I think this series was titled, Finding the Middle Way. And I don't know who made that title, but it's kind of a good one. I want to begin tonight by paying homage. And homage means not just praise, not just an expression of praise. but an expression of alignment. And I'd like to pay homage to the peacemakers, the peacemakers of ancient times and the peacemakers today. And I'd like to pay homage to the liberators Almost everybody says that their main concern is peace, right?

[01:18]

But some people, of course, think that we may have to use great military force in order to have peace. But really what they want is peace. So I guess everybody wants peace, I guess. But I pay homage not just to the people who say they want peace, but I pay homage to the people who realize peace. And it's not just people, but I pay homage to whatever the peacemaking process is. I want to align my life, give my life to the process of peacemaking and the process of liberation. I want to find that way of living that is in accord with peacemaking and liberation. This is another way to talk about the middle way.

[02:23]

The Buddha said that he found a middle way 2,500 years ago. He proclaimed that he found a middle way that gives vision and gives knowledge and leads to calm and insight and enlightenment and nirvana, which is nirvana is peace, and Nirvana is liberation, the middle way to peace and liberation. He realized and then tried to teach it for 45 years. And some people seem to have understood it and have transmitted it over the centuries. There were wars in the time of the Buddha, there were armies in the time of the Buddha, and there have been armies and wars ever since. And yet, the Buddhist disciples have continued to devote their lives to peace.

[03:31]

And I must admit to sometimes feeling kind of puny in the peace work compared to the threat the threats of harm that exist in the world today. And the, I don't know, the willingness of so many people to use military force as a peacemaking device. But as I was thinking about this today, I flashed this this old ad that used to be in magazines. And I think it was, I'm not sure, but I think it was like an ad for Charles Atlas exercise programs. And the scene was on a beach. There was a skinny little guy, you know, sitting on a towel on the beach with a lovely lady in a bathing suit.

[04:44]

And he looked pretty happy. And then this huge bully comes up and kicks sand on him and takes his girlfriend away. So then he does some research on the middle way and transforms himself into this new being And then he goes back to this guy, this bully, and he encounters the bully and the bully is pacified. The bully doesn't want to kick sand on him anymore. And his girl plus a bunch of other girls come over and hang out with him. So it may be possible that we can develop a skill so great that it can convert people who previously were huge bullies.

[05:50]

That's the hope. That's the possibility. Not to beat them up, but to show them, you know, remind them of what's really important and remind them of really the skillful way to live that they always, of course, wanted but got confused. the director of the yoga room. Are you the director of the yoga room? He told me that he had the impression that there were quite a few new people in this series. I think that's true. Some of you have not been in previous series here with me. Is that right? So he thought maybe I should make, in some sense, some introductory remarks about meditation. So I'll start with that. which is really apropos of this situation anyway, of this study of the middle way.

[06:58]

Because the study of the middle way is actually a meditation, it's a type of meditation, but there's another basic type of meditation And so the type of meditation where we're meditating on the middle way is what we call an insight meditation, or it's a meditation which develops wisdom. But parallel with that, we should remember that there's another important dimension of meditation, which is what we sometimes call calming practice or concentration practice or tranquility or serenity practice. In the end, in the full realization of the middle way, these two types of meditation are, in the end, they are completely joined. But in the early phases of studying wisdom teachings, the study of wisdom teachings feels quite different and is really quite different from the study of meditations which give rise to tranquility.

[08:11]

And the basic difference between the two types of meditation is that by training our attention moment by moment, experience by experience, training the attention onto giving up discursive thought comes to fruit as tranquility. So tranquility, and by tranquility I mean calm, but not just like calm, like a sleep calm, but awake calm, like a very full, buoyant, flexible readiness and alertness and calm together. That's the kind of serenity it is. And that serenity is the fruit of giving up discursive thought. Wisdom practice, on the other hand, at least the early phases of it, not so much the early, but the beginning and middle phases of it, is the fruit of using discursive thought.

[09:22]

So the feeling of wisdom work and the feeling of tranquility work, there's a difference in feeling, and I think it's good as you study meditation to learn the difference between them and to actually feel the difference between them. In the end, the tranquility is joined with the wisdom and produces the deepest wisdom. And the deepest wisdom is not the fruit of discursive thought. It is rather the fruit of taking the fruit of discursive thought, taking the kind of wisdom that comes from using discursive thought and then joining that wisdom with tranquility and then a new wisdom arises, which is the most profound. So in this series, for the next eight weeks or so, if you're in this class and other times, I would recommend that you spend at least part of your time

[10:33]

practicing a type of meditation which develops tranquility. And again, the training of the mind, which comes to fruit as tranquility, the training is not the same as the tranquility. Tranquility is actually being a certain way, being very relaxed and calm and flexible and buoyant. in body and mind. During the training you may not always feel that way. So how do you practice giving up discursive thought? The root of the word discursive thought I think is very helpful because discursive means wandering about or running back and forth. That's the etymological meaning. So discursive thought is the kind of thought that's wandering or running back and forth.

