In terms of Zen stories, the one that I thought we'd start with is number 44 of the Book of Serenity. And is it true that there are some copies of the Book of Serenity in this room somewhere? Did you already get them? They've been passed out? So everybody that wants one of those books of Jotlin, I mean, they're all passed out now? Is that right? Pardon? You don't live? People who live here take them. Give them to the residents first. Now, how many people need a copy of case 44? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. Okay, how many copies?

[01:02]

I've been sort of describing a certain way of looking at some of the practices that address some of the problems that we have. is as human beings. I've been talking about that for a few weeks here. And I'd like to coordinate, I'd like to bring those up again for the new people in this group and then for the people who have already heard about it, you can listen to it again. And I'd like to relate these practices to studying Zen stories. So, basically the... The concern, some people have said, I think it's pretty good to say that the basic concern in Zen practice is to pull off the blinders, unpack the saddlebags,

[02:27]

Pull out the pegs, melt the glue, set people free. That's the main thing. Liberation is the main thing. And it turns out that liberation means to remove certain obstructions from the human mind and human heart. And once those obstructions are removed, the natural goodness of our heart becomes functional. And not just the natural goodness in the sense of like goodness, but goodness specifically in terms of wisdom, vision, compassion, and skill. Because you can see what needs to be done, and you have no problem doing it. So the release releases all this basic endowment of a human creature.

[03:34]

The Buddha, as you may have heard upon awakening, could see. that all of us human beings, and not just us, but all creatures, fully possess the wisdom and virtues of the Buddhas. But because of these clings that we have, these obstructions, it's hard to realize this wisdom. Now I'm going to stop there. Any problems with that? as a kind of basic addressing of the purpose in the problem, or the purpose in obstacles to realizing the purpose. Does that all make sense to everybody? Really? OK. So then these obstacles I've been talking about in terms of three general types of obstacles.

[04:44]

or three general obstructions to be able to see like a Buddha can see. And three obstacles are obstacles due to action, karma avarana, obstacles due to conflicting emotions, conflicting, afflictive emotions, conflicting conceptions, afflictive, troublesome conceptions, various ways to put it, like greed, hate, and delusion, basically, applied to ourself, applied to others. These kinds of troublesome, conflicting emotions cover our vision. of what the way things are. And then the next level, the most subtle level, is the obstruction due to the very, just the basic fact of being aware of an object and thinking that things are external and also that making the world into something that can be that can be cognized or conceptualized.

[06:08]

The actual process of conceptualization which makes possible knowledge, that creates another very thin, subtle layer in between the living being and all other creation. Okay? Does that make sense? And then I've been talking about three basic kinds of practices which take us through these obstructions. The first structure is addressed by belief in the law of cause and effect. Which, to make a long story perhaps short, I would say the law of cause and effect is that everything we do in the realm of

[07:17]

this individual person doing things himself or herself, everything I do in the realm of an individual being who does things, that's the realm of karma. Okay? The realm of karma is where I think of myself as a separate individual and I think I can do something on my own. And this is part of our life, right? Anybody have any problems with that? I mean, anybody have any problems understanding that we're sort of involved in that? And other people seem to be too, from all reports. Is that okay? Following this so far? Okay, so the law of cause and effect, the belief in the law of cause and effect means to believe the message that what you do is extremely important. like extremely, and it's inconceivably important from the point of view of the person who's living as an individual, it's inconceivably important.

[08:28]

You cannot conceive how important it is. Well, you can conceive how important it is, but you cannot know it, you cannot see it yet. You can't see how important it is until you're enlightened. And enlightened beings are very careful of what they do. They're free too. But they're careful at the same time. They're free to be careful. In the meantime, before we understand, before we feel completely free, we should, to the best of our ability, be very careful of what we do, because what we do has tremendous consequences for ourselves and for others. For example, if you don't watch the road when you're driving, you can run over somebody. This kind of thing, right? Just look out the window just for a second, and bam, you hit some kid. And then, just like that.

[09:28]

So we have to learn how to live our life paying attention moment by moment to what we're doing. That's a kind of short presentation of the law of cause and effect, and we need to believe that and adjust our behavior to that law in order to remove the most gross hindrance to our wisdom. When I say be careful what you do, I mean be careful to do good and not do evil. Because good always leads to good results and benefits, and evil leads to bad results and damage. Now, one might wonder, how do you know what's good and bad? And this is on the level of, you just simply, for a short presentation, you just do what you think is good, for now.

[10:36]

And you don't do what you think is bad. Later, you may develop... lots of skill about this as you practice it more but for starters what you just do whatever you think is good and you don't do whatever you think is bad and gradually if you practice that way diligently things will get clearer and you'll be able to cope with more and more complexity about the issue and develop all kinds of skills about how to determine and what is good and all kinds of skills about how to kind of encourage yourself to do it Now what this does, basically, when you practice this way, and someone who wants to study Zen stories has to practice this way because you can't see the story if you don't practice this way. The story will be covered up by all kinds of darkness and confusion and obstructions. You won't even be able to see the story. You know, if you don't practice this way, these stories won't be interesting.

[11:38]

You won't see how neat they are. You'll think they're stupid or something, or boring, or that you'll think, well, they're just hard to understand. That's that kind of thing. But if you start uncovering these things, if the fact that they might be hard to understand will not be very difficult for you, like hard to understand the most beautiful person you ever met kind of thing, well, geez, it's really hard to understand, but it's not like you're not interested. But if you're not careful of what you do, these stories won't be interesting. It's kind of like a, what is it, emperor's clothes kind of thing. You know what I mean? Those who practice evil actually don't see that these stories are wonderful, naked stories. Those who practice evil will be afraid to admit what they see, namely that these stories are Really wonderful. Anyway, another thing that being careful does is it brings you back to yourself because you're the actor, right?

