And like I said the other day, if somebody said that Zen was not just psychology, would you agree? And if somebody said Zen was just psychology, would you agree? You wouldn't? Okay, so what else is it besides psychology? Philosophy. Religion. What's the difference between psychology and philosophy? Psychology is the study of... In Zen terms, it's a hard distinction to make. In conventional Western terms, psychology is the study of the mind, and philosophy is the study of life.

[01:26]

I mean, that's the roots of the word. If you accept the premise that all of the life we encounter is just our mind, As far as I could, everything that's in the arts, psychology, actually, investigates. And maybe it's more flexible than that. Any other comments? Yes? I think that psychology and philosophy are actually the same kind of activity, except that psychology is applied and hopefully involves individual dialogue. Psychology involves individual dialogue. In Western terms, I think philosophy includes psychology, but psychology doesn't include philosophy, in the sense that philosophy is above all the disciplines.

[02:44]

It's the love of knowledge. Psychology would like to be above all the disciplines. It would like to be, you say? That's what a lot of people that are philosophers like to do, is they like to be in a position above the rest of the disciplines. I know that's what you're saying, but what I'm saying is that the people who go into philosophy are those who like to think that way. The other people don't necessarily agree with that, right? And now even some philosophers realize that what philosophy has tried to do is get into that kind of position vis-à-vis other disciplines, namely to be the one that overarches the rest. And philosophy has been, for a lot of philosophers, a choice of a type of work which lacks certain kind of benefits, but one of the kind of benefits it does have is that it has the self-congratulatory quality of, we are the arbiters of what knowledge is.

[03:46]

We are the ones who decide what is knowledge and what isn't. Question from the audience Did they decide what is truth and what isn't? Well, then from there you go to what's truth and what is ultimate existence and these kinds of things. Then we would say that the other schools, other types of study will depend on our work. But now some philosophers are willing to admit that in some sense what they're doing is is going into a kind of work where that's part of what you can, as a human being, get out of it, namely some kind of high status vis-a-vis other kinds of study. And in other words, they're questioning whether that's just the motivation, a human motivation of people to go into it, or whether that's really what psychology is about, or what philosophy is about. Does that make sense to you? Yes, it does. In other words, that's pretty sophisticated of psychologists, philosophers, to recently come out with that.

[04:50]

that understanding of what they're doing, they're catching themselves in the act, so to speak. But in the past they have had a good position in that way. Philosophers lack, as I say, some fun they don't get into so much, but they get this nice thing as if they… Well, it's a Ph.D., right? Well, for any science, the problem is the Ph.D. Some of the people like that so much that they're willing to forsake other kinds of fun. But I would like to bring up something else, and that is, I would suggest that psychology has to do with the behavior of living organisms. And sometimes they'll extend it a little bit, they have comparative psychology, so it's studying the behavior of animals too, and so on.

[06:03]

And that's the study of mind, some would say, but some would say, what's mind? That's just a construct. Some people say, there isn't really a mind, there's just an implied thing, all we can see is certain behaviors, and we study these behaviors, but others would say, we're studying mind. And philosophy is not just studying the behavior of human beings, or even of living creatures, but also includes the behavior of truth. It would include the way we have knowledge about the stars, not just the way we behave in relationship to them, but what is the basis of knowledge of the stars. Then you get into things like realism, subjectivism, critical idealism, or monism.

[07:11]

These are various kinds of philosophical positions that you can have about the nature of knowledge, the nature of perception, and so on, which is a little bit different from psychology. Psychology doesn't usually propose one of those systems or not. Psychology doesn't necessarily get into whether or not the object which the person is relating to is real or not. So also cosmology, I think, is maybe more closely related to philosophy than it is to psychology. So what things do we do around here in Buddhist practice, what things are psychological and what things are philosophical? What things are spiritual and what things are psychological? philosophy or psychology?

[08:28]

What is the difference between philosophy and religion? Maybe we could say that the difference between, not necessarily the difference between philosophy and religion, but that in Buddhism part of our religious activity is simply to enact truth or to enact philosophy. However, as a spiritual practice, we do not enact psychology. What would it mean to enact psychology? It's redundant. You don't like, okay, one, two, three. Well, here I am. And that's not psychology either.

[09:34]

Psychology is not to act psychologically. Psychology is not that you exhibit behaviors. Psychology is to study those behaviors. It's the observation part that we do. It's the study of the psychological behaviors. That would be psychology. And I don't agree with you that psychologists do not want to make systems of their observations about behaviors. I would agree with you that they have tried and they failed. But in the late 40s, they actually thought they were going to be able to do it. By the time I was studying psychology, so they got so much more data that they just completely blew the fuses on all the theories. But they did think that they could have a general theory there for a while after the Second World War. That's right.

[10:35]

But that should happen in all human activities. including touch football and teleology, is that the living organism and study should constantly be pushed beyond, if they're in touch with their vitality, they'll be pushed beyond some kind of abiding in certain positions. The miraculous thing, or the wonderful, the terrible thing, is that people somehow magically seem to get stuck, even though they're changing all the time. And they do it. So what are some of the psychological things we do in practice and what are some of the spiritual things we do? As opposed to philosophy.

[11:38]

Or in spiritual things, what spiritual things do we do that are based on psychology and what spiritual things do we do that are based on philosophy? What's an example of a psychological teaching? What's an example of a philosophical teaching? We're not watching health, we're just watching feelings arise. Watching yourself. Watching the mind produce feelings. If you have a problem with one of the monks, you should take care of that problem right away.

