Again, some historical fact. In India, thousands of years ago, philosophy and religion have been very connected. And in Western civilization, particularly in the Middle Ages in Western Europe, philosophers were also theologians. There wasn't such a thing as a as a mathematician who wasn't a theologian or a thinker that wasn't a theologian.

[01:08]

And one of the things that happens if you're a thinker or a meditator or whatever, and a theologian and a religious person, is that your thinking or your philosophizing has some urgency to it, has a life and death quality to it. So that making a misstep logically is not just an intellectual error. It may throw you into the pit of hell. Because your thinking is actually the same as your religious practice, and your philosophizing is your religion.

[02:23]

As a result of this kind of thing, both in medieval Europe, European Christianity, and throughout Indian history, the religious people who have been philosophers, or the philosophers who were always religious people, not all religious people are philosophers, but all the philosophers were religious people, they were very careful about their thinking and about their logic. Buddhism, being one of the kind of Indian philosophy, also got into this. And there was a kind of an athletic, gymnasium-type feeling to Indian philosophy, even Indian Buddhist philosophy. A real rigor. and a real even competitive feeling among schools, but also even within a school, a sense that you're working with something that's always got to be practical.

[03:38]

And the most practical thing has to do with salvation. philosophy always had to have something to do with salvation. And if your philosophy was off, you lost salvation. So in one sense, this is wonderful that philosophy would be so sincere. But in another sense, there's a lot of problems that arise out of this intense urgency and sincerity, this practical bottom line that's always there, namely that the sense of mistake can have serious ramifications, even mean that you go to heaven or hell, depending on which way it goes, or even in Buddhist context, not even

[04:44]

heaven and hell, but maybe exit from the whole cycle of heaven and hell. A little mistake goes a long ways. So, they were interested in making even smaller mistakes, and smaller mistakes, and smaller mistakes, until maybe they could get it down to mention the slightest mistake. So the sharpness over the centuries became sharper, sharper, sharper, sharper. That's how they saw it do it. Yes? How did they know if they made a mistake? How'd they know? Well, existentially, they would know. I don't see that. You don't see how? No. Well, um, I noticed, the idea occurred to me several years ago, that there are certain rules of logic which are actually, the main reason why they're there, it seems to me, is to prevent you from psychosis.

[05:58]

For example, there's a rule against absurd logical deductions, logical ad absurdum, okay? In other words, you can get into a logical spiral, where if you follow it without any break, if your mind follows the line of reasoning without a break on it, you would go insane. You would become extremely depressed, and finally your nervous system would collapse. in philosophical discourse, there's certainly these ways of thinking which have been discovered as unhealthy, and as soon as you get into those, the light goes on and you say, this is not admissible discourse. Because you actually could hurt yourself physically and emotionally by thinking certain ways that they discover. There's other kind of errors, which, I mean, the repercussions or the retribution of certain kinds of logical errors would be burned in medieval Europe, which is a very serious repercussion.

[07:19]

For example, if you say, I'm having a revelation, okay, There's two basic directions which you can make an error from that. One direction would be if the revelation was to be correct and against the orthodox understanding of what revelations are supposed to be like and you said that it was and you held to that as correct or you could get burned for that. But you could also have a correct revelation with the slight error of saying that the revelation was about yourself rather than from the deity. And you could be burned for that. You could also be burned for having an incorrect revelation about yourself. And you could go, also, you could have certain theological understandings as a professional theologian, or even as an ordinary monk, and if you got up and

[08:27]

espoused them or even gathered a bunch of people around and taught them that and practiced according to those understandings. And if they didn't accord with some of the other thinkers who had some power, they could bring you before them, put you to an inquisition to test the quality of your thinking. And the method of inquisition was, how do they put it? It was trial by fire, basically. They didn't try to, how do they put it? It isn't that they tried to logically prove that you were wrong. They would try to get you to confess by torturing you until you confessed that you were wrong. And one of the forms of torture would be a kind of interrogation where you basically go insane.

[09:36]

This is some of the things that would happen to you as a result of not thinking properly. Are you getting some ideas? Sounds like nonsense to me. Anyway. Background nonsense. Anyway, even around Zen Center, sometimes people have some understandings of what's going on, and they push it, and they get pushed back, and then they have to back down or get in trouble. Yeah, but you say mistake, and it sounds like one position, one party, one school against another school, rather than some existential mistake. It's an existential mistake to use your brain in a certain way that you get depressed.

[10:47]

That's an existential mistake. But it also could be ramified into the external environment that people, that your society can respond to you to. I think it's sort of like... But, for example, after the Middle Ages in the West, philosophers just philosophized away. Most philosophers were aristocrats. And they just sat back in their little country estates and... France and England and smoked their pipes and shot them and rode their horses and they thought and they wrote down what they thought and that was that. They didn't get fired from that. That wasn't their job. They didn't get fired if it didn't make sense. They didn't get hung or burned or tortured if they said something unusual. They just spot it off. Now, in the 20th century, philosophers get paid. It's their job now. So now they have to be careful of what they do.

[11:49]

And if they make logical mistakes, now they get fired. If their philosophy isn't clear and rigorous, they lose their livelihood. And their wife leaves them. But before the 20th century, 19th century philosophers, a lot of them were very sloppy. Very sloppy. Very sloppy. So Nietzsche could come in and just shred them. Because there was no extra, there was no extra, there was no societal feedback. And there was no extra worldly feedback. They weren't philosophizing in order to gain liberation anymore. And they weren't philosophizing to make their money. So they just sort of, they can do whatever they want. which has its advantages, that you can be very free, you can speculate about anything. But the Indian system and the medieval system were not like that.

