Well, good evening. Happy to be here with you. Can you hear me okay? So for these four sessions, we're going to examine the five hindrances, which are actually seven, and I'll explain that, and the seven factors of enlightenment. When I first came here in the early 1980s, Sogen Roshi was, he spoke on these subjects, I remember it quite clearly, do you remember that? He often spoke on these so-called Theravada or Hinayana sets of practices. and of course he put it within a Mahayana context. And I think that's part of what I would like to hold as the framework for what we're examining in this class is how does this actually apply to our Zen practice?

[01:20]

And I was thinking, you may have heard this before, I was thinking of, I looked for this quotation from Suzuki Roshi and found it in a lecture that he gave in September of 1967. And he said, our way is hinayanistic and mahayanistic. Hinayana practice with Mahayana spirit is the Soto Zen way. Rigid formal practice with informal mind. This is our practice. Our practice sometimes looks very informal, but our mind is not formal. So this is the context in which Suzuki Roshi framed, I don't want to say Hinayana, which means lesser vehicle, as opposed to Mahayana, which means greater vehicle, but I would say this sort of foundational and early Buddhist practices

[02:35]

in the context of our Mahayana Zen practice, which is large and to some extent, the organization of mind is informal instead of a very clear and well-defined set of formal practices. And I would also add At least for this week and next week, when we're talking about the hindrances, I would say that for us, the hindrance is not so much an obstacle as it is gate. It's the gate by which we enter our practice. It's what we have to deal with in ourselves, the difficulties that we come up against in ourselves, the difficulties that we come up against in our relationships with people.

[03:49]

And that is precisely the place that we have to enter and work with. So I want to start by looking at these five, the five hindrances. Everybody has the handout, right? And just to name them, as you have it in front of you, The five hindrances are desire, sensory desire, ill will, which is anger or hatred, sloth and torpor. I remember this from Sojin's early classes. He's a sloth and torpor, you know, he does like two brothers.

[04:50]

worry and flurry. That was another one. That's another way that he framed it. And it's a traditional way. You could also call it restlessness and remorse. And then the last factor here in the list I gave you is doubt, but it's really skeptical doubt. Doubt itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but this kind of corrosive doubt that undermines the confidence that we might have in ourselves, the confidence that we might have in our practice, that's one of the factors, that's one of the hindrances. So these are the five hindrances, which as we look, as we go further into the factors of enlightenment, we'll see, are sort of, the factors of enlightenment are a sort of antidote to these hindrances.

[06:09]

And they are practices by which we can find ourselves free from the hindrances. So this is kind of the framework of these two sets of practices. You'll find them, we'll go into them individually, but you find them in a variety of places in the early the early teachings of the Buddha and the Pali suttas, they come up, these lists come up again and again. But the context that is quite interesting to me, sparked my thought about this is that these are,

[07:11]

systems that appear in the Satipatthana Sutta, the four foundations of mindfulness, and they appear in the fourth foundation of mindfulness, which is mindfulness of the dharmas. And there's a number of others that appear there, but these, to me, seem to be particularly alive and interesting and sort of stand on their own. So that's what we're going to look at in the course of these four classes. And I want to encourage you as we're going through this, please interrupt me if you have a question or you have something that you want to share. because I'd like this to be a fairly open exchange.

[08:16]

That's the way I like to do classes. So, as you have questions, please feel comfortable and free to just say that you have a question or say, wait a minute, or something like that. Okay? Yeah? I'm going to go into that in greater detail. Well, that's what I'll go into in greater detail. The four foundations of mindfulness are kind of the basic teaching on mindfulness. And I'm going to have to take a step back to talk about that. The fourth foundation, this is what I'll unpack, the fourth foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness of the dharmas, which has a variety of meanings, but one is mindfulness of, is keeping in mind or remembering, we have to talk about what mindfulness is, these dharma systems and the,

[09:28]

Hindrances and the factors of enlightenment are two of the systems that are mentioned explicitly in that fourth foundation of mindfulness. Is that okay? Yeah, and I'm going to go back to that, yeah. But that's not the entire, I mean, I think that there's an open question. about how does this apply to our Zen practice? And that's the conundrum of what Suzuki Roshi called this Hinayanaistic practice and Mahayana spirit. This is a kind of dynamic and interesting tension. So I want to read you, let me give you a context about mindfulness. I'm gonna give you two contexts about mindfulness.

