Well, there are some new people, but even if there weren't some new people, I wanted to review and go a little deeper into the process of generating meditative stabilization. I think this will be, it might be too deep for the new people, but I don't know. Somewhere between too deep for the new people and perhaps somewhat repetitive for the people here before. But I think a little deeper, too. Okay, so... So last night we talked about what's called in Sanskrit, shamatha, And we talked about a process by which this shamatha, which is translated as tranquilization sometimes, meditative stabilization, calm abiding, various translations of shamatha.

[01:28]

So we talked about that process last night and I would like to come back to that and go over that process which has traditionally nine kind of phases or nine stages. And also as, again, a reminder and also as an introduction to the topic of yogic meditative practice, I would like to say that yoga practice is, generally speaking, a wholesome activity.

[02:34]

And when yogic practice is done with or conjoined with an enlightened attitude, then the yogic practice becomes not just wholesome, but liberating. Yogic practice without an enlightened attitude, although virtuous activity, still has what? What does it have without... If you do yoga practice like concentration practice, what's it... What's the problem with it if it doesn't have an enlightened attitude? It has outflows.

[03:41]

It leaks, as we say. One day when Master Dung Shan was parting company with Master Guishan, he said, if people ask me about your teaching, what shall I tell them? And Guishan said, just don't tell them where I am. What advice do you have for me, the monk asked. He said, don't leak. Just don't leak. All day long, all day long you should be doing yogic activity.

[04:46]

But while you're doing that yogic activity, you should not leak. And not leak means your yogic activity should not be defiled by ideas of gain or loss. But most yogis have most big problem is gain of sense of gain, problem with gain. A lot of yogis are willing to give up a sense of loss. But they do need to feel sometimes. They think they need to be improving at their yoga practice. So we should practice yoga. It's good to do. And if possible, we should practice it under the guidance of an enlightened attitude. An attitude which recognizes the vastness of frustration.

[05:56]

which is open to impermanence, which is open to the ocean of frustration and suffering, and which does not adhere to some limited idea of self. In this way, if you have this kind of attitude, you will not be susceptible to leaking through trying to improve or whatever. So the enlightened attitude or the mind of enlightenment should guide our yogic practice. This is what I have been saying over and over this week. So as we offer these yogic exercises, we offer them with the caveat, with the warning to do them.

[07:11]

Yes, please do them. Please listen to them, listen to how to do them, and please try to do them. Please try to practice these exercises which will stabilize your body-mind situation. which will stabilize you, stabilize your life, and make a very auspicious situation. A stabilized situation is very auspicious. Once the body and mind are stabilized, it's easy to wake up. But while we're stabilizing, if possible, we should immediately, we shouldn't wait any longer than necessary in order to do this stabilization practice with the right attitude. Because then right away it can start being liberating.

[08:14]

So the enlightened attitude is one that, again, sees impermanence, sees into the world of impermanence, is open to the truth of suffering, and doesn't adhere to a limited idea of self. And in that context, you do something which seems to... You cultivate stabilization. You develop... You seem to evolve... But you're not improving. You're just cleaning house. So again, the reason for practicing yoga is that yoga in conjunction with the right attitude is liberating. Just the right attitude is somehow not sufficient. If you have the right attitude, that's good, but then you have to put the right attitude into yogic manifestation.

[09:26]

One basic definition of yoga is to cut or inhibit or stop the fluctuations of the mind. So we're talking about a stabilization process, a yogic stabilization process, but in some sense all yogas head towards stabilizing the mind. So there's yogas like sitting and meditating on an object, like breath or posture or something. There's also asanas, yogic asanas, yogic postures which you do, and if you do these postures properly, while doing the postures, the mind is stopped also. So another way to put it is that we

[10:38]

we do yoga to, in some sense, elevate and refine our situation until it gets so developed and so high that it's not afraid to be very low. Strange thing is that people who don't feel their consciousness is very high are afraid to have a low state of consciousness. It's funny, but that's my observation. If you go into prison or something, or into some really apparently unfortunate physical and emotional situation, like mental hospital or soup kitchen.

[11:43]

Not too many of the people there, even though the situation may seem quite unfortunate, not too many of the people there may be willing to be in that situation, to be that low. although they know they're in a low situation, they still may be into showing how they're a little bit better than the other people in the situation. Once in a while in a slum or in a mental hospital or something, you may see one of the residents who is willing to be there. And that person, when I see that person, I see a noble person. In a mental hospital, you'd probably expect, well, if you see somebody who's willing to be there, probably they're one of the doctors. They should be one of the healers. But in fact, not too many of the doctors are willing to be there, and therefore they're not healers.

[12:50]

Maybe some of the patients, once in a while, maybe one of the patients is willing to be there in that terrible situation. with all that suffering, at that time, that person becomes a healer. I used to work at a rehabilitation clinic, Elizabeth Kenny, Sister Elizabeth Kenny Rehabilitation Clinic over on Chicago. Forty years ago, I was a patient in that hospital. I had polio. And then after they got the vaccine, it converted from a polio treatment center to treating people that are paralyzed by accidents and strokes. So I worked there. I was an orderly, and I worked with the people who had the paraplegics and the quadriplegics, which were all except the one young man.

