within the scheme of a narrow practice and a vast understanding, the two sides of our practice. Yesterday was a a big understanding kind of event. Does that make sense? No? Yes. Yesterday, emphasizing the vast picture, which is Gento Koan, the manifestation of the ultimate or complete picture, and that situation we have, We're just in the ocean and we don't leave the ocean.

[01:02]

However, in the ocean there are narrow practices which we can't do. Also, Suzuki Roshi said, we're in the ocean. We're on the surface of the ocean. But we have a motor.

[02:05]

We're on the surface of the ocean. Yesterday, we were talking about how we have to swim on the surface of the ocean as walking on the bottom of the ocean. That's the way we swim on the surface of the ocean. But when on the surface of the ocean, just on the surface of the ocean, or just swimming in the water, we also have a narrow practice limit. One aspect of the narrow practice is stabilization for shamatha. I felt yesterday that I wanted to go into that, go be a little bit more narrow today. Is that right? You could not feel that way, but you wanted to be more detailed and narrow.

[03:13]

So I'm taking that and try to be quite narrow, focus now on shamatha practice. But I feel quite restrained by that, and not so good about it. But that's what I want to do, I guess. Yes, I have to manage. Actually, the way I've been presenting this material is I've been presenting the seven, the eight, the nine traditional stages of the development of shamatha, but also mixing in with them the obstacles to shamatha and the techniques or balancing efforts to these obstacles.

[04:31]

and also the powers that arrive on each stage. So today, I might separate parts a little bit more for you, too. First, I'd like to say that the word shamatha means something like stopping or resting. Now, the Chinese character for it is nice to use to remember. I'll draw it not the way I would draw it myself, but the way it should be for your side, the way it looks. Name the character, of course, a baseline like that, horizontal baseline. And then a vertical line coming up sort of in the middle of the baseline, a little bit over this way. And then there's another lock doors up like this.

[05:39]

Walk halfway up the vertical line, line sticks up like that. This by itself means, that part of the character means to lift something up or to come up. And the next line of character is another vertical line shorter over on this side that goes down to the ground. So . And that you can actually see on Japanese stop signs. Red sign. And I thought that I like this this character because actually it looks a little bit like something being balanced. And actually, I think the word balance, calculus of balance is good. Stabilization or balance.

[06:46]

But really, there's balancing lots of things that are going on. So we talked about now the first four stages as the first one is, what is it? Deteriorization. What? Fixation. And that's the first. basically had a lot to do with the initial placement on the object, or the initial placement of yourself in the attempt to . Stabilization.

[07:47]

At the beginning of meditation, the main obstacle that you overcome is the first obstacle, namely laziness, which is, in this case, means just that you don't even do the meditation. You don't even want to. You just don't want to stabilize body and mind. So in order to overcome this initial obstacle, you give rise to the event. You do it. This effort is called faith. Not believing in something, but simply, as soon as the thought of meditating He just, I do it. I need to know how I get to say, I'm doing it.

[08:59]

I'm going to meditate. So we went into detail about, I'm going to meditate. I can meditate. And a lot of people are like, just I am meditating. I'm doing it. And so through this stage and the next three, the first four stages, there's faith. The faith that we're doing it. Not that we're doing it, but the faith which is doing it. And the aspiration to continue and to attain full balance. And out of this doing it, this immediate responsiveness and this aspiration, arises what is called kind of a rapture or joyous effort. And out of that arises kind of suppleness or flexibility of body and mind.

[10:00]

These four kinds of proponents are the ones we use, particularly the first four stages, particularly the first two stages, to overcome laziness. So the next stage, basically, it's called what? Stretching, or elongating, or prolonging the fixation. Stretching is resting. Stretching prolonging the fixation. So the first stage is It's not so much whether you're a constipated or not, just you're going to do it, starting. Next one, extend that feeling. And there's a power associated with the first one. It's the power of hearing, the power of experiencing.

[11:14]

And this power, this power which you have, which I feel anyway, is now quite evident in this group of people. Having consistently brought yourself to Zento for a week, the power of hearing must quite develop it. Hearing is what it's called, but it means actually hearing, seeing, the smell, the touch, and the taste. You sense perceptive capacities as you practice . So at the end of Sashim, people could hear in a way that . This is parallel to, this power of hearing is parallel to what we call shrutta chinta and bhavanamaya.