[12:49]

Yes. Practicing the precepts could be psychological and spiritual? I was actually splitting spiritual and psychological separately. You can see them operating separately. What about the causal nexus? accord with the causal nexus? What's that talking about? What kind of instruction is that?

[13:49]

Is that a psychological instruction? Philosophical? Spiritual? What would you say? Spiritual. Spiritual. Why not psychological? So what we're doing in Zen Center now, it seems, is that we're considering the psychological stuff, and that's part of the causal nexus. It could have been philosophy, it could have been trivial things that we considered, but it just seems that the point where we can become liberated is the psychological stuff. It seems that we can be liberated with the psychological stuff or through psychological practices?

[14:58]

It just seems that the causal nexus of the people that are living now, you know, focuses on the psychological stuff. So a Zen person or a spiritual person would use whatever arises as the entry point from which they can be liberated. Or what's an example in spiritual practice? Service. Service. One question. For instance, when we sit Satsang, I mean, Satsang itself should be considered the form of truth. But the person who sits Satsang, or when we sit Satsang, we experience all kinds of psychological processes going on while we are sitting. So for one side you have the form itself, it's truth. In another sense, you experience all the psychological stuff. Right. So where is the spiritual practice there?

[15:59]

I want to make a case that service is not spiritual, but is psychological. Well, first of all, can you make a case for service as spiritual? No, what I want to say is I think you can't separate them. Yes, but can you make a case for service as being spiritual? You can, sure. Howard, what would be the case of calling service It promotes our union, unity. It promotes unity? How does it do that, psychologically or spiritually? Spiritually, through action, not through study. Not through study of states of mind, it's through action. But you could analyze it psychologically, describe how it does that. In fact, you can't separate any of these things. You can't be spiritual without being psychological at the same time. It's spiritual because it's ritual. And what's the difference between ritual and study? What's the difference between observing an activity and going through a ritual activity?

[17:07]

What's the difference between those two? Well, like, you know, you walk, they hear you say, okay, now my body's going down to the ground, or now I'm angry, or now I feel groovy, or now I feel, you know, kind of connected with all the other people here, or today I feel isolated from these people, that's one kind of observation. Another one is, I'm bowing, or not even I'm bowing, just bowing. A ritual activity to be outside yourself, so you could, you're given an opportunity to see yourself by being not, like, you're bowing. to the chair and bow on your knees and get an air so you might bow everybody you know put you outside of yourself and see yourself It seems more like… And how are they coming into contact?

[18:33]

They're both doing the same thing. Well, they're both doing the same thing. Okay. But that, I would suggest, that thing you just said is kind of like a… It seems to be a psychological justification or a psychological explanation for that union. I didn't mean that. Okay, you didn't mean that, but that could be one of the psychological explanations of what service is. In that way, service is psychological, in the sense that you realize, through the ritual act, you realize a certain teaching, which is called the teaching of the oneness of body and mind. The oneness of body and mind is a teaching. It's a truth which if you try to enact it in your life it has liberating possibilities. It is also a philosophical position and you can just uphold it there psychologically.

[19:36]

But what would be a spiritual way of looking at bowing? Just bowing? No goal. Just bowing? It's a mystery. It's a surrender. It's an act of faith. It's a mystery. An act of faith? A mystery? Yeah. See, doing it as a mystery is not really psychological. Or you do it, or like, you know, oftentimes, this is the spiritual or transcendent dimension of, for example, bowing. You can bow as a psychological thing, and you can demonstrate how there is psychological study there, and that psychological study can be liberating. But you can also bow kind of like, as I was saying the other day, with a strong sense of irrelevance. Irrelevance, this has nothing to do with anything. This has no effect on anything, and nothing has any effect on this. This has been done from beginningless time.

[20:36]

Deluded beings have been doing this from beginningless time, and they will never stop. And as long as deluded beings do this ritual act, the Buddha's way will continue. This is not a psychological statement. This is a spiritual statement. And it coexists with the same act where you could be analyzing it psychologically. And it's not even a statement when you usually do it, it's a statement, now I'm saying it, but actually you just do it. And you do it with a sense of irrelevance. Not irreverence, but irrelevance in terms of, I don't care what this has to do with anything, and I don't know what it has to do with anything, and anybody who says it's got to do with something, something's got to do with this, or something bears on this, they can say whatever they want, they're just talking. What I'm doing has no relationship to anything. That's not very psychological. That's an example of not a psychological approach. Is it philosophical then? It sounds like it could be. When you talk about it, it's a philosophy or it's part of a philosophical system.

[21:40]

But when you just do it, then it's... The philosophical teaching behind what I just said, what is it? Dharmas are empty. Yeah, emptiness. emptiness, the teaching of emptiness, which you can realize as a result of psychological analysis. And once you establish emptiness, then you can act on it, which means you can do anything. And therefore, since you can do anything, why in the world would you be doing these things? Well, there's no reason. There's no reason. Or you can give any reason you want, you can say, because my teacher did. But that just That's just what you choose to say. You could say, because my teacher didn't. Or you could say, because I am. Or whatever you want. There's really not a psychological reason for it that you can have. You just do it. And you do it because they did it. Or not even. Actually, forget it. Because you just do it. And you know or you don't know. Or you tell yourself or you don't tell yourself why you do it.