[13:55]

And the one woman who was paraplegic was a passenger in a car driven by a man who was killed. So I learned a little bit about the difference between girls and boys working there. And then the other people there were people that had strokes. So they're paralyzed. They're what's called hemiplegics. They're paralyzed usually on one side or the other. And they were usually old people and half men, half women, basically. But the paraplegics and quadriplegics got there by and large due to their own brilliant maneuvers, like water skiing into docks, diving into shallow water, driving 110 miles an hour, and so on. One of the guys there used to sing a song called Sticks and Stones Will. but water skis will break your back.

[15:02]

And these guys used to vie with each other about who was sort of the most, kind of had the most going, you know. Like one guy would say, you know, I can sit up for half an hour, you know, with the aid of the bed. And one guy would say, I can move these two fingers, and Joe can't even move one. So, just being in a difficult situation doesn't mean you're in a difficult situation. So we may need to do elaborate exercises to make ourselves feel enough energy and courage and determination and flexibility and so on to be able to live in our life, you know, just be where we are.

[16:18]

Even if that place is the pits. Okay, now, also before I go into the specifics of this development of calm, I want to also point out that this calm abiding, this generation or establishment of a stabilized mental and physical situation, psychophysical complex, This then, when this is completed, when you're able to stay calmly abiding with the meditation object as long as you wish, and with flexibility so that you can adjust to the changes that come up, this is a prerequisite for insight work, and it's also a prerequisite for what we call the dhyanas,

[17:32]

in Sanskrit or the jhanas in Pali. These are also states of concentration, but they're, in a sense, the concentration is used actually to change the actual psychophysical situation, to refine actually what's going on, rather than just stabilizing in the midst of what's going on, to start refining. So, for example, meditative stabilization is like maybe going out on this lake or on the ocean when there's waves on a surfboard, and getting up on the surfboard and balancing on the surfboard. Even though the surfboard's moving a lot, you're able to grip the surfboard and adjust your weight so that you actually stay quite still and at ease even though the wave and surfboard are moving a lot.

[18:44]

This is like meditative, this is shamatha, this is resting. under the situation of whatever amount of waves there are. And the jhanas then, once you're settled, then the jhanas are to deepen that concentration so that actually the waves start calming down. So actually what's happening starts to change. So you see the difference then between the shamatha and the jhana. One you could call meditative stabilization, the other you could call meditative concentration. And again, there's two possible routes. One route is after attaining the stabilization, you can immediately start doing the insight work.

[19:48]

As a matter of fact, it may spontaneously arise. The other possibility is you start doing the insight work, but you do the insight work as a way to actually establish deeper concentration. And then after that concentration is established, you turn to insight work. Which again, using the analogy of being out on water, In one case, the waves are rough, but you're stabilized with those rough waves. And actually, you might be able to hold a glass of water that's full to the top. You might be able to hold it without spilling it, even though underneath you it's shaking. In the other case, you actually try to calm the psychophysical situation so that the ground isn't shaking so much, and then you can all the more easily, maybe, hold a glass of water, a full glass of water.

[20:53]

And then in both those cases, when you're holding the water, you just look to see what you learn from the behavior of the glass of water. How does it spill or how does it not spill? What happens? Something will happen. Okay, now before I introduce these nine stages again, any questions or comments? I didn't quite understand you. Did you say inside work or insight? Insight. Or you might say, another way to say it is analytical work. Analytical work. By doing the stabilization work, you can start doing analytical type of meditation.

[22:01]

Stabilization work is usually based on one object that you're trying to become really engaged with one object. The analytical work now will be dealing with lots of different kinds of things, and the mind will become more agitated, which is all the more reason why we have to have this calm base to work with. Anything else at this time that you'd like to bring up? Once again? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, yogic practices are exercises that still the mind. Or you could say, yogic practices exercise the still mind.

[23:07]

They bring the still mind into exercise. The still mind is there all the time. The mind is constantly calm, actually. Every moment the mind is centered and concentrated. How can we bring this calm into our action, into our experience? How can we exercise the stillness at the center of each experience? How can we exercise that? That's yogic practice. Why do you say that, that the mind is always in stillness? Because in every moment of consciousness, in any moment of consciousness, of discriminating consciousness, Discriminating consciousness means ordinary consciousness. In any moment of ordinary experience or ordinary consciousness, there is an awareness.

[24:11]

So samadhi is always present. However, the object changes every moment too. So in ordinary experience, you look at this person there, you look at the wall, you look at the light, you hear my voice, you feel your armpit, you look at another person, you sniff. The object of your awareness is constantly changing. Okay? Okay? To see a person, for me to see you, means my eye has moved hundreds and hundreds of times in a short period of time. To put together all the different colors I need to put together to make this picture here. But our nervous system does operate, you know, inconceivably fast. And we can put together a world in the blink of an eye. Or, you know, a fairly good version of a world. All right? So then, what causes the discrimination? Let's see, what causes the discrimination?

