So I was talking about a certain way of presenting a meditation practice which has two aspects. One is called tranquility or stabilization of the mental field. Actually, I think mental stabilization in some ways is better than stabilization of consciousness. Mental stabilization is one aspect. The other aspect is aspect of insight or higher vision. And observing that reaches a state of development where it actually is actually correctly seeing and understanding how things are. Two aspects. And first about the stabilization type.

[01:03]

And the stabilization type is a, in a way, it's kind of obsessive and compulsive. It's a kind of, it's a disciplining of the mind, it's a disciplining of the attention in an abstract way, in the sense that you abstract, you try to train the mind to abstract itself from everything, but what you is the focus of the training. You're training the attention onto a single topic. So one definition of stabilization practice is a non-differentiated object. In other words, the object isn't differentiated.

[02:09]

In other words, one object of focus. And that object is an inner object, a mental representation. It's a mental representation of... Something. Could be a mental representation of mental phenomena, could be a mental representation of physical phenomena. So, it's obsessive in the sense of the mind is obsessed or, you know, kind of disciplined in a kind of constricting way onto a very simple and kind of narrow focus. The insight or the higher vision aspect, is actually quite different. It's more about opening, a more open and receptive way of dealing with phenomena.

[03:12]

So in some ways, I think a lot of us don't feel comfortable with the stabilization practice because of this abstracting quality. which it shouldn't get into being coercive, because if it gets into being coercive, it won't work. It should be gentle. Gentle disciplining of the mind onto a single topic, an undifferentiated topic. Whereas in the insight practice, the meditation object, the object of observation, differentiated highly differentiated matter of fact it has the range of the entire range of phenomena so it's open and receptive is is the is the mode of insight but the idea is that before you open up to investigate the nature of each and every phenomena of your life

[04:26]

it might be good to stabilize the field where the observation is carried out. And the stabilization has this, the tranquilizing of the field, undifferentiated object, which it uses to cultivate stability. And it is a mental image. It's a mental representation of or whatever. It can be a mental representation, which means a conscious representation of the breath. This morning, Rebecca pointed out that the breath is both unconscious, it's an unconscious, it pervades the unconscious realm, and it's also a conscious thing. Which we have a concept for, like, you know, Is this thing I have in my hand breath?

[05:30]

Huh? Some people say yes. A few wise-acres say yes. But most people think, no, this is not breath, right? So we have the concept which is that breath isn't like this glass is a case. In the unconscious, or by unconscious means at the level of consciousness... which is direct physical experience. At that level, there's no conceptual mediation between whatever breath is and the awareness of it. And there, breath is not called breath. Breath is a physical phenomena, which means it's a color, a sound, a smell, a taste, or a tangible. And there, breath is more, you might say, you can see breath is more like spirit, Or psyche. Psyche means spirit. And spirit means breath. Right?

[06:34]

You know that? Spirit means breath. The word spirit. The root of the word... And the root of the word psyche is breath. So, at the level of direct sensory experience... Whatever kind of breathing is going on is going on, but it's not called breathing. It's just some kind of physical event. The training of mental stabilization is primarily in the level of mental life, which is conceptual consciousness, because it's in conceptual consciousness that we have, that is where our ignorance lives. Our sense of self and other lives. So that's the realm that's most upset. And that's the realm we start training. So I have this blackboard now. And the microphone.

[07:37]

This microphone is, I can use this microphone. But you can use it too. Okay, so this whole blackboard, let's say this whole blackboard is the realm of mental phenomena. And one type of mental phenomena is awareness. And I would just tentatively suggest that you can use awareness as a synonym for consciousness, for knowing. Actually, being aware as a synonym for being conscious and knowing and perceiving is consciousness as a synonym for knowledge. So, mind, mental phenomena are more than just awareness or consciousness. They're more than that. But, in some sense, I don't know why, I'll just say anyway, in some sense, consciousness

[08:50]

has qualities which are especially enlightening or helpful. Quality of knowing is very important for us to understand. So I'll just write awareness on this board. But along with awareness is awareness is awareness of something and there's Two kinds of awareness that I would like to speak of. One is awareness which is direct awareness which arises from the interaction between two types of and I'll write the fancy word here, rupa and I write that to remind me about something, which I'll tell you in a minute.

[09:53]

But rupa is a Sanskrit word or a Pali word for matter or physicality. And rupa is related to the word, I think, rupini, which is a type of Buddhist pasta, which means susceptible to being hit. Material things are susceptible to being hit. And they are susceptible to being hit by other material things. And so the realm is, in some sense, that which can be hit and that which can't be hit. The root of the word is that which can be hit or that which is susceptible or vulnerable to being hit.

