Today, just to be all organized and everything, we'll finish the Eightfold Path by considering the Eightfold, which is called Sama Samadhi or Samyak Samadhi, Right Concentration. And, you know, this is kind of like, this is our song, right, Samadhi, that's the practice of concentration and Zen monks are famous for being completely one-pointed and single-minded, right? You're famous for it, so live up to it.

[01:04]

So, Samadhi means to be fixed onto a point, that's what Samadhi means, to be firmly fixed onto a point. A Chinese character that they use for Samadhi is like this, which means to be fixed, ding, [...] ding. And this goes with wisdom. So this is a Chinese character for Samadhi, meaning … and then sometimes they transliterate

[02:16]

it. He is a character for three with a character which means, which is pronounced me, so san me, for samadhi. Like Hokyo Zanmai, sanmai. Ding means, he is a Chinese character for samadhi. It's the, like a, it's a, what do you call it, a semantic translation of samadhi. Because this character means to be fixed, decided, settled. Okay, so this is the character they use to translate samadhi. When they transliterate it to make it sound like samadhi, they say sanme, or in Japanese, sanmai. It means for the mind to be one-pointed,

[03:24]

that's what samadhi means. It's a state of the mind being one-pointed. So, the one-pointedness of mind is a quality in terms of the mental factors that are associated with the state of consciousness. Both, all the Abhidharma traditions say that all states of consciousness have this mental factor called samadhi. We never have an experience where the mind is not one-pointed. The mind is always one-pointed. Every state of consciousness is always one-pointed, which means the mind is on the point, which is on the point of the object of awareness. So, there are various mental factors which accompany all states of consciousness and

[04:29]

samadhi is one of them. It's a universal mental phenomenon, we never are without it. However, it is often, to a great extent, in the background of our life and it's sometimes quite weak. I mean, it's just strong enough to have an experience. So, it's not always full-strength samadhi, but we always have samadhi. Now, right samadhi, samyak samadhi or samasamadhi, is first of all, is the samadhi of a wholesome state of consciousness. So, all states of consciousness, wholesome and unwholesome and also indeterminate states of

[05:32]

consciousness have samadhi, but right samadhi is associated with a wholesome state of consciousness. It is possible to be quite one-pointed about doing something cruel. So, there is sometimes a fairly intense level of concentration while doing something harmful, that's not right samadhi. However, I would say also that there is a limit to how concentrated you can get when you're doing something unwholesome. You can get quite concentrated doing something unwholesome, but there's a limit, but there's no limit to the level of concentration when you're doing wholesome things. The concentration doesn't have a limit then, it can get completely, fully developed. There's all the little shakiness and unwholesomeness. Well, go right ahead

[06:35]

and make faces so I know that you're doing that. Okay, now that's a kind of a generous way to talk about right samadhi. Right concentration. A more stricter definition would be that right concentration means not only the concentration associated with wholesome minds, but concentration which has been developed and intensified to the point of being an absorption. So, there's a feeling that our total being is absorbed in our experience, that we really feel collected. So, samadhi means a mental factor associated with all states of mind, but it also means a developed state of absorption. And the classical depiction, almost like a lawful depiction

[07:45]

of absorption, is that absorption comes in these four stages. Well, for starters, four stages in the world, which are called the four jhanas. Four jhanas, or that's Pali, in Sanskrit it's dhyana. Okay, now this then is the root of the name of this school that we're in, which is the Chinese way of transliterating this is jhana, which is chan, this is chan, na, chana. So, they

[08:50]

transliterated jhana and dhyana as chana. This is chan, and Japanese people pronounce this as zen. Pardon? This character? Yeah, same Chinese character. They don't usually say the na though, because after a long time in China they stopped saying chana school and they just said chan school. So, then this is the character that Japanese use for zen also. Okay, so we got this name, you know, our lineage got this name because the early practitioners of our lineage, our lineage was not called chan, chanas originally, they were just disciples of Buddha, but people observed

[09:53]

they did a lot of sitting meditation, starting with bodhidharma facing the wall, and they said, oh, they must be doing that samadhi practice, and since he's sitting there so long in the snow, he must be in a state of dhyana or chana. So, they named the school, they named our school by what they thought we were doing. Our school, our ancestors did not name themselves the chana school, they got named by the press. And as you know, sometimes once you get named by the press, it's all over. You can't, you know, you keep saying, well, that's not my name. They say, yeah, sure, sure. Like when I went to New York, when I was president of Zen Center, I went to New York to do fundraising, and Richard Baker thought that I should change my name when I went to meet these foundations to say, my name is Rev Anderson. It sounds a little unofficial. So, we went back to the name I had when I was a kid. When I was a kid, the same thing happened.