[12:45]

It brings you back to this individual actor or actress. Because you're being careful, you're always like watching what this person's up to. You realize this person is like, this person is constantly in crisis. Every moment this person can do something really damaging or really good. And you're kind of watching this person this crisis mobile that you are. Every step of the way you could do something really bad or really good, every moment of the day. And they're not like breaks, you know, like after lunch or something, when you can't do something bad, or during lunch, or even during a vegetarian lunch. I mean, like, you can chew your food not carefully and choke to death. It's not good. You're a precious being, you know? And if you haven't realized your full potential yet, you should take care of yourself and chew your food. Chewing your food is a kind of a wholesome thing to do. Especially brown rice, I recommend chewing it.

[13:45]

It's a wholesome thing. Tasting your food's good too. And so on. Watching where your fork's going. These are kind of wholesome practices, which you do or don't do. But they bring you back to yourself. And the whole crux of the whole matter is this self thing. So, as a result of being careful you come back to yourself who is the observer and the actor in this life process. So it brings you back. You start settling into yourself. You start becoming aware of yourself. You start coming home by being careful. And these other obstructions start dropping away between you and the world. So you need to... In order to... We're not emphasizing this kind of ethical observation, this kind of conscientiousness. We don't emphasize so much in the koan class. When we study these stories, these stories do not necessarily directly mention that you have to be very careful.

[14:49]

But these stories are about people who are... who are practiced very carefully. That's the type of people that are in these stories. So it is part of studying these stories. Really, you should understand that if you want to understand these stories and get something out of these stories, then you have to, like, throughout the day, throughout the week, take care of yourself so that you can understand these stories, so that they'll mean something to you, so you won't be wasting your time studying them, and also so you won't be wasting your life. That's the first level of studying these koans is to really respect the power of karma. Get down into your karma and try to adjust your behavior and harmonize your behavior

[15:56]

with the laws of karma. This really will help you study the koans. They'll be much more interesting and they'll tell you their secrets much sooner if you do this. Does that make sense? This is part of studying koans. But I'm not going to say it's over every class, right? This is part of your homework for this class. So I'll just stop there. Any comments on this? Are you up for this? Do you think this would be part of studying these stories? No, people don't necessarily think you'd come in, listen to the stories, blah, blah, but you have to be a conscientious person in order to make use of this class, in order to make use of these stories. My experience is that when I'm in those rare moments when I practice a little conscientiousness The stories have much more encouraging impact upon my life.

[17:05]

I get very happy when I read these stories when I've been taking care of my behavior. And when I'm not careful of my behavior, when I read these stories, it's not like watching a movie. They're virtually, I mean, the story's kind of like, like this, they just, the big door just go, and you sit there, the story just sit there and go, nothing there for you, nothing for you. And I don't mean to criticize anybody, but I've heard that other people, when they read these stories, they read them and they say, I don't get it, you know. They come to class, you know, and in class everybody behaves themselves, right? And in class things start happening. You know, stuff starts popping out of the stories. You know, you see that there's a lot there. Because we're paying attention here, you know, to what's happening.

[18:07]

They come alive. But then if you don't continue to pay attention and be conscientious after the class is over, the coin's just going to close up again. Until next week. We open it again in class. But if you keep practicing careful observation of your behavior and you study the koans in between every day a little bit, you look at them, read them, they'll keep talking to you. You know, they'll still be mirrors of your heart. And you pick up the book and say, feel your heart. And your heart will feel good. But not because the koan is good or bad, but because it's reflecting your good effort. There are certain types of material in Buddhist teachings. There are certain types of material where if you read them, the material says, would you please, please, for the sake of everyone, get your act together? Would you please be careful? Would you please start thinking about how good it is to practice good and how really wasteful and horrible it is to practice bad?

[19:13]

There are teachings like that. which amplify and tell you about the horror of not being careful and the wonders of being kind and gentle and attentive and so on. There are teachings like that. These koans don't say that kind of stuff. They are for people who are already doing that work. Okay? So you have to do that work if you want these stories to mean something to you. Does that make sense? That's the kind of type of teaching it is. It's not that it's exactly high-level teaching. But it is high level teaching, not exactly though, just plain old high level. In other words, it requires that you're already doing your homework on your life. This teaching is to finish you off. These teachings are to finish your practice off, to bring it to, you know, these stories are to bring your practice to completion. Not, you know, necessarily total, but in certain realms to bring your practice to completion.

[20:14]

So you have to do this work. If we do this work, this class will be a celebration. Every week you come here and you do your work between classes, this class will be a celebration of your practice. You know, a party that we have to celebrate the work that we've been practicing all week. And now we can do wonderful things together. And I think people do do that, and when they do that... Okay. Now the next level... This first level is pretty hard, but you know, basically... Well, it's pretty hard, but basically it's kind of like... I think you get... If you practice it, you get... You get bent, but it's pretty fast from it. The next level of practice is the practice that addresses the obscuration of negativity. And... the obscuration of conflicting emotions and troublesome conceptions. So, the first level, you're very careful of the person who's doing things.

[21:23]

Now, based on being careful of the person, or the person being careful, you now turn around and kind of start looking at this person. And also, you try to express, you try to get this person to express herself. Or, another way to put it is you confess, you own up to, you admit that there's a person here who's doing things, but you more concentrate on the admission of the personhood now. Based on the admission and carefulness of the behaviors that the person does, now you turn your attention and start looking at the person. You try to make the personhood, the person, more and more clear. And the way you make the person more and more clear is by expressing the person, letting the person express herself. Getting her to be more and more expressive, try to find out what a fuller and fuller expression of this person is. As you express yourself more and more fully, you get a better and better sense of yourself.

