So last week we read the first, we read the whole chapter, but we went through the words, thus I have heard one time, and the word, the Lord. And the next word, we went, we talked about thus I have heard one time, and we talked about the word, the Lord, and some of the other epithets, for the Buddha. And now we come to the word dwelt. And you

[01:03]

You all know in English what that word means, but the Sanskrit word that appears here is . It's not actually the word that appears, but that's the root of the word that appears. I mean, it's in some grammatical form, meaning a verb form of that, which means to dwell or an abode. It's also the name for Buddhist monasteries in India, what they called their monasteries that they had, that they used during the rainy season. So this word brings to mind several things about Buddhism.

[02:22]

First is that there are, in Buddhism, there are the main vihara, I don't know if I should say the main vihara, but the first vihara is is the body, and the body has within it, for a Buddha, there are what we call the Iryapta. And there's four of these. Sometimes we say posture. And in Chinese, or in Japanese, in Chinese they're called, in Japanese they're called .

[03:34]

In Chinese, they're translated as solemn, awesome ceremony or awesome conduct or awesome deportment. In Sanskrit, they're usually called the attitudes or postures, the noble postures, the whole noble postures. And they are standing, sitting, walking, and lying down. And this means, in one sense, it sounds quite simple, you know, just to say standing, sitting, walking, and lying down. That sounds like that just talks about the different postures that the people are in.

[04:52]

But when we say lying down, we mean a particular way of lying down. You lie down on your right side. You lie down, prop your head up so that your spine is straight. Put your legs on top of each other and bend them slightly. Put your hand up under your head like this or like this, and your other hand across your body like this usually. So you're sitting in some kind of a balanced, state of lying down. It's a wakeful posture. It's a rest posture, but it's quite alert, too. We say, you know, that if you curl up too much or lay on your stomach, you become afraid. And you become lost in

[05:54]

illusory dreams. But if you roll over on your back and sprawl out, which is a human, human beings are the only animals that do that, it's the king's posture, you know, it's a very arrogant posture, which is nice to be a king or queen, but the posture we're talking about is not so arrogant as that. It's a more synthesizing alertness. And of course, sitting is, sitting posture is four-rotus or half-rotus. And standing is a posture of erectness, trying to sit with as much awareness, stand as much awareness and stability as possible. And walking also is kini, which literally means in Japanese, moving, rotating, are moving or circulating the sutra.

[06:57]

But sutra also means it has to do with the kind of thread that runs through the binding of a Chinese book. And in the book they have this lining. And so that's that binding It also means the line or the principle running through the sutra. So it means not only a book or a sutra, but also a principle. These postures are indeed well translated by awesome, awesome demeanor or august demeanor. Somehow the Buddha, even though he was very kind and compassionate, he abides in these postures. And of course, as you transform yourself from sitting to lying down, from sitting to standing, from standing to walking, from walking to standing, and so on, in between each of these postures are innumerable other postures which have as much dignity.

[08:16]

But these are the four postures that give you that basic idea of how you would be in between as you sit down you know isn't that you're standing you know like this and you go well you you have a sense of uh of presence and alertness in all postures this is the first vihara first idea of vihara next idea of vihara is uh is uh in terms of So this idea, the first idea of your heart has to do with how you kind of take care of your own monastery, so to speak. The next one is that there are actually different abodes that you can enter into. So the first one is, of course, it helps your own alertness, keeps you alert. And... So, for example, if you sleep like this, you do not tend to have dreams.

[09:23]

You don't really have dreams, either the fearful kind or the arrogant kind. And also these postures are not only sort of help your alertness and are comfortable for you and invigorating to you, but also they encourage other people. But now we're talking about viharas or abodes or dwelling places, which are like places. They're more like places. And there are basically three types. One is the deva abode. And by deva, I mean his heart here. devabod means specifically devas of the kamadatu.

[10:35]

So it's kamadatu. is called in Sanskrit. So this is a sense, devas are gods of the sense of the desire realm. And these gods are called, this realm is called Divya Vihara. Divya Vihara. Divya Vihara. We talked about this last time. Art Hackerson brought up the question, who are these gods that they're talking about? The gods that are in attendance at this particular sutra reading here are these gods.