[10:58]

When I went to school, on the way to school, my mother said, now, Rev, I want to teach you how to spell your name. My name's Harold, right? So, H-A-R-O-L-D. And I practiced on the way to school and then told the teacher, this is my name, Harold. The teacher called me Harold, and all the other kids called me Rev. So, the teacher, most of the teachers gradually switched. But some teachers kept to it and called me Harold, and some other ones switched. But then the same thing happened. I went to meet these foundation people, you know, and I introduced myself as Harold Anderson, president of Zen School, and then sit down with a conversation. Then some other people would come in, you know, some of our donors would come in to, you know, help me meet these foundation people, and the donors would sit down next to me and say, hi, Rev. So, you know, you can't necessarily change or make your own name. So, we're called the Zen School. We're

[12:04]

actually supposed to be Jhana monks. We're supposed to be like one-pointed, not just in the sense that everybody's one-pointed, but in a developed way. So, I think you've all heard that, you know, concentration and wisdom go together. It's possible to have concentration without wisdom, and it's possible to have wisdom without concentration. But concentration without wisdom is considered to be kind of a dull state, and wisdom without concentration is insanity. It's just crazy. But the two together is, you know, at the wheels of awakening. It looks like you had trouble with wisdom without concentration. But some people have tremendous insight. You can meet them if you want to. They're often found in

[13:18]

bars. I mean, they know more about Zen than any of us. But without concentration, it's just crazy what they're saying. It's worse than people who don't know anything, to have that kind of wisdom, that's not grounded in, you know, in the present bodily experience and one-pointedness with what's happening. They just jump from one insight to the other, you know, and they have to take a lot of Prozac to deal with that. So, samadhi is the context in which we are transformed and we have, you know, our wisdom develops, and intense, deeply developed samadhi. So it's kind of a circle. Samadhi gives rise to wisdom, and then once you have wisdom, then you take that wisdom into samadhi. So one kind of samadhi is a kind of one-pointedness that clarifies your mind so you can see clearly.

[14:18]

You know, for example, you can see clearly the five aggregates as they appear. You can experience them and be settled with them very clearly and stably. And then you can see if there's any self which is supposed to be separate from that, and you can see the pain associated with that and so on. And in that stability, you can see very clearly, you can study the nature of any belief in self. You can study the nature of any idea that there's five aggregates in self. This is an excellent situation. This is the excellent situation to study. Once wisdom arises and you see, actually it doesn't make sense to separate self from experience, you see through that, you have insight into selflessness, then that insight into selflessness then is taken back into the samadhi. Now the samadhi is not so much for the purpose of seeing clearly. The samadhi is now the situation in which you kind of like

[15:22]

cook your insight or bake your insight, like bake your insight into your bones, so to speak. You steep yourself in your wisdom, in the wisdom of selflessness. So selflessness gets kind of baked into your body, so your body becomes transformed by immersing yourself in the environment of selflessness, and then starts to actually transform your bodily habits, become transformed. So it's a circle, you know, and going into the wisdom, samadhi supports it. Coming out of the wisdom, wisdom is then like the contents of the samadhi. Going into it, it's like samadhi sets up the wisdom. Coming out of it, samadhi embodies the wisdom. And then again, out of that wisdom, then you go into new wisdom, which is then again

[16:27]

embodied. So around this, there's endless wisdoms. And in one sense, some people say that samadhi, you know, the janas, these four janas that over all the years of studying, you know, there's four janas, they haven't got up to five. I don't know why. You don't never have five janas. Actually, there's eight janas. This is the five to four janas in the material world. There's four more in the immaterial world. But anyway, they never say six or five or nineteen or whatever. So the way the mind gets concentrated seems to be fairly standard, but insights are infinite. So in Mahayana Buddhism, you hear in Mahayana texts about billions of samadhis. But the reason why there's billions of samadhis is because those are billions of samadhis connected to billions of wisdoms. So every time there's a new insight, then after you have that insight, you go back into samadhi, and that samadhi is named by that insight. So insight is always up to date, you know,

[17:34]

and new off the press about what's happening, and then you take that insight into your body, and that's the name of the samadhi. But really, basically, samadhi practice is very simple and hasn't evolved in a sense. It's very much the same as it was back in the time of Shakyamuni Buddha. But since Shakyamuni Buddha, there have been untold insights of the practitioners, and therefore there have been untold samadhis named after those insights, which went beyond Buddha's teaching, things he hadn't actually articulated, even though he taught a lot. His disciples have unfolded more aspects of the nature of the way things work than he had time to do in 45 years. Yeah, like that, right, dharmagate to balance. Every dharmagate is an

[18:37]

occasion of learning, of insight. Let's see, what else should we do here? Samadhi is basically the same as shamatha practice, basically equivalent to shamatha. The Pali is samatha, and Sanskrit has a little slash over it, shamatha. So it's basically the same as shamatha. Shamatha means resting or tranquilizing,