[22:41]

But it's based on emptiness. The act is based on absolute freedom and perfect Buddhahood. which is not something you can psychologically experience. However, if you study your psychological experience, you can realize Buddhahood. Once realizing Buddhahood, then your practices are now spiritual. But you can't act them out any place but in the psychological realm. Because anything you do, or any place you act, can be seen psychologically. In other words, as soon as you start observing what you're acting, then you can say that's psychology. but your choice of standing erect in a zendo with your hands in shashu for a good portion of your life, this can be done from a spiritual point of view. Namely, you don't know why you're doing it. Nobody ever knew why you were doing it. Nobody ever knew why they were doing it. But many people have said why they're doing it. I mean, many people thought they knew, but that's just simply delusion.

[23:45]

anybody who knows why they're sitting up in the zendo is, whatever way they know, whatever that knowing is, it's just a delusion. And anybody who sits up in the zendo and doesn't know what they're doing up there, in other words, has no idea about it, that's called a special kind of delusion called some kind of trance, or blanking your consciousness out temporarily. Everybody that sits there either has a blank consciousness which is induced by some kind of compulsion and obsession, or you have some idea about what you're doing and you think about what you're doing. In other words, you're psychologically functioning, and one of the things you think about and feel about is what you're doing there in that room. That's just delusion. No one knows why you're up there and what you're doing. But everybody probably could tell you something about it. Everybody has some attitude about it. But, aside from that psychological study, we still do it. Even if you're not studying yourself psychologically or attaining liberation through psychology, you still do those forms.

[24:48]

However, if you just do those forms without some study or psychology, that will not work for very long. In other words, if you just do these things spiritually or just do them from the transcendent point of view. But, if you just do psychology, that won't work either. But what's working, though? I mean, when you talk about just doing it from a spiritual point of view, it won't work for very long. What is working that isn't working? By not working, I mean... people will get discouraged and there'll be lots of unhappiness and misery but that's not really not working either that's just unfortunate result of not taking care of certain things which are speaking to you loudly so I think you wouldn't go very long without if you were sensitive you wouldn't go very long without hearing that there's some psychological attention needing to be paid and if you didn't pay attention to that

[25:50]

then you have troubles, but those troubles aren't exactly not working. There's a dharma called, this happens when you don't pay attention to that, that's dharma too. So by not working, what I mean is that things will go in a very rough way. It'll be in a kind of a, get your comeuppance, that's too many foreigners to say that, but you get some kind of negative retribution if you practice spiritually too long. Or in too long means you keep practicing spiritually even when there's a request for you to become involved more intimately in psychological analysis. That's what I mean by not working. But still, that really is working too. So nothing you can do can stop the way it's working. And that's a kind of spiritual position. And you don't have to stop the spiritual practice. You don't have to, but what I'm saying is, what I said before was a good example, is that spiritually I know that no matter what happens, it will work out perfectly.

[26:57]

That's a philosophical position. Based on emptiness, everything is always working perfectly. Everything is completely free, and if things go this way, that's perfect working, and if you go like that and you spin this way, that's perfect working. Everything is working perfectly according to the way things work. And you can take that position and practice and enact it ritually too long, in the sense that you will be counterproductive to what you think, what you would like to have happen psychologically. For example, psychologically, you wouldn't want all the people in this valley to die of, I don't know, some kind of flu poisoning and have the place burned down. Right? Spiritually, it'd be okay. Spiritually, it'd be fine. You would simply get up and go do something about it spiritually. I mean, why make a distinction? Why to act in that way that's not spiritual? Well, again, the distinction I'm making is that you can say that everything's working out perfectly.

[28:05]

Which means you're getting up and going out and putting a fire on it that's working for you, or not putting a fire out or whatever, but... Yeah, in other words, what I'm saying is that you can override your psychological calls. For example, your psychological call is, I think I should put this fire out. Your spiritual claim is, I think this is fine. And you let the building burn down. What about spiritual claim? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's following the spiritual imperative and not listening to psychological reports. Namely, I feel like I should put this fire out, but it's all empty so it'll be just fine. Sounds to me like that spiritual imperative is psychological in nature. I mean, you would be kidding yourself to be in there. I mean, there'd be a problem there. You'd be psychologically... It's inorganic. It doesn't take everything into consideration. Right. It's not total. Right. So it's bad in spiritual practice from a psychological point of view.

[29:08]

Well, it just doesn't happen that way. I'm sorry, but I'm a little confused about how we're using the word spiritual here, because it seems to shift around quite a bit. And the way I'm hearing it now is in the sense of the idea of how we divorce from experience in human life. Yeah. Well, it's not divorced, it's emptied out, you know, it's from the point of view of emptiness or freedom, you see. But emptiness, freedom, or any other thing, it's only an idea, it's only an idea that is not connected to life until it's an act of experience. So, you know, if it's an idea that you're holding on to, I don't see how it can be spiritual, alive. It's... I mean... I'm not saying it's... It's a real emptiness. I mean, you can't even have real emptiness without experiencing emptiness.

[30:09]

You can think about it, but how do you see it as something else? Well, see what I'm trying to do is... I think that... I have this feeling like it would be good for us to become able to distinguish between these two poles which, in fact, they're not really separate, but if you can't distinguish between these two things that aren't separate, then I think it's not so good. I think it's better to be able to distinguish between these two different realms. And that's what I'm trying to bring up here. Yes? I think your point is very important. The very word spiritual means life. I mean, spiritual is life. To be spiritual means to be super alive. And that always means that experience is the key word for being alive. The word spiritual comes from Naima and breath. And that's where it comes from. To distinguish it from, which has caused a lot of trouble, not from body, but from death.