[12:18]

You receive a teaching, you memorize it, receive it, let it sink in, and you reflect on it, and you become it. So the first stage is you receive information about how to do the meditation. And by this aspiration of faith, you can hear pretty well. Next stage of standing at a long fixation, power that arises there is the power of the reflective power, the power of you starting to think about how to apply these things. But thereon, the rest of the practice, you're just emphasizing because I'm balanced.

[13:21]

Everything else is woven up. So the next two phases have more feeling of about being able to power. That's emphasized there is the power of mindfulness or remembering. So the first obstacle is laziness, which is overcome on the first two stages. The fourth stage is the obstacle of forgetfulness, forgetting instructions, forgetting to stay with the object. is overcome by succinctly and repetitively. And again, two stages are discriminated, but there could be more than two to thought about it.

[14:22]

But basically, the first stage is that you are able to bring your mind back to the outlet. She's talking about, I was saying something about including more and more. And I'll think about it. Let's take the box. See where you take the box. She's wondering where the gesture of including more and more of what's going on in concentration, where that would fit. So this third stage basically is talking about the experience of remembering and bringing yourself back to the object.

[15:31]

You go away, bring yourself back. So again, this is the centripetal motion and bring themselves back to the object. Bring the mind back to the object. And do this. Catch it, bring it back. This is an experience which I've heard from many people that they are actually often discouraged that they're constantly to drive themselves back to the object. But this is the third stage. Catch it and bring yourself back. Now, some people catch it and don't bring themselves back. That's not the third state. That's back to first. Where you have to, again, if you catch it, you're off. If you don't bring yourself back, you're back to zero. Because at zero, when you catch yourself off, catch yourself to distract, you make the attention to bring yourself to the meditation. So the third stage, catch yourself, bring yourself back.

[16:36]

Catch yourself, you're distracted, away from the outlet, come back to the outlet. Fourth stage, you really, as soon as, it's not ready to catch yourself and bring yourself back. Actually, the third stage is called replacement, right? Keep replacing yourself, or re-rest it. The fourth stage is close placement, the close position. And there, I used an image of, actually, I remember before I saw this book called Evolution to Sexuality. It's got a picture of an infer-like egg on it. It's a big picture. But anyway, it's a big circle, lots of little hairs all the way around. The fourth stage, the basic sphere of concentration is set and just little fuzz around the edge so that thoughts keep arising but they just, there are little tiny hairs that stick out.

[17:44]

They don't really take your way. They get snipped right away. So you really can stay with the object now. Interiorization is complete. And I think of the story that first came here last year about he went for a walk and came back to his house. And either he had left the windows open, because it was nice weather when he left, or the wind had blown the windows of his house open. Anyway, he came back home, the windows were open, and the wind had blown through the windows, and it had blown everything all over his room of papers and cloth, ash dust.

[18:50]

The room was a big mess. It was cold. So he closed the windows. And then started hitting the paper up and cleaning the room up. And then he let it fire. And I sat down. This is like the first four stages. Now, after that happens, we mentioned that there is now a danger of what is called which is the fourth type of obstacle. Fourth type of obstacle. First is, what's the first type of obstacle? It's blazingness, second. Beautifulness. Third is, actually, it's four.

[19:52]

That's four of them. But they're similar in the sense that they happen, they're talking, these are obstacles which happen after you're concentrated. And they're called sinking and rising, or sinking and excitement. Again, there are basically two varieties. Gross is subtle. We don't talk about sinking and excitement at the beginning of the meditation. This is what happens after the porch, After this strong uplifting of your attention and concentrate, your aspiration, now after developing the power of mindfulness fully, you really have drawn yourself in. And now the problem is that the momentum of that effort will be completely closed.

[20:58]

And it will make it move. So again, I think of the house. Now it's got the windows shut. The rooms are cleaned up. It's got the fire on. And he may start sinking. It's all cozy now. And he may sink a little bit. Just when the window was shut, the room was set, the fire was lit, that just, just fine. Now I have a car open. Just, I was sick. It's pretty good, but a little bit damped out of it. Sick. So both kinds of things are both supplement groups. So the main effort at this stage, which is called what? Teaming effort at this stage is to uplift the mind.