[19:41]

and the Chinese character that they use for that is, I like the Chinese character for shamatha, because you can see it all over Japan. It's this character here. You may stop, and it's on every corner in the city, you see this Chinese character for shamatha, and the cars drive up to it, and they go, they stop, and they practice shamatha. They also turn their lights off at nighttime, at the stop sign. They do that in Europe too, I think, some places, don't they? But you don't have the Chinese character, you just have the, what does it say on a German sign? Stop. Stop. So shamatha is to stop or rest or tranquilize the mind,

[20:46]

and shamatha is presented often in nine stages. In the ninth stage of shamatha, you're completely settled, but it's not the same as a jhana. The ninth stage of shamatha is like just on the verge of the trance. When you reach the ninth stage of shamatha practice, you could enter a trance if you wanted to. You have a level of concentration which could be turned into these jhanas. Although the Zen school is called, named after the jhanas, in the history of Zen practice, if you look at the descriptions of the way they practiced, Zen people in China and Japan and Korea and so on did not practice the jhanas so much. Although they seem to reach the level of concentration which is full tranquilization,

[21:50]

they seem to more meditate up to the point of what's called the access to the jhana. So there's a state of concentration which is just prior to the attainment of the full trance which is called access or neighborhood concentration, and it looks to me as though most Zen people in a sense stop there, don't get more into the concentration at that point, and when they're fully stabilized and pacified and settled in their mind, they then go right into what's called vipassana or insight work. That's the common thing. Now it's not against the rules and some Zen people do go into the trances, but strictly speaking in trance work, in the trance there's some problems because in the trances you can't talk. So there's certain kind of linguistic study that you can't do when you're in a trance, there's no language in the trance

[22:57]

state. So in order to kind of like work with your language habits and the way you talk about yourself and others, in some ways it's better to be in the access state just prior to entering full trance. Is that true for all of the four absorptions? Well, in the four absorptions, what you do is you don't go like into the second absorption just flat out, you go through the first to the second. So there's not an access between each one, there's an access before the first one. Then once you enter the first one, you go directly from the first one to the second one, you don't go into a sort of like a waiting room for the second one or the third one or the fourth one, but there is a kind of like waiting area or sort of staging area for the jhanas, which is basically the same as fully developed shamatha. It's a samadhi where you can stay concentrated

[24:04]

on whatever, if you're meditating on a particular object, you can stay on as long as you want. But in order to go into the trances, you have to sort of like want to, you have to sort of like have that intention, and that intention, the momentum of wanting to go into a trance state, once you get fully concentrated, you can go right into it. But if you're not trying to get into a trance state and you get fully concentrated, you very likely won't go into a trance. However, you can sometimes accidentally fall into a trance, and people I think sometimes do. I've talked to people who have done that. Shakyamuni Buddha himself fell into a trance when he was 16, just sitting under an apple tree. The apple didn't fall on him. Maybe it was a mango tree. But anyway, he was just sitting out under a tree one day when he was 16, and he just dropped into the first jhana spontaneously. And so I think other people

[25:04]

just fall into the jhanas, they just get concentrated and just drop in. But you won't necessarily fall into it, especially if you're intending to or even already starting to do insight work, which will...the inquiry involved there will usually stop you from dropping into the trance. But it is nice to have that level of concentration. Any questions so far? Does Buddhist psychology include a Freudian notion of an unconscious person performing conscious actions? Yeah, it does. In every state of consciousness, in other words, in every experience that you're having, like you're just

[26:05]

right now having experience, not all that's comprising that experience is what you're thinking is happening. Okay, so like you could feel...you could look at a color blue, and as you keep looking at that color blue, you notice that you feel differently every moment you look at the color blue. Even when you're angry, you notice that every anger is different. You look carefully, this...all the anger is always a different anger, or lust is always a different lust, or confusion is always a different confusion. That's because simultaneously with what you can be aware of are many other mental factors, but those are actually conscious mental factors. It's just that they're not the object of awareness. Then also within your field of awareness, within the circle of your awareness, there are factors

[27:07]

of organization within the field due to your past karma. So if you've lied about certain things, as we talked about before, you actually spoke a lie or wrote a lie, that structures your consciousness in a certain way, that puts this kind of like avijñapti rupa into your conscious field, right, so to speak. There's like this manifold in your mind then, which like makes certain areas of consciousness less likely to get surfaced into consciousness, into like objects of awareness than others. Similarly, if you do wholesome things, that makes a shape which tends to surface things. Is that wholesome things...one of the effects of doing wholesome things is it tends to create shapes that send to surface information. Doing unwholesome things tends to make shapes in your consciousness which tend to push things into...make them unavailable to you, but all this is consciousness. So I guess what they would call unconsciousness or the unconscious are those areas

[28:13]

which have been structured by past karma as sort of difficult to surface into, you know, getting a chance to be an object of conscious awareness. So that has some connection to unwholesomeness? Yeah, usually the things that are out of reach are the result of unwholesome karma, because wholesome karma tends to aerate the system and, you know, bring things up to be known, because that's helpful to understand the nature of the mind, to see how it all works together. That's a short course on that. So in Buddhism we don't have an unconscious, we have a consciousness, but the consciousness has structures. But I think Freud also drew some pictures of

[29:16]

consciousness and he made these compartments, you know, like ego, super-ego and id, and there's lines between them. So for us these lines are like dispositions which are set up by karmas, which make us inclined not to turn attention into certain areas and to turn them towards others. So by karma our mind becomes biased and sentimental about what's going on, and therefore our view of what's going on is distorted by our past karma and by our delusions. But for us we call it all part of consciousness, and all those things that influence the way we feel about everything that's happening. Okay. Carrie? Carrie? I just wanted to know if being in a trance state, if that develops wisdom for us, it doesn't involve language?