[25:14]

Ignorance. So, ignorance... Still mind, meaning ignoring still mind. Well, ignorance, the twelve links of causation, that's one story. First you have ignorance. Then because of ignorance, you have karmic formations. And because of karmic formations, you have consciousness. Okay? So first there's ignorance. Ignorance of what? Just ignore something. Just ignore part of what's happening. Just ignore. Then because of ignorance, you can have something happen. Like I was saying, this depends on not this. You can't have this without this. You can't have the sound of my voice without silence. But when you hear the sound of my voice, usually you ignore the silence, right? And by ignoring the silence, you think something happened.

[26:20]

You think you hear something. And this too, you can only see this movement by ignoring the stillness. But if you don't ignore the stillness, nothing will happen. So in order for something to happen, you ignore. Because if you ignore, something can happen. Karmic accumulations occur. And then discriminating consciousness arises. setting up subject and object. So, once that happens, then the consciousness has objects and it's always concentrated on its objects. But the objects are impermanent, constantly changing, Therefore, moment by moment, we're looking at different objects. So our experience is, oh, I'm looking at this, then I'm looking at that, I'm thinking of this, then I'm thinking of that, I'm feeling this, then I'm feeling that, I'm emoting this way, then I'm emoting that way. All these things are objects of awareness, constantly in flux. So each moment you're concentrated on this, you're concentrated on that, but you feel jumping from thing to thing and you don't actually experience the uninterrupted, concentrated quality of consciousness.

[27:24]

So, by doing stabilization practice, you start to get a feel again. You start to celebrate the fact that the mind is concentrated. Even while you're jumping from object to object, you still feel concentrated. You convince yourself that you are a calm person. You convince yourself that calmness is part and parcel of what you are. It's always there anyway, but somehow we can't experience it because of the type of experience we have. We can't believe in samadhi. So we do an exercise to bring the samadhi out for us to feel. And then when we experience the samadhi, then we also experience the ignorance. Once we experience the concentrated quality of the mind, we also experience the illusoriness of everything that comes up.

[28:27]

To experience illusoriness as illusoriness is called insight. When you see that these things that are happening are just illusions based on ignorance, when you actually see that, that's insight. That's why the actual concentrated quality of mind, when it's realized, then it leads to the realization of how things happen, how things are illusion, and that's insight. Anything else? Can you explain why hearing is the power of the first stage? Well, they say hearing, but for those who can read, it could also be by reading, or by seeing.

[29:32]

In other words, in the first stage, you are... There's two ways to understand the first stage. One way to understand it is as a result of the first stage, you get the power, or that power helps you accomplish the first stage. Okay? Either way. You can see it either way. One way is you can use hearing to do the first stage. The other way is you can, if you can do the first stage, you will be able to hear. Both are true. The first stage that we're referring to is what's called resting the mind or placing the mind on the object. And there are a variety of objects. The one we've been talking about most is, or the two we've been talking about the most so far, has been the posture, our physical posture, and breathing or breath. So if breath is your object that you're using to generate stabilization,

[30:33]

then as soon as you actually find the object, as soon as you actually find the breath and pay attention to it, at that moment you have started stabilization. Now, you would have had to listen, you have to hear the instructions in order just to sort of start. You have to hear. You have to hear what the object is, and you have to hear enough about the object, not only to hear its name and its characteristics, you have to hear its name and characteristics, but you have to hear enough of the name and characteristics to successfully find the object. Some people, when you say follow the breath, they cannot follow the breath because they can't find the breath. Then a little bit more instruction, a little bit more listening, and they find the breath. Same way with, for example, to try to have, if you have feelings or emotions or concepts as what you were going to look at as your topic of meditation.

[31:49]

You would have to have even more, usually, even more instruction, verbal instruction, for you to be able, if you had to listen more in order to be able to find the object. Once you find the object, you've started the practice of stabilization, you've attained the first stage, and it's due to being able to hear that you were able to do it. But you could have also read it. Or some people can also learn how to do it by smells, by various... odors, they can figure out how to do it. Some people, by being touched, they could do it. But the point is, by some external stimulation, you're taking information from outside, primarily hearing is the first, because everybody, you know, can hear some instruction except deaf people, but not necessarily can people read. So folklore and Zen is oral transmission, we usually say. Buddhism is orally transmitted, usually.

[32:51]

Okay. Now, also, as soon as you do that first stage, you also have the ability to listen now. People that can do the first stage, and not to mention the second stage and so on, they can hear very well. They can hear much better than they can under ordinary circumstances. You say something to them and they hear it. You feel it go in. So the first stage is kind of resting. And again, as I mentioned last night, there's a kind of forcible engagement with the meditation object at this point. There's a kind of tightness around the breath. or with the breath. You're not sort of hanging loose with the breath, you're pretty tight with it. And at the beginning then, there's a strong forceful centripetal force, inward going force to counterbalance the feeling that the mind is quite dispersed.