[11:42]

For example, the gods who live in Tushita heaven, the gods who live in the heaven of the four great heavenly kings, the gods of the 33, and so on. There's six kinds six echelons of gods in the sense realm. And these viharas are available to, Buddhists can go there if they want, at will. And also any yogi can go there. These are easy to get into. The entrance fee to these abodes are giving. giving stuff, and moral discipline, and good thoughts, good thought, you know, positive, wholesome thinking. This is the entrance into these, the God realms, the Deva realms of the Kamadatu.

[12:46]

Good thoughts. Kushala. so in in comments in common sense terms it just it just means that if you do these things you will be you will be able to take birth in heavenly abodes in this world you won't you know you'll still be able to see people sweaters and glasses and light bulbs and tables and stuff, and you'll still be seen. But you'll be in a heavenly abode, in a blissful abode, in this realm. What do I mean by birth? I mean, no, I mean both.

[13:56]

after physical death, if you should happen to be involved in such practices in the neighborhood of your death, it's quite likely that you'll be reborn in the next life, next incarnation in one of these realms. Or even if you are involved in You know, sometime during your life, you still might be reborn there. Or, in this very life, next Tuesday, you may be reborn there, even while you're still in good health, by our standards here in this realm. And there's a hierarchy of these gods, depending on the qualities of these compulsions. of giving, of morality, and of good thoughts.

[15:04]

When I say compulsions, then I mean it. When I say impulses, these are impulsive activities, but they're a very high quality type. Okay? The next level of existence is called Brahmandamara. Would you say that again, please? Yeah, I mean, the body, The body system is set aside now.

[16:07]

Now I'm talking about the three systems. One is deva. One is deva, the common dhatra. Now we're talking about deva, the rupa dhatra, and arupa dhatra. And next is ariyan vihara. Next one is called brahma vihara. And brahma vihara is also called Anyway, this is a name of a meditation, actually. It's a name of an abode, and it's also the name of a certain type of meditation. And the type of meditation which is the name of is one of the ways to get into these realms. So these, Brahmavihara, strictly speaking, there are, in the Arupadatu, in the realm of fine material, of subtle material, of elemental material realm, there are 17 heavens, 17 layers or types of divine abodes.

[17:25]

And you get into these abodes by meditation practices. Whereas you can get into heavenly or divine abodes in this world without even practicing meditation. If you do practice meditation of a certain type, intending to be reborn in a better place, you can enter into one of these 17 in the Rupa Doctor. And the first four of them, strictly speaking, are called Brahma Viharas because they're... No, the first three of them are called Brahma Viharas because that's actually where Brahma lives and where his attendants live. But in this case, I'm saying I'm calling all of them, all 17 of them, all the states, all the meditation, they're also called meditational heavens. They're also called meditational heavens, meditational divine abodes.

[18:30]

There's seven, oh, excuse me. There's 17 in the reproductor and there's four in the eye reproductor. So 21 altogether. And actually there's one that's on the top of the, on the top of the reproductor, one's called the sphere, the neither perception nor not perception sphere. It includes that one too. Okay? So that's the second major category of places you can live that a Buddha might live. Is that Vavagra? What? Is that Vavagra? What? The one you say is Vavagra. Vavagra. Oh, Vavagra. No, Vavagra.

[19:31]

Vavagra. It's called Vavagra. That's what she said. But that's not what I heard her say. That's why I kept saying what. Vavagra is the name of the top layer of the Arupadatu. So I'm just saying that all those fancy abodes come under this heading. You could say that there's six, you could say there's 27 abodes if you wished. But generally speaking, there's three. There's the heavenly abode of this world, which you get into by good works. There's the heavenly abodes of the next two higher worlds, next two higher datus, next two higher spheres, which you arrive at by meditational practices. And then the top one is called the Arya Vihara. I don't know, it's not the top one, actually.

[20:33]

It can be any of these. Please note that I retracted the word top. Because Arya Vihara can be in Kamadhatu or any of these other places. It can be Kamadhatu, Rupadhatu, Harupadhatu. Okay? Now, the Arya Vihara is inhabited by Buddhas. Pratyekha Buddhas and Arhats. Well, I won't say not Bodhisattvas because Bodhisattvas, we haven't got to the Bodhisattvas yet.