[30:19]

Yeah, but you can still, Buddha in a trance, in the fourth jhāna, coming out of the fourth jhāna he did see the Four Noble Truths. Based on the fourth jhāna, he then developed this divine eye, divine ear, retrocognition, super magical powers, and then he saw the outflows, and then he saw how the outflows worked, and the outflows waned, and then he saw the Four Noble Truths. So all this happened coming right out of the jhānas. In the actual trance state, you may not be able to do that, but coming out of it, you can go into insight work. It depends on your motivation. With his motivation, he naturally took the concentration of those jhānas, but he was in that state of absorption, and there was no language in the state of absorption, but he could still see the Four Noble Truths. So it is possible to do insight work while in full absorption, even though there's no language.

[31:30]

Yeah, some people go into the jhānas, and they just have a really nice, basically, it's a very happy, nice, pleasant situation. It's a very wholesome environment. It's the most non-polluting, most ecologically correct kind of vacation to take. The only problem is that you can't take your spouse with you, so you still have to go shopping. I think maybe Rob, and David, and Scott. Yes? Before I get to my question, I heard recently that the jhānas are not necessarily Buddhists. That's right. They're not Buddhists. The Buddha learned them prior to his enlightenment from non-Buddhists, from unenlightened yogis, and he learned them very well.

[32:36]

He also practiced these self-mortification things, which you don't have to do these self-mortification things with the jhānas, but he did them too. He was self-mortifying himself, and also becoming a really good jhāna practitioner. So he checked out the yogic trance thing, and he checked out the self-mortification thing, and neither one of them in themselves were sufficient. However, he did practice his jhānas the night of his awakening, but after having a good meal. Enlightenment's based on, you know, blood sugar. We eat before we're enlightened, and after. And then I think David. Oh, that was my question. Can you hear him? No. I'm a little surprised to hear you associate non-verbality with jhāna, or also use the word trance with so much of the jhānas, because you also mentioned

[33:41]

the element of will or intention. I'm using the description of the jhānas as a description of a person who's sort of active, willing to move on to the next jhāna, and the consciousness of the mind is now relinquished. Why do you associate non-verbality with jhāna? Trance implies this kind of heavy sedation of the consciousness of the mind. Doesn't that contradict you? So, let's see. I agree that there is this intention. That's what I said before, is that you probably wouldn't get into the jhānas unless you had that intention to get into them. There is a strong compulsion and obsession involved in attaining these states.

[34:45]

OK? Hello? Yeah, OK. I'm thinking of actually between them. I'm thinking of actually moving from one to the other. In my experience, I think the experience that I've done, you kind of consciously relinquish or consciously let go of the content of the jhāna. Yeah, it does. And I'm just telling you, you're not speaking English to yourself or Pali. They're not talking to themselves at that point. But there is this momentum coming from the world of whatever your native language is. At that point, you're talking to yourself and you're saying like, I don't want this stuff. I do not want this stuff. I do not want to deal with these gross material events anymore. I don't want to deal with like Mozart and Grateful Dead. I don't want to deal with ice cream cones and Cadillacs. I don't want to deal with people and frogs. You eschew those categories of physical experience and conception.

[35:50]

OK? That's that will to eschew that. And then as you get more and more concentrated, that momentum throws you into the trance if you want to go into the trance. To move into the next trance, however, you can't talk to yourself, my understanding, because the mental factors which are involved in forming speech have just been totally engaged in... they've been taken away from speech and applied to the meditation objects. They're no longer available for talking. So the momentum into the next trance does not come from talking to yourself. But you know, tell me that that's not... I don't think it's what you're saying. If you come out of the trance, you're not in the trance, then you can talk to yourself again and get yourself more concentrated and tell yourself to put aside... For example, in the first two trances, the predominant factors that get you in the first trance are what's called vittarka and vichara, application of the mind and discursive...