[34:06]

You don't feel concentrated. You don't experience your concentrated qualities, so you make a big effort to go in the other direction, to gather the mind, tighten the mind around the object. Now, that tightening is necessary at the beginning, but you will see that if you're too tight, it becomes counterproductive in the sense that if you're too tight, in other words, you have too limited idea about what the object can be, the tighter you are, the more likely that you'll lose it. But at first, anyway, you still have to, generally speaking, err on the side of tightness. Then the next phase is you've identified the object, you've found the breath, you've met the breath, you've engaged it,

[35:10]

And now you just extend that somewhat. Just extend it, just continue it somewhat. If you can extend it or continue it a little bit, then you come into the next stage, the third stage, where your main experience is of bringing yourself back to the object. So you've gone from first meeting the object to extending that little bit, to extending it so much that you're mostly experiencing yourself bringing yourself back to it. You're still distracted quite a bit, but your experience of your effort is to keep coming back.

[36:13]

So you're mindful of what the object is, But sometimes you forget, and then you have to remember again and bring yourself back. So in these first three stages, the problem is mostly that you forget the object. That's the main problem. Either forget the object or you're too lazy to start even paying attention to it. So it's a combination of being lazy and forgetting in these first three stages. In the fourth stage, you are able to not forget the object anymore.

[37:27]

You're able to stay with it. In the fourth stage, which is called close setting or close fixation, you can stay, you're not losing the object anymore, but now you come into a new kind of problem of not to forget, but to avoid two new kinds of problems that you haven't had before. which we call, sometimes we call, one of the problems is sinking or laxity, and the other problem is excitement or agitation. So imagine now you're in a situation where you actually are able to stay with the meditation object.

[39:07]

You can stay with it now. The collection activity has reached its climax. You're completely collected. But by going like this, by pulling yourself, by gathering yourself together, see these arms coming together like this? And now I reach completely collected, but there's some momentum to go a little bit further. There's some momentum to keep going and to become too collected, too tight, too inward, too undispersed, you might say. So we felt dispersed, we felt our mind flying outward centrifugally. Now we collected the mind centripetally. But by reaching the maximum of that collection, full collection, it doesn't stop there, it can keep going.

[40:07]

And we can become too unaware of the external phenomena. Too inward, too much concerned with our own version of what the breath is, too insensitive to the actual experience of the breath. This is laxity or sinking mind. Okay, so you're working with something. You're sitting cross-legged with your back straight. You're following your breathing. Or you're a potter and you're spinning a pot. And you're able to stay right with the pot as it spins. Your hands are right there on the pot. Or you're a golfer and you're able to watch the club, you're able to feel the club come down, you're able to watch the club as the club meets the ball. You ever try to do that? You ever play golf? It's very hard to actually see the club hit the ball, to keep your eye down there and wait and be present enough and steady enough and alert enough to actually be there

[41:17]

to make a little contribution there as the club hits the ball, because before the club hits the ball, in some sense, it's all preparation, you know? Your nice swing, the club's coming down very nicely, but that last minute there where the club meets the ball is really kind of, that's very important, because if the club's going this way, the ball goes off that way. If the club's going this way, the ball goes that way, and so on. The club... in order to send the ball in the right way, it has to be positioned in the right way. And guess how it gets positioned there? By you being there to position it. Now, if your preparation is very good and all the way down the way you're positioning the club right, then maybe just by follow through it'll be in the right place. But still, at the last minute, if you check out, you're just sort of saying, I hope the ball gets hit right. How can you be there with it just right? So it doesn't have to be following your breath.

[42:20]

It can be anything you're doing. The object can vary. Okay, now let's say you're able to be there now. You can stay with the object. Can you imagine now? You can be there with the ball as it gets hit. You can be there with your breath as it happens. You can be there with the pot. You can be there with what you're aware of. You can stay there. But still, there can be a problem now of, the first one I'm bringing up, is sinking. Sinking into the cave of the object. Becoming moody. Okay? And there's two varieties of this laxity. Called subtle and gross, or gross and subtle. Sinking. Sinking. Uh, the gross sinking, um, what's the gross sinking like?

[43:35]

I think it might be helpful to give you a feeling for the coarse laxity, to distinguish laxity from lethargy. Okay? Lethargy, the Sanskrit word for that is sthana, and the Sanskrit word for laxity is laya. So, lethargy is a kind of... contradictory to this whole situation of meditative stabilization. Lethargy means to be going to sleep, to have a heaviness in the mind. And lethargy can be... Lethargy is an unwholesome dharma, an unwholesome process, or sometimes it's neutral. But laxity... can be neutral or even wholesome.

[45:01]

Laxity can be wholesome. Because laxity, again, happens in conjunction with meditative stabilization practices, whereas lethargy happens in conjunction with all kinds of unwholesome situations. And lethargy is not very important in this practice of stabilization, except before you start lethargy is pretty important. Lethargy will prevent you from starting. But once you start, it's not so important. Except, ironically, there's lethargy even around excitement. There's a kind of laziness even around excitement. But laxity is different. So the laxity and the gross form, let me ask you, is it stable, do you think? Do you think laxity is stable? Does it have stability? What do you think?