[22:29]

Also, as you express yourself more and more fully, the afflictive emotions start to, you know, come closer around your body and mind, both in terms of things that you're aware of, like self-negation and its opposite, its reflection, other negation, like hating yourself and denying yourself and also hating others and denying others, or self-protection and attachment, or other protection and attachment, and confusion about all that. And then also all kinds of energy losses around all that, and energy inflations around all that, which then lead to energy losses. So all kinds of turbulence, energetic turbulence that happens around the cell. all this negative energy happens around the individual self. So, to be clear about the individual self will make it clear where all this stuff circles and also the relationship between holding the self as an identity separate from other things and the arising of these emotions will start getting clearer and clearer.

[23:39]

And by this process, which this class also can serve, we can actually do it in this class, Also, you can do it during the week, but we can do it in this class because there's a possibility for you to express yourself in this class and to see how that feels. Kevin? When you say express yourself, do you mean describe yourself? Do I mean describe yourself? Yeah. What I'm thinking of, if you say express yourself, it sounds like, well, if you're angry, go ahead and be angry. Express that anger. Uh-huh. No. Well, if you're angry, I mean, then admit that you're angry. But if you're feeling angry, it doesn't mean then that you do something about it. See, if you're feeling angry, I'm not talking about what you would do with that anger. I'm talking about you very much admitting that the person, you admit that this person's feeling angry, and you feel how the anger is defined by this person.

[24:44]

So you're more into the... I'm not telling you what karma you should do or not, right? That was supposed to be taken care of previously, that you're being very careful about not being angry and trying to practice patience so you won't get angry. And if you are angry, to try to determine whether this is appropriate or inappropriate anger. That's all the thing about practicing good and avoiding evil. That's what you're supposed to be working on all the time. You're going to keep being a karmic being all the way through this class. Right? So you're supposed to be watching carefully all your karma. Now. What you're trying to do now is, as you are doing all this stuff, which hopefully is all good, still there's a person expressing himself. So now I'm saying, look, try to now get this person more in view. So even while you're doing good, you can still have some conflicting and troublesome emotions around you. You can still feel in a turmoil and feel pressed and challenged by all kinds of other impulses other than the good ones.

[25:46]

Right? If you're going to express yourself, you cannot, basically you cannot express yourself outside of turmoil. So again, the first level of practice is you're expressing yourself, blah blah blah, and mostly you're watching at that level what you're doing. Try to be careful of what you do. Now turn and watch the doer. As you watch the doer and watch how that doer expresses himself or herself, you will notice there's turmoil all around that doer. There is turmoil, there is conflicting emotions, there is troublesome ideas all around. Basically, all the time. There's also wonderful things all around too. And there's conflict among the things around you. That's why it's turmoil. It's not just all pure black. It's dark and light. It's very dynamic. It's always changing. It doesn't just stay evil.

[26:48]

It's also good. It's tremendously active all around this person. And this person is actually, the more you settle into this person who's doing these things, which you're hopefully doing carefully, the more you tune this person, the more dynamic it gets. The more fully and honestly you express this person, the more resistance arises. The more you express your understanding of these stories, the more feedback you'll get. And particularly, not so much the more you express it this way or that way, but the more you express it as an expression of yourself. Really, you're self-expressing yourself through that understanding. That's the focal point of the greatest energy which will be experienced often as challenge.

[27:50]

And then, as I've been mentioning, beyond what you can conceptualize or make into objects, behind all the turmoil that you can see or imagine or objectify, behind all that is something that you can't even say is turmoil. You can't see it, but you feel it. An unknown, objectless threat to your individual being. And your individual being should be threatened because it is an illusion. It's not real. It's always under threat for its being. For its individuality is always under threat. But its actual existence in reality is never under threat, ever. It's always completely supported. But the individuality is always being challenged and threatened and questioned.

[28:57]

And it's being questioned by individual people, like some of you individual people actually ask me questions and threaten my existence and call me into question about the way I am. But behind you, behind your questions, your threats, your disapprovals of my being, which I can objectify and know, behind that is something much bigger, much more stable, and much more awesome, and I never can interact with it. Both the up-close objective threat or harassment or fear or pain And the farther away, all of that is what is supporting me and giving me my life. But I misinterpret it because I believe in my individuality. So because I believe in my individuality, what's giving me life is a threat. And these stories are, they're about this level.

[30:03]

They're not mentioning this other level of, you know, being careful of what the individual actor does. They don't mention that much. Although these people are doing things, the focus of the practice in the koan is not to look at that so much. That's understood. The koan starts at this level. If you could tune into this self and see this self clearly, which is exactly what it is, and watch how this self does things and get that very clear. And don't back away from that or shake around that and see that very clearly. It'll switch from this self doing things to everything doing itself. It'll turn from this deluded view of the world where you're doing stuff under duress to a world where everything's doing you. Everything comes forth and then there's you. And if you don't know that you're under duress, I propose to you, outrageously, that you're not present. The only people who don't feel this challenge are people who are not home.

[31:09]

I say that. Or people who are enlightened, who understand, you know, that the self is totally supported and all this stuff is supported. And actually maybe some of you sometimes are enlightened and understand that what's happening now is supporting you. So there's two possibilities if you're not in an address. Well, three. One is that you're temporarily enlightened in a certain segment of your awareness which you're paying attention to, you feel supported. The other is you're perfectly enlightened. And the other is you're in denial. So I'll stop there for a second. Any questions about that? Melissa? Is what you said about various things coming forward to express you, what you mean by... To express themselves as you. Right. But is that what you mean by what you perceive as a threat is giving life?