[36:54]

direct application and indirect or discursive application of the mind to the meditation object. Then to move from there, you lighten up on those and intensify rapture. Well, not exactly. It's the lightening up that's described. Then you lighten up on the rapture and intensify pleasant. Then you lighten up on that and emphasize equanimity. And what does it take to lighten up? I think pre-instruction. Yeah, if you've studied this stuff, you get into the trance and then you realize, now I've used these mental factors to intensify my concentration on the object, the vittarka and the vichara, the application and the discursive treatment of the object. I've done them, they've gotten me in the trance. Okay, now when I go into this and I'm going to go in again, I'm going to go in again, okay? But when I get in, I'm going to let go of those and emphasize rapture. Just sort of like embracing the object rather than applying myself to it. And once you get into it, by the first time, you can drop them more easily because you know how to get in by using them

[37:58]

and then you can let go of them and get more into it. Then you get into that, you let go even of the rapture and just lighten up in terms of you're not even embracing it anymore, you just sort of experience the sweet quality of it. And you lighten up on that and just enter into the equanimity of it. So it's by pre-instruction and discussion with your teacher about how to do that. But in the trance, you're not messing around with that stuff. You still have to, you see, there's that kind of, that lightening up, like you have to remember, for instance, that, oh, there's attachment here, there's attachment to this, there's a lot that goes up. That's sort of a subtle, I don't think that's... It's subtle, yeah. ...automatically. Pardon? I don't think that just comes up automatically. No, I don't think that's... you have to train yourself and you have to discuss these things and understand these mental factors. There are mental factors, but the application of them, I think, I'm just saying, at that level of concentration, if you bring words in, you rough it up again. Right. Okay? Like you say, it's kind of like if you've been trained to ride a bike,

[39:00]

if you maintain balance, you're not using language or thinking. It's like that, yeah. Or even something, you know, if you imagine the old dog learning a new trick up in the high wire, he can't... if he says a word to himself, he'll fall off the wire, you know. So, another way to put it is... Like sometimes people are following their breathing, right? They're counting their breath and they're using the words to help them... the words of the numbers to help them tune into this breath process. But at a certain time, at a certain point, they feel those words are roughing it up. At first their mind's rough and then they use the words and then by using the words, their mind becomes more disciplined and soft and, you know, cooperative. But then as it becomes softer, the words, those numbers are kind of like grating and it seems more apropos to drop the number and just follow. And then after a while, following the breath is also grating. Even the intention to push your mind towards it is too much. So, you drop that and then there's just a breath and the breath in a sense stops.

[40:02]

You know, you're no longer even like into like in and out. So, at these levels, you have this instruction about what to let go of. But to be talking to yourself about it would rile you up again and put you back down. No, perhaps for you. I'm just telling you that when in certain states, any kind of talk like that is antithetical to the quality of the smoothness of the state. If you get in there and try to manipulate it at all, you ruffle it. That's what I'm suggesting to you. So, you disagree. You disagree. Don't do this thing like, okay, I don't, you know. You disagree. Yeah, that's better rather than, oh, okay, well. You disagree. You disagree. Stand up for yourself. So, you check it out and you go talk to some John experts and see if they say they're talking

[41:08]

to themselves in English or something or Pali in those genres. Well, I'm not talking about talking to yourself. Well, I am talking. That's what I'm talking about. I'm saying you don't talk to yourself. I'm saying you're not speaking English anymore. That's what I'm saying. That's all I said. No language at the level of like forming, you know, words that you're saying to yourself to give yourself instruction. You're going into that from a level where you did train yourself verbally. Just like gymnasts, they get these teachings from their coach a million times, you know, about, you know, tuck, tighten, straighten, all this stuff, you know, all those words. But when they go into the thing, there's no language there. They're just doing these, they're doing these things which were pre-programmed into the system, but they're not talking to themselves anymore. But they did when they first did. They were saying, they were talking to themselves when they first did it. No, you know, straighten, tuck. But after a while, you don't say it. That's what I'm saying. Anything else? Is there something else? Oh, Scott.

[42:08]

What are the four formless jhanas? Well, after attaining the ... these are called the four rupa jhanas. In other words, you go into the state of fine material experience, and then the formless ones where you actually then eschew form, you know, you turn away from even looking at colors and smells and things like that in their most refined form. You turn your mind towards the vastness of space, the infinity of space, the infinity of consciousness, and things like that. Can that only be achieved sitting still? Can you do that, like, in waking activity and stuff like that? I don't think so. You would ... I think it would be dangerous if you're walking around in that state. Even these, I don't think you can be, like, driving a car and do these things, because you wouldn't see the stop sign. You would just see, like, red everywhere, you know, just like the whole universe would

[43:14]

be red. And then suddenly, you'd see ... if you looked at the letters on the sign, you know, part of the O, the whole world would be white, right? So the whole world would be white, then the whole world would be red, but you wouldn't know what that meant. Well, you're supposed to stop the car, right? And the car, your foot touching the pedal would be ... the whole world would be, like, pressure, rather than ... So these things are supposed to be practiced sitting in a safe place, and hopefully, having told someone, you know, people know you're doing that practice. You don't do it in public, usually, either. When do you recommend a person try to drop all thoughts, or do something impulsive to achieve that fixed point in the sub-mind, like that, or do you recommend just ... At this point, until further notice, I just recommend that you attain, you know, full access