[12:52]

They had to be careful of every move they made. And the Abhidharma Kosha, I've talked to some of you about this already, the Abhidharma Kosha grew up in quite a different environment than, for example, the Vasudhimagga. The Abhidharma Kosha was written by a Buddhist sage who lived in the north of India. The city Magga was built by a Buddhist sage who lived in southern India, or Ceylon. Southern India in Ceylon is kind of like Hawaii. I mean, literally. They have palm trees and surfers. In northern India, weather-wise, it's pretty bad. It's hot, but it's bad weather. It's more like Cambridge or New York City, culturally speaking. In New York City, if you make a painting, you have to be able to stand up for your painting, you know, intellectually. You have to go to cocktail parties. If you're a philosopher at Harvard, you have to be a philosopher in Miami.

[14:00]

Or... Georgia Tech or I don't know where, you know, Texas A&M. It's a different environment. And in northern India was the part of India which the intellectual center where philosophy was religion and religion was philosophy. In other words, philosophy was religion. And your philosophy made your brain, broke your religion. Now the drawback of this which is why I'm bringing this up, is that as you take this stuff more and more seriously, you develop a system which becomes more and more refined in order to protect itself and protect the practitioners from practicing a way of thinking which will not lead to salvation. But as a result, since it's such a crucial matter, you don't

[15:03]

You don't dare try anything new. And as it gets more and more refined, you can't go backwards. It's like an art of the arms race. It's hard to put aside technology which you've developed. Especially technology which has to do with hell or heaven, salvation or torment. And so it... it hinders some kind of bold simplification which would make it useful to more people. It tends to become more and more specialized so that almost nobody can practice it except people who have intellectual capacity and the opportunity to practice it. And Buddhism got into this problem. Other Indian philosophies also got into this problem. Buddhism has developed some of the most sophisticated philosophical work that's ever been done in this world.

[16:12]

But such work is not available to very many people. So, now I'm subjecting you to a little bit more thinking than you're used to. But I don't want to do it in such a way that you lose sight of the fact that many of us came to Zen. Because Zen was able, in the palatial, in the vast array of Buddhist thinking, Zen was able to just cut right through it. to a very basic approach, that you didn't have to be an intellectual to practice. And yet, what I opened up the other day was a rather complex situation.

[17:17]

And I think of Suzuki Roshi saying, referring to the profound sophistication that Buddhism has developed, the very elegant and highly evolved and refined Buddhist practices which have been developed over the years, and saying, I'm not so interested in that stuff, just give me a rock that I can move with my own hands. So, in some ways that's why we came to Zen, because it presented something simple that we could do, that we could take hold of and do. Now, some of the practices which I'm going to bring up are simple practices, but I'm not just offering a simple practice, because the practices are different from, in some ways differ from or sound different than the practices which you're already doing.

[18:29]

So I feel in order not to confuse the situation, I now have to... That if I give you some practice which I feel could be integrated with what you're already doing, I have to also present the context in which I'm giving it. So that you have some way to deal with it. Also, if you're going to become Buddhism yourself, You don't have to learn all the different things about Buddhism. But it would be good if you knew the lay of the land and knew which areas you were familiar with and know where you could go if you wanted to study the other areas or where you could send someone else even if you don't know about it. So you may not know about Madhyamaka but it might be nice if you could tell if someone was interested in it. and be able to send them to where they could find out about it.

[19:34]

You might not be interested in logic, you might not be interested in the jhanas, and so on. You might not be interested in concentration. If you're not interested in insight work, then that's going too far. There are certain things which are optional. Certain practices in Buddhism are optional. You don't have to do them. But they have to be done by Buddhists. And if you're not interested in doing them, and you meet someone who is, or someone for whom that would be helpful, at least you should know where this person can go to study these things. So, this is a kind of apology and a warning to the terrain that I am opening up to you. And, uh, I don't want you to lose your rock that you can go back to.

[20:37]

So in the midst of all this, if you lose sight of your basic rock, just stop and remember the rock. Stop it and find some way to relate it back to your daily practice. When I was in Christ in the Desert Monastery in New Mexico, they sang psalms there a lot. In that environment, the psalms made sense to me because the psalms are written by desert people or nomadic people who live in the time that they lived. The Middle East was Middle East, Egypt, and so on. At that time, it was still sort of like barren land, it seems. Lots of deserted areas. And the image of a rock appears quite frequently. And if you're in the desert, you realize how important rocks are.

[21:46]

Because there aren't necessarily a lot of rocks. Sometimes you're in a place where there's no rocks. There's no trees, and sometimes you camp out at night, and you wake up in the middle of the night, and you hear a rumbling, and all of a sudden, you find out you're in a river. You didn't think you were in a river, but all of a sudden, it's a river, because several miles away, it rained, and all of a sudden, the land doesn't soak it up any, so it just rolls down the hills, and the river's coming at you. And you've got two minutes or three minutes or seven seconds to find a rock to hold on to. And the same in the midst of Buddhist philosophy and all different practices possible. You think you're just sitting here in a simple place, right? Where you've got your little rock. But if you open up the door to Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist practices, all of a sudden this mass cornucopia of love comes at you and you might get quite confused.

[22:50]

So you should have your rock nearby and hold on. It shouldn't just sweep you away. So I hope if you feel confused by all that I present, you call for your rock. You say, okay, this is your rock. This is your rock. Okay? I don't want to go that far. Another way to put this, to say this in another way, is that Shindo-san pointed out in the Vendôwa question number 12, a monk asked Dogen what he thinks of practicing literally he says Shingon and Shikon.

[23:51]

And Dogen says that when he went to China, And all the Buddhist ancestors that he mapped said none of them advocated mixed practices. Shikan is the Chinese character that I like, please. And the Chinese way of saying it is jirguan. This character is shamata. And this character is the pasana. So the monk asked Dogen, what do you think of practicing Samatha Vipassana, or jirguan, or sikkhana?