[10:55]

But there's another half to the world of materiality and things which can hit the other part. And so the part that's hit are what we usually call the physical organs or the physical sensitivities, which we call the eye organ, the ear organ, the nose organ, the tongue organ, and the skin organ. The touch is what can be touched. The skin is the most basic. And the other ones have evolved from the skin. The eye and the ear and so on have evolved basically from the skin. The skin and its development in the form of eyes, ears, nose, and tongue. The skin, roughness, pressure, temperature, and so on. And so that's another kind of materiality that can get. And then what we call the eye is the place which is particularly sensitive and responsible for being hit by electromagnetic radiation of a certain wavelength.

[12:05]

And the ear, that which is susceptible to mechanical waves. And the nose, that which is susceptible or particularly responsive to being touched by gases. which is particularly sensitive to being touched by liquids or liquid chemicals. Okay? Your elbow can be touched by sound waves. Your elbow can be touched by electromagnetic radiation. I'll take back sound waves. waves the elbow can be touched by electromagnetic radiation the elbow can be touched by gases and the elbow can be touched by certain chemicals liquid chemicals and there'll be some response but it won't be the same as for example if you shine a light of a certain wavelength on it it might not have much of a response at all like if you shine the light on it which uh which is inside the wavelength of infrared and ultraviolet, inside those areas, and you shine it on here, there won't be much reaction.

[13:14]

You shine it on the eye, you might see a color. You put your elbow in water or put it up to a telephone or just put it out in the air while somebody's talking, you might not get much of a reaction. You ever try it? There is some reaction. There is a reaction, so like I mentioned, that somebody... I heard of a blind man who taught himself to ride a bicycle, but he didn't have information in his cheeks. So you do get some information through your skin of a very subtle type that we don't usually notice. And he actually learned how to, he noticed that just before he ran into a telephone pole while he was trying to ride a bicycle, he got some feeling in his cheek on the side that the telephone pole was on. This guy writes for the New Yorker. And then he... And if he got a sensation, you know, he got a different sensation when the telephone pole was in front and a different sensation when the telephone pole was in the left. And he actually learned by running into walls and telephone poles and cars, he learned how to ride a bicycle. You do get some sensation, but your eyes...

[14:19]

much more sensitive to, like, information about, in some ways, than your skin is. So your eye is much more... So when you're blind, you don't have a certain kind of information, which, apparently, most people use their eyes mostly for riding a bicycle. Ears a little bit, you know, when you hear a truck coming. But mostly eyes and balance. So mostly eyes and skin. But he didn't have eyes, so he used ear, balance, and the sensation on the skin. So it's there, but, you know, and again, if you put something hot around your ear, it's your skin that tends to sense the heat. It's not the anvil, the hammer, and the stirrup, and the cochlea in your ear that tell you that it's hot. You know what I mean? So there's a difference. So these are two types of physicality. The gross, electromagnetic radiation, and so on.

[15:22]

And I call it electromagnetic radiation because it's not really light. It's only light when it interacts with an eye and a consciousness. There is no actual light out there. Separate from an eye and a consciousness. And there definitely isn't any color. When these two interact, it doesn't always happen, but when these two interact, sometimes there is a rising of awareness. That awareness is arising from direct contact with electromagnetic radiation or something, which stimulates tissue for us in the area around what we call high. That's one type of consciousness. The other type of consciousness is consciousness which is arising from the interaction of two types of mental events.

[16:30]

Concepts and the ability of the mind called this mind-organ. So, concepts and mind-organ interacting gives rise to mind-consciousness. Material phenomena interacting with material organs gives rise to material consciousness, consciousness of materiality. This direct perception is unmediated by concepts. And these experiences of color and so on are not which we call objective, in the sense that there is not the awareness of that color being external. There is just awareness of color. But the color is not out there on its own.

[17:35]

And it's not in here. There's no insight and direct perception. We do, I propose to you, have this level of life, a level of direct perception where there's no subject and object, and where the things that are known are not out there. There's knowing, but the knowing is not objective. This is something that is unconscious. But what it really means is it's un-conceptual consciousness. So unconscious, for the Buddhist presentation, I would say, could be rephrased as non-conceptual consciousness or un-conceptual consciousness. The model... of this type of consciousness, where two different types of phenomena interact, and out of that interaction a consciousness arises, is the same model as for the arising of mind, of conceptual consciousness, or mind consciousness. Mainly concepts interacting with mind organ, mind organ, which makes the mind be able to split itself into awareness and concepts.