[10:34]

One is sort of the traditional, a more traditional notion of mindfulness as found in the Pali suttas. So first of all, Right mindfulness, mindfulness is, it appears in list after list in the Buddhist teachings. So in the Eightfold Path, it's the seventh of the Eightfold Path. And interestingly enough, in the factors of enlightenment, it's the first factor of enlightenment. So there's a lot of redundancy. So the term mindfulness, it's translated, it's the translation that we kind of more commonly or conventionally use for the Pali term sati or the Sanskrit term smrti, same word really.

[11:47]

And what it really means more literally It means to remember or to recollect. And I like this word. I like both those words, remember. It's like you've been dismembered and you have to pull your limbs together and put yourself together. And the same thing with recollect. We have to collect again what had previously been collected. And then it gets translated, I think it's, this is a sort of 19th century translation as mindfulness. But it really means something like remember. And so the four foundations of mindfulness are mindfulness remembering the body,

[12:53]

which means remembering, paying attention, putting your attention on your breath, putting your attention on sensations that arise within your body, and applying yourself to what's happening physically. The second foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness of the feelings. And in the In the Buddhist sense, is a very particular interpretation of feelings, which is quite different from our Western notion of feelings, which is kind of more akin to our emotions, or how we feel about something, right? But in the Buddhist term, feelings have very particular meaning, it's basically, When something arises through the senses, the first thing that happens is a feeling, and that feeling is, it's positive, in other words, it's pleasurable, it's negative, unpleasurable, or it's neutral.

[14:17]

Those are the three dimensions, the three first clearest, cleanest, simplest perceptions of our sensation. So in other words, our sensation, when we think of emotion, by the time we get to emotion, which is actually the next factor of enlightenment, we've already created a story about what is taken in through the senses. But at the simplest perceptual level, there's just positive, negative, and neutral. Does that make sense? So that's the second foundation. So it's looking at these bare perceptions as they arise, first of all, as they arise in our meditation, because that's the place where we actually get to where it's quiet enough

[15:21]

so that we get to look at what's going on. We get to look at it at a really base level. The third foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness of our thoughts. So that's looking at As a perception arises in our body, we have a feeling and really, really quickly, we start creating a story about that feeling. And that story is based on the accumulated our accumulated experience, the experiences that we have that have come up in our life.

[16:22]

You know, it's like if I have a sticking pain, say in my knee, then immediately I think about, I might think about, okay, where is this gonna go? Is this gonna get worse? Is this gonna get better? Is this because I, you know, I, fell on a cement step in New York 10 years ago, you begin to put together all of the elements of your memory with that sensation. So that's kind of being mindful of your thoughts. And then the fourth foundation, which is very interesting to me, is what's called mindfulness of the dharmas.

[17:27]

Sometimes it's translated as mindfulness of mental objects. But I think the dharmas is a much better term. Yeah, Jeremy. Well, I'm just about to go there. So, dharmas can be every sensation that you have, is a Dharma. If you look at the kind of very analytical sort of psychological system that you find in the commentary of early Buddhism, every emotion, every mental state is classified as a Dharma. And so you have several meanings of Dharma.

[18:36]

One is just, it's just each thought that comes up has a characteristic of a Dharma. It's also true that Dharma is used as a kind of, global sense of the way the world is. So Dharma is like everything functions according to Dharma. The Dharma is like the law, the Buddha's law, you know, and it's kind of equivalent to sort of parallel to like gravity. Gravity is a Dharma, you know. The way that I think it's, that I feel that it's used in the context of the fourth foundation of mindfulness is that there are, the Dharma is also the Buddhist teachings. So that's the third meaning of it. So in the fourth foundation of mindfulness, you have, it's pointing to

[19:44]

the dharmas as systems. So those systems, here I'm reading from Thich Nhat Hanh, the first system that he refers to, so mindfulness of dharmas means looking first at, you look at the five hindrances. That's a system of dharmas. And you also look at the five skandhas, which we talk about in the Heart Sutra. Forms, feelings, perceptions, formations, consciousness. These are the aggregates that provisionally make up what we see as ourself. We also look at the dharmas as the working of the six senses.