[25:16]

This means stopping or tranquilizing, this means, this is the, you know, khan of kanji zaibo, kanji zaibo, that's a gyojin. It's the khan, it's the vision or the observing that Pavloki Teshkara does, okay? So, stabilizing. What do you think of stabilizing and observing like Avalokiteshvara does, Dogen? He says, I never heard of people, the pan-sisters, doing a mixed practice. He said, you have to concentrate on one practice. Master that one practice. It's hard enough just to master one. Don't try to do six. I completely agree, okay? shikan and zazen should not be practiced as though they're two practices. You shouldn't do them as like you're mixing shikan or mixing shamatha vipassana in with your zazen.

[26:20]

The study which I'm offering to you should not be seen as another study. Could you give an example of a mixed practice? I don't understand what a mixed practice is. A mixed practice would be, if you thought you were practicing zazen, And then I told you about tranquilizing and tranquilization and higher insight. And you started learning about that practice. And you thought that was a different practice from your zazen practice. Then that would be a mixed practice. You thought you were doing zazen and shamatha vipassana. That there were two practices. Then you would be doing a mixed practice. And Dogen Zenji said, please don't do mixed practices. There's Buddhism, right? There's Buddha way. That Buddha way is the practice that we're doing. Buddha way can be broken up into one piece, and then you have one practice.

[27:27]

It can be broken up into two pieces, but that's one practice in two pieces. It's not a mixed practice. It's just looking at it from two different ways. It can be broken up into 84,000 pieces, but it's one Buddha way, broken up into these different ways, coming at it from different angles. So again, the Hokkyo Zammai says, it communes with the process and communes with the source. It, what's the it? The teacher. The Buddha way of teaching, the Jewel-Mir Samadhi, communicates with the source and the process. In other words, you can look at the practice from the point of view of the source, or you can look at the practice from the point of view of a process. You can approach it as though you're an ordinary person cultivating yourself towards enlightenment, or you can think of it as you're an enlightened person cultivating yourself towards ordinaryness.

[28:28]

Okay? But you shouldn't think of those as two practices and then you're mixing them. They're two aspects of your one practice. So these things I'm telling you should be seen as part of sasen or as equal to sasen or as the same as sasen or whatever you want to say. This is not mixed practice that I'm bringing to you. Just like a mixed drink is one drink. Okay, so... The other morning John Lipscomb asked me a question about, it was a nice story, it's about a story between two monks, two Theravada monks, who are discussing the practice of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.

[29:51]

The teacher says that the four foundations of mindfulness can be both mundane and supramundane. And the student says they can only be preliminary practices or mundane practices. This brings up several things. One is that in the Abhidharma Kosha, in Chapter 6, on the path, It says in the beginning, it says, the afflictions are dropped, are abandoned by insight and by meditation. By the path of insight and by the path of meditation. Okay? two ways in which you drop all afflictions, according to the gradual view, the process view of practice.

[31:05]

Abhidharma Kosha is taking the process side, or the path side, from ordinariness to sagehood. From that point of view, the first There's three, there's five paths. First path is preparation, second path is preliminary exercises, and the third path is Darsana Marga, and the fourth path is Bhavana Marga. Darsana Marga is the path of insight. Bhavana Marga is the path of meditation. Then the Abhidharma Kosha says, which of these paths are pure and which are impure? Or another way to put it, which have leeks? and which don't have leaks, which have outflows and which don't have outflows. So darsana-marga, path of vision, darsana means vision, marga means path.

[32:13]

Darsana-marga is always pure or never has leaks. never has outflows. What's an outflow? An outflow, let's see, an outflow is an English word, first of all, and we use it to translate the Sanskrit word asarva. Okay? But before I tell you what asarva are, let me tell you that bhavana marga, bhavana means cultivation, Bhavana Marga. And Bhavana Marga has the root bhava, which means being. So cultivation has something to do with being. Meditation, sometimes translated as meditation, other times as cultivation, but it has some kind of, sometimes kind of working with the ground of your being. You're cultivating, you're plowing, you're smoothing, you're enriching your being.

[33:21]

by this Bhavani Marga. Bhavani Marga is of two types, pure and impure, with outflows and without outflows. So with outflows, see, is sa, which means with, sa-srava, sa-asrava, which is sa-srava, without outflows. And it's also anasrava, anasrava, without outflows. darshana marga is always anasarava without outflows. bhavana marga is both anasarava and sasarava. So, the path of meditation can be without outflows or without outflows. The path of insight is only without outflows. Now, what is an outflow? An outflow is a leak which means, for example, If I give you this eraser, I lost an eraser and you gained an eraser.

[34:29]

Now if you give her the eraser, you lost an eraser and she gained an eraser. If she gives me the eraser, she lost an eraser and I gained an eraser. But that whole story, nobody really gained or lost anything. But each one of those things that happened was a gain or a loss. And each Dharma, in the Abhidharma system of the Kosha, each Dharma has an outflow. There are 75 Dharmas, each, well, 72 of them, with the exception of the two kinds of Naroda, two kinds of extension and the space, 72 of them have outflows. Even if they're good Dharmas, like faith, faith has outflow. Faith is something which you can do or not do. When you do it, because, like, if I have faith in her, then I do faith towards her and she has faith towards her.