[11:38]

So that's a kind of thought that's quite familiar to most people. And so if you can learn how to pay attention to the possibility of giving that up, of letting that go, then as you get more and more into like letting go of discursive thought, you become calmer and calmer. So it's hard to do actually insight meditation on your own until you learn a little bit. So right now you may have no idea how to use your discursive thought in such a way as to develop wisdom. So it may be a while before you can actually get into the wisdom meditation. But you can get into the tranquility meditation right now if you're willing to just give up discursive thought. However, it's hard to give it up during a class like this because I'm talking to you discursively.

[12:45]

So you probably won't be able to, unless you're already in a state of tranquility from previously having given up discursive thought. You won't be able to train in tranquility probably while I'm talking unless you stop listening to me. But you can train in tranquility in the meditation period at the beginning of our evenings, and you can train in tranquility whenever you get a chance throughout the day when you feel it's okay to put aside discursive thought for a while. For example, it is difficult to put aside discursive thought when you're having a conversation. That's hard to put it away at that time. However, if you were able to give up discursive thought for a while and this calm arose in you through that practice, once you're calm, you can have a conversation in the calm state.

[13:51]

That's possible. But to train your mind to wean yourself from discursive thoughts is hard to do when you're talking to somebody or driving a car. Not to mention having an argument and trying to win. If you're having an argument and willing to lose, you're probably already pretty calm. Plus, you're probably calmer as the person wins. And they'll probably wonder, how come you look so good since you just lost? And then those probably drop into the practice themselves. So anyway, so maybe it would be good at the beginning of the class to practice this tranquility meditation. And then as the course goes on, you may learn how more and more to do the wisdom type of meditation. which would be basically that you apply these teachings on the Middle Way to what's happening.

[14:55]

You use your understanding of these teachings and think about them in relationship to what's happening. And then this develops wisdom. But again, that's probably a little early at this point because you haven't yet heard much about the teachings. And you have to learn them enough so that you understand them and remember them in order to be able to apply them to what's happening or carry a book around or something and read the book between each experience or something, which is kind of inconvenient. Any questions about how to give up discursive thought? By the way, you use discursive thought to give up discursive thought. In other words, you hear the teaching, giving up discursive thought gives rise to tranquility.

[16:01]

So that's a discursive presentation. You remember that and use that to remind yourself, remind your mind to pay attention to things in this new way. After a while you don't have to remember that anymore, but at the beginning you may need to use that. No questions about that type of meditation? Since you don't have any questions, I'll probably say some more then. In the yoga room, usually we start around 7.15 or 7.30, these sessions, and usually from 7.30 to 8, there's a ballet class going on downstairs, and usually there's a piano going.

[17:01]

And sometimes there's a ballet class upstairs too, so sometimes there's two pianos. Plus there's often sounds of airplanes, dogs barking, and people talking out on the street. And so quite a bit of sound comes into the room while we're sitting. And so it's a good opportunity to like, when you hear these sounds, to see if you can give up discursive thought in relationship to those sounds. So one form of discursive thought. Well, maybe you could tell me some examples of discursive thought that might arise in relationship to those sounds. Can you think of any discursive thoughts that might come up in relationship? Unless they slam the door so hard. Unless they slam the door so hard. Yeah, that's one. That's a discursive thought, kind of. Yeah. That could be, yeah.

[18:04]

Yeah? Well, you know, I was listening, I was hearing the piano and I was telling myself, don't make any judgment about what you're hearing. Yeah. But that's a discursive thought. That is a discursive thought, but if you actually then didn't make judgments about it, you just listened to the sound and then gave up various comments on it, and then comments on your making comments, that would be giving up discursive thought. Also, wondering how much longer it's going to go on and going back and forth between how long it has been going on, how it is going on, and how long it will be going on. That's the mind wandering, right? But you can give that up. It's possible. And sometimes it happens. I mean, I think it happens to people. And it's kind of nice because, in some sense, to have the sound, which initially might be kind of annoying, but the reason why it's annoying is not because necessarily it's so annoying, but that it's so provocative of discursive thoughts.

[19:13]

The discursive thoughts, unless they're directed towards some beneficial end, usually kind of agitating and irritating. They're often about running away from what's happening, which makes things usually more difficult, more painful. But sometimes what happens in the situation here, to me, is at first there's this noise and there's a little bit of discursive thought, And in my mind, one of the discursive thoughts that often happens is, I wonder how these people are doing with this racket. I wonder if they're getting upset with all this noise. But usually after a while, I either don't hear the music or it starts to sound beautiful. But just things calm down as I just don't make much of it.