[46:03]

No. One no. Any other comments? Yes? Everything is stable. Everything is stable. Well, laxity is stable. Okay? Because it arises. When does it arise? It arises at the time of this close resting. So laxity has stability, and the coarse or gross laxity has stability, but it's not clear. In other words, the mind is not clear in terms of the way it apprehends the object. And then there's a subtle form of laxity, which is both stable and clear. but it's not intensely clear. The subtle form of laxity is very similar to what?

[47:10]

What is it? It's calm, it's stable, and it's clear. What's it like? What's that sound like? It's hard to say the easy ones. It sounds like, to me, meditative stabilization. So laxity, which is one of the dangers or one of the faults that happens as you try to develop a stabilized body-mind complex, laxity is, subtle laxity especially, is very similar to the thing you're trying to develop. Because the thing you're trying to develop is calm, alertness or calm and clear body-mind complex. Therefore laxity will be very difficult to distinguish because it's very similar, the subtle laxity or subtle sinking.

[48:14]

It's the most difficult and most unfavorable of all the problems that occur to you as you're trying to establish a stabilization. So you said gross laxity is stable. It's stable in the sense that there's not a lot of distraction from the laxity itself? The gross or coarse laxity is stable in the sense that you are no longer distracted from the object. You can stay with the object. For example, if you're following your breath, you can stay with your breath. You can just stay with it. Breath after breath for as long as you want. But in conjunction with that, there's this feeling of heaviness? No. That's lethargy. There's no heaviness.

[49:17]

You're stable. And you're clear. You could very well think that you had attained meditative stabilization and then just wait for your chickens to come home. But you have not actually attained meditative stabilization. You have attained an understandable... It's understandable that you would fall for this counterfeit stabilization. Some people actually think this is meditative stabilization because what's meditative stabilization? You stay with the object? Yes. Here you are. You're following your breath? You just follow it. Not just one period, but maybe even a whole day. Just with your breath the whole time. And clear, too. Sounds just like meditative stabilization, but it's not. So since it's so difficult to tell the difference between the two, and since that's the most dangerous of all the things that attack your concentration, generally speaking, rather than try to give you some way to distinguish it, what was generally suggested is err on the side of being tight.

[50:38]

So if you feel like, well, this is meditative stabilization, You might be wrong. It might be subtle laxity. So just tighten up a little bit. You might be wrong. Maybe you shouldn't tighten up. But you can find out later because if you tighten up too much, what happens if you tighten up too much? What do you think happens? What do you get? Right. You get excitement. So, excitement is not so difficult to distinguish from meditative stabilization. Gross and subtle excitement, you won't be so likely to think that they are meditative stabilization. And as I explain what they're like, you will see they're not so similar. They're easier to tell the difference. So they're not such big problems. So trade in your subtle laxity for excitement if you can do it. And the way you trade it in is tighten up.

[51:42]

When you're in a situation that you think it sounds pretty good, seems like this might be good, tighten it a little bit. And if you get excited from it, then you know it was laxity rather than meditative stabilization. Okay, then there's the... So you understand the course and the subtle laxity? I'm still kind of confused because I thought that laxity, you were saying, was the same as sinking. Yeah, sinking. My sense is that sinking is older practice, from how I understand it. I don't, you do it too much like this. Uh-huh. So then if you're saying the antidote is to go, is to tighten more. Oh, I guess I'm using, I'm using the word two, two different ways. One way is a gathering.

[52:44]

a gathering momentum, which then goes too far. It goes into laxity or sinking. The other kind of thing is a kind of tightness around the object. Maybe if I give you some... Again, the time when you're most likely to find laxity is at this time which enlarges the scope of the object. So, for example, let's say you're following your breathing, and you're able to stay with your breathing, but it's not too clear, and you feel this is not meditative stabilization, this is laxity. Now again, the time when you're most likely to find laxity is at this time, which the time when laxity will start to occur is after you're able to stay with your object.

[53:58]

Okay? Before that, you don't have to worry about laxity too much. Before you're collected, laxity is not happening. Laxity is when you're overly collected, get overly interior. Okay? So if this is the object right here, or let's say this is the object here, okay, so I'm kind of rounding like this. No, better. This is the object, okay? So you gather yourself onto the object, and at this point, you reach the maximum productive or helpful gathering right here like this, okay? This is maximum gathering. You're gathered right on the object right here, okay? Now, as soon as you're gathered, you should start to look out for laxity. And I'm telling you a lot about laxity because laxity is something you don't know about until you start doing concentration practice.

[54:58]

Laxity is not something that occurs so much in daily life. So you have to study about laxity before you start doing this stuff. Gathering, gathering, gathering. Now, maximum concentration. or I should say not maximum, optimum gathering, okay? Optimum gathering. At the point of optimum gathering, you should start worrying about laxity. Now, laxity is not that you get too tight around the object, but that you go like this with the object. You start to collapse the object in. In other words, you stop paying attention to the object as it is as an external event. You start to become disconnected and overly interior and start caving in to yourself and forgetting about what the object actually is. Okay? Is the symptom of this subtle laxity, is it that you might feel like contentment or satisfaction or just a little too... The subtle laxity?