[18:47]

So this is a very, this is kind of a difficult thing to pick up all at once, but anyway. Now, when this consciousness arises, when this awareness arises, when this knowledge arises, it always arises with some object that is There isn't any knowing which arises without knowing anything in this presentation here today. I'm talking about consciousness which is consciousness of something. This consciousness is consciousness of materiality without the materiality being mediated by the concept that that's external. In this case, The consciousness is knowledge which is mediated by concepts, and there is a sense of knowing something out there.

[19:55]

When these consciousnesses arise, they also arise as other mental phenomena. Other mental phenomena are the ability, besides the concept, there's the awareness of knowledge, and then there's the concept. that the knowledge is aware of, or knows. But there's also the ability to create concepts. There is the ability to create images, which we call imagination, or conception. There's concepts, but there's also the ability to conceive. So another thing, whatever consciousness arises, there is consciousness capacity to create its objects. So it isn't just consciousness. It's consciousness plus concepts, mental concepts, which are mental representations of whatever we know. And then also there is the capacity of the mind to split itself into a splitting function of the mind.

[21:03]

That's another thing that arises. The mind has this function. But this function of splitting is not consciousness itself. It is not knowing itself. It is just the ability of the mental field to make it split itself into knower and known. There really isn't two separate minds, but there's a sense of a knower and that which is known, and then there's ability to create that separation. And there's also the ability to create, to produce images, the imagination. So we have consciousness, concepts, the splitting function, the imaginary function. Every moment of must have this. Every moment of objective consciousness has those. And in addition, there always is samadhi, or mental one-pointedness, because the awareness is always clearly focused on the concept. So samadhi, or mental one-pointedness, is also a characteristic of every moment of mind consciousness. It's also a characteristic of every moment of direct sense consciousness.

[22:04]

There's also constantly a feeling, Every moment of consciousness has a feeling. And a feeling means there's an evaluation going on. There's an evaluative function. Mind arises with the ability to evaluate. Then in addition... There is the fact that the mind is, in a sense, chooses among the many things that it could be aware of, among the many concepts it could be aware of, or here, among the many material interactions between sensical sensitivities and sense data, potential sense data, it chooses by very, we would say, we say basically by... past habits, there's a choosing of what to pay attention to here, or what is known here, and what is known there. That's called the adverting. Another thing that's always there is that the mind is always bent towards whatever it knows.

[23:09]

That's called mental application. Those factors are always there. Then in addition to those, there can be confusion, and it's usually there from Confusion-delusion-ignorance, that's usually there. In other words, accompanying the situation is some basic not facing the situation. In other words, the way the mental application is being applied is more or less a mess. So there's confusion, and in the confusion there is then greed and hate. Usually. Not always. Sometimes it just, confusion just completely takes over. So confused you can't even have a reason to hate. But with a little less confusion, usually you want to get away from it or get it. Usually something's a little off because of it. Try to control it or get rid of it. So these kinds of things, and there's many more, like for example, if there was ever, if one of the concepts was ever, if one of the concepts was ever like practice,

[24:12]

If you ever got that concept, and then the practice was like meditation or something, then when that concept... There could be, in response to that or accompanying that, there could be like diligence or not diligence. You could say, well, geez, I think I'll practice meditation. And you could say, well, forget that. That's also a mental phenomenon. So the whole field is, in a sense, the mind. So mind, you could say, includes... what it knows, all its accompanying functions. But there's some, what do you call it, lack of fascism in the Buddhist teaching. And we haven't got everybody to sort of use the same vocabulary. So sometimes people speak of mind as equivalent to consciousness. And then you might use mental to mean mind, consciousness, awareness, cognition, that kind of thing, knowing, and also including associated with mind, consciousness, knowledge, and so on.

[25:24]

So mental stabilization, in some senses, is better than conscious stabilization of consciousness, because in some ways, consciousness is always stable, because consciousness is always so radically pure, because consciousness is like, in some sense, It just knows. And it never really... If it doesn't know, you don't have anything happening. You actually, every moment, you do know what you know, and that's it. And it's like, absolute. I mean, it's 100%. And if it's like 82%, it's like zero. There's not like partial knowing at this level. However, all around this consciousness are all these other mental functions which can be in disarray, and so the whole mental field can be a big, painful mess. which might or might not be rendered into a mental representation, which then the consciousness would know. But generally speaking, the mental field is in disequilibrium, and it's painful that it's so, and there's all kinds of confusion and conflict in it, which create discomfort and a sense of anxiety and so on.