[21:35]

And you get into this Vihara, or with one more word about getting into the meditational heavens, you can get there by, one of the ways you can get there is by doing a practice called Brahma Vihara, which is meditation on, which is also called the unbounded meditation, the unlimited meditation. And you meditate on friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. And that meditation gives you entrance into the first few layers of the rupadhatu heavens. Yes? Rupadhatu is, like this world, we have form, like flowers and tables and things. in the rupadatta you have the elemental constituents of these composite form experiences we have here so for example a table is made up of as a when it's a visual object it's made up of a large number of colors okay and this is a rather gross existence here because even in this existence

[23:15]

we actually build up that table by a large number of experiences, more fundamental experiences. But because of our desires, we tend to average and group experiences into big chunks. And by averaging them into big chunks, they can become the object of our desires, of our gross desires. If you see them in their finer finer grade or finer faster and more elementally there's a number of object subject-object or sense-desire relationships you could have with your experience that are cut out so the kamadatu is we sometimes say it's the desire for food by the mouthfuls you want food in big chunks rather than But actually food comes, nourishment comes to you, not in big chunks.

[24:19]

I shouldn't say actually, but in the rupadatta, you experience nourishment, but without eating it in big chunks. It's like it's intravenous. But then the whole practice of eating, you know, of dishes and silverware and tablecloths and dinner bells and chit-chat and so on and menus a whole thing shot you just get nourishment so the Rupa doctor you just have salty sweet bitter and so on and you have smells all in in this realm smells are extremely complex a smell of coffee there's a smell of the spring of 1942 there's a smell of the winter around the Rose Bowl in 1961 in Southern California, you know, you can have smells like this, right?

[25:21]

In other words, smells are incredibly rich, but in Abhidharma, smells are very simple. It's about four kinds. But somehow by putting these four kinds in grossly, bunching them together, you have a tremendous richness. So it's funny because you have richness by grossness, When you get into subtlety, a lot of the richness is washed out. So that's why people don't want to go to the rupadattu, some of them. And that's why they're here. But the rupadattu has its good points too. So some people like to go there. And they work really hard to get there. And they get there. And they're freed of a lot of gross desires, gross cravings. A lot of them drop out. Because they're There's no longer tables. They're just blue and red and yellow and salty.

[26:22]

So all the experiences that we have here in the elemental form happen there. Nothing's added, but you just don't chunk them together because you don't want to anymore. That's a rupadatu. Our rupadatu does none of that stuff. There's no greens. There's no blues. There's no salties. There's no sweets. There's no rust, they're so smooth, there's no sounds made by animate beings or inanimate beings, and so on. Just the mind. No, it's got full complexity. And all the thoughts, you can still think about food. You can have the concept of a mouthful of food or a shapely nose. But it's a total concept. So that's those. Then the aria of your heart, you get into those by various kinds of meditations. Besides, you know, like meditation on, for example, one of the ways you get in there is meditating on colors, meditating on blue.

[27:30]

And you just meditate on blue, [...] and pretty soon you're in a world where there's just blue and red. By your compulsion to meditate on this blue, you enter a world where that kind of stuff's happening. the Arya Vihara can be in any of these realms and you enter this by meditation on what's called the three samadhis the famous three samadhis or sometimes called the gates to deliverance first one's called what? signless signless is animitta The next one is called wishless.

[28:32]

Wishless, which is ah-prani. And the last one? What? What? What? Emptiness. Shunya. These are the... objects of the famous what's called the three samadhis and by contemplating these three samadhis these three objects by doing these three samadhis one enters into one is in at that time when you're doing this properly you are in the Arya Vihara and this is where Buddha would naturally be living so This is, however, as I said, he would live in this, the Vihara, which is defined by meditating on these objects.

[29:37]

At the same time, the Buddha would live in one of these other realms too. So, although his basic posture and mental attitude is these postures and these attitudes, still he might go to Florida. But even if he goes to Florida, he still is in this realm. He never leaves this realm. This is his home. Yes? Does it include them? Well, it includes them, but... Also, it's a different sort of emphasis. Like right now, here I am in this class, all right, and I'm talking. And here you are in this class and you're talking. And so what am I, what are we up to here?