[56:04]

Yeah, it might... Well, laxity is very similar to complacency, isn't it? So you could feel somewhat complacent. You might not feel complacent, but anyway, you're kind of satisfied with yourself. Well, I mean, when you're concentrating on your object and the concentration, you feel kind of enjoyment toward the concentration. I think if you get to this fourth stage here, you'd be pretty... Actually, it's pretty nice to be able to stay with the object. In a sense, you want to lift the mind up a little bit. You want to get it to come back up again, away from this . Again, you want to increase the scale of the object in a couple of ways to do this.

[57:05]

One way is to make the object a little bit brighter. make the breath brighter, make the body brighter. Or another way is to get into more little details and little various traits of the breath or the body. This will be a way to clarify, bring clarity into the laxity. And again, as I said, if it's subtle laxity, you're going to have trouble spotting it as subtle laxity. So again, tell yourself beforehand, subtle laxity is going to be something I'm probably not going to be able to spot. So why don't I just assume it's there? And if I think I've got meditative stabilization, I'll assume that I'm wrong and tighten up a little bit. Not like this in terms of centripetalness, but in terms of being more sharp around the object.

[58:09]

which is what, if you have coarse distraction, you should do that anyway, and just sort of stay with a nice tight grip on it, but don't make it inward, more like this. And again, the factor or the power that helps you do this is combination, first of all, at the beginning of this laxity is a mindfulness, and then coupled with introspection or differentiation, okay? And again, the analogies here are if you're working with the object, and you can think of it, well, one analogy is like holding a cup. Holding a cup of hot tea. Mindfulness is what holds the cup or what holds the object.

[59:12]

And introspection is like looking at the cup now and then just to make sure you're not spilling it. It doesn't say introspection is not to hold the cup and stare at the cup. Holding the cup is sort of the equivalent of staring at it. You do have a continuous hold on the object. but another aspect is to just keep checking it now and then occasionally not all the time occasionally check it you should not be checking all the time into laxity or excitement. You already feel that you can stay with the object, okay? Once you're at that state where you can stay with it, then from then on you shouldn't be checking all the time. Another example is it's like walking with a murderer, walking down the road with a killer.

[60:20]

If you're walking with a killer, you should keep your eye on the killer, but you shouldn't look at the killer all the time. If you look at the killer all the time, you'll fall on your face. If you never look at the killer, that doesn't work either. So you have to keep watching where you're going and occasionally check. Yes? What would happen with meditative stabilization if you tighten up? Well, Once you get to the ninth stage, okay, then you develop this one more thing that converts the ninth stage into full shamatha.

[61:37]

And that thing you develop is called pliability or flexibility, prashrabdhi. By having that, if you tighten up too much, and you still may get excited, but you have this pliability now, so that the presence of the pliability shows you that there's no problem with that. You just naturally relax with it. In the other case, you do not yet have pliability. So the excitement will confirm to you that you didn't have meditative stabilization and you made the right move. In the other case, it wasn't the wrong move because you still don't get disturbed, because you have this flexibility which can absorb the excitement. Again, it's spontaneous, intimate activity at that point.

[62:41]

When Narasakhi Roshi was here, he told a story about from the Nirvana Sutra where this person is supposed to... I guess, is it that somebody wanted to marry the king's daughter? Was that it? That's usually it. Or no, he wanted to be the king's... The king was offering jobs for his head minister, right? And then people were told that they should be careful to apply for it because... If they apply and then they don't succeed in the test, they will be killed. But one guy dared to come and apply, and he was told what he had to do was carry a plate or a dish of oil from one side of the palace to the other. And the oil was not just... There was a plate, right, a flat plate, and it was not just filled with oil, but it was bulging with oil, right? The oil was sort of bulging up by surface tension, and he had to carry that from one side of the palace to the other.

[63:50]

And I think that also that a guy was walking right behind him with a sword, and as soon as he spilled any, his head would be cut off. So this is another way you couldn't, again, if you imagine carrying that, you wouldn't be able to just look at, you couldn't just stare at the plate. You couldn't just stare at your feet. And what he did was he became his, he said he became his feet, you know. He totally filled his whole body and mind. completely present in his whole body and mind, including the hands, holding the plate, and seeing the plate, and everything was all one. And he managed to go from one side to the other without spilling. So this is this introspection kind of thing. Now, the other possibility is excitement.

[64:54]

And there's, again, two kinds of excitement. And also we should distinguish between excitement and distraction. So first of all let's distinguish between general distraction and excitement. This excitement we're talking about now is excitement that happens in the context of having been able to become settled with the object now. You're not distracted by the object. This isn't general distraction. You have overcome, in a sense, general distraction. You're stable with the object. And last night I was talking about, like, if you're following your breathing in this way, you're not just aware of your breath, you also hear sounds and see the floor and feel your body and so on. So you're taking in a variety of sensory and mental input.