[26:34]

That's usually going on. That's part of what's going on here usually in the mental field. But it's not always what is currently being taken and converted into a mental representation and presented to consciousness to know. But sometimes it's presented. Those are the times when you feel suffering. At that time, you have a mental representation of your suffering. You know it. I'm suffering. This is suffering. But sometimes you don't know it. But it's there anyway. It's like feeling is there every moment, but you're not always aware of your feeling. You're not always conscious or knowing the mental representation of what you're feeling. You also have all these other things that are going on, which may or may not be presented to you in a conceptual form. Now, some people think that we've already, generally speaking, we've already got pretty much, at a certain age, we've got a whole bunch of concepts of our experience, and then they're just like, the mind has these concepts available to it, and then it just, like, by various conditions, chooses which concepts to be aware of, and that's your experience.

[27:51]

And for some people, I think, actually, they do not have concepts for all their different mental experiences. And part of meditation is for them to learn concepts for these things so that they can actually have this resonance between these mental phenomena and representing them. Anyway, you all have some concepts for your mental representations for mental events. which you are sometimes aware of, and you also have mental representations for physical events. Those are the images you have for colors, sounds, and so on. Or those, I should say, those are the images you use to conceptually know physical experience. So the stabilization practice is to use, to pick one concept,

[28:54]

For example, the breath. Train the attention, which is one of the mental factors. Attention. The attention. You might be training attention in relationship to imagination, because the imagination probably is going to keep churning up a variety of images. and train the attention to say thank you very much to all those images, be very gentle about it and say thank you, thank you for the image, thank you. But this is not the image I'm working with. This concept that I'm being presented is not the concept I'm focusing on. I'm focusing on the concept of, for example, breath. Now, you don't want to be rude about this, because that's going to create more disturbance. Just gently say, oh, and this, and so here, by the way, another mental factor is mindfulness. So mindfulness is how you remember that you've chosen the concept of breath. So you use mindfulness to remember the one concept you're using is breath.

[30:02]

Your imagination is giving you the concept of breath every now and then, but it's also giving you the concept of stupid person over there, smart person over here, heat, cold, etc. Tired, blah, blah, blah. It's giving you mental representations of all these other things. They're being offered to you. And once in a while, maybe, the imagination will give you the one concept which you want to pay attention to. So people who are trying to do stabilization practice... uh you know they they choose the concept and again usually they think they choose the actual breath but actually you choose the to successfully stabilize the consciousness you have to use excuse me in order to successfully stabilize the mental field you have to use a mental image and the mental image that breathing so occasionally the um

[31:04]

the consciousness will actually know breathing. The imagination will churn up an image of the breath. And it may churn up different images of the breath. And you may say they all count. Anything related to breath, I'll accept as, for now, part of my focus. But sometimes what happens is the imagination does not churn up any images of breath for quite a while. Like sometimes for days. Some people have chosen the breath as the concept that they're going to focus on, and they go to the meditation hall, but for days they don't notice that concept. They notice maybe the wall. They notice maybe their neighbor. They notice the time, how far through the period they are. They notice the pain in their legs. But somehow the imagination doesn't give them this gift of, hey, look at this.

[32:09]

A nice, strong, like, this is a really neat image. Look at this breath one. And then the consciousness says, oh, breath. And that's one of the reasons people like to count the breath, because they like to get as much additional, you know, I don't know what the word is, accompaniment. a reinforcement for this poor little concept of breath. So you have the counting to accompany it, and what some other people like to do is that sort of like amplify this, to give some amplification to this thing. And by these methods, one can sometimes occasionally see the concept of breath and pay attention to it and start stabilizing the consciousness. But it's a kind of restrictive and obsessive operation. And what I did yesterday was I introduced a different concept from the breath, which is a little difficult for people to understand, but which has certain virtues, which I don't want to play up too much.

[33:17]

But the concept that I offered to you, awareness has the quality that the concepts, that when it knows concepts, it does not elaborate them at all it just knows them with no elaboration and that you as an idea and i suggest to you that you focus on that the idea of the mind being that way but if that's too difficult to understand for now just focus on the concept of breath Yes. Is it helpful to name it? Breath, you mean? Say breath. I think... I think, yeah.

[34:22]

Well, just like breath, you name that at one point. You're more familiar with it. So this one needs to be named for a while. You need to name it for a while until you can like... until you can see it without naming it. But it... this concept of the non-conceptual nature or the non-conceptual quality of awareness it just seems to be kind of hard for people to get but for some reason or other I keep bringing it up And the breath might be easier, so I really want you to feel supported. Train your attention onto this concept called breath.

[35:25]

It really is one of the traditional objects for stabilizing consciousness. There's many other objects for stabilizing consciousness. Like Marta brought up one the other day. Death is another one of the objects that you can use, one of the other concepts you can use to stabilize consciousness. And certain colored discs are also images you can use to stabilize consciousness. That's an inner image of a colored disc. And images of the Buddha can be used to stabilize consciousness. And loving kindness can be used to stabilize consciousness. And the practice of loving kindness can be used as a concentration device. And compassion and sympathetic joy and equanimity, those all can be used as concepts that you can use to concentrate the mind.