[35:33]

She receives it, I give it. If I can have faith or not have faith, you can ask me to do something and I cannot respond or I can respond. Either way, There's a flow. There's a circuit. So each dharma, in order to arise, has a flow to it, or a circuitry to it. But each dharma is a partial circuit. The sum total of all the dharmas in a given experience, however, the total ecology of all the dharmas present in a moment, that gains nothing and loses nothing. all the circuits balance each other, so that the totality of what's happening, there is no gain or loss. Just like when I gave you the eraser, and you gave her the eraser, and she gave me the eraser, the total picture, there's no loss. Darshana Marga is the part of the path where you see dharmas, you see the individual dharma, but you see that it's in a context, you see the total totality of it, so there's no gain or loss.

[36:39]

then there's no outflows. So it's like a hologram. You always look at a hologram at one point, but you can see the whole picture. And you can move and look at another point, and you see the whole picture. It's a different point of view, but it's the same picture, same totality. And Darshani Marga is when your vision turns from seeing part of the story to seeing the whole pattern. So you no longer think in terms of gain and loss, but you're still looking at individual elements. You can only look at individual elements at a time, at a particular thing at a time, at a particular phenomenon at a time, and yet through that you can appreciate a wider picture, the widest picture. Then you have darshan and marga, and you have no outflows. Are you going to ask a question? You're wondering, if that is so, to what degree is not darshana?

[37:46]

Darshana? Darshana maga, synonymous with emptiness. She says, why isn't darshana maga synonymous with emptiness? Because I, as a living being, participate in it. Okay? Yeah. At the time of darshana maga, you might say, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, okay? But I have eyes, you can tell me about it. So a person seeing emptiness is not the same as emptiness. If you're going to have an experience from a single point of view which allows you to have both the point of view as well as to see the totality, in order to see the totality, don't you have to be experiencing emptiness? It's not, you know, it's not like... It's interesting, you know, Chinese character emptiness is like this.

[38:48]

I just wanted to do it when Shinda Song was here, but I'll do it as well. This is the Chinese character for emptiness. Okay. This is the head. This is the shoulder. This is the ribs. This is the stomach. This is the legs and this is the feet. Okay. Emptiness is not some kind of nothingness over there. Okay. when it's something which interacts with the living body. So it isn't that I see emptiness over there. No, it's that I am emptiness. I am emptiness, but I am emptiness doesn't mean I'm nothing. That's why. So that's why darshan and marga isn't emptiness. I am emptiness isn't emptiness. Emptiness is emptiness. I am I. But I am emptiness is not I am I or I am emptiness.

[39:59]

I am emptiness is not emptiness is not me. It's interaction between the two. It's really not exactly that I am emptiness, but rather I'm not different from emptiness. The Heart Sutra doesn't say form equals emptiness. It shouldn't say that. this very form, completely itself, that's emptiness. It's not different from emptiness, but doesn't equal emptiness. Okay. Darshan Amarga is insight into that, insight in the sense of realizing emptiness. And that's what we said the other day, once you see this, that's it, you never forget it. You don't have it, you know. But, there still is a bhavana marga to be pursued because you still may have lots of old habits still.

[41:03]

Now, before darsana marga, you practice bhavana marga too. You practice insight because this is the insight path. You practice insight and you probably practice concentration too. Practicing Samatha and Vipassana prepares you for Darshan and Marga, if you're doing the gradual path. Right? At the culmination of that practice, you have this insight. You enter the path. The practice you did before that was a practice where you had outflows. Because you were still, you hadn't yet seen the whole, you hadn't yet seen the whole picture. And your practice itself is from the point of view of improving. You're improving. You're getting better. You're getting more skillful. You're coming closer to having vision. In that sense, the four foundations of mindfulness occur in that phase of the path. And they are preliminary exercises in that situation.

[42:11]

After insight, right, you don't see gain and loss anymore. You're cultivating, you're integrating your insight into your life, but you no longer see any way to gain anything because you don't even believe in the Self anymore. There's nothing to accumulate gain and loss. You see through that. So now the meditation is without up-flows. You're not making any progress anymore, gaining anything from practice, even though from some point of view somebody may see you gaining something, But that's from the point of view of gain and loss. You don't see it that way anymore. So again, I think I said the other day, the funny thing is that not seeing gain and loss and living your life not being able to see gain and loss removes your afflictions. If you can't even see it that way, afflictions can't stand it very long in that kind of environment because they are getting no food.

[43:19]

But do you see that you're meditating to remove your afflictions? No, you see that you're limiting your life. Do you see your afflictions? Do you see your afflictions? Yeah. You see them with these eyes, which now see your afflictions. You see your afflictions now from the point of view of... Afflictions, even wholesome or unwholesome dharmas have outflows, right? Either way. There's wholesome outflows and unwholesome outflows. Once you can see there's no outflows anymore, you see the unwholesome dharmas, but you don't see the outflows. If you can't see the outflows in the dharma, the dharma can't function. Because its existence depends on some kind of gain and loss. You can't see that anymore. The dharma loses its vitality. because it's not getting any water. Nothing's sleeping. There's no flow through it anymore. It just sort of like just sitting there in its reality and pretty soon it just can't hold up.

[44:24]

The muscles can't enact it anymore. But you can still see it. You can still see yourself squashing, killing mosquitoes and squashing cockroaches out of habit. But you see it now in the light of no gain and loss, and the habit cannot sustain itself under those circumstances, and it rots away. You see things just as before, but in a context of no gain and no loss. So, different situations. Yeah, either one. I think part of our circumstance now and why I felt we couldn't talk about such things in the practice period was that the trust, it was pretty thin.

[45:43]

And it still is, I think. And not for no reason, I think. So it has to occur in an atmosphere of trust and in an atmosphere of intimacy, contact. what do i mean by that well a specific thing i mean is that if okay you have if we have this example of the person who's about to sit their sheen and you know they have a bad back and their back starting to get worse and worse and worse if there's somebody there who's in touch with them and who has a lot of experience, they can say, well, don't worry about it. Accept your circumstance. Or they have a being, so they keep doing it. But when you keep doing something, and the reason for doing it is not there anymore, you don't do it with quite the old punch of Rudy anymore.