[22:00]

And we need to use, starting at this stage, we need to use a new power called the power of discriminating awareness to determine whether or not we do, in fact, have a sinking. And do we have the subtle sinking or gross? So discriminating awareness means, in relation to discriminating awareness, I would like to mention another obstacle, which is called over-application. So the third obstacle is gross and subtle sinking and excitement.

[23:18]

And the fourth obstacle is over-application. Excuse me, the fifth obstacle is over-application. The fourth obstacle is a non-application. Now that you've attained the fourth stage, you're coming into the possibility now that you're syncing, you're more excited. You might be excited, but most likely syncing. What I suggested is assume you are. and apply the antidote of uplifting your mind. Today I say it's a little bit different. Don't assume you are. Check it out. See if you are. Look to see if maybe you sink. Don't apply the antidote of uplifting your mind, even though it's likely that you are going to sink. Don't apply it right away. Check it out. That discriminating awareness is described

[24:18]

As you don't, on this stage, don't constantly check to see if you're sinking. If you check too much to see if you're sinking or to see if you're excited, that will become self-checking. It will become, I don't know, exciting. So mostly you keep trying to stay with your breath or with whatever object you're concentrating on. Mostly that you have it. Yes. So the third obstacle, actually, is forward. Whoops.

[25:23]

The third obstacle is gross and self-sit-brotting excitement. So in that third category, is that this is for . What? Non-application. No. Non-application support and application support. Traditionally, it's by laziness, forgetting, sinking, and rising. Non-application and over-application. Number three, this is four. Now, I'm being quite narrow. I was wondering, I've never seen this map description before.

[26:26]

Let's see, the sources are, one of the sources is called, there's a word called above in the crown by Kuala Shiva. It's a Mahayana meditation technique from the point of view of The narrow point, it, uh... Mahal Shila was the guy... Great... I'm going to give a story. Mahal Shila was the, uh... One of the people in the Great Bay, Lhasa, had the debate. They had Lhasa at 745. It was between Indian school which proposed that enlightenment was through gradual practice. And the Chinese Zen guy said it suddenly. So Kamal Shielder, the winner of the debate, because the king wanted to side with India, with China.

[27:30]

Winner of the famous Kamal Shia, a Kamal Shia book, same book, called Bokanacrum. In Bokanacrum, I think it describes nine stages. The citrus source for these is... I'll tell you tomorrow, but it's from the citrus. Other places you'll find these discussed will be... any place where you have a discussion of This is traditional.

[28:31]

Now, we don't want to go into the details then, Senator, but simply when I started maybe . So again, in fact, I think we're at this stage. There, the main, like the foot, is the main is mental sickness. And that is community awareness. which is basically that you stay walking right along, staying with the object, following the breath or whatever the object is. But again, image is used sometimes of walking with someone. You're sort of suspicious. So occasionally, mostly you watch the road. You still have to keep watching the road. You look too much at the person. You fall on the face. You should look too much at the possibility of being undermined by this fraction of the opponent's face.

[29:42]

So mostly, you continue to stay with the object. But if you look around a little bit, just a little bit down there, see if maybe you're sinking. Or at a later stage, see if maybe you're sinking. And if so, if you are sinking, which time? Look for the subtle first. You don't need to use rough sand, but don't use it because you'll scratch the surface. So look for the subtle first. And the subtle is basically that you have now concentrated on the object pretty well, and you have this kind of There's a circle or a sphere. You're pretty much applied to that. You're pretty much at one with that. But still, there's some activity, several ways around it.

[30:44]

Just everything that's going on besides the concentration of it. Concentrating your breath, you still hear the bus go . You still see the wall, the floor. It's not like the whole world disappears inside your breath. It's just there. You really feel engaged in following your breath. But there's other things in the world going on. But these other things are just little buzzing. However, now that you've had this tendency towards inwardness, it's possible to the subtle form of syncing that you kind of loosen the grip. So at this point, the antidote to subtle syncing at this stage is simply pay more attention to. The alkaline is the characteristics of whatever you're breathing, whatever you're doing.