[31:15]

I mean, they had a word for body, if they wanted to say body, but they say breath. And spiritual, at least in the Christian tradition, means being alive. I think the point you're making would be a lot easier to see if you use the word philosophical instead of spiritual. Because spiritual is freighted with other sorts of things. I mean, when you're talking about having an idea, being true to an idea that everything is empty and therefore letting I don't know. I mean, to some people that would be a fulfillment of a spiritual impulse, and to other people it wouldn't, but that clearly is following out a philosophical idea, and sacrificing, as you said, the psychological idea.

[32:22]

Let me give you a simple example. Following the actions of the community, is the body and mind have dropped off. To accord with the actions of all the monks is the body and mind of Buddha. Okay? Now, if you practice that way, then some very psychological things will happen to you while you do that. And yet you go ahead with that kind of practice. maybe regardless of psychological content and your current opinions. That's not exactly psychological study. Right? You're just following the schedule. You're behaving psychologically, of course, all the while, but your motivation to follow this ritual, to follow this schedule, is that you're enacting a teaching, which is you're enacting something which some teacher has said is the truth.

[33:26]

You're putting the truth into action. Meantime, you're functioning psychologically all the time. Now, you can practice that way, year after year, and very psychological stuff can come up, and you keep practicing that way, regardless of the psychological stuff that's coming up. Okay? This is possible. Can you believe that? Is this like not picking and choosing, kind of? Yeah, you like to do not picking and choosing as a truth. You can try that on. Okay? Meantime, inside various picking and choosing is going on which you do something with. Now this can go on for quite a while. It can go on, in fact, for a period of time until finally you might even notice that this practice of following the community, which is supposed to be body and mind dropped off, you're not so sure you're doing it. And actually if you ask, but you forgot to ask your teacher also what the teacher thought of how you were doing. And teacher actually thought, well, actually you're not doing it. And really you should go see a psychiatrist.

[34:29]

But I didn't tell you that, sorry. Because you didn't ask. But this is quite possible, as a matter of fact, this actually happens right here in old America, that people keep following some teaching and disregard certain psychological work, certain pathologies which are emerging in their psychological functioning while they're doing spiritual practice. And to address those pathologies and those psychologies or to address those behavior systems and those complexes is a different kind of practice than just following the schedule, which is said to be body and mind dropped off, which is the same as enlightening self and others. And this enlightenment goes beyond itself, constantly, through the continued practice. Okay? Just to follow that according to that way, without understanding what you're doing, and just do it, is a kind of

[35:31]

life, but you might be missing something, and what kind of things could you miss, and I'm trying to get some kind of expression of what would they be like, and what I haven't mentioned in that description is they are a psychological type of functioning, and they are the kind of work which we usually call Abhidharma. This thing of do what the other monks do, and don't do better than them or worse than them, but particularly don't do better than them. These kinds of instructions are not psychological analysis, right? And by what we usually call, they aren't Abhidharma type of instructions. Abhidharma instructions would be more like, you're aware of. your body, your breath, you're aware of your feelings, emotions, and you're aware of the systems of thought, like skandhas, ayatanas, dhatus, various kinds of causation among those psychological functions, and so on and so forth. You see, it's a different type of work, and what I'm also saying is that we should do both, we have to do both actually.

[36:36]

You can't just do spiritual Zen without psychology, you can't do psychology without spiritual stuff, because the spiritual stuff only goes so far, and then you have to do something which is irrelevant, which is beyond your conception, which you do do even though various different kinds of psychological content are spinning around inside of you. But the error in one side is you think you can figure it out, the error in the other side is you don't think you have to be bothered with such things as figuring out things or dealing with what's going on with yourself. Maybe it's hard to distinguish these two sides, because as soon as you get one case, you see the other case is involved. As soon as you get one side, the other side is involved. Yeah? Did you have your hand raised, or are you just scratching your face? Yes? Doesn't the one, do I understand correctly, that the one is complementary to the other? I mean, to follow, to be in accord with the rest of the monks and the schedule, has some effect on the psychological It has an effect on psychological, yeah.

[37:40]

It completely purifies your psychological situation if you do it right. But the reason why you can't do that practice right, if you can't, is because you have to do certain psychological work. If you do that psychological work then you can do the practice properly and when you do the practice properly it takes care of your psychology, your psychological functioning. Shouldn't the practice include those psychological aspects? I think it should, yeah. It should address them and it should address them, yeah, period. How you address them could be to use some therapist which isn't in the monastery, but that doesn't mean you're leaving the practice. Just like what I've been talking about reading the Odyssey is for me, a study of the Western psyche, which I feel we have to do. It's not outside practice for me at all.

[38:44]

As a matter of fact, I think it may offer us some subtle Abhidharma instruction that we can't find in the Abhidharma books. Let's see if I can think of another example. Here's a good example. This is another way I can see what I've imparted to you, what is the fundamental teaching of of the ancestor Daido-shin. What's his fundamental teaching? His fundamental is Buddha's mind, and then second is, practicing the One Practice Samadhi, those are his things. Okay? So there's two things, two main things he teaches us. Mind of Buddha as primary, that's an example of a spiritual teaching. What's his teaching? Buddha's mind.

[39:45]

Got it? That's it. That's a spiritual teaching, pretty clearly spiritual. But that doesn't mean that you don't, you know, as soon as you hear it, you've already transcended everything. But that doesn't mean you don't have to deal with psychological life now. The next one is, now, to practice the one-practice samadhi, or practice the samadhi of oneness, as taught in the Lankavatara Sutra. So what is the practice of oneness, or the one-practice samadhi, what is it? Or would you describe it? Well he said actually, to contemplate ultimate reality, that's what he said, which means you can say contemplate emptiness if you want. Focusing on Dhamma is focusing on ultimate reality, which is the same as having no objects of thought.