[44:15]

concentration, the full love, the full shamatha. That's the first four? No. Or are you asking when I would recommend you go into the formless trances? Well, I'm confused. It seems like the four jhanas are, like, the first four on the base, and then the four dhanas are the ... No, no, no. This is the poly ... I mean, this is poly in Sanskrit. Okay. This is the same word, jhana, dhyana. They don't have j ... They don't have this ... This dh here, dh is the same as jh, basically. So when it's right, the four ... I mean, the four rupa jhanas here. There's also four arupa jhanas also. But usually when they say right concentration in relationship to the eightfold path, they mean these four rather than the next four. All the next four are prohibited, but these are the four they're talking about. So what's your question? I thought you were saying, so you recommend just staying with the shamatha? Shamatha.

[45:17]

And there's no technique involved in that? Oh, yeah, there are. There are techniques, and I sometimes have discussed them with people. There's nine stages of how to do it, and they're quite straightforward. And sometimes I have, during some sessions, I've gone through those nine stages of shamatha with people, and people like that. It's nice. Bodhidharma's teaching about this is, sort of as a hallmark of Zen, whether he really was that way or not, we don't know, but anyway, is to do this shamatha practice without any contrivance, to pacify and tranquilize the mind without any contrivance. To do that without any contrivance, without any system, without any nine stages or focusing the mind on the object and all that stuff. Of course, you can do that if you want to, but you don't have to think of it as a contrivance.

[46:21]

Like Ana was saying, she feels like she has to do that. It's just something you feel like you have to do, but if you do it as a kind of like, do that in order to get this, then you're getting into gaining idea, which we kind of like tried to put that aside as soon as possible in Zen practice. So, if you can practice the nine stages of shamatha without gaining idea about it, it's the same as, as I often say, playing nine holes of golf. It's basically very similar about keeping your eye on the ball. It's not a problem, but if you go play golf in order to gain something, then it's a problem. If you practice shamatha to gain something, it's antithetical to the basic situation, because the basic situation is you're already a Buddhist kid. Don't lose track of that. And if you want to do these Buddhist practices, do them, but realize it's not like you're doing these practices in order to be a Buddhist or doing these practices in order to be Buddhist children.

[47:24]

You do these things because you're Buddhist children. It isn't that you, you know, flex your muscles in order to be a man. You flex your muscles because you are a man. It isn't that you, you know, go take care of little babies because in order to be a mother, you take care of babies because you are a mother. You practice Buddhism because you're a Buddhist child. So, you can do all these fancy Buddhist practices, no problem. You can play golf, no problem. If you play golf from the point of view of, hey, I'm a golfer, leave me alone. Let me play golf, would you? That's the spirit, you know, of non-gaining. That's the kind of guy you are. You like to practice concentration. But that's not what makes you a Buddhist. It's your nature that makes you a Buddhist. And not all Buddhists want to do concentration practice like this.

[48:25]

What are you laughing about? That reminds me, yeah, there's a 930 group. Before I forget, you know, I told you about how Dogen says, you know, you think you can attain the way without renunciation? Well, forget it, right? He says, but even a bad monk can attain the way. You know, even a monk who breaks the precepts and doesn't practice can still attain the way. Renunciation is that important. And I just heard this story about some monk who went to a pool hall with a friend of hers and her friend calls her the monk. So anyway, she went to the pool hall and then later, after she left, some of her friend's friends, co-poolers, what are pool ball people called? Pool players? Sharks, yeah.

[49:30]

Some of the sharks said to him, you know, who was that woman? And he said, ah, she's a monk. He says, well, how come she's in a pool hall drinking beer? He says, well, she's a bad monk. So it is possible to be a bad monk, but still, you know, it's possible to be a bad child of Buddha too, you know, and take a long walk and forget all about, you know, your heritage and think that you're really whatever. And then you need to do all the shit shoveling in order to have confidence again. But it's better to just do the shit shoveling because you like it, rather than think you have to do the shit shoveling in order to like be back in the family. It's not really required that the father didn't feel that way. He was ready to take the kid back right away. But the kid couldn't accept that, couldn't accept. But still, in Soto Zen says, don't do those practices as much as possible.

[50:32]

Don't do them in order to get yourself to be a better person so that you can do that. Because with some confidence that you're practicing already. But if you refuse, go ahead. Think that you're not in the family and that you need to do something to get in. It's okay. I don't know if there's anybody. Oh, David, yeah. Well, if you want to present more, then I can just hold my breath. What was the question? The question was... Might have been a good one. How do you... Without any signs, without any reference in language, how do you actually know that you've entered into a trance? And then how do you discriminate between the trances without any discriminating function? I didn't say there wasn't any discriminating function. I just said there wasn't language, like English and stuff. If you do a triple backflip, you can have some...