[32:11]

Yeah. Right. Before that, if you're expressing yourself, that stuff is threatening you. Most of the time, it's threatening you. It's kind of like knocking on the door and saying, you can't do this. But you can do that. That will be okay. If you're this way, it's fine, but not this way. And the way that most doesn't want you to be just happens to be the way you are. But it really isn't that that isn't the way it wants to be. It's that you tell yourself that as you start to come up to express yourself. Because we have been told various things in our life which we have interpreted... as meaning that we shouldn't be ourselves. And the other people said, yes, that's right. We did mean that. Don't be yourself. Thank you. We do not, you know, you're a big boy. Don't cry. We were told that. And it seemed like they did mean that. They didn't really mean that, but they were confused. So then when we sort of backed down, they did encourage us. When we curled up in a ball, they did say, nice going. You know, when we just sat quietly at our mother's feet, you know, she did say, everyone said you were a very good boy.

[33:17]

And that felt good. To be the most popular little boy. When I was a kid, when I was in high school, when I was eight years old, I could see what you had to do to be president of the class. And I decided I would be president of the class. So what I did was, I sat at my desk like this, upright posture, crocked my hands like this on the desk and sat like this and smiled at the teacher. I don't think it was an hour before I was made president. The office was temporarily empty. So I just did what I was pretty sure would make me president and it did it very rapidly. I don't remember how long it was, but just suddenly she looked at me and she saw this thing and she couldn't avoid this one student who was doing exactly what she wanted. And she just said, well, here he is. We now have a new president of the class, eight years old, third grade.

[34:19]

And then as president, I continued to be this one normal kid. One normal kid in the class. And I did that, but I got bored with it. I uncrossed my hand and I was impeached. So these kinds of things do seem to happen. This isn't really what my teacher was a teacher for, of course. But people do slip into that during stressful days. and think it would be nice if all the kids were little automatons and just sat there and said, teacher, you are great, we are learning, and just keep it up, you're doing fine. Sometimes they think that's what they want, rather than little living creatures doing their thing. So then we kind of go along with that sometimes for various personal gains, like being promoted to blah, blah, and blah, blah. and being loved, and so on.

[35:21]

So we make these deals, right? Now it's time, now it's time, before it's too late, to start expressing ourselves. We do have a self now, we think we have one, and we're doing things based on that. We honor that, we be careful of that, and let's also, like, turn around and see who this is. Let's get really clear about this. And it isn't so much like go around and rant and rave, It's more like, if ranting and raving is really going to make you most clearly aware of who you are, then okay. That's not harmful. If you can rant and rave in an unharmful way, and it is possible to do that, especially in this class, if you want to rant and rave as a way of getting clearer about what you have to say, If what you have to say, if what is really truly what you have to say is a rant, rant. If what you have to say is a rave, rave. If what you have to say is you're afraid, say you're afraid. If what you have to say is, I don't understand, or even I'm angry at this, whatever, you know.

[36:23]

In this class, go ahead and express yourself if you don't think it's going to be harmful. And also if you think it's going to be good. But also as you do good things in this class, try to do especially the thing that's going to most... Express you. See how that is. And see how you feel with this number of people watching you while you do your thing. And see if you can feel the turmoil. And you will feel the turmoil. But that doesn't mean it's wrong. Doesn't mean it's wrong. You can feel lots of turmoil around yourself when you do a very good thing. But you can do a very good thing and not be present and not feel the turmoil. If you do a very good thing and you inhabit the place in the middle of that, of yourself, when you do it, then you'll feel the pressure. Because that's where your being is. If you do a good thing by correspondence course, you won't feel that threat. But if you come into the place where the good action is, and that is you, then you feel this question.

[37:24]

Even when we're doing good, just our being... is what is threatened, not the good or the bad, but our being as an individual. So this is where these stories are. When these people come and talk to each other, when these monks come to talk to these teachers, they are coming there and they are doing this. They are coming up there and they are expressing, they're trying to express their most essential limited selfhood. And if they do that fully, then they can also simultaneously express their transcendent self with. So we are both beings who need to, we must express ourselves, we must settle into ourselves completely, and we also need to transcend ourselves. So these monks in these stories, both teacher and student, are being careful of their conduct, settling into themselves completely, and then transcending themselves in the story. Or, sometimes not settling into themselves and not transcending themselves, or sometimes settling into themselves and then the other person who settled into himself comes back and then they back off and they lose it.

[38:40]

That also sometimes happens. There's various possibilities, you see, on how this can go. But this is the kind of thing that's happening in these stories, is these people are settled into themselves. They come and bring that, they bring their settled self to this other person who is doing the same thing, supposedly. and you go meet somebody who's actually there. You don't go meet somebody who's out of town. They travel to meet somebody who's got a reputation for being on site, and they bring themselves to that person and then they meet. And that's the real dynamic of most of these stories. And then, some of the stories, not all of them, some of the stories then move up into this next level, which is the next level of practice and the next level of obscuration. Namely, the monks move into the transcendent mode where they have now, by virtue of being themselves, have dropped themselves. By virtue of settling themselves, they forget about it.

[39:42]

By honoring the fact that they think they're a limited being and fully expressing themselves as a way of clarifying that, they realize they're not a limited being. Which is the same as realizing that all this stuff which is pressing on you is actually supporting you. Then they have a talk at that level. And at that level the problem is that just being aware, which you sometimes are, that you're having a talk at that level, just being aware that you're liberated, and putting any kind of like covering of... of conceptuality over that, and falling for that conceptuality is the next obstruction to perfect vision. And so many stories about the monks who have moved into that realm, but they still have a covering on their liberation. So they're presenting not only themselves, but they're liberating being to the teacher, who's also supposedly presenting his or her liberating being to the student, and then they see if they can drop the obscuration at that level.