[20:15]

And so usually by the time we stop, either the music has stopped or the discursive thought has stopped, or both. So you can practice that where you can notice maybe if there's some running around or buzzing around the sounds that you hear at the beginning, and if as you go through the the period if there's a little less buzzing and more just the sounds and some calm starts to come in that way. So that is an ongoing skill that you should develop alongside of wisdom meditation, is that kind of meditation. So you should do both types. Yes? An example of some thoughts that aren't discursive. Well, for example, that's a thought. Did you see that thought? Hear that? Did you hear a beep? There's a thought there. You say it's a sound, but actually you thought there was a sound.

[21:21]

I guess you did. Did you? Yeah, that's a thought. But that thought's not running around. Now you might have, when I went beep, you might have, in addition to thinking beep, you might have said, what a lousy example. When's he going to give me a good, better example? That would be discursive. Or that was a brilliant example. I wish he'd give several more. That's discursive. But just the thought, brilliant, that itself, period, that's not discursive. That's not going anywhere. The etymological meaning is run around or run back and forth. The denotative meaning of discursive is a kind of reasoned discourse coming to a conclusion. So if you're doing any of that kind of things too, like planning or considering various possibilities of what to do after class, trying to reason out which one is best, or what to do during class, or which posture to sit in, or whether you should change your posture, this kind of stuff is discursive, but just brilliant.

[22:34]

Pleasant. Beep. Hot. Those are thoughts, but they're not, you know, hot is not hot. Hot's you're thinking of hot. That's a thought, but not discursive. It's not going anywhere. Now, the hot's really like, it's not just hot, but it's like hot and like it's going, this is a hot that's going somewhere. Like, you know, that's hot, you know. then that's, even though it's just the word hot, it's still like going someplace. You're still vibrating around it. Even if there's no words around it, you're kind of like, whoa. See? So another way I put it is, is meet whatever comes with complete relaxation. It's another way to talk about calming practice. So beep or piano music or two kinds of piano music, doing kinds of various cacophonous things in relationship to the experience, just relax with it.

[23:41]

Relax, relax, relax with it. Okay? Is that enough on that then? Okay, now we turn, yes. You say, how do you relax when pain comes? Is that what you're asking? Acute pain. How do you relax with acute pain? Well, basically, again, you give up discursive thought in relationship to the pain. It's like throb, throb, throb. And when it's like that for you, just... Then you're giving up discursive thought in relationship to that pain.

[24:44]

And you'll calm down with the pain if you relate to the pain in that way. And you'll also relax with it if you relate to it that way. But if you start thinking about the pain, of course, then it can, you know, get agitated on top of the pain. In other words, it's possible to be calm when you're in pain. It's also possible to tense up when you have pain. So if you're physically tensing up in relationship to pain, you might be able to also not be discursive in relationship to the tensing up in relationship to the pain but let's say you do tense up in relationship to the pain again if you give up discursive thought if you let's say you try to give up discursive thought but you're not really successful and then you tense up tensing up is a kind of like discourse discursive thought it's like pain and or you know shrink back from it and maybe it won't hurt so much. So there's a kind of discursiveness in the physical tensing around the pain.

[25:52]

So now you have the phenomena of being tense. And you can relax. It's possible to relax with being tense. It's possible to relax with a spasm. It's also possible to spasm on top of the spasm. But we already know how to spasm on top of spasms, right? Everybody knows how to do that, I guess, as far as I know. We already know how to tense up when we're in pain, right? So how do you relax with pain? Just give up discursive thought about it. And part of discursive thought is, should I move? Should I take painkillers? Should I take revenge on Buddhism? In the early days of Zen Center, during one of our intensive meditations, there was a guy in them who was in a lot of pain, and he got this idea that Zen was the Japanese revenge against America for the Second World War.

[27:06]

to get all these American people to go in the room and experience all this pain. Now, if you're in pain and you relax with it, you might, without being discursive, you might adjust your posture or you might change your posture. you might take a rest and it might be that when you take a rest your tensing would stop the pain would subside and then you go back to sitting again and there's no pain for a while maybe because it was like a good maybe it was a good thing in that case to take a little break from the sitting but you don't have to think discursively in order to act You may know that, that sometimes you can act without getting involved in discursive thought.

[28:12]

Do you know what I mean? Sometimes something happens, you respond, and there's no discursive thought. Like I just observed that I scratched my head, there was no discursive thought there. You can scratch yourself and calm down. It's possible. But you can also scratch yourself in a very discursive way and get more and more upset. You understand? So you can sit there and be discursive about your pain and get more and more upset, or you can calm down with your pain and do the appropriate thing in relationship to it. Or I should say the appropriate response can come up very nicely in that calm state. Maybe not the response that would come with the greatest wisdom because you haven't yet attained that. Giving up discursive thought doesn't give you wisdom, but still it allows a pretty skillful response to come sometimes. Does that make some sense?