[36:29]

They have more use than just that, but they can be used as stabilization concepts, inner concepts Now, just another little kind of like... I don't know what it is. It relates to Zen or it relates to Samatha Vipassana or mental stabilization and insight in Zen. We have a text called The Gateless Gate. It's one of the... Collections of Zen stories in the form of stories called koans. And the first two cases in that book typify, I think, present tranquility and insight.

[37:36]

The first case is a case of does the dog have Buddha nature? It's a story. A monk asks the teacher, does the dog have Buddha nature? And the teacher says, moo. which in Chinese means no, or there isn't any. It also means non-existence. It means all those things. Anyway, he said Mu. So that story is presented, and the way you can practice that story is as a stabilization practice. And you can practice that story as an abstract, as a meditation abstraction or as a meditation. In the sense that whatever happens, you say, no. Everybody you meet, you say, no, no, no, no, no, no. Or you say, there isn't any, [...] there isn't any.

[38:42]

You pull yourself away from doing anything with this thing. Before you do anything with this person you're looking at or this experience you have, before you do anything, before you get any kind of elaboration with it, you say no. You cut yourself off from doing anything. So what you're doing is you're focusing, you're seeing all these different faces, but you're treating them all the same. So you're always focused on no. You're always focusing on not doing anything with what's happening. You can also practice no with your breathing, though. You can follow your breathing. You can say no. So you're aware of your breathing, but you don't do anything with it. And if you go anyplace else from your breathing, you say no. So it's that kind of a practice. That's a stabilization practice. The next practice, the next story, is a story about... This is a story about... The question, does an enlightened person fall into cause and effect?

[39:49]

And it's a story about that. And it's a story about a man who came to ask a teacher about this question. In that story, the scope is to open up. To open up and be receptive. to look more widely at what's going on. Because you're looking now at a situation which applies to all. You're widening your perspective. So that's an example of how in the Zen tradition you can see these two kinds of meditation. So the... often tell this story of the of the buddha saying now it isn't it's it's part of the story but it's this part of the story just his instruction to one of his monks he said uh by by he you by here train yourself thus in the scene in the herd there'll be just the herd and then in the um

[41:05]

He just said in the reflected, but that's a shorthand. In the tasted, there will be just the tasted. In the touched, there will be just the touched. And in the smelled, there will be just the smelled. And in the cognized, there will be just the cognized. In other words, when you're dealing with mental concepts, I should say, when you're dealing with concepts, all concepts are mental, so it's not really a mental concept. When you're dealing with concepts of mental phenomena, then whatever mental phenomena you're cognizing, cognition, there will be just that cognition of that mental phenomena. That's an instruction which I think I have said in the past that it's a stabilization instruction, but it's actually... This instruction you can see as being, you can use this instruction in a sense for telling you how to do both kinds of meditation. The difference is that it says, you know, in the seen there will be just a seen, in the heard there will be just a heard and so on.

[42:17]

That way to the seen and the heard is the way of relating which is to not elaborate on concepts because he's talking about in the consciously seen and the consciously heard in other words a concept for the seen and a concept for the heard and a concept for the tasted and a concept for the touched and a concept for the smelled there will be just that when you have a concept for pain and you have a concept for pleasure and you have a concept for laziness and you have a concept for confusion you have a concept for anger and a concept tall, and a concept for short. That's the last category of the cognized. But actually, in all cases, there's cognition. So it means no matter what kinds of concepts you're dealing with, treat them all the same. But in the... you're opening up the range of concepts.

[43:22]

And you're applying the same method which you applied to... which you applied in the practice of stabilization, namely the practice of stabilization, you were just working on letting whatever concept was there just be that concept. Now in Vipassana, or in insight work, you can now see if you can, instead of just looking at the actual focusing on that way of being with whatever happens, And anything that takes you away from being with what's happening in that way, you let go of, you eschew. Now you open up the field a little bit and see if you can look at different things with that same spirit. In other words, with that same, now that stabilization. But first, usually it's good to spend some time seeing if you can just stay with this basic way of being with what's ever happening.

[44:28]

And if anything happens that you feel taken away from that, you just come back to that. So sometimes people say, come back. But it's not exactly coming back to the breath, it's coming back to not elaborating what's happening and using the breath to do that. Come back to the concept of the breath. But it doesn't, it means come back to the concept of the breath and come concept of the breath and just come back to the concept of the breath. And when you get to the concept of the breath, let the concept of breath just be that. When you feel some stability, then you can start looking at the concept of blue, the concept of sweet, sour, all concepts can try to open up in the same way. So, in some sense, all this is actually mindfulness of your body.