[40:54]

So all this stuff's going on in most of these stories. Certainly the first one's always going on, and almost always the second one's going on, And sometimes, and most of the time, the third one's going on. All this stuff's going on. All three of these kinds of obstructions are being, you know, pulled away or slipping back on and so on throughout the stories. Usually, I would say these stories, the first level of obscuration is not operating. That's why you have to come clean to class. You're already taking care of that yourself. See? But the next level of struggle and subtlety That's more like what we do here, and see if we can see them doing it in the story. So that's my way to try to ground this study in actual practice. And also let you know that the difficulty you have with these stories is another version of the difficulty you're just going to have in your practice. of being a person who does things, and being a person who has a self, and being a person who has trouble, who has difficulty being herself.

[42:01]

People have a hard time, I've noticed, being themselves. I actually, you know, just, you know, in the last few years have been deeply impressed what a hard time people have. I didn't realize before how much that the hard thing that people have time with is specifically about being themselves. I thought they were having a hard time with, you know, this pain and that pain and this delusion and that afflictive emotion. And of course they are. But now I realize that really it's all about being themselves. So I'm really lately really encouraging people to express themselves. But again, if you're not careful of your conduct, if I'm not careful of my conduct, you can't even see yourself. There's so much confusion, obfuscation, that you can't even see yourself to be it. It's just like, you know you're in trouble, you know you feel lousy, but you don't really know where yourself is. You don't know what it is. It's so murky.

[43:02]

You think you've got one, but you have no idea where it is. I mean, that's not so uncommon. We have, you know, called mindfulness of body practice. One of the foundations of mindfulness is mindfulness of body. It's the easiest one for people to do. And people often can do that, that come to Zen Center. Some people who aren't at Zen Center, and a few people that are, can't actually find their body to be mindful of. They don't know what you're talking about. Some people who practice at Zen Center, the next level of subtlety is to be aware of your feelings. Some people are not aware of their feelings. The next level of subtlety, the third foundation of mindfulness, is to be aware of your thoughts, like what kind of thoughts you have. Disturbed thoughts, calm thoughts, pleasant thoughts, unpleasant thoughts, you know, afflictive thoughts, angry thoughts, lusty thoughts, this kind of, that's the next level of subtlety. The next level is a level of like Four Noble Truths, and that there's suffering, and the cause of suffering is self-attachment. It takes a while for people like to get up at the end of the table to see what they think their self is that they're holding on to.

[44:09]

Because most people hold on to their self, you know, back somewhere, you know, in the garage. Most people do not have their self-attachment right out in front of them. And even though they're holding on just like this, they don't, like, bring it out in front. Because they don't even know where front is, because they're creating so much disturbance, they don't know front and back or where their hands are. If you can be careful, really careful, the self's going to come right out in front of you and say hi, and that's going to be hard, but at least you're going to be able to see it. Bring the self to class. And then the class is going to be, you know, you're going to be highly rewarded by being frightened when you come to class, and anxious. But that means your self has come. So that's kind of my background or sort of introduction to how to practice through this class and in life in general. But to make this class work, if you think in these terms and try to do these practices... Oh, I didn't actually tell you how to practice on the fourth and third level.

[45:18]

The way to practice on the third level, if you should ever happen to move beyond your self-attachment, would be to watch how your sense of freedom... to whatever extent you have a sense of freedom and liberation from self-concern. Which you sometimes do. Sometimes people think, oh yeah, I'll just... I would like to... I'm going to just do what would help that person over there. I'm just going to be devoted to that person right now. And then they experience liberation. But then, immediately, they feel great about that and grab the liberation, right? That's an example. You can experience this self-transcendence pretty easily, sometimes. But then, you grab it. So, at that point, the way of practicing is, again, now watch how you meditate. And there's a lot of threat to people who express liberation. A lot of threat. There's even a rule against expressing it. You get kicked out of the Sangha for expressing liberation without just cause. But you do not get kicked out of the sangha for expressing delusion without just cause.

[46:25]

Like, let's say you're angry and you say that you're feeling lustful. You don't get kicked out of the sangha for that, for claiming that you're lustful, inaccurately. But if you claim you're enlightened without justification, in the old days you'd be kicked out. In other words, there is pressure on you to express yourself honestly. So again, if you start looking at this, it's not so easy either there. And plus it's much more subtle. But that's the way, that's the same practice, or to change into the language of, you know, traditional Buddhism. The first level of practice is just karmic maintenance and purification. This next level of practice is to watch how you do, to admit that you don't think yourself dependently co-arises. And to watch this self that you don't think dependently co-arises with all beings, watch that self until you see that the self dependently co-arises.

[47:26]

Then the liberation, which when you see the self dependently co-arises, you're liberated from attachment to the individual personal self. But then watch how your liberation dependently co-arises at the next level, how it also depends on things and isn't a fixed independent thing. So the two layers to addressing the two more subtle coverings are both meditations on studying to see how phenomena dependently co-arise. In particular, the first one, first you try to see how the person dependently co-arises, or how the person doesn't have a self. The next level, you see how everything dependently co-arises, including Buddha and liberation. so you don't make a self out of Buddha, or a self out of enlightenment, or a self out of freedom. Okay, now I think I kind of like got all the cards on the table. Is that okay? Got it?