[30:39]

Do I, am I involved with some kind of idea of that this, this class, or my preparations for this class, or what I say here tonight, that they'll lead to something? Am I involved in that people will like me for this, what I do in this class, what I say in this class? Or do I actually think that as I talk and as I think about this class, do I actually keep thinking all the time that I don't have something to, you know, some effect to arrive at or I don't, I'm not doing this class for some future. I'm not taking anything else into consideration other than just doing this.

[31:47]

And also that I'm not, I'm not, I'm not looking for some particular signs, although given certain signs, I'll react differently. If you all walk out the door right now, I'll walk out too. But nonetheless, mostly I, I don't have some, I try to concentrate on not having some particular idea about what this thing, what this class should be like or something, how it should go. I do various things, trying to have some idea about how it should go. Aside from future effects. And the other thing is, however it goes, whether we seem to understand what we're talking about or whether I say stupid things or not, still, if I say something stupid, it's not something independent of you. You help me be stupid. It's not that I blame you for my stupidity, but rather my stupidity has no meaning aside from you.

[32:54]

emptiness. So they do sort of, as objects of meditation, they do sort of give different angles on catching yourself from getting in trouble. One protects you from getting into causal thinking of future effects and greed. The other one keeps you from, or helps you not be overly to certain definitions of how things are going or how they should be going. And the other keeps you from egocentric or concept, tight conceptual understandings of how things go and who is responsible for what. Or you can do them every other moment. You can alternate them. And depending on your experience with doing these meditations, you would learn which way would be best for you. For most people, it's probably better to do, when you start, to do one for quite a while until you catch on to how to do it.

[34:14]

I mean, I could say something. I could say 2 plus 2 is 4, right? And you all could say, wow. And you could all just fall off your chairs. It just might just really hit home. Or I could say 2 plus 2 is 6. And that would be maybe more impressive or less impressive. I don't know. Are you following that? So that's, it's an ordinary statement or it's a kind of dumb statement, but it may be very, it may be brilliant. It may be a brilliant thing to say because everybody feels brilliant. Or I could say something else which sounds quite erudite and really completely useless, you know. I may come in here and say all kinds of stuff that nobody ever heard before, including me, and just really dazzlingly empty and useless.

[35:35]

And it's stupid for me to say it, wasting my time and everybody else's time. Because all your time is wasted. And everybody's sort of bored and discouraged. So it seems like it's stupid. But it doesn't mean that the stupid is bad and that the brilliant is good. The point is that both of them are totally subject of the context. And you took the step of saying, well, then I'm not responsible. And the other people are responsible? No. I'm not responsible and they're not responsible. Just like we said, what's hearing? Is it the ear that hears? Is it the mind that hears? Is it the object that hears? Is it the ear consciousness that hears? Is it the mind consciousness that hears? No, hearing is actually all those things happening at once plus a whole bunch of other stuff. That's what hearing really is. And hearing is not to have an actor in it or an acted upon or an agent. And the same with anything else.

[36:38]

You really can't specify all the weight over on one side or the other. In fact, the world does that, right? If somebody throws a rock at me and kills me, well, they'll take that person and they'll put that person in jail. Maybe they won't, but they probably will. And maybe they'll put that person up for trial and say this person's a murderer and they'll punish the person. Even though from the point of view of Buddhism it's not true that they're totally responsible. Everybody's responsible for it. They're not the agent for the murder. Everything is. But if in fact we all looked at it that way the world would fall apart. The world would fall apart. So in fact in order to have a world with with laws and lawyers and colleges and insane asylums and prisons and police and gangsters and murderers.

[37:42]

You have to specify who the murderers are and who the non-murderers are. If you don't do that, you won't have murderers and non-murderers and police and prisons. You've got to have that kind of specification going on. Is the Senate against discrimination? Yeah. You need discriminations in order to make this wonderful world. Am I being sarcastic? Am I being sarcastic? Yeah. Well, you could say that, I suppose, but my sarcasm has a context too, you know? I mean... You mean? You mean, could I really be saying what I'm saying? You mean, could I be worried that if we stop discriminating, we won't have any prisons anymore? Vietnam won't happen. And could I really be worried that that might not happen? Would that make me real sad? I'm not worried about it. But in fact, if everybody stopped discriminating, then the whole thing would fall apart.