[20:52]

So seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and thinking. Those are the six senses. So we're looking at the system of the six senses and also the objects of those senses. which means you have, in order to see something, you have to have a functional organ, an eye. And I'm looking across at that, and there's a chair, which is the object. And those two things come together and they meet in my mind and so the function of that organ and the function and the object itself co-create a perception. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, well, that's another, right.

[22:03]

All phenomena is, that's the second way that I framed it. But this is yet another way, and this is also Thich Nhat Hanh that I'm looking at. This is the particularity of the way it's used in the fourth foundation of mindfulness. So that's another system and another system. that he uses is, looks at the seven factors of enlightenment. And so, you could use any of the systems of dharma that we have, but what's often framed as the fourth foundation of mindfulness is looking through, by means of the systems, of traditional systems that the Buddha has taught. So what this means to me, and this is all sort of preliminary to getting into them, what this means to me is there's a misconception, I think, in modern day, particularly in sort of the

[23:20]

I would say, if I have to be blunt, the kind of selling of mindfulness on the sort of marketplace of consciousness that we see these days, mindfulness is often construed as bare attention, and actually it's not. Mindfulness is an active principle. it's actively looking at your body, it's actively looking at your feelings, it's actively looking at your thoughts, and the Fourth Foundation is actively intervening with these systems to examine what you are thinking and what you are feeling and what you're doing. So it's using these, when it says mindfulness of the dharmas, or mindfulness of these dharma systems, it's taking up these systems and using them as a lens through which one can see one's life.

[24:41]

Does that make sense? So it's an active principle. It's not like, oh, I'm mindful. I'm just seeing things as they are. No. You actually have to. It's an active interpretation. And as we know from our 30-second understanding of nuclear physics, a very vague idea of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, that when we shine a light on something, by shining a light on something, we actually affect it and change it. So when you shine the light of the Dharma on your habits, your actions, your perceptions, then you have the tools by which you can actually affect your inner reality.

[25:49]

Yeah? Isn't there like a driving force behind mindfulness that is curiosity, but not really superficial? Well, we're gonna get into that because that's actually the second factor of enlightenment. The second factor of enlightenment is investigating the dharmas. Right, we'll get to that. Yeah, yeah, but it is, it's not necessarily there because if you are prey to the hindrances, If you're a prey to sloth and torpor, for example, you're going to be too lazy to do that. It's like, I don't have the energy to do that. I don't really want to look at that. It's too much. Or if you are subject to worry and flurry, then it's like, OK, I'm looking at this, but I really don't believe in this.

[26:55]

This is not really the way it is. It can't be right. So the hindrances are In that sense, obstacles to how we understand reality, to how we wake up, right? Yeah? So if the observer changes the thing observed, how do you really see things as they are? Would that be a hindrance? That's a really good question. I will give you a provisional answer. And I think that that's a really, that's like a core question that we, let's hold that also for the next few weeks. I am not, somebody asked me, I had a long discussion with somebody a few weeks ago about this and, because and I have to I have to look at myself, right? And my nature is I'm kind of a doubt type, not a skeptical doubt type, maybe.

[28:01]

But, you know, I can't say maybe I am. I don't I don't really believe this is really heretical what I'm going to say. I don't really believe that there's a way that you can see absolutely things as they are. I think that's an idealization and I don't believe it. I think that everything that we see has some conditionality. What we can see is the conditionality. You know, we can see, the more we investigate ourselves, and the more we practice, the more we can see both the useful lenses and also the distorting lenses that we place on our consciousness. And that helps us to see things clearer, but it's all, I'm seeing things through my consciousness, you're gonna see things through your consciousness, and I believe so.