[48:28]

Now you can try to practice, I'd be happy to help you. John? You were talking about the second level, you were using the terms settle or settling. The self or the self and... Settle the self on the self. Yeah. You don't follow settling the self on the self? Well, for example, settle your body on your body. Like when you're sitting here right now. Be aware of how your body is sort of settled over there on your body. Does that make any sense to you? Like feeling my mass? Yeah, right. And feeling what posture you're in and feeling how the mass is related to acceleration. You notice that called gravity? You're being accelerated towards the earth and you're resisting it in a certain way. Okay? And you're doing that in a certain way over there rather than all over the place. That's part of settling yourself in yourself is to become mindful of your body.

[49:33]

Okay? Okay. Mindful, and also again, as you are careful of your conduct, then you'll be careful of your conduct in body, like how you're sitting, and how you, like when you stand up, you would then, if you thought it was really a significant matter, then when you stood up after class was over, you would like pay attention to how you stood up. You wouldn't assume that that was a minor thing. Or if it was automatic, you would think it would be very important that it was automatic and you would check to see how it was automatic. But that would be like... Again, that would bring you back to settling yourself in yourself. When you're careful of what you do with your body, that helps you settle yourself into yourself. So both in terms of how your body feels, where it is, how it's postured, but also what you do with your body in terms of karma. Those two ways bring your mindfulness to your body. Then there's also your speech, paying attention to your speech.

[50:41]

You have an idea of your speech rather than my speech or Anne's speech. You watch your speech. Watching your speech will also help you watch my speech. Watching my speech and your speech also helps you settle into yourself. My speech is mine, yours is yours, and that gets very clear to you when you watch carefully yours. If you watch mine too much and you're too worried about mine and forget yours, that will not help you so much settle into yourself. And also your thoughts. And you start also watching your thoughts. So, but anyway, first you do the body. Then you do your feelings. What do you, how do you feel? That also helps you settle into yourself. Then you do, then you do your, all different kinds of thoughts, like I said. Angry thoughts, confused thoughts. What state of consciousness do you have? That also helps you settle into yourself. Then finally, you start looking at your self-worth. And how do you define and limit yourself? How do you know what the limits of your body? There's a self there. Where does your self begin and end? You start looking at that stuff. This also helps you settle into yourself. And as you get more and more to the core, the turbulence starts building up.

[51:43]

And more and more the demons whisper in your ear, you know, John, you've got better things to do than this. Or even, you know, maybe they don't need to go that far, maybe they've got you already taken away without even sort of challenging the whole practice. So, meantime, all these conflicting emotions, like getting angry at people, talking about other people's problems and stuff like that, you can get into that, like, the government's got problems, this person's got problems, these people aren't practicing very well. And if you do that without understanding that's about yourself, then you're not settling to yourself, you're dispersing yourself, and you're heading basically down the road to, you know, Samsara. Turning around and going back towards yourself is the opposite direction from samsara. It's the direction towards liberation from self-clinging. You have to keep bringing yourself back all the time. Always turning around back this way. Always. Everything. That's how you say it. That's why I see an integrated self with body, feelings, thoughts.

[52:48]

All as one. Yes, yes, exactly. And what is that? And then how does that feel? And then again, the process of liberation is that you will feel a lot of kind of things going in at you. But as you hold to your habit of being an independent person, these things will challenge you. And these things coming at you as images and objects and fantasies, they will turn into fears and pressures. And part of the reason why they do that is because behind them is this infinite implication, which is the anxiety that backs them up. So you feel all this converging on you, on your identity, on your separateness. And if you can stay there and feel that, then you settle even more in yourself. And as you settle more into yourself, it presses harder and challenges you even more. So as I said, the story of Buddha is exactly this story. He finally practiced enough so he finally could just sit, and he said, I'm not going to move until I get it.

[53:54]

And then a tremendous challenge came to him, but he didn't move, and that made it even clearer what he was, and he could see more clearly how he depended on the Kauravas, and that was his awakening. So he finally really thoroughly settled himself and he saw how that happened, saw how that was challenged, and the challenge then turns into support. Rather than you're there doing all this stuff and being challenged, it switches to you're there, no, no, you're not there. Things come and then you're there. So our usual way, our usual way of living in this world is there is the world and there's one thing more. That's our usual mode of existence. There's the world which has all our friends in it, all our enemies, and one thing more. There's a little bump on top of the universe. That's the world of delusion. The world of enlightenment is, there's the universe and there's one thing missing.

[55:01]

And then there's, and then there it is. And it's you. And it's an enlightened you. You temporarily forgot. Things went right ahead and happened. And then there was you. This is the self that's realized by all things. This is the awakened self. And these two fit perfectly together. See? There's the world plus something and the world minus something. These two worlds perfectly fit together. The extra thing and the lacking thing, they fit. And you got it. A perfectly integrated... This is called the Buddha seal. Buddha isn't just... the enlightenment. The Buddha seal is that the enlightenment comes and completes the picture of the delusion. But in order to feel the enlightenment, you have to go and fulfill the delusion. Because the delusion pivots on the self, and the enlightenment pivots on the self. The delusion is the self, it does everything. So that self that's doubling and doubling, you've got to inhabit the self that's doing everything. is doing all this stuff, and this self is doing everything, everything's saying, you're doing fine.

[56:07]

No, you're not. You're doing fine. No, you're not. I'm doing fine. No, I'm not. All this chatter, chatter, chatter, all the time. And then, suddenly, by fully admitting this, it turns around and then suddenly everything's coming in and then there's a self. But it's at the same place of your delusion. The delusion's the same place as enlightenment in Buddhism happens on the self. And that's the place we don't like to be. It's not comfy there. Intimacy with this place is not comfy. But it is a place where true peace is found. Yes, Alex. So, when all that chatter is going on, what do you admit that the chatter is going on? You admit the chatter, yeah, but also admit yourself. Admit that you think that you're there. And what are you doing? And who are you? And is what you're doing an expression of yourself? And if not, I would say, please try to move your expression, whilst continuing to be careful to be good, among the various good things that you could do.