[66:00]

Not just breath, but breath is your object of meditation. It's the thing you're using to stabilize yourself. So when you follow the breathing, in effect the breath is being interrupted by other input that you're aware of. Is that clear? I feel my breath, but I still see you. Okay, so I'm feeling my breath. I feel my exhale. And I see you, but I'm not necessarily distracted by you. I can stay with the breathing even though I'm seeing other things and experiencing other things by the breathing. These other things I'm seeing and experiencing are not distractions, if I can stay with my breath. And they're also, I'm not excited until when these things I'm seeing besides my breath become objects of desire. So if I'm with my breath now, I'm following the breath, staying with the breath, okay?

[67:03]

And in the midst of staying with the breath, I see you, I see you, I see all these different people. So I'm not just seeing the breath. It's breath, and then seeing something, breath, and seeing something, breath, and seeing something, breath, and hearing something, breath, and thinking something, breath, and feeling something, breath. You see, it's like that. But during this whole process, I can feel I'm always with my breath. But when one of those things I see, I sort of get interested in or desire it, then something That's excitement. Distraction means towards any object. Excitement is, in particular, distraction towards or attraction towards a desired object. And the difference in feeling there is, there's a distinguishable difference between feeling breath, seeing a color, feeling breath, seeing a color, feeling, experiencing breath, seeing a color, experiencing breath, seeing a color that I like. It's like breath and this, breath and that, [...] breath and... Something happens.

[68:15]

It pulls, it's like... You can feel the difference. That's excitement. And excitement is generally due to holding a little too tight. And there are two kinds of excitement, gross and subtle. The gross kind is that you actually lose the object. The results are the same as earlier, when you forgot the object. But it's different because it's happening in the context of being able to stay with the object. And now the reason why you lose the object is not because you forget it exactly, but because you've got a little bit too tight a grip on it. And because you get a little too tight a grip, you get attracted by some object of desire.

[69:18]

It's a little bit different than the distraction earlier, this gross kind. But you still forget the object. If you tighten up and you get caught by this excitement, what's the difference if you tighten up and you get caught by this excitement, or if you were loosened up to begin with? Loosened up earlier on? If you loosen up early on, you never reach the state of being with the object as long as you want. I guess what I'm talking about is that place where you're wondering, But it doesn't, yeah. Well, the particular thing is that if you have this lax, this subtle laxity, okay, and I said at this point you want to, since it's difficult to tell the difference between subtle laxity and actual stabilization or tranquilization, then err on the side of being tight.

[70:25]

If it really is laxity, tightening will balance you. It will balance you. And if you loosen at that time, that's exactly the problem is you're a little bit too loose. Loose, sort of internally loose. You become overly collected. And being loose in this case would mean to accept this as stabilization. So then you would just sort of say, okay, this is stabilization, so fine. But then you could really get lost. You could get really lost for a long time. You could think, boy, this is great, and just sort of... But you're just fooling yourself, just wasting time. But wasting time in a kind of... It's a kind of poignant wasting your time because you're in a very kind of good situation. You could turn this to your... You could really turn this to your advantage now. It's wasting time after you've done a lot of work. So that's why I was putting a lot of energy into... Since you've come this far now and you're this concentrated, you can stay with the object.

[71:32]

then if you think this is meditative stabilization, since it probably at that point, if you have recent, and there are two kinds of excitement, gross and subtle. The gross kind is that you actually lose the object. The results are the same as earlier when you forgot the object. But it's different because it's happening in the context of being able to stay with the object. And now the reason why you lose the object is not because you forget it exactly, but because you've got a little bit too tight a grip on it. And because you get a little too tight a grip, you get attracted by something, by some object of desire. It's a little bit different than no distraction earlier, this gross Kanye, but you still forget the object.

[72:35]

If you tighten up and you get caught by this excitement, what's the difference if you tighten up and you get caught by this excitement or if you would have loosened up to begin with? Loosened up earlier on? If you loosen up early on, you never reach the state of being with the object as long as you want. I guess what I'm talking about is that place where you're wondering if it's laxity or if it's really being with the object. You said it's better to go in the direction of tightening up. If you go in the direction of tightening up and you're caught by this excitement, it seems like you would have the same effect as if at that point you loosen up. Well, the particular thing is that if you have this lax, this subtle laxity, okay?

[73:50]

And I said, at this point, you want to, since it's difficult to tell the difference between subtle laxity and actual stabilization or tranquilization, then err on the side of being tight. If it really is laxity, tightening will balance you. Oh, I see. Okay? Oh, okay. It will balance you. And if you loosen at that time, that's exactly the problem, is you're a little bit too loose. Loose, sort of internally loose. You're overly, you become overly collected. And being loose in this case would mean to accept this as stabilization. So then you would just sort of say, okay, this is stabilization, so fine. Fine. But then you could really get lost. You could get really lost for a long time. You could think, boy, this is great, and just sort of... But you're just fooling yourself. Just wasting time.