[38:50]

It would go flat instantly. Hmm? That's what I said. There wouldn't be any prisons. There just wouldn't be. Or if there were prisons, they would just be, you know, what do you call it? What's that movie, King of Hearts? They would just be sort of, you know, shows, games. They would have more reality. They'd probably be the most interesting places to be. Because it would be for people very advanced bodhisattvas to sort of go through the motions of being in prison and sort of work with that column. What am I doing here in this prison when we don't really, you know, everybody knows. There's no actor and no agent. How did I get here? Why is my friend pretending to be a policeman now? That's not really a prison. That's a monastery. Of course, you could walk out any time you want. Anyway, we need this kind of thing in order to keep this samsara going.

[39:53]

But these do not keep samsara going. Buddhas do not keep samsara going. They do not keep it going. That's not their job. What's your... Buddhist activity has nothing to do with samsara. samsara runs on its own fuel. If the whole world agreed with that, then we practiced that. If the world's viewpoint of samsara do not call it that the buddhas practiced that as an effect. It has no effect. But the buddha sees by doing these practices that in fact There is no agent. There are no murderers. There are no prisons and so on.

[40:57]

The world actually is saved. That's what the Buddha sees. And the Buddha takes this insight into the world. What's he called? He's called the... He says... Of those to be controlled, you know, named Purusha Damya Sarati, one of his epitaphs that we did last week. For those that are to be controlled, he's the caravan leader, right? Among those people that are to be controlled, he controls them. He's the caravan leader, the chief charioteer, the caravan leader of those who are to be controlled. those that need discipline buddha is perfectly willing to discipline them so you take a wild man and buddha will be he's perfectly willing to say and you have says it says in the sutras he says please practice the brahma viharas please practice the four genres in other words please do some practice please meditate on friendliness and compassion and sympathetic joy and indifference

[42:25]

He doesn't tell them why, but it does calm your mind and puts you in a very nice place. Please do these other meditations, the other jhanas, which calm people and get them into nice places. He tells them to do that. And then they ask him, why should I do this? And he says, because they're very good. Yes, but why are they good? Because they're excellent. But why are they excellent? Please do these. But he says he will not say why they're good because for this person, their discipline, their karma. But this person needs, they think, where they're at, they think they need to do more karma. So he gives them the best possible karma for them. He's perfectly willing to do that. But he does it from this point of view. Doesn't really think he's doing any good or any bad or anything. For people who think that way, give them something good.

[43:28]

They can't conceive of doing these practices yet. These practices which have no effect. So he tells them to do these. First to do these, actually. Giving morality and good thought. Then these. And sure enough, they'll be happy. And they'll sense some improvement in their life. They live totally in a world of good and bad, so he gives them the good. And when they calm down enough, then he finally tells them about these. But he doesn't have a different understanding of what's going on in any case. He's always abiding in the silence, the wishless, and emptiness. But out of compassion, he comes into any of these realms. Kamadatu, Rupadatu, Arupadatu, or he comes to San Francisco or Chang'an or Kapila Vastu or Rajagriha.

[44:43]

What is the title of those four practices? What is what? Those are called Brahma Viharas, actually. Maitri, Karuna, Pramurita, and Upeksha. What? That's the four unlimiteds, yeah. They're unlimiteds because you do them with everybody. You don't just practice the friendliness with your friends. You do them with, as a matter of fact, they're primarily for people that you don't like. All of these, plus in the Kamadatu, he doesn't just dwell in the Devavihara. He also dwells in, you know, more or less any place.