[40:52]

There you've got it, that's spiritual practice and spiritual instruction, I would say, an example of it. Yeah, definitely. The moral activity is very psychological. It has to do with your conduct. That's traditionally the province also of philosophy and spirituality. Psychology pretends to be free of making those judgments. I want to address that, but I just want to say, now that I've told you an example of some spiritual practices, for example, contemplate ultimate reality, or contemplate ultimate reality through awareness of the uniform quality of existence.

[42:20]

Now what? Now what happens when I tell you that? Does something happen? I think about how to do it. He thinks about how to do it. Any other things that happen? Still nothing over there? Is that it? Only one person has something, they've got a nothing and he's thinking about how to do it. Anybody else here? Okay, everything's happening. I get anxious about how to do it. Get anxious about how to do it? Confusion. Confusion. I come up with causation. You come up with causation. You have an object to pursue.

[43:28]

What is the object to pursue? The subject of meditation, whether you think contemplate ultimate reality or contemplate emptiness or whatever, you're injecting something in front of you, there's something there, it's not open. Right, and this is a particularly interesting something that you just put in front of yourself because what it is is that you shouldn't put anything in front of yourself, which you then put in front of yourself again. So what happens in short? Short-circuiting. Short-circuiting, what's that called? It's like you get thrown into the realm of psychology. These are all psychological stuff that these people have said. That's psychological stuff. That's the stuff that you study in psychology.

[44:31]

Something happens to you after that, maybe. Now, Lee said he tried it, and he got something different. But everybody else, I think, it's pretty easy to see that what they came up with was some kind of psychological function, something you could study introspectively, get some sense of what was going on with you psychologically. Psychologically means something's happening that you could... some kind of psychic phenomena is happening that you could study. And that's not really a problem, necessarily, in terms of the practice, because you don't have to turn that stuff off for the practice to occur. And yet, as soon as you hear the instructions of the practice, you're likely to shift over and try to figure out how to approach the practice actively. And then that's psychology again. Now, it is possible not to have a psychological reaction in those circumstances, but many times there will be. In other words, not having a psychological reaction, it might be just that you simply do it, and you don't even know how you do it.

[45:54]

You don't even say you do it, but you also don't say you don't do it. And you're completely sure you're doing it, and there's no psychological props that you can use to verify it. In fact, you are doing They wouldn't practice Samadhi. And that's a case of a pure spiritual reaction to a spiritual instruction. It can happen. But it won't be for long, because pretty soon you start functioning psychologically again, then you have the problem of, again, how to practice the same way on that psychological phenomenon. And skill and means... The original teaching was a kind of what you might call a one-vehicle teaching, a teaching you can practice all the time, under all circumstances, and which is really, in fact, it is really the only thing that practice can finally be anyway, something like that.

[46:54]

Namely, practice can really only be Buddha's mind. It can't be some kind of, finally, something you do to realize Buddha's mind, or that you have access to it, or to whatever, it's just actually Buddha's mind. or a practice which connects you to Buddha's mind through non-duality. all the practice would come down to something like that. However, we live in a very complex life field, such that we are producing such a great variety of material that it's almost impossible for us to stay with something like that for very long. So then we have to learn how to use skill and means to apply to the psychological functioning we're dealing with. And a lot of that is psychological study. And the psychological study then becomes bona fide spiritual refuge or a way to return through those practices.

[47:57]

Could you give a definition of spiritual? Well, I think it would be hard to say something that applies to, for example, everything, to life rather than self. to life rather than self, not just dealing with the breath that's going through me, but breath, period. In other words, something that transcends the self. Like breath. Breath transcends the self. Even though the self can think it owns it or gives it away, in fact the breath is just going along there. So in that way also philosophy transcends the self. Philosophy is not just a psychological concern. It's a cosmic or a total life system concern. To live your life on that scale is to live a transcendent spiritual life or a life based on philosophy.

[49:02]

For example, philosophy of emptiness or philosophy of impermanence or philosophy of selflessness. To live according to those things. To live that way. It's a spiritual life. And to appreciate these teachings are spiritual teachings, are spiritual realizations. Not necessarily psychological. Impermanence is not necessarily, you wouldn't necessarily come to it by psychological observations. And again, the reason why I'm bringing this up is because I think that these two dimensions are going on all the time, and in practice we're skewed towards one or the other. And I think sometimes we go sort of way over, primarily on one side, sometimes for years. And of course that's not proper practice, and it sounds ridiculous that you say it a certain way, But in fact, it can happen. You can be off, sort of in one direction. You can lean in one direction for a long time and look at people's posture.

[50:08]

You can lean over in one way and you say, well, of course, it's ridiculous. I mean, I would just get up and put the fire out, right? But, in fact, some people just lean over there and let the fire go out for years. I mean, love fires go on for years, but they lean for years and years and years, and they feel perfectly comfortable and they think they're straight. Or they lean the other way, psychologically for years and years and years, and can't do something like gong bao or offer incense or do something that's based on nothing. I mean, do something that's based on the insubstantiality of all actions. That would allow you to do offering sense or not offering sense, anyway, anything. In other words, your psychological functioning is not stopping you at all. But you have to be honest about whether you're jumping over your psychological functioning, pushing it down, not listening to it, or whether actually the way it's happening is saying, go right ahead, sweetheart.