[51:39]

After you finish, you maybe have some sense of what happened, even though you weren't talking yourself through the process. It has perhaps something to do with how you land. That might be feedback. If you land on your feet, you say, well, that's... And then you look up in the scoreboard and see what the judges thought you did. But going through the process, maybe you can't actually be judging yourself. It's too fast and too intense for any conscious monitoring of certain processes. Is that enough for that? Anyone? Do you have any further questions? No, I think that's enough. Yeah. Liz, and then Karen. This kind of goes back a lot to where you're talking about the circle of wisdom and insight. And there's times when I experience things just kind of clicking. And it seems like maybe that's where insight is happening. And I get really interested in that statement.

[52:41]

And I think I want to look at it more closely. But is that the kind of dead end that is making duality again? Better to just let it happen? But I get kind of intrigued and fascinated. And so it's just kind of a part that wants to kind of learn about the learning. So what's going on? Yeah. Well, again, is the learning about the learning just to learn about the learning? Or is it because it's another kind of manifestation of thinking, well, what I just learned, that kind of like makes me okay. And now I'd like to go back and learn more about that. Because then I'd even be more solidly based in being okay. And then I'd even have more assurance that I'm really okay by knowing even more about what made me feel like I was okay. If that's the reason for going back, I would say, move on, girl. And so when you're sitting, you know, and some great insight happens, you know,

[53:45]

the competent thing to do is to move forward. Rather than, oh, got to write that one down. You know, some things are so beautiful, so wonderful, you want to remember them, right? But it's antithetical to try to remember them. It's more a confirmation of them to just say, move forward. Our practice is about, you know, as about, you know, you name it, whatever is the best thing, okay, whatever that is, okay, go beyond it. And go beyond that, go beyond, go beyond, go beyond. Go beyond Buddha. Not to mention go beyond all of our problems. But not go beyond doesn't mean renunciation doesn't renounce, like you said, you know, it isn't that you renounce the things you're having problems with. You renounce your attachments. Go beyond your attachments. That's not easy. It's easy to renounce what you don't want to face. That's the same as holding on to your attachments. No. When you renounce, you realize Buddhahood, and then you renounce the Buddhahood.

[54:46]

Go beyond it, go beyond it, go beyond it. And there's this tendency to want to cash in or remember it, or this is wonderful stuff, you know. Like if you're teaching, if I'm teaching, you know, I think of various things, I think, oh, that was really good, that'd be a good talk, you know. But that undermines my talk, if I told you about it. If I bring these things along with me, it means I don't trust the present situation. So, how do you get organized to present something at the same time not holding on to it? This is the trick. There's countless one, like grab one. Exactly. Yeah, move on to the next one, you know. Ah, it's a heart-rending business, this forward progress on the path. Karin? So, shamatha can be a learning meditation. Yeah, it could be, right. But it doesn't have to be. Doesn't have to be, right.

[55:47]

But having the intentions of going into the four jhanas, couldn't that still be meditation without flows? With? Yes. Definitely. When the Buddha was practicing those jhanas for years, he had outflows in his jhana practice. He did. It was on the night of enlightenment that he stopped having outflows. When he stopped having outflows, then he saw the four noble truths. Many people practice the jhanas with outflows and do not see the four noble truths because the outflows create such a disturbance that, you know, even though you're concentrated, you're in such a field that you cannot see the four noble truths. Yeah. First of all, you have to end the outflows, which means you have to face the outflows, even in your state of concentration. He did that, the outflows waned, he saw the four noble truths. Prior to that, his shamatha practice, his jhana practice had outflows. He said that. He had not ended the outflows prior to that night.

[56:49]

So, yes, it is possible for us or anybody else who has outflows to practice these jhanas with an outflowing attitude and then they're impure. Wholesome, very wholesome, but still not purified of outflows. So, is shamatha different from zazen? It's different when there's gaining idea. It's different when there's outflows. When there's no outflows, shamatha is identical with zazen. And in fact, it's pretty hard not to have out... It's pretty hard to... When you don't have outflows, you're naturally tranquil. That's what Bodhidharma is saying. Tranquilize, pacify the mind with no contrivance. If you have a mind with no outflows, the mind is naturally pacified.

[57:55]

The mind is naturally pacified when you do not fall for the duality of self and other. That's the fundamental disturbing factor in my life, this subject-object, internal-external. As soon as there's an external object, the mind is agitated. When you see through that and don't fall for it, then the mind is naturally calmed. That's the most direct, immediate and non-meddling way to realize, immediately realize a tranquil, imperturbable mind. Simultaneously, realizing the end of outflows. Yes? It sounds to me as if you just told Ruth that the effort to remember or expand on a moment of insight got into grasping or got into... What? No, I didn't quite say that. I said, if it comes from... You have to see where it's coming from. Is it coming from just... I mean, it's okay to be interested in things.