[57:12]

Please try to do the thing which is most truly the expression of Alex. That will turn out to be, among all the good things, the best. It'll be the best, and best, it is truly your virtue, and also, it will be the thing most conducive to enlightenment. Nice coincidence. But it must be in the realm of doing good. But there's a tremendous variety of good things. As I said, you can do good from a distance. You feel like, I did good, but you weren't really there. You kind of chickened out. You didn't want to be there when you did it. Because you know how it is. It's scary to be there and do the good thing. Because what if they don't agree? Well, fine. You should be there and find out that you tried to do good and they didn't like it. That's where you're going to get enlightened. It's where it actually happens. So yes, do good, do good, do good. And which among all the good things you do is the most honest expression of yourself?

[58:18]

That's your greatest virtue. And that's where to do it. Give a specific example. You mean rather than be a specific example? You don't like what I'm doing here? You don't like this? What am I doing wrong? Don't you see me here? Yeah. This is it. What are you doing? Is that what you're doing? It can be, it could be, that could be it. Is that it? Yeah. Well, how do you feel? You're doing fine.

[59:43]

Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, you want an example, but you didn't want to, did you want to be an example? You are an example. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in this class, I'd like you to be an example, if you want an example, to see what it feels like to be an example of somebody. You tell me, you tell me, look in my face, you tell me the truth. Are you expressing yourself now? Yeah. Okay. Are you doing good? Do you feel like you're doing good? It feels kind of neutral. Kind of neutral, yeah. Well, could you please make it good? What you just said, was that good, by the way? Do you think that was good when you told me when you thought it was neutral? Was that good? Oh, yeah, that was good. Yeah, it was. Now you're kind of smiling. Are you expressing yourself? Is this really who you are? Yeah. Okay. Now, is there something more you could tell us that would really be who you are?

[60:45]

A little bit more? Tell us a little bit more truly, uniquely who you are? Well, you're putting in the here and now right now. Yeah, definitely. That was a really good example. Yeah. That you actually got to sit it on myself. Exactly. Be able to look at myself and see how I express myself. Exactly. By being able to say that it was neutral. Yeah, and I could see that. That made sense to me, too. Now, I might have disagreed with you and said, you know, are you sure? It might not have looked that way, and I might have said, are you sure? And tried to, according to my sense, but it made sense to me that you felt neutral. But when you said it was neutral, I didn't feel it was a neutral statement then, and you didn't either. But something good happened there. What was the best thing about it for you? Well, that I at least got the example given to me in a sort of in a here and now kind of state.

[61:53]

Yeah. That's the way I'd like to do it, as much as possible. But you can still ask, anybody can ask for an example here and then we'll have one. About anything, okay? That is? Tough question. Maybe an example. As you were talking about expressing the Self, I'm just thinking about how I often have this experience that I feel like I'm not expressing myself, and... How about now? Are you expressing yourself now? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What's the difference between what you're doing now and these other times? Speaking up, that's one of them. Big one. Oh, you're speaking up now? Yeah. Ah, yes, that is definitely, that's part of it, is speaking up. Speaking up. Generally speaking, one of the policies is if you're mispronouncing something, do it loudly.

[62:58]

Because when you're mispronouncing, you feel you're there, right? You're feeling, you're aware of yourself. So you want to say it quietly. So nobody else will hear it. And so you want to be there and experience what it's like to be a mispronouncing person. Right? You don't want to be there. So speaking up is part of what you're doing. What else do you sometimes... I'm just kind of feeling something about kind of the beautiful mystery of how It's like I don't know what it is, but something must know what it is. Must know what what is? What expressing myself is, because I certainly know when it falls short, but I really feel like something I can't grasp. It's something that pushes me around all the time. What pushes you around? A sense that I'm not expressing myself fully. How does it push you? When you feel like you're not expressing yourself fully, how do you get pushed? Self-judgment. Ah!

[64:01]

Self-judgment. And cringing. And cringing. So there's both the cringing... You see, that's part of the dynamic, is we cringe from self-expression because we're afraid that we won't express ourselves. And if we don't express ourselves, we will justifiably condemn ourselves for not doing our job. But because we don't want to be condemned for not being present, we shrink away and then we get condemned. However, the condemnation we experience is never as bad as the potential condemnation. Behind any condemnation which you can hear and say to yourself is an infinite expansion of that which you never can objectify. And that's the anxiety that's pressing on you. That is the huge threat hanging over your head if you don't be yourself.

[65:04]

But again, ironically... Because we're threatened with condemnation and guilt, if we don't be ourselves, we then back away even more from ourselves, to not be in the neighborhood of where we would get punished and condemned for not being present. Because we control that punishment. You are the judge. You're the judge. You're the judge. When you go to hell, you're the judge there. We all express ourselves at the same time. I mean, if we all expressed ourselves at the same time, I was going to ask you the differences between expressing yourself. Is it okay to just see what you feel, to be aware of what you feel? Do I have to say I'm feeling scared or I'm feeling... Do you? You tell me. Well, it's nice if I can say, but if we all say, if we all express ourselves at the same moment, it's going to be like a tower.

[66:09]

It's going to be crazy. Let's do it. Let's do it. See what happens. See how long it goes on. I mean, do we really need to do that? Did you say, do we really need what? Do we really all need to do that out loud in order to be at this level you're talking about? Do you need to be talking constantly? Is that what you're saying? No. You do not need to talk constantly. As a matter of fact, you can be silent hour after hour and fully express yourself. Buddha was not talking under the bow tree. He was being talked to. He was being talked to. Who do you think was talking to him? The tree. The tree. No, the tree wasn't talking to him. That's why he sat under the tree. Somebody was quiet. Buddha was not quiet. This demonic assault upon him was internal voices.