[51:12]

Sometimes your psychological functioning says, go up there and sit down and do something irrelevant. that's completely okay with me, I'm very happy for you to do that, you know, no problem. You can put everything into that, that'll be just fine, nothing's sick about that. Or you can be going up and doing a practice like that, and telling yourself, this is spirituality, or this is Buddhist practice, or this is helping all people, and inside you, you really don't feel that way. And you're, and, and, and you're not listening to that. And you're continuing to go ahead. Do you see what I'm driving at? It seems to me that, at least when I get out of Bodhidharma is, sit, right through it, right? Just ignore all that stuff, just cut right through all that psychological science. That's what I get out of Bodhidharma. Yeah, Bodhidharma is kind of

[52:16]

His teaching is kind of a spiritual teaching. And he gives you an actual physical way to implement what he's teaching. Because what he's teaching is just this fact. Just go sit there. And there's no merit in it. There's nothing holy about it, even. Because we now build it up as an old teacher. He probably went through 20 or 30 years of doing other stuff before that. Right. And it's possible that many people would have come to see him. Sounds like they did. And he provided such a practice, which was so hard, that anybody who hadn't done a lot of psychological work would not be able to follow him. The nature of his practice probably would weed out anybody who had psychological work to do. And if they didn't have to do, then he would just sort of say, Oh, come on, sit next to me then. I've been looking for some company to do this strange practice. But yes, Bodhidharma, the way we have Bodhidharma represented to us, and that's an essentially spiritual presentation, it's irrelevant to whether it's snowing or not, whether you're fed or not, whether you're upset or not.

[53:32]

He still continued to function psychologically while he was doing that, I believe, but he had taken care of all that stuff so that it wasn't sick for him to continue sitting there, even though his legs rotted off. It wasn't ill, it was in life, he was good, he was compassionate. In other words, he was taking care of himself too. But he didn't have very many disciples because almost nobody is ready to do such a purely spiritual practice because to do that kind of spiritual practice you have to have already taken care of lots of psychological investigations. You really need to know your psychology so that you know what it is saying to you. And maybe it's saying, go right ahead and sit. I'm satisfied. You take care of me every minute. Just your attention to us psychic forces. You're constantly paying homage to us and taking care of us. You can sit there forever. Now that you ask me, you should go see a psychiatrist.

[54:51]

I'm wondering, one, traditionally, how did it work in Japan? In Dogen's time, where did these people work? I just told you. Tell me again. The practice would eliminate people who had psychological work to do. to a farm, to a garden, to a different temple. Would this be some skillful means? Yes, skillful means, like you can't get in. Or you get in and you soon fall off the practice, you can't stay with it. And they have a nice big society with lots of nice people who can help you work on your psychological stuff in other ways. You know, there's many, many niches, and other kinds of Buddhism, too, where they deal with these screens and stuff, for example. Some kind of Buddhism will deal more with those screens, those psychological screens. But Bodhidharma, as far as we can tell by the image of him and whatever's been said about what he said and his close disciples, they weren't into those screens.

[56:03]

In other words, you had to be very healthy to start practicing with Bodhidharma. Already, healthy means you have to know yourself quite well psychologically before you can start doing that practice. And that's sort of what I've been saying this practice period. See, that's the practice of substance. And if you squeeze people down on it, people will pop out because they can't stay with such a practice because of psychological reactions. They have to deal with these psychological reactions, then we have to see these psychological reactions, no, we have to see dealing with these psychological reactions as practice, or as skill and means by which we re-enter the practice. But traditionally in Zen, the way they dealt with people was just to make such a hard gate that only psychotics and healthy people could get through. And psychotics, you have other ways of finding out. Once they get through, you have ways of finding out about them, too. But a normal neurotic will not be able to do it, because it's just too ridiculously uncomfortable.

[57:06]

And why is it uncomfortable? Because of what happens psychologically. the psychological experience will be so uncomfortable that you will be stopped, unless you deal with that psychological stuff. And if you deal with that psychological stuff, you become very healthy, and you can stand the experiences that you'll be put through. That's the way they traditionally did it, and we're not doing that in America, because if we did that, none of us would be here. I see it that we have to provide something more, at this point anyways. I'm saying I'm willing and happy to provide a practice more like the fourth patriarch, namely lots of skill and means. That's what this class is about. And part of the skill and means here is to develop an ability to discriminate between the practice of suchness, and when you try to do it, and your psychological reactions. to be able to tell which is which, and to be able to not put down psychological reactions, but call a spade a spade and say, I have to deal with this and take care of it, and when you take care of it you can come back to the basic practice.

[58:16]

So I'm willing to provide and discuss the development of skill and means by which we can all stay in the path which surrounds this central cord, which is this one practice, samadhi, or Buddha's mind, yes. That's also my understanding of the story that keeps coming up with that. On one hand, it was the son's unrestriction. So in America, if you're in a position of being a teacher of Buddhism, then you see children who you recognize who don't recognize themselves as Buddhist children, so you say, okay, well, shovel shit, deal with the psychological stuff.

[59:31]

Or you see children who The other case would be, I guess, what would be the other case? I'll answer your question first. What I was trying to get at before, I don't know if morality is really the right word, but it's... Pay attention to them, but then not do anything about it. And there's a third thing, you can pay attention to them and do something about it. Right. You could be sitting there and, for example, you could be sitting there and saying, well, I probably shouldn't move, right? No matter what, I won't move. I decided not to move, and a fire is not going to change that. And that might be a perfectly good, healthy, enlightened thing to decide.