[31:53]

Now, if that doesn't work, or it's still suspicious, then they could have gross seed. Again, start with the more and more gross antidotes. A more subtle one would be Encourage yourself again that initial uplifting. Remind yourself of the benefit of making this effort to stay on the altar. Another one, again, I want to say in case I could tell you, antidotes at this stage are anxious. This morning, someone told me about a feeling that she had about feeling quite concentrated, feeling like the body was kind of very dense, not feeling distracted.

[33:07]

However, after this feeling of denseness, which didn't seem to distract, there followed a kind of wandering. Thoughts occurred to see that the concentration was lost. So the sinking would have a basic concentration, This concentration is not just inwardly locked into the object. It also has a kind of clarity, a sharpness, and a kind of intensity. You've got the windows shut, and things are quite well ordered. But there should also be intensity, clarity. So at a certain point, you may have to turn the heat off, turn the fire off, or open the window again a little bit to refresh yourself.

[34:12]

Otherwise, this concentrated, dense experience could deteriorate to simply wandering off and take it down in a sense below the third state. So what I suggested this morning was oftentimes we visualize our experience, our breath, as going out of our nose on exhale, entering the body, holding the navel, and on inhale, coming up through the body. Inhale ending, going out again. So I suggested that experience bringing that fresh air up through this dense body. And maybe emphasize the uplifting or refreshing aspect of inhale coming up through this dense body.

[35:20]

Another one that's suggested is to visualize in your heart chakra, the mind in the heart chakra. That is, you see it as a light. Expand the light slightly while saying, is there a Jewish word called ? This is a Sanskrit translation of the Jewish religion. Just bring that light and say, up through your body, up to the top of your head, and then blow it out through the stack, into the stratosphere. That's another way to lift yourself. Huh?

[36:24]

What does it mean? My ligaments get out of here. It's disgusting. It's bad. It's like, what's it's bad? So, Now, that is basically now the gyrology. So you may have to chant the heart to yourself. This stuff is supposed to be done silently. But don't use this. Use a more subtle thing. This is a gross, pretty gross one to do this. But another one is to. Look at a dot between the forehead up here. Cross your eyes and go up like that.

[37:25]

Blow that out. Anyway, uplift yourself. Find some way to uplift yourself. Even look around the room a little bit at something cute. Open your eyes while you're... Anyway, but this is when you're concentrating. You're actually not concentrated, and now you're trying to rouse yourself so that you can bring back that clarity and intensity to your concentration. Now, after that, of course, the sixth stage is, at this stage, it's called train, train and obtain. The sixth stage danger now is quite likely to be over the cycle. And again, over-excitement has grossed sub-last bits. The sub-last bit is that you have now regained your intensity and clarity, and you're too intensely, clearly zapped on the other hand.

[38:42]

So you want to relax. And again, to use discriminating awareness to spot this, it's gross. That means now it's not just too intensely, but you start to almost wander a little bit. Yeah, the rising is more centric.

[39:53]

It's more centric. Yeah. Grab me six times. Stop. Grab me six times. Stop. Grab me six times. Next. Well, it's like six times. Yes. Yes. Yeah, that's a gross effect, a gross price.

[40:55]

That's what something might happen on the sixth stage, a kind of irritation. You're a concentrated person now, but you get irritated with it. It's not that you don't want to do it. You are a meditator. You are meditating, but you don't want to irritate the whole project. You don't like the idea. So this is an example of what I said. Some people just walking around the street, they think they're good. They don't realize that you're at a fairly advanced stage of meditation now. But having is the irritation with meditation. It's different than the irritation. It's not the irritation before it even starts. You just collect it well. But after sitting for five and a half days or whatever it is, what?

[42:03]

Six days. [...] Six days in a sense. You're describing right on what I was talking about. Talking about gross excitement. It's not irritation, but it's an excitement relationship to irritation. What? Any suggestions about how you come as cross? Well, I don't know about that particular work or something that I've used. But when we sow, just concentrate on Yes?

[43:06]

Yes? Yes? Oh, I thought maybe you were going to say something right on. Because I thought you'd be an expert at this. What? Huh? What was this? Worst one that I realized 50, and 40, and now I've written on the website, and I've been trying to focus on what's going on.