[45:33]

Because these mental phenomena are already born. They grow up out of a body. You're actually watching what your brain does. Your brain can create this stuff and you're actually training the mind which is what the brain does. You're training which is a production of the body. So you're actually training yourself to meditate on your body. I just wanted to say that there's something... I've been very much involved in music for most of my life, and there's something very profound about it, which seems to be part of the study of music as well. It seems to be a good analogy, and that is that before you improvise, you need to work on fundamentals. And yet, the more you work on fundamentals, the higher your level of improvisation is.

[46:36]

And when you return to fundamentals, the higher your experience is. So they're really interconnected, and there's this constant process. You don't really arrive anywhere. It's just always growing, proceeding. So in the very last few minutes there, I don't know, something about that. I mean, fundamentals and improvisation, which was coming up very strongly. Especially as you move from, I don't know, something, especially the improvisation, being able to have a Teflon quality to what you're doing so things don't stick. Right. So that you can actually be present enough. In other words... You may not have a Teflon quality. You're going to have a Teflon quality. In order to improvise at a high level, you cannot hang on to anything that you think you've already played. That's not improvisation. Improvisation is actually being present and being open.

[47:38]

Expressing. As soon as you start playing licks and motifs that have already been hashed out, you're no longer improvising, you're just... playing old news. So I just was inspired to comment on that because there's something coming up for me. And in some sense, you know, awareness of mental, awareness of concepts is a kind of improvisation on direct awareness without conceptual mediation. And meditation is like an improvisation on both of those. And then part of what makes meditation work is that you don't even cling to your meditation. You keep going beyond your meditation. You don't keep going back to the way you were meditating before, which seemed to be working pretty well. Please come up here and use this. I just wonder how to handle with that idea or concept of I. Like, I see, I smell, it's arising.

[48:57]

There's just seeing and then coming. How to handle with that? How do you handle the concept of I? Well, if you're working on stabilizing, when the concept of I comes up, So I'll just ask, what do you do if your practice and the concept of I comes up? What's the practice? What? Pardon? Oh, well, there it is. Oh, well, there it is. Yeah, something like that. Oh, well, there it is. In other words, what? Don't elaborate. Pardon? Recognition, but no elaborate. Yeah, recognition. So if you're working on stabilization and the concept of eye comes up, or sense of eye comes up, you recognize with no elaboration. Or if you were meditating, if you were using the breath when the image of eye came up, then you just go back to the breath.

[50:08]

So I think breath is an example of... The way of focusing on breath is another way to say no conceptual elaboration. So going back to the breath is the same as... If the concept of I comes up, going back to the breath is the same as not elaborating on that. But in some ways, not elaborating on it is the way you are just before you go back to the breath. Because if you elaborate before you go back, you see? The willingness to go right back to the breath is that you're not going to elaborate on whatever this thing is. In other words, you're not going off with it. And that's the way to stabilize, but it's also the way, when you're doing insight meditation and going from object to object or topic to topic, you do the same thing, the same way of... This way of being with the breath... I mean, being with concepts, including the concept of self, is the way in which you will eventually become intimate with this concept of self, and gradually start to see what it actually is, and how it functions, and how it arises, and how it ceases, and what it really is.

[51:19]

That make sense? Anything else you want to bring up? Yes? The elaboration comes so quickly after the concept. So you've got a string of elaborations going on very rapidly. So what do you do about that? You don't do anything about it. You just have had a bunch of elaboration going on there. So that's it. To continue the elaboration. However, there is awareness now of the original concept, and there's awareness of the elaboration, so you can report to me if you notice elaboration. This is the start. Now, when you notice, and that's the end of that, and you finally stop elaborating.

[52:25]

And you just said, whoa, that was clever. That was quite a thing, and I'm still talking about it, but I'm just talking. Then you are, that's it. And maybe that way of being with that one, when the next one comes, this time you go, this time you go, okay. Maybe you're humbled by noticing how much you're into this elaboration thing, and finally you just stop for a moment. And by the way, the word for stabilization, the Chinese character for stabilization is stop. It also means rest. Take a break. Take a break from this. So this practice is restful, stabilizing, calming, but also involves stopping whatever mental representation you've been given. So in a sense, another spirit of stabilization is whatever happens, you say, thank you very much, and no complaint whatsoever.