[60:34]

Now, if inside you have feelings like, Jesus, it's getting awfully hot, or this is stupid, or, you know, am I just sort of some kind of a weird person, and I'm going crazy to sit here? This is obvious. And you have those feelings, and you hear them, and you say, well, these are just the feelings I have, actually. I'm just going to keep sitting. Or you could have those feelings and say, oh, I think I'll get up. Well, you get up, but you get up because you had some feelings. Well, I don't know. Well, I do. The fact of the matter is, if somebody's about to trip and fall, you don't have time to go through all that. You catch them. You do have time to go through all that because you're very fast. You do go through that, I think. You think, oh, the person's falling and I'm going to get up and help him. And you just... That's not right. Anyway, I believe that you do think of things before you do them.

[61:40]

I believe that. But if you don't experience it that way, I also believe that's not your experience. I believe everything you always think of before you do it, physical or verbal. I believe that. I mean, in other words, I believe that teaching. What you're breathing right now, Breathing is voluntary. Body and mind are one. Yes?

[62:52]

How do you know or express if you think you're doing one practice of Samadhi? Do you know? Yeah. You do not know that you're doing it. It's not something you know you do, it's a matter of something that you have no doubt about doing. It's like that boy, he does not know that he's He never really knows that he's the son of his father. You don't really know that. Like you know you have some data that proves it to you, you just believe it or you don't. You just are certain about it or you doubt it. There's no criteria or way that you can establish that you're doing the One Practice Samadhi. There's no criteria or standard that you can apply to yourself to check to see if you're Buddha. That's one of the nice things about Buddha, is that's when you don't have to do that anymore.

[63:54]

You could be really deluded. You could be sitting there thinking that you're doing it and you... But then you know you're sitting there having a delusion that you're doing it. I thought she was going to say, this is catching the baby with the bathwater. Do you see that? Yeah. It's perfectly all right to sit there and think that you're doing the One Practice Samadhi, that's perfectly all right, but you should know that whenever you think that you're doing the One Practice Samadhi, or think that you're not doing the One Practice Samadhi, or think that you're maybe doing the One Practice Samadhi, or etc., or think that somebody else maybe or is doing the One Practice Samadhi, these are examples of deluded thinking. Okay? And to see that all these different kinds of deluded thinking are the same, that's the One Practice Samadhi. But, there's an additional thing which is to realize and think that you're doing the One Practice Samadhi now that you've realized that all these things are delusion.

[64:59]

That additional thing is just a delusion. It's not the One Practice Samadhi. You see the difference? That's not because you're thinking of that. It's not because you're thinking it now. It's just awareness of reality, namely, that thought thinking is delusion. That's all it is. Or, seeing that all these thoughts are empty, etc. In other words, that everything, no matter what's happening, it is always unitary. It's always the same thing. It's always, no matter what you say about it, the same thing is always happening. And to live in awareness of that, which you can't be aware of it because your mind is part of it, but to be certain of that way of living is what we call Buddha's mind, or vamparita samadhi. And you may think, oh, I'm doing it. That is possible. It's not crossed off the list. But the main thing we emphasize is not that it's okay to think that you're doing the One Practice Samadhi, but rather that it's not necessary to think that.

[66:05]

So Buddhas don't necessarily think, oh, I'm Buddha. They don't necessarily think that, even though they are. They don't necessarily think that. Also, remember, it's okay if they do occasionally think. In other words, it wouldn't kill a Buddha to think that he or she was a Buddha. That would be all right. But they would know at that moment that they just had a deluded thought, which is quite similar to the thought they had just before that of, I'd like an ice cream cone. They wouldn't know they had a deluded thought, but they could say a deluded thought. Yeah, they could say it or whatever, but there wouldn't be knowing. There would just be a deluded thought. Yeah, there would be a deluded thought. And there would be no uncertainty about the deludedness of that thought. Or certainty. They would be certain, but not like knowing, as an object. They would be certain. Their certainty is ... Well, there would be certainty then, also, and a delusion.

[67:07]

No, certainty is not a thought, certainty is lack of doubt. Lack of doubt is actually not a dharma. Enlightenment, except in the Srivastava system, isn't really ... Nirvana is a dharma, but enlightenment is not a dharma. It's just the way dharmas are. So, a deluded thought or an idea that I'm Buddha, as just that, is what enlightenment is. Anyway, it's nine o'clock now, so I just... I hope you can see what I was trying to do tonight, in terms of telling the difference between these two different kinds of aspects of our practice. And Abhidharma is pretty much, mostly, it's about psychology, although it does have some philosophy.

[68:13]

For example, I was talking to Catherine about these beings, these intermediate beings that live between death and birth, called the Gandharvas. They're not actually psychological entities. eschatological or soteriological constructs. They're more theological entities than they are psychological entities, but they're part of the Abhidharma teaching. And there's other parts of Abhidharma teaching which are philosophical. So there's some philosophy and some psychology there. But the practice of the philosophy... A lot of what we do in Zen is practice. We put a philosophy into practice. The philosophy put into practice is the philosophy of the Prajnaparamita Sutras and the philosophy of the Lotus Sutra. That's the philosophy that a lot of the practices we do is enacting.