[44:29]

And what's going on? Yeah. Yeah, I've got to go to bed. This is the way you start doing something, you should be loved, [...] I would appreciate it. Yeah, it's pretty close. The antidote to this kind of, to this rose, your excitement, or even irritation, or just basically resisted practice that you might have any time during your day.

[45:32]

OK? It's different than not doing it at all. It's a sophisticated kind of irritation for existence. And one way to talk about the antidote is the antidote of non-aggression. What does non-aggression mean? Well, it's similar, again, to what I was talking about on the second and the third stage of replacement. Again, it's like feeding a baby. Just feeding maybe angry, irritating baby that doesn't want to . But also, you tell yourself, In some sense, you tell yourself that you're a good girl. You're not so sophisticated as to have resistances to meditation practice.

[46:37]

You're actually deep down underneath it all just to kind of a sweet kid that wants to do it. You actually want it. You actually want it. It's really necessary to know to live your life for. You've got to really take care of yourself, and you want to do it. What happens if it's non-aggressive as it was? We'll be good at this time now. Yes? When I have good God, I just let you accept that. Yes, it's hardly a word to talk to a Christian.

[47:42]

Praise to a Christian, right? So I think this resistance at this stage, this second stage, which is like resistance or irritation, but it also can be a little bit more lighter than that. The balance board is called non-aggression, which means to me that it isn't directly going in the opposite direction. So you might say, well, you're too excited. Well, then you just calm down. do the thing you did earlier to bring the mind in. But it's not that situation anymore. You're fairly well locked into the object of the awareness. So it's not so much bringing yourself back in. It's more that there's some resonance around. There's some shakiness, growth shakiness.

[48:45]

And it's no longer a matter of pushing yourself back onto the object. That's not going to help them. You've already done that very well. It's more like a gentle kind of hurting, hurting your mind. back to being clearly, intensely resting on the output. So won't we just, as far as you said, talking about centripetal and centripetal, we shouldn't just push that out. It's going out now. It's that direction, bring it back, but it's more gentle than you simply apply. To not be aggressive.

[49:45]

Well, what I mean is that, let's say that it catches the horizon. Then you get angry at the horizon. Many people told me about their anger at this thing. Anger's already happened. The rising's already happened. Anger's happened. So at that time, be friendly to that. Be friendly to the anger at the rising. So non-aggression doesn't mean that you don't let yourself get angry at this situation. You probably will get angry quite quickly. So you'll be irritated at your irritation, like irritated about your resistance, and so on. That counts very fast. That's part of this gross version of something very subtle, which is holding on too tightly. So in a sense, holding on too tightly, you may be intuitively sense that this is not right.

[50:52]

So you resist holding on too tightly, And by resisting holding on too tightly, you're not just holding on too tightly anymore. Now you're quite irritated. Then you get angry at yourself and make such a big mess. Still, you're concentrated, though. Still, you're standing there, quite aware of what you're doing. You're sitting there, quite aware of what you're wearing now. But you've got this heavy-duty fuzz around the outside of it. Now, what I'm suggesting is, basically, become mountain friendliness to that person doing all this stuff around their head. And friendliness, this mountain of friendliness will happily let this kind of plague happen. Let this world know about that. No restrictive, it's a gentle kind of shepherd or tolerance of this. And that tolerance will Well, it depends on your response to the vision.

[52:07]

If it's very quick, if there's a lot of happening and it dies away, then it's just a characteristic of what you're at this stage, or a characteristic of our elephant. What do you do? What is the effect of that? Going into a tennis, then it's a tent. Going into it on the fourth stage on Thursday, then you have to replace yourself. So far, you lose the outfit at it. Now at this stage, you're not going to go in. You're not going to talk about that. You're not going to do anything so much to lose the out there. And then it actually could be either gross or slightly more gross.

[53:11]

So I think that the position takes you away at the stage 3. Visions at this stage don't take your way. The vision could be a vision of . water or something like that. The sinking of the process is something uplifting, either something. At the first day, something uplifting, like the breath coming in through, uplifting, this, or a chant .

[54:20]

But still, this is not . This is . Would you still have something to say? oh Well, how would you discriminate between what you can't deal with, how are you lazy?