[74:51]

But wasting time in a kind of... It's a kind of poignant wasting your time because you're in a very kind of good situation. You could turn this to your... You could really turn this to your advantage now. It's wasting time after you've done a lot of work. So that's why I'm putting a lot of energy into... Since you've come this far now and you're this concentrated, you can stay with the object. then if you think this is meditative stabilization, since it probably at that point, if you have recently been able to stay with the object, it's fairly likely that it's not meditative stabilization, but subtle laxity. And if that's the case, because subtle laxity has clarity and stable stability. So if you have clarity and stability, and then you think, okay, this is stabilization, you could really be fooling yourself, so why don't you just sort of be conservative and tighten up? If it's really meditative stabilization, as he asked, then you'll be able to adjust to the tightness.

[75:57]

You won't get the excitement you'll be able to cope with. If it's not meditative stabilization, you will be balanced by that tightening. In other words, you'll go from being stable and clear to stable and intensely clear. You'll get clearer at that point. Because, again, your tendency is now to close down a little bit. So by tightening, in this case, you know, this is closing, this is the inward direction. By tightening, actually, you come back up a little bit. You're actually sort of coming, you've gone, you've reached the object, you've met the object, and now you're collapsing within the object. If you tighten, you actually go back out to the object. You fill up somewhat. You become constricted and moody and insensitive. By tightening means you become more sensitive to the object as it is. Is tightening like getting your focus more detailed or bringing back some of the force, forceful attempt, you know, that you did in the beginning?

[77:04]

Is that what you mean by tightening? Well, let's see. How would it be tightening there? Again, in this particular case of subtle laxity, tightening will mean that you suspect it of being laxity. That suspicion or that awareness is somewhat energizing or stimulating activity. So in that case, tightening will be lifting you. I'm not even calling it, but just not believing that it's meditative stabilization.

[78:13]

Is it kind of doubt? Doubt? No, it's not doubt. Because you're in a process that you basically trust. and you're doing what, according to the instructions, you trust, and you're just doing the instructions which say, this is a situation that's hard to tell, so earn the side of tightness. And again, if you're wrong, it won't matter because you'll be able to handle it, and if you're right, it'll help you. So, let's see. So for the gross kind of excitement, what I suggested was, what do you do with the gross kind of excitement?

[79:13]

I didn't say it, did I? In that case, for the gross kind of laxity, what should you do for gross laxity? Well, now, what's the situation of gross laxity? What's that like? Tell me what that's like. Stable, but not clear. You're stably with the object, but it's not clear. You feel this kind of moodiness. It's kind of caving in or going too far, becoming too inward. The result of good effort, but it's gone too far. So what should you do under those circumstances? Come back to the surface. Yeah. And how do you come back to the surface? What do you? Tighten? Tighten? Yeah. Tighten, which means enlarge the scope.

[80:15]

And how do you enlarge the scope? I gave two examples. Pay attention to more details and make it brighter. Okay? That's for the gross. For the subtle, also tighten. But this time, the tightening, you don't go so far as to get into more details or to make it brighter. Just suspicion that it's subtle laxity is enough. That's enough tightening or enough coming back to the surface. Okay? So with gross laxity, if you relax, then what? With gross... With gross laxity... What will happen? What do you think? And you will eventually lose the object and go right back to the... You'll go all the way to the bottom.

[81:22]

You can stay in that situation for a long time. You know? You can spend... I don't know. It depends on your schedule, you know? If you're in the middle of a session... and you didn't have dokes on or anything, or didn't have to serve, you could stay in that, you could spend days just cruising along thinking you're doing meditative stabilization and probably getting ready for insight work, but nothing, you know, sort of nothing's clicking for you, you know, nothing's happening. You're just going down into a sink. You're just going down into the plumbing, your own plumbing. So the problem there is wasting a lot of time. Because you can just... Again, if you don't cope with subtle laxity, you're basically... The reason why you're not coping with it is because you think you're doing fine. So you're just going to cruise along thinking that you've attained stabilization and waste whatever that amount of time is that you do that.

[82:23]

Rather than that little bit of suspicion, bringing yourself back up to meet the object as it is, and then you'd continue your stabilization process and move along and get more experience with basically tightening and loosening, tightening and loosening, tightening and loosening, like holding a hummingbird in your hand or something. So from this point on of attaining close fixation or close meeting the object, you spend the rest of the time just not holding the bird too tight and not holding the bird too loosely. If you hold it too loosely, it flies away. If you hold it too tightly, of course you hurt the bird. Kind of like raising children, too. If you hold your children too tightly, they don't develop. You can crush their... Well, some people can't hold their children too lightly because the children are too vital.

[83:32]

But for strong parents who have medium to weak kids, there's a possibility of holding the kid too tightly and squelching the child's vitality. But also, if you let the kid too loosely, then they fly away, and that's... It's difficult too. So how to have the right amount of control there with a child or with your breath, it's very subtle. Breath is the object.

[84:05]

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