[46:52]

You sort of go, well, here I am doing it, but it doesn't have the old kick. You're still doing it, but it's not like it used to be. And you certainly can't quite do it anymore. Not because you're stopping yourself, but just because you don't want to. There's nothing forcing it. But sometimes, if you think that it would be an improvement to do something, you do things you don't even want to do sometimes, because you have an understanding about why they would be good. So, you may not want to squash cockroaches, but if you think you can prove the situation, you may squash them. A lot of people, I think, don't like to squash cockroaches, but they don't want cockroaches in their house, so they squash the cockroaches. But if you didn't have that idea in the first place, you may not do it. Something like that. Does that make sense? It makes sense, as you said.

[47:54]

I thought... It's not exactly a spirit. Oh, well. When you have Darshan Amarga about cockroach killings, maybe. If you haven't worked out that colon yet. But Darshan Amarga has 16 movements. But 16 means, you know, infinity. The Hekigan Roko has a hundred cases. Shorya Roko has a hundred cases. Each case looks at reality from a certain point of view. And then with the commentaries, point of view, each commentary gives you many, each case gives you many points of view. So you work out looking at this hologram of the universe. You work it out by looking at it from all different angles. And then when your vision is corrected, And you meet these situations, so you understand in particular cases how it doesn't make sense anymore to do something that you're doing.

[49:02]

But again, for a while we keep doing things that we used to think were useful and important to do for some reason. We had the rationale for them. Now we don't have the rationale anymore. So we gradually lose their power. Something like that. So anyway, about this, the four foundations of mindfulness being preliminary and super mundane. In a sense, they're not super mundane. After the path, you might still do them, alright? You might still do them, but they're not any longer done in the way they were done before. They're done more now like scales for a musician. When you first start doing scales, you're doing it to train your hands so that your hands will be capable, your muscles will be capable of performing certain feats when the music says to do it.

[50:08]

When the score or the direction says to do it, your fingers will be able to respond because you've done these drills for foundations and mindfulness like that. But after you could play music, four foundations in mindfulness don't serve quite the same function. Yet you might still do them before you play music, just to warm up. And one of the funny things, ironic things, paradoxical things, is that the more skilled musician and the more evolved athlete you become, the more you have to warm up. You might think, well, you're really good. You just sort of do it. But actually, the experience is somewhat the other way around. You have to warm up more than you did when you were performing at such a high level. You have to still do the warm-ups that you had to do when you were young or a beginner. In some ways, even more than you did then.

[51:10]

So you still might do the four foundations of mindfulness as a warm-up. But they're no longer serving the same function. Yes, in the case of killing cockroaches or even in the case of smoking cigarettes, there seems to be a gain of a certain kind of pleasure and realization, but all the while there's this loss of genuinely doing something really bad for my body and not practicing awareness. And I have the feeling that I'm doing something wrong, or in the case of cockroaches, the feeling that I shouldn't be doing something acts just as much to... to maintain the, to give life to the inflation and I just feel like this is something I should be doing. Correct. But the totality of the event means no action. If you think about all the things that are going on, you see total hardship, you won't be able to kill anything anymore.

[52:16]

But if you see this part, and then that part, and then that part, and then this part, and then this part, and this part, you can act with each of the parts. Each part has a circuit, plus and minus, go from here to here. You can do this, and then do that, and then do that, and then do that. But if you see, in each part, you see the whole picture. Then you won't be able to act on any of that stuff. if you're acting from the partial picture. You can still act, but you're no longer acting from this part. You're looking at this part, but you see the whole thing. And then you do not any longer act in an afflicted fashion. You're not driven by this picture here. You're driven by the whole picture. When you're driven by the whole picture, you follow the precepts, and you're unafflicted. But when you look at this little thing and you see the whole picture, you still might see your hand going out there and doing something stupid.

[53:20]

But again, now it's something empty in the middle of a whole different understanding. You're ashamed of yourself as before, but even the shame you see in the whole picture. Shame is another partial thing you feel driven to because of this fashion. There's a certain mechanical thing that follows through, but after some period of time of reviewing your activity in this new context, inside, things lose their power. But you still always see it from this point of view, or that point of view, or that point. We're built for limitation. We always work with limitation. Okay, so now I'd like to see this next. Should we take a break? Sure. After the break? Sure. Let's take a break. Should we ring a bell when the break's over or something?

[54:26]

Ten minutes. Ten minutes. The teacher said, they're both on both sides. The student said, only preliminary. And then later the teacher reflected and went back and realized that they were, because of some teaching he had heard, he realized that they were only preliminary. And he got up and lectured in front of the group and he said, friend, addressing his disciple, friend, you're right. So it's an example of the teacher being willing to give in to the student. But also, this other point that Catherine was asking, but she had the impression that they were also advanced practices, although practiced from another point of view. And so it brought up several examples that maybe might be helpful to point out here. One is the example of a raft taking you across a river. Once it gets you across, you don't need to use it anymore.

[55:30]

But it doesn't mean you might not go back if you got across the river and use it for some other purpose. Not getting across the river anymore, maybe. But maybe take it to a lake and paddle around a little bit. Or you might use it as firewood or as a house. You still might, you might bring it along for sentimental reasons if you had any sentimental steps. But anyway, the thing could be used more, but it wouldn't necessarily have to be used more. Something like that. Or another way to put it would be... It's like, again, like music. You do scales to prepare yourself for certain kinds of performance. But when you're doing the performance, you don't think of the scales. The scales are there. But you're not doing the scales. All the elements of the scales are an invisible piece, but you don't feel like you're doing that.