[29:16]

Yes. Through doing lots of yoga, we train ourselves to move away by listening to our breath and moving into more balanced areas, moving away from the thoughts and the pain. It's a movement, but not a movement of thought, a movement of action, a movement of being. Is this part of meditation? Well, without me spending any more time right now trying to understand what you just said, let me say another thing about calming meditation, okay? Calming meditation is to train your attention to not move among objects. So actually in the Yoga Sutra, in the section on samadhi, samadhi is defined as the ceasing of movements of the mind. That definition of samadhi there is similar to a calming type of meditation.

[30:22]

That meaning of samadhi is the calming type, it's not the wisdom type. So ceasing the movements of the mind means that your mind doesn't move from object to object. You train your mind not to move from object to object. You train your mind not to move between different objects. Now usually if we look at the same person moment after moment, we don't feel necessarily like our mind is moving. you know, like I'm looking at Carmen, I'm looking at Carmen, I'm looking at Carmen, so I don't really feel like my mind's jumping around when I'm looking at the same object. But if I move from Carmen, if I look at Carmen and then I see Phil and then I see Laurie, and if I think my mind moved from Carmen to Phil to Laurie, that's discursive thought. So when you give up discursive thought, then I look at Carmen and And I look at a different person or different object, Rochelle.

[31:30]

And I look at a different object, Lee. And I look at a different object, Keith. Okay? They're different. But my mind doesn't move from one to the other. So giving up the movement between the different objects is calming. Whereas insight work you are using the discursive movement, the discursive movement to actually penetrate into the nature of phenomena. When your mind stops moving among the different objects, you calm down. When you have insight, you realize that the different objects are not different. So when I look at Carmen and Rochelle, if I'm looking at their difference, I'm looking at the surface. On the deeper level of their true nature, the true nature there where Carmen is is the same true nature as where Rochelle is is the same true nature as where Lee is.

[32:39]

When you see deeply, you see the same thing. You don't see any different objects anymore, which is another aspect of being on the Middle Way. But you need to use your discursive thought to penetrate beneath the surface of the differences between people and dogs and love and hate. Again, so this course will be emphasizing the more penetrating vision of wisdom rather than the calming, but I encourage you to do that practice alongside of, you know, in the class at the beginning and during the week to train at that. Which is another way to say also that wisdom practice in the Buddhist tradition, wisdom practice is coupled with compassion practice. That, of course, we've had other classes here where we study different aspects of compassion.

[33:45]

So compassion, one aspect of compassion is actually the type of meditation which I just talked to you about. Calming meditation is a type of compassion. It's a type of compassion for your own body and mind, and it's a type of compassion in your relationship with others. So if you can meet other people, and again, usually it's in silence, if you can meet other people and when you meet them you give up discursive thought like you look at the face and you give up all this wandering around the face you look at the face and you give up well he's looking pretty happy today and also really good looking and I wonder you know blah blah blah blah blah meeting somebody and giving that up just like looking at them and then watching them change you know And just looking at it, just looking at it, then you can actually... Or sitting together quietly and being together quietly.

[34:53]

This is a compassionate way to be with each other. It's compassionate to meet people and give up discursive thought. It's compassionate to meet somebody and give up your ideas about them and your thinking about them. And just be with them. It's compassionate. Another dimension of compassion is to be generous with people. Another form of compassion is to practice the precepts. Don't kill them. Don't steal from them. Don't misuse sexuality with them. Don't be intoxicated with them. Don't lie to them. Don't slander them. Don't praise yourself at their expense. Don't be possessive with them. Don't be stingy with them. Don't be angry with them. except in some cases where it's beneficial to them, and do not speak, disparage them. This is compassion. Be patient with them. This is compassion. Be diligent in doing all the practices of compassion with them.

[35:57]

That's compassion. And practice concentration. Practice tranquility with them. This is compassion for yourself. It's compassion for your being. So these practices, although we're not going to be emphasizing them in this class because we're going to try to go deeply into the wisdom practices, please practice those as best you can in parallel to this wisdom teaching and this wisdom practice that will help your study of wisdom And it will also give you a chance to apply your wisdom practice to those practices. The wisdom practice will help you understand those too better. So they will help your wisdom practice and your wisdom practice will help them. But you sort of have to give the wisdom practice something to work on. So please consider practicing giving wisdom. ethical precepts, patience, diligence, and this kind of concentration that comes to fruit as tranquility.

[36:59]

And understand that you're practicing compassion. Oh, and one other practice which I am really big on the last few years, and that's the practice of confession. Practicing confession is a part of both practicing compassion and practicing wisdom. Practicing confession is compassion, so when you're doing...when you're trying to practice compassion and you've noticed that you're not being very successful, then if you confess your unskillfulness in practicing compassion and repent for your unskillfulness in practicing compassion. And repent means that you feel somewhat sorry, you feel somewhat sorrowful that you were unskillful.