[29:07]

But we, you know, it's like we approach it sort of like, I think the word is asymptotically. We just come closer and closer. We can come closer and closer but never quite meet. But maybe you can, maybe the Buddha did. But I think that's a really good question to hold. Isn't that one discussion of emptiness? is what? Unknowingness. That you don't really know, you can't really, isn't that sort of a definition of emptiness? There's different definitions of emptiness and there's also, so there's emptiness, sunyata, and there's also suchness. That's another suchness which is tatata. Yes, but they're seen from different perspectives.

[30:14]

Right, so you can say emptiness. I just came back from Upaya Zen Center where they have their own translation of the Heart Sutra. They never use the word emptiness. They use the word boundlessness. you know, vastness. So emptiness has, to my mind, an uncomfortable envelope of meaning in English because it means like it's void or it's empty, there's nothing there, whereas another way to look at emptiness is really is fullness. It's the interpenetration of causes and conditions. Which are really not knowable. Ultimately, they are not knowable. Ultimately, they cannot be parsed or into perceivable moments or things.

[31:25]

Yeah. Sue. Thank you. I was caught by the term bare attention, and I think that my little experience with it is when I'm in the midst of the hindrances, coming to a point of bare attention allows me to investigate what's going on. Yeah, well coming to a point, I don't know if it's bare attention, it's come to a point of attention. Attention. Right. Well, you know, just my experience with it was it was sort of spacious and calm and then when I wasn't so flurried and worried I could, you know, address something. Yeah, I'm not big on adjectives. Attention is good, I'll take that. Yeah, yeah. And the deeper we are, maybe the clearer our attention is, the less it's caught by ideas of me and mine.

[32:37]

Yeah, and I guess that goes into that there's no need to look for a first cause. Right. That certainly is one of the strong directives of the Buddha's teachings, is not to look for first causes. And even in the context of karma, the Buddha said, if we look at our ancient tangled karma, we recognize that it's ancient tangled karma But to look at, to try to identify all the strands and sources of that karma, the Buddha said, leads to leads to madness and confusion, actually. So That's not necessarily, sometimes it arises, sometimes we see the root of our activity, the root of our delusion, but it's a different process, say, than certain Western psychological processes, which is not to say there aren't causes.

[33:58]

It's just the question at hand is, Given how I am feeling or how I am acting at this moment, what do I intend to do in the next moment? How do I intend to move forward given where I am? Does that make sense? Okay. So this is kind of a background. I want to read you something a couple of quotations about seeing these dharmas. So, one author says that contemplating these dharmas, the fourth foundation of mindfulness, teaches one to see the world through Buddhist spectacles.

[35:05]

And I also think that in the context of our practice, this is something that we do together. So we sit together. When we do walking meditation, we walk together. We feel each step in pace with each other. And so there's an aspect of the practice that is also collective, or if you will, transpersonal. The inmates of this zendo, as in the inmates of a prison, each of our activities, each of our perceptions of our bodies, our thoughts, the way we're seeing the world really affects each other.

[36:10]

So when someone is feeling grief and they're experiencing grief as a dharma, to some extent, we all feel this. When there's joy, we all feel the joy. When there's anger, we all are perceiving that there's anger in the air. And we understand this. And if we are practicing, we're capable of holding this mindfully. So, uh, As time goes on and we're working through the process of mindfulness, we're looking at the five hindrances, we're looking at factors of enlightenment and so forth, this is simultaneously providing the opportunity for us to transform as so-called individuals, but also to affect

[37:22]

the community to affect the people who are sitting together. And that practice then, at least ideally, can sort of bend towards harmonious and awakened relationships. That's the perspective that I have. That's part of what I see as the Zen perspective, which is, which is somewhat different from the early Buddhist perspective, where the motivation would be, and the activity would be more seen on an individual basis. Does that make sense? So I just want to say that's kind of the context in which I behold it. It's like the hindrance, the hindrances are not necessarily my hindrances, They're identified in a way because they're common human experiences.