[69:17]

And that's fine, and we've been doing that for quite a while here. And I feel the weak point has been the lack of respect for the shit digging we have to do. Or another way to put it is the lack of respect for our own disbelief that we are Buddha's child, that I think a lot of us don't believe that really deeply, and we think we're not supposed to bring that up. But I think we should be honest. If we don't believe that we're Buddha's child, we should be honest. And if that's the case, then Buddha will give us skillful devices, like shoveling shit, which will help us believe that we're Buddha's child. And those are still included in the one vehicle, even though they look like other vehicles, temporarily. Does that make sense? And those practices, a lot of them may look like psychological practices, because what we're dealing with is our own reservations about being Buddha's child.

[70:26]

We're dealing with our own doubts, with our own experiences and psychic productions, which we cannot quite believe are the same as Buddha's mind. So we need to do some practices by which we can turn those around, or understand their emptiness, and then see that, yes, Buddha would be able to, this would be true for Buddha too. That therefore, I guess I am Buddha's child, oh yeah, okay. And after we have those kinds of experiences, then we can practice suchness, perhaps without dealing with that psychological stuff, because it's not there anymore, because there is no doubt anymore. And we really can see the uniform quality of all psychological functioning and behaving. Sincerely practice, you know, zazen. Not in a hypocritical way. Yes. I just wanted to ask a question then. What is this session about? Especially the extended one. What is... how does that deal with psychological stuff?

[71:29]

Why are we putting ourselves even more into the practice of processionists? You know, without... I don't quite understand. What is the philosophy behind that? The philosophy behind that? Yeah. In terms of what... Well... my experience will be, but I'm encouraging people then to be honest about what's going on. In other words, I don't want people to feel like, hmm, this is happening, I probably shouldn't go tell Rev about this because this doesn't sound so good. This sounds like I'm scared or I'm losing confidence in the practice or I think I'm crazy or And you know, some other things might come up. Many things will come up. Psychological things will come up. And then you go and you can go confess those things to your teacher and go say, this is happening.

[72:30]

Now, if you don't think you should bring that stuff up and you just sort of sit there and say, well, this is happening. you're certainly not going to talk to a teacher about, because it should be for a therapist. Well, you can say that. That's fine. If it's really true that it is for a therapist, but maybe it's not. That would be, and if you can do that realization during Sashin, that would be a perfectly fine realization to have during Sashin. Namely, having certain kinds of experiences, being able to identify them as psychological, and it's something a psychologist should be dealing with. This is psychological work. You just did it with a Zen teacher. Now, this teacher may feel that you need a certain kind of attention that's beyond his or her ability, or would strain their abilities, so maybe she'd go over there. But all this so far that I'm talking about is psychological work which is being done under the auspices of the Zen monastery.

[73:33]

Okay? Does that make sense? Doesn't look like it. You don't set it up just to do psychological work. You set it up for people to practice Buddhism, and in the process of practicing Buddhism, they do psychological work. I don't tell the person that they should start having doubts and confusions and get angry and stuff like that. They just do that, right? But they do that outside of Sesshin, too. Or I also don't tell them to do that then, either. People do this stuff, right? We don't set up Sesshin to make them do it. but they do it. And in the process of Sashin, maybe they tell a teacher about it, where they might not have told the teacher otherwise. And during that time, the teacher does some psychological assessment and diagnosis and discusses that with the student. Now, one way to bring it back to practice is what I just said, namely, that it is a practice that you're doing with the teacher to figure out your psychological situation, what you should do about it.

[74:53]

That's a practice. You're taking care of your life, okay? But that's... another example would be, instead of saying, coming to the conclusion we just said, or coming to the conclusion we should go see a professional psychotherapist, you come to a different conclusion, namely, oh, this is an excellent opportunity in such and such a practice. For example, you should start meditating on a picture of Buddha and then picture that Buddha without thinking of it as an object. That might be a practice that would be given to you very much in response to some psychological confession you make. and that would use your psychological responses and reactions as a way for you to do this practice, which will then guide you back into feeling like you're practicing Buddhism, with no need to bring in an outside lay therapist. Okay? So there are Buddhist practices which

[75:53]

practices, which deal with psychological screens or hindrances to getting into the meditation. But those are in Buddhist books, right? Then there are other practices beyond the screens to take care of other psychological responses, which aren't really screens, but are, you might say, misleading directions of realization. or directions of misleading realization, or something like that, which also can be dealt with with many kinds of practices and skillful devices to guide the person back to the central practice. So Sashi just brings up a lot of stuff, you know, and helps people often clarify their psychological situation. But it's not necessarily for that purpose, but in fact that's what does serve that purpose often. But another scenario is, excuse me for going on, but another scenario is that the person brings up psychological phenomena with the teacher, they decide that the person should go see a psychotherapist because this kind of problem is beyond the Zen teacher, this particular Zen teacher anyway.

[77:10]

and they still go to the psychotherapist. But as someone who has had a deep Zen experience and tremendous confirmation of the value of Zen practice, but still they may need to do psychological work. But sometimes another scenario is when they don't need to do the psychological work because they realize the emptiness of the problem that they are going to talk about. That sometimes happens. And sometimes just unloading or admitting the psychological work you have to do is enough to get beyond the screen that it was making. And you go right into the practice. Right after you adjusted the fact that you've got psychological obstructions of a great extent, and that you really need to do a lot of work on it, immediately the thing drops away and you fall right into the practice in a way you never could before. That sometimes happens. Okay?

[78:25]

Now, do you understand what I'm talking about? How many people have sort of been following what I'm saying? Hey. I want to try to be worthy to penetrate everything and place With the true merit of Buddha's way, all Buddha's temperations may be balanced. All beings fully suffer. Namo'valokiteshvaraya

[79:36]

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