[38:09]

And out of that sorrow at you not being, not enacting the skillfulness that you would like to enact, you re-enlist in the practice that you didn't do very well. You reiterate your intention to practice compassion when you notice that you're not. If you want to practice not stealing and you notice you're stealing, you confess it and you notice and you don't feel so good about stealing and out of that not feeling right about it, you reiterate your intention to in the future practice not stealing and so on. If you're impatient, you confess, I was impatient. And I got angry out of impatience rather than for anybody's benefit. So I was both impatient and angry. I confess it. I don't feel good about it. This is not the way I want to live. And I want to now go back to practicing compassion.

[39:11]

So confession will actually melt away the root of your unskillfulness in practicing compassion. So it's a key ingredient in compassion, applies to all the compassion practices, helps them all along. Okay? So I'm probably not going to reiterate this sales pitch for compassion every week. So I just hope that you remember, although I'm not mentioning it every week, that it's the other side of the story of our practice. It's the mate of wisdom. So now the middle way. I wrote in the description of the course that sometimes there's two different ways the middle way has been, two basic kind of different styles in the way the middle way was presented in the early days in India.

[40:17]

And I called one a practical style. or practical form or compassionate form and the other is the more philosophical or more purely concerned with wisdom form. In the first discourse or the first talk that Buddha gave, according to our usual history of the Buddha, He had five auditors and these five people were people he already knew from practicing, actually practicing meditation with them. He practiced tranquility meditation with these five people. And I think that he, I know that, I know the story is that he was very good at tranquility practice. And I think they were too.

[41:19]

So these people, he and these other people are already really masters of tranquility practice. They went into extremely deep states of concentration and calm. I said the other day that the attainments of tranquility 2,500 years ago have not been surpassed. those people were as calm as you can get without being dead. They turned down their mind and body so far that if they went any further, they actually, their brain would shut down and their heart would stop. They got extremely calm. And they got into states which are not, absolutely nothing going on in the mind, but You know, you can't really say that they even have any feelings or thoughts at all going on.

[42:21]

Not to mention that they're giving them up. Almost nothing's happening in their minds. Very, very profound states. And you can't get any deeper than they got without dying. However, wisdom, the wisdom of the Buddha, although it was incredibly wonderful, wisdom... can be surpassed, must actually constantly surpass itself. So the wisdoms that have occurred from the time of the Buddha, all the Buddha's wisdoms have been augmented and elaborated and enhanced and developed. And Buddhism must constantly be creating new wisdoms, but the concentration practices are basically They're out there to attain, but they haven't really evolved. Nobody has gotten any deeper concentration. Of course, many people have lesser concentration than those. Just like in those days, some people were less concentrated, but nobody's gotten any more concentrated than those guys did.

[43:22]

But in some ways, our wisdom practices have even evolved beyond those that the Buddha taught. Of course, he could have taught the wisdom practices which we've retained since that time, but they weren't the conditions of society in India at the time were not there for the greater and more profound teachings to be given. Anyway, he was teaching these five excellent yogis, and the teaching he gave them, according to our Buddhist story, is the teaching where he said, There are two extremes that ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth. One who's gone forth means somebody who's left home to be a full-time yogi. One who has gone forth from the home life. What are these two? What are these two extremes that ought not to be practiced by the yogi?

[44:25]

Number one is devotion to indulgence and sense pleasure. That's one extreme. The other extreme is devotion to self-mortification. Those are two extremes that are not to be practiced by one who has gone forth on the path to liberation. Now, I'd just like to clarify from the beginning that he didn't say there are two extremes to be avoided, and one extreme is indulgence and sense pleasure. He didn't say that. The word indulgence means to yield, basically. It doesn't mean necessarily to be excessively involved. But devotion...

[45:31]

to yielding to sense pleasure. That has the connotation for me of excessive involvement in sense pleasure or addiction to sense pleasure. You're addicted to it. You're devoted to it. It's like, you know, sense pleasure, sense pleasure, sense pleasure, sense pleasure. That's an extreme way of living. And it's not compassionate. So, that's why this is a practical type of presentation. Now, how about self-mortification? He didn't say you ought to avoid the extreme of self-mortification. He didn't say that. Self-mortification is not an extreme. He said devotion to self-mortification, addiction to self-mortification. So, The middle way avoids these two extremes.

[46:33]

But the extremes are not the extreme of sense pleasure and self-mortification or pain. Pain which you're actually allowing yourself to have. It's not that. It's the addiction or the devotion to painful experiences. Or it's the addiction and devotion to putting yourself down, to criticizing yourself. a lot of Zen students actually do practice some self-mortification and some are addicted to self-mortification. They're like really into it and they're really unhappy about it. And the nice thing about self-mortification is you can do it like in a monastery and no one will really notice. Whereas if you're indulging in If you're addicted to sense pleasure, people notice it more because, like, you're in the kitchen all the time, you know, stuffing food in your mouth, or, like, you're lounging around in the sun when you're supposed to be in the meditation hall, you know, or you're... etc.