[38:27]

And the same thing is true with the factors of enlightenment and with our enlightened activity itself. The enlightened activity of one person affects the enlightenment of everyone. So let me stop there before I kind of launch into the factors themselves. Do you have any thoughts or questions? Yeah, Katie. Yeah. in what way uh... [...] What it's talking about is that first arising sensation before you put a name to it.

[40:03]

And that process happens very, very quickly. And I believe this, and I have some experience of it, I think. The deeper and clearer your meditation is, the quicker one's perception can be. I had a conversation with the Theravada translator Bhikkhu Bodhi because I've been unclear about the third of those sensations. So it's positive, negative, neutral. And I said, is it neutral or is it mixed? You know, can something be, once we put a name to it, something can be, in my mind anyway, both positive

[41:15]

painful and pleasurable. And he kind of granted that, but he also said, I think if you look really, really carefully, you might see that actually it's a kind of flickering or fluctuating activity between painful and pleasurable. And then there's some things that just are not, they don't have an affect attached to them. So I think, I can't. I think this is something to investigate. This is investigating the dharmas, to investigate for yourself. And if you can perceive at that level, fine. If you can't, then that's okay, and just look at it in the level of thoughts, or look at it at the level of physical perception.

[42:23]

But hold that as a possibility in your mind that there's a very basic physiological perception. It's like if you hold your hand over a flame or if someone sticks you with a needle, before you make a story, you have a reaction, right? Before you even know what it is, sometimes you're stuck and you just don't know, you might not have any idea what it is. And I think it's talking about things at that level. Yeah. she gave one time on the non-identification and the investigating it. I don't know if she came up with it or someone else, but it was saying when anxiety arises, the sensation, whatever, that I could say to myself, anxiety is arising in me, or anxiety is moving through me, I am not this anxiety.

[43:46]

Something like that. And I realized we don't really I mean, my understanding is, you know, we have such an emphasis on zazen, zazen, zazen. So I'm wondering how that kind of a practice connects to, say, Suzuki Roshi saying, you know, what we do here. I can't remember the quote, so he mentioned it. Well, let me read you. Okay. So, um, sooner or later we'll get to the five hindrances, I think. Uh, let me read you two approaches. So in light of what you were saying, this is a traditional. So first of all, uh, You say, again, the five hindrances, what they are.

[44:49]

I'm gonna go through it, and then we'll go through them individually at some point, sooner or later, maybe in the fifth week. Sensory desire is the first one. And it's the particular desire to seek happiness through the senses. The second hindrance is ill will. And it's, I think this is in your handout, all kinds of thoughts related to wanting to reject or feelings of hostility, resentment, hatred, and bitterness. The third factor, third hindrance is sloth and torpor. It's a heaviness of the body and a dullness of the mind, which drag one down into disabling inertia and depression. The fourth is worry and flurry or restlessness and remorse.

[45:52]

And it's two factors that point to the inability to calm the mind. And then doubt. which is the lack of trust or lack of conviction. And it's looking at the kind of, not the philosophical kind of doubt, a creative kind of doubt, but skeptical or corrosive doubt that undermines our ability to function, our ability to think. So then, The paragraph I found is very interesting. So the five hindrances are identified as mental factors that hinder our progress in meditation and in our daily lives. In the Theravada tradition, these factors are identified specifically as obstacles to the jhanas. The jhanas are stages of concentration through which, in the Theravada system, one progresses towards enlightenment.

[47:02]

And they are stages of meditation practice. And we don't pay attention to stages of practice. It's not that they may not exist, but we're not looking at them as distinct expressions of our Zen practice. So I like this, within the Mahayana tradition, the five hindrances are identified as obstacles to shamatha, or tranquility. Meditation, shamatha, you could say is tranquility. There's also an element of concentration in it, samadhi. But I really like, here's, to go back to Suzuki Roshi, he says, and this is in the chapter in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind on readiness and mindfulness. And he says, the important thing in our understanding is to have a smooth, free-thinking way of observation.