[67:13]

There's plenty of talking around, but you don't have to talk out loud. However, you are welcome at any time without raising your hand to talk. But raising your hand is nice too. Corinne. Sort of going from what Elizabeth I'm hoping that other people have this too, but I certainly have a lot more than one thought going, it seems like, at the same time. And what I express or don't express seems to go with sort of the latest fad of the week that I have. Like, either I'm going to agree with people and I'm going to express the part of me that is positive and that's going to agree with them. Yes. Or I'm in a mood that I'm going to express the other thoughts that maybe won't agree with them. And whichever one I do, I feel that feeling of, damn it, I didn't express myself.

[68:16]

And I feel like the only way of expressing myself honestly would be to continually say that. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know is sort of the only honest expression I speak to have. Well, then do that for a while. Do people get to a point where they don't have different thoughts and there seems to be no way to express these thoughts? Well, they're not consistent thoughts. So, what is your question? I don't know. You had to say what? I don't know. But I think we all understood you did. That made sense to us, didn't it? Yeah. That made sense. You seemed like that was on the mark. It didn't seem like some program you had, a policy.

[69:19]

It just seemed to come right out of there. That was fine. Now, do you have a question? Yes. Oh, now it's yes. Okay, yes. Do people get to a point, or is there a way of getting to a point where you have one expression in your mind? Yes. How? I just showed you twice, three times, four times, five times, six times. Did you see it? Are you seeing me express myself one thought at a time? Are you seeing this? This is happening right now. This is what's going on. I'm doing this right now. That's the way I live. I am that type of person you're wondering if you get to that point of being like me. Yes, I do. How did you learn to do that? How did I learn? By practice. If you watch me, you can do the same thing. It comes with being a human being. And it takes guts, too.

[70:20]

Because you have to be, you have to be that one over there, moment after moment, expressing what you have to say. And it can be, I don't, you can sort of warm up an I don't know for a while, if you want to, and see if that's really true. I don't say that very often myself, but I can say it. And I often say it to my wife. But primarily because she asked me very difficult questions. Occasionally I know the answer and she says, how did you know that? And I say, Zazen. And sometimes she doesn't say, how did I know that? She just says, do you know that because of Zazen? And I say, yes. But like I say, she has really difficult, ordinarily I just express myself, I don't, people aren't asking me those kinds of questions. Okay?

[71:23]

So you can do that, anytime you're ready. In the meantime, just sort of like, you know, do whatever you're doing now. But definitely that is definitely possible to express Martin. I just wanted to ask Erin if she could give an example of two thoughts at the same time. Well, since Martian studied psychology, I would imagine that he's going to say that one cannot have two at the same time. Well, you can have a thought that's called two thoughts. It feels as if I can want to say something loving and hurtful to someone at the same time. Definitely. And that is a thought. I know that feeling. What do you think, Mark? Ton? It's one thought, it's not two thoughts. Yeah, it's one thought. It's a conflicting thought. It's a conflictive emotion. It's a conflict. It's a contradiction. It's one thought or the other. It's not both or the other.

[72:25]

You can't think the same thought. Well, or you can put it, you can say it another way, is that it's recommended that you try on the meditation of one thought at a time. and see if you can see that happen. It seems to be, it's recommended to, you know, Buddhist meditation wouldn't exactly say that's the way it is, but rather that's the way people have found it to be, and that way of meditating, in some ways, there's a whole, you can get a lot of help with that. Well, maybe it's important, and then I think I said, I think what I said was, I feel like I'm thinking two thoughts at the same time. Right, so that's a feeling, that beauty. a sense you have of two thoughts at once. Because if they weren't half... Well, anyway, think about it. And you can see that you could also see it as... Rather than say you're wrong, you could also see it this other way. It is now... I've just got a signal from the teleprompter that it's almost time to end the class.

[73:33]

Now, so we'll study... So you understand how to practice now? But remember, although you may understand, don't expect this to be easy. And remember, you do not have to talk between now and next week, and you can still express yourself fully every moment without saying a word. However, sometimes you might have something to say, and I recommend that you check out if it's good, and if it's good, please say it. Please say it. And then when you say it, try to see if you feel like that really truly expresses yourself. And if it doesn't, what would? And would that be better? I mean, would that be also good? And if it's more you within the realm of good, it's more virtuous. It has more the virtue of meditating on yourself. Studying yourself. Studying yourself. That's what Buddhism is about. Study the self. Study the self. And then forget the self. Okay? And then maybe you can start studying Case 44. And maybe next week we can get into it. If you study it.

[74:34]

I would also recommend that you memorize the stories. That's good. And if you don't want to memorize it, really express yourself. And you're not wanting to do it. Are we going to start over in 44? Start over from the beginning of me? Yeah. Yeah. We're most of the way through it. We're most of the way through it, yeah. But it's such a good case, and I like the numbers, 44. I hope during this class to get to case 48. That'd be a lot. That'd be a lot. But it's such a nice one. I hope to do 44, or 5, or 6, or 7, or 8, 5. No, I can't do it. Sorry. But this summer, I hope to get to hit 48. Any other questions before we conclude? Is it the refuges in the Zen director? The practical people. And everybody can go over the zendo and do the refuges if they want to.

[75:36]

But the practice period, please, go even if you don't want to. No, I'm just kidding. If you don't want to, don't go. Okay?

[75:43]

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