[47:42]

So addiction to sense pleasure is easier to spot, but a lot of self-mortification you can do and no one really knows except they can tell you're unhappy... Some forms of self-mortification do arise, and if you're not addicted to them, it's okay. And yielding to sense pleasure is okay. If you see something beautiful, if you see a sunset or you taste a strawberry and it feels good, taste it or see it, that's a sense pleasure. And if you let yourself have it, you have yielded, you have yielded not to temptation, but you have yielded to sense pleasure, and that's okay. to be addicted to it to be devoted to it to be primarily concerned with it to have that be your main thing in life or one of your two main things in life some people switch back and forth between in that addiction to the other one the point here is that these addictions take you away from your life that's another way to talk about what's not compassionate compassionate is to be with your life

[48:59]

How do you be with your life? Be generous. Be patient. Be ethical. Be calm. Be diligent. Then you're with your life. So this is in some sense the easier meaning of the middle way to learn, at least to understand. It may not be easy to practice, but it's fairly easy to understand. It looks like you already understand it. I say that because you look like you're not indulging in either one of those extremes right now. Although you might be feeling some sense pleasure or feeling some self-mortification, you don't look like you're taking yourself away from being here by being addicted to those types of experience. Self-mortification does happen.

[50:02]

Not so bad sometimes. Like, sometimes it's good to go out in the cold because somebody needs you to come out in the cold with them. And it's kind of a voluntary self-mortification. But to go out in the cold, to be devoted to going out in the cold, that's taking yourself away from where you are. Even if you're in the cold. The devotion, the addiction to being cold, takes you away from the cold. So that's what the Buddha taught. And both of these ways, both of these extremes are unworthy and unprofitable. That they share that.

[51:06]

These two extremes are both said by the Buddha to be unworthy and unprofitable. Unworthy means unworthy of one who is on the path to liberation. But one is painful, and he doesn't say the other one's pleasurable. He said the other one's lowly. So in some ways the path of self-mortification is not as lowly as the other one. So people who don't want to be that low, they switch over to self-mortification, which means they get to criticize themselves and be mean to themselves, which is not as low as just trying to get some pleasure. So Buddha says the first one's low and the other one's like painful. But they're both unworthy and unprofitable and they're both to be given up, not to be practiced. So go right ahead and stop practicing indulgence and addiction or devotion to those.

[52:08]

Give it a try. And if you're having any trouble, practice compassion with yourself if you're having trouble learning this middle way. In other words, be patient with yourself and practice confession and repentance with it. Be generous with yourself, too, as you notice that you're not staying in the middle between these two impractical ways of living. So then the Buddha goes on to say, avoiding both these extremes, the tathagata, which means the one who comes in the way things are, the Buddha, has realized the middle path. And I already told you, it gives vision, it gives knowledge, it gives insight, it gives calm, and it gives peace and freedom.

[53:11]

And then he says, and what is the middle? What is the middle path? It is simply the Noble Eightfold Path. Right view, right understanding, right intention, right livelihood, right conduct, right speech, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. That's another way to talk about the way that avoids these extremes. So then he told that, he told the monks that, and then he said, the middle path realized by yours truly, which gives vision and so on, is like this. And then he taught the Four Noble Truths. So he told them about the middle way is avoiding his extremes, and then what is the middle way?

[54:23]

It's practicing the Noble Eightfold Path. And then he taught them the Four Noble Truths. How many people have not heard of the Four Noble Truths? Would you raise your hand? Okay, the Four Noble Truths are the truth of suffering, the truth of the origin of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering. of the cessation of suffering and the truth of the path which realizes the cessation of suffering. And the path which realizes the cessation of suffering is the Eightfold Path. So it's a kind of involuted or circular way of teaching. So he says, what's the middle way? It's the Eightfold Path. And then he starts teaching a wisdom practice, which comes in these four modes. And the fourth mode of the wisdom practice is the Eightfold Path.

[55:25]

But in particular, in the Eightfold Path, right view is wisdom. The first element in the Eightfold Path is wisdom. So the teaching he offered them, although he mentioned the Eightfold Path, the teaching he offered them was particularly directed towards right view. He gave them a wisdom practice right off. Even though he told them about eightfolds, he really just taught them one. And I mentioned recently in one of the classes here that I never noticed that before, and I thought, well, how come he just started right away with wisdom and didn't teach them the other ones? Because this is like a historical event here, supposedly. This is the Buddha's first teaching. He's teaching people who we actually know who they are, and we know their careers prior to this. How come when he taught them the Eightfold Path, the Middle Way, he went right to the Four Noble Truths, which are wisdom teachings?