[56:33]

Or as I was talking to someone else just recently about, at a certain point, you just physically do not want to do certain practices. You do them, you do them, you do them, and they're very helpful, you like them. Certain mindfulness practices you enjoy, they help your life. At a certain point, you get to a place where you physically do not want to do them. You still may be mindful, but you don't want to do the practices, certain practices. They're just irritating. They don't accord with your respect for yourself. You feel like, just me standing here, drinking coffee, talking to my friends, this is Buddhism. I don't have to do a practice now for it to be Buddhism. I don't have to do the Four Foundations of Mindfulness to have confidence in myself. I believe in this. In that sense, too, you might not do them. But still, it doesn't mean you're not aware of the speed coming off a coffee cup or the feeling of your lips touching or sound of your friend's voice.

[57:37]

You still might be doing the practice, but not in a very informal, unsystematic way, such that you don't any longer feel like you're doing the four foundations of mindfulness. And again, this is One of the differences between Zen Buddhism and a lot of other presentations of it, both Theravadan and Tibetan, is that the Zen way is not so much like we go through the Four Foundations of Mindfulness and so on. They're all there, but in a very unsystematic way. The teacher is often pointing to mindfulness of body, mindfulness of breath, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of emotion, mindfulness of downness, but not in a systematic one, two, three, four, break up into these parts way, which again is more like the Chinese mind rather than the Indian mind. very systematic, list-oriented, seven, eight beats, all that stuff, very articulated.

[58:46]

And the Tibetans picked up that articulation from the Indians in their predominantly from Buddhism. So they have everything laid out. Chinese are not so much that way. So the Zen comes from an environment where things are more, again, if you look at a Chinese garden or a Persian garden, or a Chinese gardener, look at a Chinese gardener in the garden in front of the Taj Mahal or something. Quite different kind of idea there. And that's part of the difference between Zen and Theravada Buddhism, although the elements, in the actual elements, there's really no problem. Okay, now I'd like to introduce the, this is about the Samatha. Vipassana and jhana. A little bit more detail. I think I already told you, some people

[60:08]

Some teachers of Buddhism immediately start people with vipassana or vipassana practices right away. Other teachers say that before you practice vipassana, you should practice samatha. Some non-Buddhist teachers, I don't know about what they would do, but some of them might start people practicing the jhanas. without any insight, practice it beforehand. But I personally, it seems to me that the best way to approach the jhanas is to practice samatha-vipassana first. So what I think is best is to go samatha-vipassana, samatha-vipassana, and then the jhanas. And the reason for that is that the jhanas, if you have, of course, you have to have some composure before you practice the jhanas.

[61:25]

That's necessary. You have to practice samatha before the jhanas, but you do not have to practice vipassana before you practice the jhanas. But if you don't have vipassana before you practice the jhanas, you may not be able to, they may not be so, beneficial because you may misunderstand them. They're very, uh, of all the things in the world, they almost tend to hit as real. That's what they say. They have nice-looking people, nice-looking houses, good-tasting food. These have a tendency to take us real. They don't care whether you have it or not, or whether it's that way or not. These things are even more tempting. So, preliminary insight work is often recommended, and I don't know if anybody doesn't recommend it.

[62:32]

I think it's not necessary. some people are so unnaturally so so prepared and so suspicious of the substantiality of anything that they could do these giddings right away and they won't fall for them. But generally speaking, shamantabhipashya could be seen as a preparation for the jhanas. Now, shamantabhipashya can also be seen as not a preparation but a practiced in and of itself, not as a preparation. Now, does anybody have any idea about what the difference between shamatha and jhanas is?

[63:44]

Does anybody have any idea about what the similarity between them is? Well, the question I have is you've gone through lectures giving the nine stages of shamatha, and is it jhana after those nine stages? Is it? Yeah. Yeah. So that's one difference is that with shamas fully established, that is a time when you would be very concentrated, stabilized, and that would be a time when you'd be prepared to start doing a jamas. Yes? Well, I'll do them, but I wanted to sort of assess what you think about this stuff before we start. So there's some sense of the jhanas, that the samatha is a kind of preparation for the jhanas.

[64:50]

So what similarities do you think there might be between them? Both are concentration areas. Okay. What other differences might there be? The events that happened. What? The events that happened. The events that happened, yes, but what? Can you say something? Yes? Could you say that shamatha is in kamadhatu and jhanas or not? Yeah, you can say shamatha occurs in kamadhatu and the jhanas are not in the kamadhatu. That's one difference. Yes? Could you say that the object of concentration is not the same in the sense that it might be grass in and out, but it's changing? Or is that, in the eyes, it's more one-point concentration? I don't know if you could say that.

[65:54]

There are some, I think that almost some of the geonics objects of meditation are not usually objects of meditation for the Samatha. But a lot of the Samatha objects of meditation could also be meditation objects for the jhanas, to the breath, for example. What's the word? So the object partially distinguishes them. I don't know if we can say the other point that you raised. I'm just saying, no, I just haven't thought about that yet. I'll think about it more. Yes? Would the word formless absorption apply to the jhana? Formless absorption. Does anybody have any idea where the formless absorptions fit into this? I can write them down here. Where are they? They follow the jhanas. Formless. Formless states. You need to practice the jhana before you can practice the formless states. And what's the difference between the jhanas and the phonestes?

[66:59]

Jhanas have an object. Jhanas have an object, and what about phonestes? They don't have an object. They do have an object, but it's in the obverse. Yes, it's rupa-dhatu obverse. So the jhanas are in rupa-dhatu, have rupadattu objects, and the formless states have arupadattu objects. Arupadattu means no form. So their objects are not forms anymore. Is that like time and space? It's like you're concentrating on mental concepts. And then you have no alternatives either. It's not like you're not paying attention to forms. You can't even see forms. You're totally in a mental realm now. The physical world is not opinion at this point.