[53:33]

You say thank you. So no, no, no, no, no. But it's very much the same as thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm not going to ask for something else. And no means I'm not going to ask for something else. What you just said is enough for me. I'm grateful for that. And what I'm going to do is I'm not going to do anything with it. That's the way I'm going to work with it. And that way of working with what happens, the mind calms down. The mental field calms down. The mental field becomes like consciousness itself, which doesn't argue with what it knows. Consciousness is kind of grateful, being able to know something, because then consciousness is a success. That's its job. So consciousness says that every concept is said, thank you, thank you. Saying, no, I'm not going to trade this in on something else.

[54:38]

I'm not going to trade this in any way. Does that make sense? This kind of spirit, so it should be gentle, a kind of a gentle obsession, a magnificent obsession. Did you give me the steepest tip? When you said that there's always samadhi around, so is the mind, I mean, it might come very quickly, one elaboration to another, but is the mind always singly pointed? Yeah, the mind is even singly pointed on every little phase of the elaboration. Right. Wait for me now. Anything else you want to bring up? I'm curious about the difference. When you talk about elaboration, it seems to me that if I notice my breath and then it feels tight, and I said, oh God, what is it tight about? And I just kind of go off on this.

[55:40]

I think of that as elaboration. But what about the curious exploration of, oh, it feels like a stone or kind of like entering into it, the layers of it, or like a pain in my leg and like feeling the energy or the wave. Exploration may be sometimes penetrating insight. It's just that if the exploration isn't accompanied by some... by a minimum level of stabilization, then the exploration can be just more, you know, just stir things up more and cause more confusion. If we're confused, then exploration doesn't clarify the situation, it just churns up the situation more. In fact, one of the things that some people hear, they hear about Zen practice and they think that we're like suppressing or repressing our experience. When they hear about the, I think they hear about the stabilization phase. Sometimes Buddhism in general, they think that the people are stuffing their experience, they're suppressing their experience.

[56:46]

And that can happen. You can, for example, you can be aggressive and cruel and harsh about this stabilization practice, and that can be harmful and suppresses. That's why it should be gentle. You should totally recognize and accept what's happening, and that's it. That stabilizes. Once there's stabilization, then we can do insight work. But you only hear about stabilization practice and you repress it. Yes? How does one know that one is stable? Yeah. Well, you know, it helps to have a, what do you call it, a teacher. I find that most people do not, you know, do not severely overestimate that stabilization.

[57:54]

Most people kind of admit, yeah, I don't feel really stabilized. But some people get somewhat stabilized, and then they come and they wonder if there's time to do this exploration. And sometimes they are sufficiently stabilized to do it, it seems like. And sometimes it seems like, why don't you just go with that for a while? One time I asked Suzuki Roshi, you know, what sort of the next step in my practice was. I was having kind of an easy time. And I thought something was off because I was having an easy time. But you might get to a place where you feel fairly stabilized. So you think, well, now it's time to like open up this more challenging practice of insight. And he said, well, sometimes when you, you know, when you, when it's easy, it should just be easy for a while. And he took a piece of paper and folded it. And then he said, sometimes, you know, like for origami, when we fold it, we don't just fold it and then fold it again right away sometimes.

[58:58]

Sometimes we fold it over. time actually makes the hole deeper. So sometimes when you get to a certain state of stabilization, you did stabilize some, but maybe it's just a little while. Don't immediately go off yet. You might be good, but you could say that even though you were active in assessing the thing, there might be a little bit of rush there. How does dream life becoming more active have to do with practicing stabilization? Well, what I would suggest for starters is that you practice stabilization and find out.

[59:59]

What is how it works? Rather than me telling you. Why don't you find out firsthand by practicing to see what the relationship is. It's there. Yeah, but I've heard that story many times. That people, their dreams become very vivid when they become more stabilized. Some people are so upset that they can't tell their dreams from their daily life. And when they calm down, they realize, oh, that's a dream and it's a daily life. Oh, that seems, wow. I have these dreams. I didn't even know they were dreams. Yes. How do people that just begin practicing insight meditation, or how do the insight teachers handle the stabilization process before they begin insight meditation? How do the insight teachers handle the stabilization practices before the people start insight meditation?

[61:06]

Well, I think, what do you call it? This is almost like a demographic comment that I'm going to make. My sense is that in the modern world, like recently in the last 20 or 30 years, not to mention, I don't know how long before that, it's pretty hard for people to do stabilization practice. Insight practice is difficult too, but stabilization practice... it's harder to do than insight practice because stabilization practice needs kind of like a support system. That insight practice, if you already had realized how to, if you already understood how to do stabilization practice, then you can practice insight in a more dynamic situation. That's part of the reason why we need insight practice. Is that insight practice can hold much more, less supportive environments for meditation than than stabilization.