[55:35]

Are you still doing it? Are you still making that good? Is it constant? Better. Better. Better. Right? Yeah, that sounds like laziness. Tell yourself that you can't do it anymore. You've got the energy to say that. Choose to say you can't do it anymore. That sounds like laziness. That might also be what Carol's talking about, but she's got more energy in hers. So it sounds to me like all laziness, what you need to do for that, You don't say, well, I'm just tired, so I'm just tired, so that's it. It's not even on the list, so there's no actuality.

[56:35]

So I can just do it, I guess. What about rest? What about resting? What about resting? This whole thing is resting. This practice is actually how to rest. You're allowed to do energy. That's it. That's called blazes. So, what you do when you feel tired is you have faith. First thing you do when you're tired, you have faith. Namely, in the tiredness you say, I'm doing it. You're the one who says you're tired. I didn't say you weren't practicing. You said all of a sudden, I'm tired. I'm tired of being concentrated. But you can just say, whether you're tired or not, you can say, I'm doing it today. I'm a tired person, but I'm concentrated.

[57:35]

Then you can say, even though I'm a tired person, you can't keep it up much longer. I'm still doing it now, and I'm going to continue. And so on. Rouse yourself with it. The only one that we can see that the next was something like that. Yeah, but it was so good that it had to be much more good. and make your job so close and then [...] make your job so close and

[58:54]

Mahatma, Mahatma, Mahatma, Mahatma. Mahatma, [...] Choice. Yeah, that's choice. Choice. [...] You have to just keep going back to what you have decided previously, what the meditation on here.

[60:00]

You can't stop pictures, images, feelings, and all sorts of things. Okay, now it's a different time. Or should you stop and take this while or should you go on and finish this next stage? It's beautiful. It's beautiful. We just have now finished the six-day survey, which is the one where you have either gross, the likelihood of a gross or subtle, exciting address of those issues. The seventh-day, the sixth-day is called Casathon. Fifth-day is 10th, sixth-day is Casathon. The seven stages are completely passed by. And now, . However, there's still a possibility of some subtle .

[61:02]

And there's still a fine discriminating awareness to sleep, which it is. But at this stage, just keeping aware of which it is, making a kind of effort called the power of joyous effort is sufficient to balance. Stages three, which is replacement of the stage seven, are all characterized as interrupted shamatha. The first state, of course, is set ground with it. But three, which is replacement, four, which is closed, and so on, up to seven, which is called pacification. It's always something that of the spirit is going on. To set the state, if only the subtle

[62:07]

and no special effort in addition, just working that forward. Now it's kind of joyous suspicion, power to rise joyousness. Next stage, the eighth stage, is called one-pointedness. At that stage, there's no longer any gross or subtle sinking or excitement, I guess. But there's still a little effort. You still are using discriminating awareness and applying the power of joyous effort. You still make little effort. Quite a strong joyous effort to handle the gross and subtle excitement. Subtle excitement is subtle.

[63:10]

Seventh stage is like that. A stage is no longer thinking, gross or solid variation. At one point, it's not even closer on the edge. You're not holding on tight loose. However, there's still . In other words, you're still using, still discriminating to see whether you should make an effort and sometimes make an effort . The joy is that. But you never get off anymore. The day state is just like the seventh state, except the day state, you don't get happy anymore. And the power there is the power of the complete area. You're just so familiar with what you're meditating on that you never disturb, there's no effort. But this is what totally includes it.

[64:18]

You're so familiar with the object. You can't get off it and . So that's the case of sometimes you're balanced. Sometimes you're balancing something. There's no effort to balance it. I just like to try something. I've heard this. A stage is like balancing a pencil on anything. And you're balancing it. It's standing still, but you're still going to . I saw a photo of a ballerina's foot, going up on the toe. And this particular picture, that foot was just amazing. It was going . It screwed me so much. It was up on the toe. And then there's a point where she's . Of course, tell what?

[65:26]

Tell something. When something happens, it's called peace life. Finally, we get to the ninth stage. Follow the strength of the source. Sit, watch. I'll think about whether I should go into the seven papers, nine papers, if you want.

[66:29]

But what do you want to talk about the eight and seven papers? What tomorrow do you want? What?

[66:59]

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