pointed about it, you would be tranquil and at peace, and you'd be impeccable. So in order to go from attempting to do the free-fold bodhisattva ethics the way we try now to the way they're doing it where it's impeccable, we need to practice them and then practice patience enthusiasm and concentration. So we need concentration for them actually to become impeccable. And as presented, it starts with the first one, which is to be in a state of concentration where we realize we're in irreproachable, impeccable state.

[13:33]

And I also mentioned that when doing these bodhisattva exercises, that the essence of training with these three, restraining, distraction, just restraining, yeah, distraction from doing the practice, practice and benefiting beings, that in trying to practice these precepts, first of all we receive them. We receive these precepts from another who has received them from another and so on. Back to beginningless time. Then we aspire to them. So the essence of ethical discipline has four parts. First is receive the precepts correctly from another. Second is to aspire to practice the precept. Third is to be peccable. It's to fall down.

[14:37]

is to fail at doing what you aspire to do. That's a normal part of moving towards being impeccable is to be peccable. And by doing that over and over one evolves towards being successful, towards being impeccable in regard to practicing. But to be successful all the time means we need to be concentrated in this way. So as we're doing with these practices, we move until the concentration is so one-pointed. And in that one-pointedness, there's no more failure. We are impeccable. So that's the three aspects of concentration in relation to the aspects of ethical training.

[15:42]

I feel that they dovetail each other. One anticipates the second. The second shows the perfection of the first. This is from the sutra, and then one of the great devotees of the sutra, Asanga, wrote a text, The Great Vehicle, and in there he also treats the concentration as three aspects, and he says it slightly differently. He's inspired by the sutra, but when he talks about the three aspects, he talks about it slightly differently. He says the first aspect of concentration is that which pleasant abodes. The second aspect is that which engenders supernatural powers.

[16:47]

The third aspect is that which benefits beings. Pleasant abodes are established by doing things with no resistance. by thinking with no resistance. Which means thinking without any to be totally one-pointed with things is to have no resistance. And we don't usually think of these all these good qualities of supernormal powers. But anyway, that's what it says. So, just letting you know that you might accidentally engender some supernatural powers if you do these practices in a concentrated way.

[17:51]

And the third one is exactly the same. That which benefits living beings. Now, Turns out that each one of these three aspects of concentration can be analyzed into three further steps. But I would be willing to wait till another time to tell you about them, unless you want to hear about them now. It may or may not be the right time to tell you that these three aspects of concentration also have three aspects. Pardon? Each, yeah. So this presentation, the six basic bodhisattva practices, each have three aspects, 18 aspects of one practice of enlightenment. And then each of them have three aspects, which is 54, I believe, aspects, 54 practices.

[18:55]

of facets of making a Buddha. But maybe I should wait to tell you about him and see if you have any questions in our last few minutes together. Any feedback from anybody? Any feedback, Ted? Brown? I asked you that before, remember? Yeah. Ted, Ted what? Ted Moore. Ted Brown and Ted Moore. Any feedback, Ted Moore? Any feedback, Jeff? Any feedback, Tyler?

[20:04]

Any feedback, Athena? What? Thank you. Any feedback, Alenia, up in the high A? You're welcome. Would you tell me your name, sir? Eric. Any feedback, Eric? Eric. You were sitting and you were noticing inconsistency and it was hard to accept the inconsistency? More open to seeing the inconsistency? Yeah. How about more open, did you feel more openness to being inconsistent?

[21:09]

Yeah. So that shows that to me, I hear you saying, at the beginning, when I was aware of inconsistency, the concentration, I was having trouble being generous towards it. But at the end, I was more generous in welcoming of it. Okay? And then if you can be more accepting, open, and welcoming to the inconsistencies in the concentration, you're concentrated. I don't know if you noticed that, but I feel that when I see somebody who's distracted and they push the distraction away, that they get more distracted. But when they welcome the distraction and say, you know, and they say thank you to the distraction. They notice the distraction, they're already more concentrated at that moment. That's what I observe. Then we have to be careful of the distraction, right? Practice ethics with the distraction.

[22:12]

I don't know if he moved on to that. But anyway, I think what happened, my story of him, is that he was sitting, he noticed distraction, inconsistency, concentration, and he went back to the beginning practice of generosity, which is the foundation of concentration. We can't be concentrated in a focused, calm, relaxed way if we're not generous with what comes up. And if we are generous with what comes up, we can be concentrated. And then we can be patient also with the amount of effort that we have to give to go from consistency to consistency. But we're not going to get to consistency unless every step of the way we're generous to the inconsistency. But that doesn't mean as soon as you're generous to inconsistency, the inconsistency drops away.

[23:14]

So there's patience. We need to be generous, careful, and patient. And then we've got that all together. Now I can say, I actually would really like to be consistent. I'm ready, and I really would like to. And then there it is. And then it goes away. Start over. Any other feedback? Would you say there's a difference between awareness practice and concentration? A difference between awareness practice and concentration? Well, the word concentration is sometimes translated as awareness. However, is not concentrated, or some awareness does not fully realize tranquility, bliss, flexibility, focus. So some states of awareness are not concentrated.

[24:18]

But concentration is one of the forms of awareness. And it's a type of awareness that's necessary in order for there to be another kind of awareness You can call wisdom also a kind of awareness. You can call Buddha's wisdom a type of awareness. But it's an awareness of fully developed concentration, which again doesn't just mean focused, it also means flexible, body and mind are flexible, relaxed, open, but undistracted, and joyful, and bright. That's an awareness. States that are not drawn to the quality are not usually called concentration. The concentration is always available. We're living in concentration, actually. That's where we live. But because of the limited world we imagine, that sometimes quite successfully distracts us from the state in which we're actually living. Is your name Shoshana?

[25:27]

Do you have any feedback? No, I'm just taking it in. Romy, did you have some feedback? No? No? Brent? No, thank you. Ben? Kai? No? John? Verbal feedback, but I feel like I... Okay, thank you for the non-verbal feedback. Simon? It's going to be practicing these six perfections with it. So... Again, if discursive thought arises, for example, certain kinds of discursive thought are really either for self-abuse or self-aggrandizement.

[26:45]

So, if I want to relinquish or let go of discursive thought, I have to, first of all, practice generosity towards it. And then I have to be careful of it, because it can be a pitfall. But careful of it does not mean closing my eyes to it. It does not mean running after it. It does not mean holding on to it. It does not mean speak badly of it. It also doesn't mean to praise it for more than it is. And so on, I practice the bodhisattva ethics of with discursive thought. The the state of concentration is like the state of the first precept. But the development of concentration, you have to use the six perfections to get to concentration. We're not going to renounce discursive thought until we have wisdom. So by doing these first four practices,

[27:50]

we're ready to basically relinquish discursive thought. And relinquish it means we don't push it away because that would be some discrimination and we don't hold on to it. We really totally let it be so that now we can look at it and apply the teachings about the nature of phenomena to discursive thought and all other phenomena. Was that helpful? I would like to ask each of you for your feedback, so maybe you could all give it at once. Thank you very much. And so I wish you well in the month of July. I will be a month, but I hope to practice with you again someday. Thank you. Thank you. May our intention equally extend in being and in place with the true merit of Buddha's Way.

[29:08]

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