[48:13]

We have to think and to observe things without stagnation, which means to be fresh every minute. to be able to have a fresh and free perception of what's going on in our minds. We have to think and to observe things without stagnation. We should accept things as they are without difficulty. Our mind should be soft and open enough to understand things as they are. When our thinking is soft, and I would say, maybe not soft, but flexible. When our mind is really fluid and flexible, it is called imperturbable thinking. This kind of thinking is always stable. So this kind of thinking, if you like, is thinking in the manner of being a stalk of bamboo.

[49:19]

very strong, very upright. When the wind blows, it bends this way, comes back to the center, bends this way, comes back to the center. And bamboo is a really interesting model because when you peel away layer by layer of the bamboo, you get to the center and there's nothing there. It's empty. and yet it's so strong and flexible. So this is this kind of fluidity and flexibility that's imperturbable. Our minds should be soft and open to understand things as they are. When our thinking is soft, it's called imperturbable thinking. This kind of thinking is always stable. It is called mindfulness. So this is his definition of mindfulness. And I think it's very much in line with this notion of mindfulness is the absence of these hindrances, which means it allows our ability to be at ease or tranquil and flexible to every condition that comes our way.

[50:48]

Does that make sense? So, now to get to what Judy was saying, I came across something, and I think this is also in your handout, by Gil Fronsdale, who's a Vipassana teacher, but Gil is also a Dharma heir of Sojan Roshi. He's got recognition as a teacher in both lineages, but he's mostly teaching for possible down the peninsula. He's a really, really good teacher and really good person. So he says, Gil says, you must be very patient with the hindrances and not dismissive of them. You don't indulge them. you become interested in them and study them. In other words, you don't indulge him by believing that, you know, it's like, oh, I'm really, that my ill will is the truth or my desire is the truth and so on and so forth, but you don't push them away either.

[52:00]

You investigate them. And he uses this formula which has the acronym RAIN. R is in relation to the hindrances. Recognize them. A is accept that they're there. I is investigate them. Sort of be curious. What do they feel like? How do they manifest in your body, in your mind? And then the N is what Judy was saying is non-investigation. Non-identification, thank you. Ah, non-investigation. The hindrances are a passing process that comes and goes. They are not who I am.

[53:03]

That seems like the most important one. Yeah, but. Right, so. What? Right, so I think this is one of the. This is one of the interesting things about what we're looking at here. I remember when I was at, I was at Tassajara in 1988, and Gil was the, Gil was a Shuso. And he had already, he had been very well trained in the Theravada tradition. He had been a Theravada monk in Thailand. And then he was a Shuso in the Zen tradition. And, I don't remember the content of his lectures, but I remember his lectures having a kind of clarity and detail that I just hadn't really encountered much in our tradition.

[54:19]

It's like he could break down the experiences of Zazen into these elements that were, they were fresh to me at the time. And I think that we have this, we're constantly working with this. If you, and for me, this is an open question. To what extent do we apply the analytic capacity of our minds to our meditational experience. I don't feel like we're encouraged so much to do that. And yet the underpinning of our practice is

[55:22]

We need constantly to be looking at and engaging with our lives. So, you know, I'm not saying, and this is one of the conundrums of what we'll be doing over the next few weeks, is I'm not saying you should take these up as discrete practices and do them in zazen. It's more that I'm saying this is a traditional Buddhist framework, one that Suzuki Roshi understood, one that I know Sojin understands. And it's kind of like sits in the background or sits a little under the radar of what we do and how we live. So that gives a kind of focus without having a gaining idea, it gives a kind of focus to our zazen.

[56:25]

And it gives us a way to work with our lives, particularly. Whether we're doing that, and this is, you know, let me read you something else. And this is from Neoponica Terra, who was one of the foremost Theravada monks and translators and commentators. So, it's a really nice passage. He says, one who earnestly aspires to the unshakable deliverance of the mind, in other words, to awakening, should select a definite working ground of a direct and practical import. So what I'd say, the working ground, in a way, is like, that's a vow.