[68:08]

So objects are different, but there is an object. Consciousness, as long as it's functioning, arises with an object. Any other differences among these? The jhanas cannot be sustained. The jhanas cannot be sustained? In other words, you can't get up there, but then you're going to come down again. You can't stay up there. The attributed states produced by the jhanas have a certain lifespan. Effort in the jhanas and effort in the shamatha is momentary. it so it's not like you exactly get up there and while they're doing it and then do it again or not so effort is momentary in all these cases states that are produced have a certain span and that also is a

[69:12]

I don't think I should go into it right now. Basically, I would say there's two situations. One situation is what we call the... One kind of thing is called... the center words. Anyway, when you're doing jhana practice, there's one kind of jhana, which is the jhana, the effort of producing the jhana. There's another kind of jhana, which is the state produced by the jhana. So when you first start doing jhana practice, you're not in the group of doctor yet. You start practicing the jhanas in the common doctor.

[70:21]

When we obtain the first jhana, The result of that is in the rupa-dhakti. That state is a state of existence. It's a retributive state. Actually, it's a heaven. Then when you attain the first jhana, you can go back to the second jhana. So from then on, you're in the rupa-dhakti. You're related to the rupa-dhakti object. But you distinguish between these two situations. And they use the same words. Okay, what other differences between Samatha and the jhana? Well, another difference is that Samatha is,

[71:24]

The hindrances to the two practices are not the same. The type of hindrances to shamatha and the type of nitsas to vipassana are not the same. And in vipassana and shamatha, there's a kind of evolution to these nine stages, but it's basically an evolution towards more and more concentrations. towards more and more worth-pointedness. But in the jhanas, it's more an actual evolution in the kind of consciousness you have, a refinement of the actual state of being. So this jhana is more like setting up a situation of concentration. You ought to start with some concentration and don't exactly deepen it, but more use the concentration to refine the state.

[72:45]

By sequentially removing grosser and grosser, starting with the more gross and removing more and more subtle elements, And each element that's removed is sort of like, you take something that brings you up to the next higher level, and you drop that one, and then you use the next element for the next intensifying factor to take you higher, and then you drop it. So it's like, again, like a sequence of wraps which are dropped as you go along. produces more and more refined state of being. A little bit different, you'll see. In the nine stages of jhana time, would you have bliss, or would you have bliss in all the stages of jhana? In the jhanas, for example, you only have bliss

[73:51]

positive and neutral feelings. Not every jhana is characterized by bliss. But one of the jhanas is characterized by bliss. The highest bliss state is the third jhana. As far as bliss goes, that's the bliss center. But the next highest one doesn't have bliss. but has something which is even valued higher, but is not bliss, or that delimiting. But all the jhana states are basically, as far as, basically don't have any pain in them anymore. Whereas shamatha can have pain all the way through shamatha. They have bliss, too. How about the second and the first gen? What? How about the second and the first gen? There is bliss there, possibly, but it's not the hallmark of those states.

[74:56]

The third state is epitomized by bliss. So what's the hallmark? What's the hallmark? I'd like to talk about shamatha first, then do the jhana. If you're sitting and you're bowing, and you're darkened, and you're red, and you're becoming concentrated, do these things, I mean, do these things magically just come up? Or is there some... The jhanas will rarely come up automatically. But shamatha will come up automatically. I can't come up automatically. You don't have to do anything different from what you're already doing. And some people that do regular zazen practice, ten shamata, or if you as a matter of fact, it's not that rare. I've witnessed it a number of times. It's quite nice for people to do. And in sesshin, a good share of the people

[75:57]

you attain shamatha, you meet full shamatha. Everybody in Sesshin practices shamatha. In other words, you may not think you're practicing shamatha, but everybody in Sesshin, from the point of view of shamatha, you're doing it. It's kind of like some people walking around, we think they're practicing Zen. They don't think they're practicing Zen. We think they are. And some Zen students stop practicing Zen, and then they start. They come and practice here for several years, When they finally give up, they say, I forget this goddamn sense. They go out and get a job, and they start practicing Zen. And they're a little apologetic for having this job. But we look at them, and we think, god, they finally started. They couldn't do it at Zen. Which is, that's the bricks, you know, for us. But somehow, anyway, it's the case that a person, an optometrist person, who specializes in that way of looking at concentration practice.

[77:01]

If they interviewed Zen students or saw their students sitting, they would see shamatha happen. So now I'd like to be a little bit more specific about shamatha. Yes? . You see there's, again, I'd like to talk about the jhanas, but I'll just say this now. I'd like to talk about it later, but I'll say this now, is that there are a set of jhana factors. They are the factors that are used in order to develop jhana. But after you use them, then you put them aside. So they're kind of like steps. You use the first step, and you step on it, but then after that, you toss it away, and you don't use it anymore.

[78:06]

It's not that you never, you know, you use it again. Well, again, I'd like to talk about this later. Okay? So, shower time. Have a nice day. And... The ninth stages are setting the mind or placing the mind. a resting room, there are several of these words. The Sanskrit is . A lot of these In Sanskrit terms, they stated that Samatha had this sthāna, and sthāna is the English word stand.

[79:32]

Stand up. Sthāna means position, at place, or in Sanskrit. So citta-sthapāna means placing the mind, resting the mind, setting the mind. That's the first stage. Second stage is called extended placement, or prolonged placement, prolonged resting, prolonged... Those three words. Next one is called reset, or replace, or re-rest. The next one is called discipline. The next one is pacifying. I'll write the Sanskrit.