[56:27]

Why did he teach them wisdom teachings right away and no compassion teachings? He didn't teach them giving, precepts, patience, and concentration. That's a hint. He didn't teach it to them because they already knew that aspect pretty well. They were already masters at concentration, which means that they're already good at patience. Pretty good. Which means they're already fairly ethical. You cannot get as concentrated as these people in going around stealing cookies. It doesn't go together. These people were not... stealing, they weren't killing anything. You can't be that calm and be killing people or plants or animals. They were like very peaceful, accomplished yogis, great yogis, but they didn't have wisdom, just like the Buddha didn't have wisdom when he used to hang out with them. So he gave them this new teaching, which he found out, which they'd never heard of before, the teaching of the middle way, the teaching of the Four Noble Truths.

[57:33]

And again, Four Noble Truths, the fourth one is the path. And the part of the path he's emphasizing by giving the Four Noble Truths is really the first element of vision. And the first two truths are the truth of suffering and the truth of the origin, or the truth of the arising of suffering. So the first teaching he gave them was there is suffering. not missing that take back he didn't say there is suffering he said it's a truth of suffering is that what is the truth of suffering it is birth is suffering aging is suffering sickness is suffering death is suffering sorrow is suffering and so on they're all suffering associated with unpleasant feeling of suffering disassociation from pleasant is suffering and not getting what one wants is suffering.

[58:35]

In brief, all the aggregates of experience, all the aggregates of attachment, all the different types of experience that have attachment are suffering. So whenever there's attachment in relationship to experience, all experience that has attachment is suffering. That's the truth. He didn't say there is suffering. Obviously there is sometimes. And he didn't say, which he's often quoted, I mentioned this, you know, I'm talking now to about 50 people, but Scott Peck talks to millions of people. Scott Peck, is that his name? F. Scott Peck? He sells millions of books, and he says at the beginning of his book, I think, Road Less Traveled, he says at the beginning, Buddha said, life is suffering. So now he's saying that. Buddha didn't say life is suffering. Again, I feel kind of puny. Here's this guy misrepresenting Buddha, and I'm kind of saying, Buddha didn't say life is suffering.

[59:39]

Buddha didn't say there is suffering. Buddha said there's a truth of suffering. The truth of suffering is that everything is suffering when there's attachment. That's the first truth. which again reminds me, I don't know if I told you this, but I was listening to the radio and had this show on about this Buddhist monastery I think in Burma or Thailand. I think it was in Burma. And this monastery specializes in drug rehabilitation. So heroin addicts come there and they have a pretty good record of getting them straight again. And so they interviewed one of the monks. And this monk was a monk who used to be, he was a Vietnam vet on the United States side.

[60:42]

And he's from like Harlem, Manhattan. and 150th and blah, blah. And here's this like Harlemite monk in Burma. And so they interview him and they say, you know, I'm not going to try to imitate him, but he sounds just like a typical guy from Harlem. Even more so maybe, maybe like a guy from Harlem in the 70s since he's been in Asia for 25 or 30 years. But here's this Harlem guy talking about Buddhism and he says, he says, Buddhism is But if you're attached, you suffer, and if you're not attached, you're not suffering. That's it. The next truth is the truth of the origin of suffering, and Buddha explains how suffering arises. And suffering arises in dependence on something. It arises in dependence on attachment. And attachment arises in dependence on ignorance.

[61:47]

When you're wise, you're not attached because you can see the nature of things, the true nature of things. When you see the true nature of things, you can't see how to get a hold of something that is ungraspable. So the origins of the grasping, the origins of the craving, is ignorance and the origin of suffering is grasping and attachment. So again now he's teaching the middle way. What's the middle way? The middle way is to show you to show you how suffering arises. So the middle way in the early teaching he's showing how suffering arises so that these people can see the way suffering arises, to see the dependent co-arising of suffering.

[62:49]

This is his early teaching of the middle way. So he's teaching wisdom as, first of all, what to avoid and extremes to avoid. And then as you're avoiding these extremes, now you look to see if there's any suffering left. And you look, is there any suffering? Is there any attachment? And looking at the attachment, looking at the craving, at the center of the craving, you see how it happens. And as you see how it happens, the craving is not possible. And then there's cessation. So that's the... a short presentation of the practical version, which is also the first version of his teaching the Buddha gave. And next week I will move over to the more philosophical and more purely wisdom-oriented presentation of the Middle Way.

[64:01]

So embedded in this simple little presentation of the Four Noble Truths that the Buddha gave is the teaching that when there's attachment, your life is suffering. If you're having a pleasant experience and there's attachment, you feel pain. Do you know what I mean? Like I often use the example of one of our friends who when he was a little boy loved to take hot showers. And so he'd go into the shower room and as soon as he got into the shower he started to feel pain because he knew that his mother was going to make him stop the shower in five minutes. So as soon as he got in the shower he started to feel pain feeling the end of the shower coming.