[58:57]

It isn't necessarily grasping to be interested in things. Interest in living beings is not grasping. You have to look to see, is your interest in this coming from your sense of inferiority and lack of confidence in your buddha nature? If so, then you're trying to gain something from it. Then you think, oh, I need to gain something from this interaction. But you can be interested in people and other things and yourself without any gaining idea. It's not grasping. It's just enjoyment of life. That's what I said, sort of, isn't it? I didn't say what you said, did I? But I also remember another time hearing you say that in order to understand something, you need to be able to articulate it. Yeah. And that, I don't know... That was for you. Pardon me? I think that's for you. Well... But it feels to me as if the effort to try and articulate something already distorts it at certain times.

[60:06]

Yeah. So that, you know, once I start kind of fitting it into language... Yes. ...and fitting it not only into language that I can understand but that somebody else could understand... Right. ...it just takes it farther and farther away from... Right. ...from its origin. Right. That's right. I got that part. So, what did you mean when you said you need to be able to articulate it in order to understand it? Okay. Did you hear what she said? Mm-hmm. Okay. So that's what it is. To depict it in literary form is to relegate it to defilement. That's what you just said, right? Yes. I guess. To put it by it, you know, what we're talking about is suchness. To put suchness into a word defiles it. Anything you say about it or any way you say it is now in this form, that defiles it. All right? That's what you said, right? Yeah. I just...

[61:07]

I could say it over several more times and see if you could follow what you said in my language. Is that okay? Okay. Now, so I told her that, but in order to understand something you have to be able to articulate it. So I'm saying, in order to understand suchness you have to be able to articulate it. But then she says, but then don't you defile it when you articulate it? You defile it when you articulate it if you think what you said was it. That would defile it. But if you realize that what you're doing is that when you talk you're expressing and articulating your suchness. Want to see me articulate suchness? Watch. This is articulating suchness. You see it? But to relegate suchness to this would defile it. But this articulates suchness. It's articulating suchness. This is how you understand suchness, by articulating it.

[62:07]

You articulate it. You talk, you talk, you wave your arms, you smile, you interact with people. This is articulating suchness. This is how you really understand it. You keep it all to yourself. You don't understand it as fully as when you dance with people. But to say that the dance is the suchness would defile the dance, would defile the suchness. So although it's not fabricated, and you can't put it into any fabrication, it's not without speech, it talks. And if it doesn't talk, it's not fully realized. It should be able to talk and walk and interact. That's how you make it into full realization, to get it moving, get it up and circulating. But none of those forms are it. But it expresses itself through those forms. And if you don't get it out there, you don't know it as fully as you do when you get it out there. And part of what you learn when you get it out there is, when you first start putting it out, you think, oh, this is it. That's part of what teaches you what it is. You say, oh, here it is, and somebody says, oh, no, it isn't. Oh, oh, I get it.

[63:10]

Well, here, well, ha! And you start getting it out there without making it into that. And then somebody says, now we're talking. You understand better. So that's why you have to express it. But first of all, you should get something to express. You should get down there and feel something and experience something. It shouldn't be just expressing before you feel grounded. But when you feel grounded, then express yourself, and that helps you unfold and understand more deeply what it is. But none of the expressions are it. But we must express it in order to fully understand it. And you can understand it pretty well prior to expression, too. So how are you doing? Is that good? So you need to express it and articulate it in order to understand it. And any of the forms that you say are it would defile it and limit it. It would be an insult. And that's why all these stories, all these Zen stories, you know, don't say that. That insults the teacher's teaching. Don't make it into that. Don't make it into that. You can't do that. It can be anything, but as soon as you box it,

[64:13]

it's really a sad thing and it's an insult. Yes? Yeah, I just wanted to add to that. I think it helps if you at the same moment say it is not it, by yourself, even if there is ... I mean, you said ... That's a nice try. Try that. So while you're expressing it, say it to yourself, This is not it. That's what he said, right? He said, Everywhere I go, I meet her. I'm alone, but everywhere I go, I meet her. She is not me, and I am exactly her. That dynamic. So, for Dogen, you know, this correct samadhi, this right meditation

[65:26]

is that we go beyond Buddhas and ancestors. That's what correct meditation is, is to go beyond Buddha and ancestors. To drop off Buddha and ancestors and to drop off body and mind. That's correct meditation. That's correct meditation. Correct meditation, you pull off the heads of innumerable Buddha's ancestors and make them into your nose. It's to pick up the flower like Shakyamuni Buddha did and turn it. And in that flower, you see a hundred Mahakasyapas smiling at you.

[66:30]

Shakyamuni Buddha, after six years of sitting, attained awakening at dawn. At that time, the fierce fire of right concentration was realized and the whole universe burned down. We have to throw ourselves into that fire. That's right concentration. Which, of course, we're ready to do, right? Because we practice Zen. That's our game. Born and raised in the concentration patch. So that's the Eightfold Path, right? We did it, folks.

[67:36]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