[45:49]

More or less any place. We'll talk about that a minute when we get to the word Rajagriha. Yes? And at the same time, he's always in the Arya Vihara? He's always in the Arya Vihara. Well, it means, well, for example, one of these, Brahma Vihara's, one of Buddha's favorite, he has a couple favorite resorts that he likes. Historically speaking, they say he did. Buddhists tend to like this top, at the top level, if you go to the top level of the Arupa Datu, which is called Bhavagra, that is the that's called the summit of existence it's of all existence it's sort of it's the best best of all possible existences okay of all mundane existence it's the top of the mundane world it's very much like nirvana but it's not so i don't have to worry about it from this diving board so to speak it's a very excellent diving board

[47:10]

If you're a Buddha, you can jump off into what's called the niroda samapati, which is the, sort of like, it has, it's extremely restful because your body, your mind completely turns off for a while. Completely turns off. Everything, everything stops. You feel, you can go in there for seven days, you feel like when you come out, if when you went in you went like this, and you went out and it was right here, you think when you open your eyes again that the thing will be here. But actually, they came in and they cleared the papers away and had breakfast for seven days and so on while you were standing here. It's so restful. So that's one of Buddha's favorites kind of resorts.

[48:15]

He liked to rest there. And other Aryans can also go there. Very nice rest place. What is that called? Nirodha Samapati. It's one of the citta viparyukta samskaras. And there's another one that non-Aryans can go to, which has exactly the same qualities. It's called Asamnin Samapati. meditation on unconsciousness but see they think because they don't have sufficient wisdom because they're not meditating on this stuff all the time when they go in there they think it's they think it's something that's not they don't just see they're at a nice resort they think they're nirvana they think they're free which is wrong so it's not so restful for them because they get a little excited even why they have no mind. Can you believe that? Which is nonsense.

[49:17]

And another place Buddha liked to hang out, he liked to hang out in the fourth Rupajana, which is mainly characterized by equanimity, which is not so restful. It's not total like, you know, wiping the mind away restfulness, but while still maintaining some, it'd be like a very pleasant, But still there's experience and minds operating, but in a very pleasant way. So he liked those particular places. And he'd go there whenever he, you know, whenever everybody else went to sleep and all the monks were asleep and all the Davids were asleep or had enough of him and so on. He'd go out to these other places. Because why not be there? Nothing else to do. So he'd go there. But while he was in these realms, he would always see them as signless, wishless, and emptiness. Same thing if he was in Rajagriha, or if he was in San Francisco on Page Street or Market Street.

[50:29]

He would be doing those meditations, even though he had come in to do them in some particular situation for some particular reason. Either because he liked the view, or the vibes, or the people. Okay? Can you see that? It's something like that. It means meditation or absorption on nirvana. There, but then they start right again, the other side. Well, what start?

[51:31]

I mean, if they've gotten to the pillar, they can stop. What starts them up again? That karma starts them up again. is still alive the the jv injury that life force is not suppressed they don't die if you see someone in this trance that you still see them but they're not dead i mean they're not cold somehow they manage to keep warm okay so I don't know.

[52:33]

I haven't heard a description of what they look like from the outside. I would think that you could stay upright myself because I don't see why. I don't see why. Maybe they're sprawling over the floor, drooling. It doesn't matter to much.

[53:35]

They don't care. No, not necessarily. I would think the signless, the wishless emptiness are much more flexible than, for example, meditation on blue. You have to stay on it. You can't look at it for a few minutes and then think about something else and change the object. Change the object. You can't keep changing the object all the time every few minutes. You have to sit with it for quite a while. Which other... Well, see, that's the point of it, and that's what Sue was bringing up, Susan was bringing up, you see, is that they can be practiced inside of these... See, these other things are... They're karmic, right?

[54:55]

You compulsively, obsessively, compulsively direct yourself towards this blue circle, and that produces a karmic effect called being born in some place, you know, like you take out your money, you pay for the ticket, and you go to Chicago. You made a lot of effort to get that money, and now you're making an effort. You're giving it to the ticket man, and you're going through all this to get this train thing, and then you go to Chicago. It's a real karmic act. So these births are that way. However, when you are working to make your money to go to Chicago, and you buy the ticket, and when you get on the train, you can still do these three. And they don't have an effect. They aren't karmic. same if now if you do meditations which which send you someplace you can do these at the same time and they themselves don't send you anywhere but the meditation you're doing me well they say they're particularly recommended by Buddha for people who are kind of raging

[56:10]

And part of our meditation is like them, in a way, because meditating on breath is one of the things you can meditate in order to get into these realms. So part of our meditation is similar to it, because if you meditate on your breath, in fact, you subdue, you calm the mind, the mind becomes stabilized. But we don't do the meditation on the breath in order to be reborn in the Rupadhatu. We just do that. as something we do, hopefully, while we do this. These three, these can be called, what do you call it? Beginner's mind, you can call these three. Or you can call them, what do you call it? No gaining idea, these three. So Suzuki Rishi would say, we want a Siddhartha, then, with no gaining idea. Namely, those three samadhis, which are their correctives to this effort called sitting and following and breathing and so on.