[80:37]

The next one is sound. The next one is Alvax, Stefano. The next one is Pupa, Stefano. [...] You. Yeah. Yeah. Stefano. And . And . OK? Sounds good. So . Resting, placing, setting the mind.

[81:54]

Sam, sthapana, sam, extending, gathering, prolonging the placement. Ava, going back, replacing. It's probably the Ava of Avalokites. Turning towards, going back to the placement. And number four is close setting. Close placement, close resting, resting close. And then five is disciplining. Five is disciplining. Six is pacifying. I think the word is shamanic. It's like samatha, right? Come, the rest, the quiet. Samana, samatha, samatha. And this view, samana, this is a thorough pacifying.

[83:00]

Eko means like eka in Sanskrit, one. Ekoti, one-pointed. Karana means like causing, causing one-pointedness, making one-pointedness. Samadhana, which means just, you know, easy resting. Resting, I mean, is equal. Complete shama, complete tranquilization. Okay, those are the nine stages. Number eight is making one pointed. Number nine, echo pose. Easy resting, easy abiding. Full shamatha. All right. now there are... I guess the next thing to mention would be that there are

[84:29]

I assume it makes a lot of sense, I guess. I think I'll just, first of all, just sort of run through these a little bit. And then later I'll go back around again and talk about some other kinds of associated teachings that relate to it. The first one is what, for the first one? Setting the mind. Setting the mind. So that has basically to do with, for example, you come to your sitting cushion and you bow to your seat. Immediately that's setting the mind. Just the idea. Just the idea that you're going to sit. Already you're sitting. It's the willingness to sit down. Just sitting down. Right there. Already starting. first hint of the willingness to concentrate on the object.

[85:45]

Now, you could also say, after you're seated, to exhale, like just one exhale, if you're following your breath. Just being aware of that much is the first stage. Or to just straighten up your posture, just check your posture. is just being aware of yourself going back and forth. Take the first movement that you're aware of, not to mention the whole swing. Be aware of the whole swing, back and forth. All this works very easily. Each one of those little parts I just mentioned, the awareness of each little part here, could be the first day. So, you see you're all imitating the first day of the Shantideva. Pretty good, eh? The power associated with the first stage is the power here.

[86:47]

And a very tangible sense of this is when people have been sitting for a week, you can feel that everyone that's been sitting has been doing at least the first stage of Samatha. Even those who haven't followed the schedule have been doing plenty of at least the first stage. And you can really, the power of hearing is very strong. Then the next one is just to prolong that first effort at all. Just to do it again. So for example, To just sit up and be aware of your posture, if you're mindful of your practices to concentrate on your posture and breathing, just to sit up and be aware of your posture can be aware of one exhale. That's an example of the second stage. So I don't know if all of you have attained that content, been concentrated on it or not. Probably most people I've met have attained the second stage.

[87:54]

If you have it, I appreciate that you have it. Thursday, you're taking a big jump now. It's a big one. This is when you have lost it. But I'm back. So you sit down. I'm wearing my posture. I'm sitting down. This is what I'm doing. This is Shangri-La, the first day now. I'm still doing that. I'm second stage. What's that, yeah? Very easy. Now, what did I do the other day? I lost it. I need to go back. I lost it. Third stage. So you see, third stage is how you do this. Now, a lot of people sort of It stuck there the third stage for quite a while.

[89:01]

The name of the third stage is you're aware of your posture. You have been aware of your posture. You're aware of your breathing, and I'm still aware of my breathing. And I'm aware of other things, too. I'm actually quite aware of them. And, oh, yes, and I'm here in the end, and I'm going to go back to my breathing. And now again, I'm aware of other things. I will go back to my breathing. And now I'm on number 46. Under my breath, I'm on number 47 now. Oh yes, I was going to stop, but I can't. Okay, go back. So a lot of people spend quite a bit of time concentrating and getting distracted and going back. Mostly spending the time pulling themselves back to the mirror. Come on, get back, come on. And this is like feeding a child.

[90:03]

Come on, eat the food. Come on, open up. Turn the head over. Come on, try again. Keep going. Like a mother, just keep feeding yourself. If you get distracted, just try again. Try again. Here you go. Come on. Come back. There we go. That effort is the third state. And if it's the third state, it's pretty good. You're already one third of the way to the top. But it's possible to stay there, as you may know, quite a while at this stage. But be very nice to yourself, very friendly. Okay? Which is called... You understand. And that's when actually you can stay with it. You're not mostly pulling yourself back. You're mostly getting it in.

[91:06]

Okay, that's a good girl. Okay, here's another one. Okay, here comes another one. For quite a while you stay. Okay. It's 10 minutes, 40 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, I should say. 40 would be too much. You should spend at least one minute tuning in to the other people. Anyway, you could do it for a while. 10 minutes is a long time. 40 minutes, very nice. Suzuki Roshi said, In the middle of a sashi, after sitting for three or four days, I think many of you could sit one period like that. And maybe, I think I've heard that for a number of people, that in a sashi, they've had a period, or two periods, or sometimes two, or they have actually stayed with the whole, stayed with the object.

[92:16]

It's a fourth stage. I think some people have done it. It's pretty good. And I thought, gee, that's not too bad. I said, this is a curation. You mean, I said something about that would be, that would be, so if I did that, that would be good? He said, no, no, because you practice that every day. You have to do it at the beginning of session. What is that called? close setting, your close resting, your close placement. Upasthana, upasthapana. Now, you are collected now. You are on the object. All right? That's good? That's what you're going to do. And by the way, the power associated with the second stage is the power of reflection. All right? It's a discursive problem, a discursive.

[93:17]

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