[62:07]

So stabilization practices, usually they recommend that you be in a place like Tassajara, not even during guest season. So like in the winter at Tassajara, like last winter we were studying stabilization and a list of things that you should have for practice of stabilization is pretty much like Tassajara. Like for example, food being brought to you. The people, the monks here, they get served. Now people in the kitchen have a problem, but the regular monks... gets served their meals. This is part of what makes it easier to concentrate on like sitting you keep thinking well you know how can I just not elaborate on this because I got to think of what to have for lunch. This is just impractical. So you think of food and you don't just think of food you think well what food and where's it going to come from and who's going to make it and you know. So part of what helps stabilization practice is to be in an environment where somebody's serving and also where other people are doing the practice. and also where there's not lots and lots of interesting noises.

[63:09]

Tassajara in the winter is very noisy. It's almost deafening. But the noises are like the sound of the creek and the rain, the wind. People do not like go off on these big trips on those things. City center... You know, you sit in the city center, Zendo, and the people are in the street and they're talking about, you know, you're listening to what they're saying and you're getting upset about it, you know, because it's like, or, you know, you're just like, I've got to elaborate on this. This is really important, right? Or, you're sitting in the city and nobody else is practicing it around you and they think you're weird to go up. If they find out that you're saying, no, no, no, or thank you very much, I have no complaint whatsoever to everything, they say, you know, stop that. You know, react to me. You know, get upset about what I'm saying. Okay, I'll get upset. But, you know, to learn how to stabilize consciousness, you sort of, at the beginning anyway, you kind of need to be in a situation where people will let you do it. Where they'll let you be that simple.

[64:10]

So, I think what a lot of Vipassana teachers are finding is that the students can't practice shama, can't practice the stabilization very much, so they start on insight. Well, they have problems. But they can't wait for them to get to the place they're never going to get to. So they start teaching insight practices before they really know much about stabilization. And I think you'll find some insight practitioners in the West, also in Asia now, with things hopping there, that you don't wait until they get stabilized much before they start. Now, insight practices also can help you develop stabilization sometimes. But the beginning of insight, the beginning of stabilization is quite different from insight. So I think what's happening is that insight teachers sometimes give insight instructions before people have actually got much of a foothold in mental stabilization because they're just impractical to wait much longer because you can see their life is not going to allow them to do it.

[65:17]

They're just... they're not going to have to get much more stabilized. So they start teaching the insight practices earlier then. But if you have a situation where people can develop insight, sometimes it's good to do it for a while. Yeah, it still works. And again, some people, even out in the busy city, some people have so little stabilization that even though they, even though they, huh? Well, you said that, but I was going to say some people have so little stabilization that they really just have to keep working on stabilization. Because any kind of meditation will get them more upset. But some people don't have much stabilization and it's not in the cards for them to have a conducive environment for a while. But you can see that maybe insight practice will actually help them calm down. And actually, insight practice is actually all they're going to be able to calm down.

[66:21]

So in that case, you give them insight practice even before they get stabilization as another road into stabilization and insight. But some other people, I don't know, anyway, we get into some tough situations where it's hard to practice. Yes? So my question is about the concepts on stabilization. And you use breath and concept of breath, yes. And so that seems like a very subtle thing during, in this case, during guest season, or if you're not living in the monastery. And I wonder if you're having, like, patience, and just keep repeating that, almost like a mantra over and over again, or, you know, pick some word that you would focus on all during the day. I'll think about that. Okay. If not, if not, That's a kind of creative move. And I think about the actual body posture is something you can use, too.

[67:25]

If the breath is too subtle, you can use the concept of body. Just actually your body posture and your body bones, your body posture can be a stabilization concept to use, too, if the breath is too subtle. like at Zen Center in the early days when you first start having like residential practice and offices and stuff like that sometimes people would try to follow their breath while they're in the office answering the telephone and we had to say you know please just answer the telephone and you know about that but you can work on your posture when you're answering the telephone and also you can you know you can When the telephone rings, even if you're in front office, you can stop for a moment. Just don't move. For just a moment, just completely stop. At Zen Center, when people call the Zen Center and the telephone rings, you know, it goes ding, they can tolerate.

[68:27]

Part of their initiation in the Zen Center is the telephone rings, ding, ding, and the person picks it up and says Zen Center. It doesn't have to be ding, hello Zen Center. They can tolerate that, usually. So if you're answering the telephone, you can actually stop when the telephone rings for a minute and just stand there and just go... And then pick it up. You can do that. But maybe you can't follow your breath and get on the telephone. But you can keep working on your... That's a little bit, maybe a little grosser, but I think it works quite well. Let's see, it's getting late, so probably should stop, unless somebody has something really interesting to say. Is this okay, using this thing? Does it help at all? Help you hear people's questions? Thank you for getting this together, Meg, wherever you are.

[69:24]

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