[57:18]

Which itself, if you didn't keep correcting with no gaining idea, and you found out that actually this nice little meditation you're doing called zazen, actually you can go to heaven with it. You might say, well, nothing better to do this session, you might as well go. In fact, you can go to heaven on our meditation. aspect of our meditation namely the the concentration on the posture and the breathing but if you keep doing if you do these at the same time you won't go there but yet you will have because you because you're doing those things there will be an effect a common effect but you don't do them you don't really grasp on that firmly so you won't be propelled into some birth by the just so happens that they are by definition they are calm They don't produce calm, they are calm.

[58:40]

Are you in a Saturday class? Well, to talk about how you practice these, we should sit down and talk about how you practice these. It's actually a practice of how to do them. To talk about it right now, I think it's not what this class is designed to do exactly. To go into some text which explains how to do this. But there's a way to get ready for this and there's a way to do these practices. Buddhist meditation practices. And as I say, I think Suzuki Rishi is saying, no gaining idea summarizes the three of them very nicely. It certainly clearly relates to a pranahita. It sounds exactly the same. But no gaining idea also has to do with the fact that you can't gain anything aside from your context. Gain is always relative. And also gain always has marks. And gain has to do with the future. So all three, signless, wishless, and emptiness, are involved in the idea of gaining or improving

[59:42]

So if you just try to sit with no gaining idea, actually you do all three of those. But if you want to know how to work on each individually, we'll just talk about it. It's a detailed discussion. So actually there's four Viharas. The fourth one is Buddha Vihara. And Buddhavihara is the fact that he can do these three in any of these realms. Plus he also has all these other things, you know, all these other kinds of samadhis. He can do many other kinds of samadhis too. Not just these three, but he also does the lion stretch samadhi and the ocean seal samadhi. He's got all these samadhis he can do.

[60:46]

So all these, that is the Buddhism. That is the Buddhist abiding place. That is the Buddhism. That's where enlightenment abides. It hangs out in those spaces. So that's dwell. The next word is... Is that okay? Any other questions before we go on to the next word? The next word is Raja Griha. And it's spelled, romanized a little bit differently there than it usually is. So there's two points, a couple main points about Roger Griha. One is that If you notice in Buddhist sutras, there's a couple of things.

[61:55]

A large number of the sutras are in Raja Griha or nearby or in Saravasti, right? A large number of them are. Lotus Sutra and Big Sutra here. So why did Buddha have a preference for this particular city? And there's a number of reasons. One is that it seems like in a way that, in some sense, that Raja Griha is kind of like the Kyoto of northern India or something. It seems to, I think we might say, geomantically auspicious or something. And there's various legends about why it's called. Raja Griha actually means sort of the abode of the... place of the king. But there's lots of kingdoms in India in those days and lots of palaces and monarchs had various places where they lived.

[63:05]

But this one has a name because it seems to be a particularly auspicious place. So just like they moved from, the Japanese moved their the capital from Nara to Kyoto. They searched and searched and searched and finally found something really powerful about the way the Kyoto mountains were shaped and about the way the watershed came into that valley and so on. It felt like it was a really good place to have a capital. And they were right. It was a very good place to have a capital that created one of the greatest things that ever happened there for a long time. The Heian. And So here, too, this Rajagriha seems to be a particularly excellent place surrounded by five mountains, five auspicious mountains. One king, for example, his kingdom or his major city, his capital city, was burned down seven times, they say. So he took his whole entourage and court and went searching for another place, and then he saw this place and he lived there.

[64:12]

So... seems to be a very good place and also it seems to be kind of located away from that you've heard of border countries border countries means border in sense of cultural borders and also borders in the sense of attacked by other countries and also border in the sense of military installations are usually there so although there were a number of other goods big powerful cities in India at that time This one seems to be particularly auspicious and people there seem to be quite amenable to receiving Buddha.

[64:55]

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