[65:12]

So it's like his favorite thing was very painful. This is because he was attached to that pleasant experience. He had a very miserable childhood when he was having fun, when he was having pleasure. And of course, if you're having pain and you're attached to like getting away from the pain or if you're attached to the pain, which most people aren't, but if you're attached to getting away from the pain, then you have suffering and pain. And then if you just have things not going the way you want them to, you have suffering. So no matter what's happening, if you have attachment, you have suffering. And then the Buddha also taught that suffering arises in dependence on something. So he gave the basic teaching of depending on X arises Y. That's the basic teaching of dependent core arising. That's at the center of the middle way. is that what's happening, whatever's happening, depends on something else.

[66:19]

So you practically speaking, you give up these indulgences and these extremes, these devotions, these extreme devotions, And then you start looking at what's happening and beginning to see, can you see, can you hear the teaching that what's happening, in particular suffering, but anything, and you hear the teaching that what's happening, what's arising depends on something else, no matter what it is. You may not know what it is that it depends on, but you hear the teaching, whatever it is, whatever X is arising, it depends on something other than itself. because the vision that something does not depend on other things is natural to us. We're innately born to be susceptible to the illusion that when we see something or somebody that the thing out there is self-existence, that it's out there. It doesn't depend on you, for example.

[67:26]

It's out there separate from you. But things aren't that way. Whatever you're looking at That appearance arises in dependence on something other than itself, but it looks like it arises by its own self and looks like it keeps itself going. That's the way things appear to us. This is a teaching which, when you give up these extremes, now you can tune in to the finer vision, the more subtle vision of the middle way, is when you look at things now, Now that you're not distracting yourself away from what's happening, now you can look and remember the teaching that whatever you're seeing, whoever you're meeting, whatever you're doing, whatever you're feeling, it arises in dependence on something other than itself. arise in dependence on something other than yourself. Your activity arises in dependence on something other than itself or yourself. So that's the key ingredient that's the center of the Middle Way teaching is the dependent co-arising of all phenomena.

[68:35]

Everything dependently co-arises. There's nothing that doesn't depend and co-arise. And I would now conclude with some high recommendations for this meditation on the middle way, which is basically that as I remember, as you listen to and remember and are mindful of this teaching, the teachings you've heard tonight plus the ones you'll hear later about the middle way, as we're mindful of these teachings... they help us find the balanced way to respond to events. As we hear these teachings and become more and more ready to see that they're true in events, our behavior becomes transformed

[69:48]

into virtue. More and more it becomes virtuous and it becomes more and more Buddha's activity as we hear this teaching and apply it to what's happening. Put it on the negative side, if we don't hear this teaching and we don't listen to this teaching of dependent core rising, if we go along with the appearance that things exist on their own rather than dependently, then we usually will care too much or too little about the events of our life. And some people generally have the style of caring too much, at least caring too much about certain things. like some women care too much about their children and Mary Carey too little about pro football.

[70:55]

So caring is good. So by hearing this teaching and hearing this teaching and listening to this teaching and applying this teaching, your caring will become balanced between caring too much and caring too little. And most people, again, care too much about some things and too little about other things. And some people, generally speaking, I don't know if anybody cares too little about everything. I don't know if there's anybody like that. And I don't know if there's anybody who cares too, maybe there's some people who care too much about everything. Those people that really have a hard time, that they care too much about everything. Generally speaking, when you're on the side of caring too little, I should say when you're on the side of caring too much, like for example, caring too much for the welfare of beings, caring too much, taking the welfare of beings too seriously,

[72:23]

When you do that, your skillfulness in working for the welfare of beings that you care for too much, your skillfulness becomes drained of its life and you burn out. So if you're working, what do you call it, if you're in a caring profession, if you're a professional carer, if you really do care for beings but you care too much, then your caring work loses its life. On the other hand, if you're a gangster and you care too little, then you're more effective at being a gangster because you don't care about hurting people. You don't care at all. Or you care not much at all. So you can really be mean to people because you don't care about them. don't care about ethics care too little about ethics so no problem gangster being being you can be an excellent gangster excellent thug excellent bully so I think some people probably in this room do care that the population of Iraq is more than 50% children some people care when they hear that they don't want a

[73:49]

bombs to be dropped on a population that's mostly children, they care. But if you care too much, that will undermine your peace working activity, your contribution to protecting these children. And of course, if you care too little, then that will also contribute probably to the bully's success. We must find for the welfare of the world you must find a balanced way of caring. And the teaching, instead of just trying to be balanced, which is okay, but it helps a great deal when you're trying to balance your care if you're also paying attention to the teachings about the way things really are. That will help you. And actually when you can see that, you don't even have to remember to try to be balanced. You will be naturally balanced when you see what you've got in front of you. and you won't care too much and you won't care too little.

[74:53]

You'll care appropriately. You'll care like the Buddha cares. And you'll do the best you can to realize peace and freedom. So this is a really, I feel, really appropriate teaching for this time to help us make the appropriate response to the situation and not be mean but also not give up on being kind because we care too much about being kind. So thank you for coming tonight and being so awake and see you next week.

[75:43]

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