[57:30]

You know, should select a vow for oneself. That's how I'm working. That's what I'm working with to go forward. And he says, of a practical import, in its widest sense, on which the structure of one's entire life should be based. So it's not just what you do, what he's talking about here is not just looking at the hindrances, investigating the hindrances and turning them as a meditation practice, but actually as an existential practice. Let me read it a little more. Holding fast to that working ground, or you could say holding fast to your vow, never losing sight of it for long, even this alone will be a considerable and encouraging process in the control and development of our mind.

[58:38]

Because in that way, the directive and purpose of energies of mind will be strengthened considerably. One who has chosen the conquest of the five hindrances for working ground should examine which of the five are strongest in one's personal situation. Then one should carefully observe how and on which occasions they usually appear. One should also know further the positive forces within one's own mind by which each of these hindrances can best be countered and finally conquered. And one should also examine one's life for the opportunity to develop these qualities. So that's a life work, not necessarily, not specifically the activity of zazen. You know, this is, and the activity of Zazen, the purpose of Zazen, of course we always say, the purpose of Zazen is to do Zazen, which is well and good.

[59:50]

But the purpose of Zen practice is to be yourself in the most, in the deepest and largest way. And, you know, one of my teachers, Soto Harada, said, the purpose of Zen is to help people. is to help sentient beings. This is our vow, our bodhisattva vow. Beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them or I vow to save them. That is the prime directive. So what I like about Jnana Panica's message is that If we find this working ground and we find this vow, then it gives us direction. Here he's not talking specifically. He talks elsewhere about our actual meditative practice.

[60:53]

But here he's talking about our whole life. And I find that really encouraging and moving. So does that get to your question, Judy? chewing on it, there's something about Zen as the expression of our whole life. It's my carry-away from that, and it reminds me very much of what Dogen says, to study the self, to forget the self, and so on, and that the 10,000 dharmas reveal the self, there's enlightenment. It's rather than, I was saying to Ross the other day, And he cautioned me to be careful with that because that can be a way of the self carrying itself forward rather than really allowing your life to be revealed.

[61:59]

So it's not like some conscious effort to reinvent yourself. And so somehow it bridges to this in the sense of You know, we study in many ways. I can study this, but then when I'm just sitting Zazen, whatever's coming up is happening. And it feels like, my experience of it is, these things are happening. The recognizing, acceptance, investigation, and identification in Zazen, but I'm not really aware of it. Because if I was aware of it, That's true. So in Zazen, we learn a certain skill of non-identification. But we don't live in Zazen.

[63:01]

And in other places, Dogen's teachings, like the Buddha's teachings, they're very finely tuned. Somebody asked him a question. And he gives him an answer. And that answer is the answer of that moment to that person. So in Genjo Koan, which that's a quotation from, he's talking within and from the context of Zazen. In Bodhisattva Shishobo, he's coming from another angle. So in the Bodhisattva's Four Embracing Dharmas or Actions, there his message is, what does a Bodhisattva do? You know, a Bodhisattva doesn't necessarily, he's not giving instruction, the Bodhisattva thinks not thinking.

[64:05]

The instruction he's giving Bodhisattva practice is generosity. kind speech, beneficial action, and identity action or cooperation. So in another context, he's talking about the teaching. And so in that context, in generosity, he says, we give self to self and others to others. That is an active principle. although it involves a certain, it may also involve a complete receptivity. That's maybe what gives one to one or oneself to oneself and others to others, is just being able, I mean, if I accept you completely for all that you are, all that you say and all that you do, then in a sense that's allowing you to be you. But also, if I see that you may need some correction or you see that I may need some correction, you may find a skillful way to do that.

[65:15]

And that's also part of that. It's not just receptivity. And in his framing of Zazen, he's talking about this receptivity. And that gets the I completely out of the way. So the hindrances and non-identification is seeing that I am more than what boils down to this particular hindrance. And yet, I have some work to do. I don't like this. I don't like that. I'm attracted to this. I'm lazy. I'm anxious. I don't believe anything I think. All these things. This is work that I have to do. It's not necessarily about allowing the 10,000 things to come forth and enlighten me.

[66:20]

It doesn't exclude that either. This is the conundrum of this stuff. This is part of what I'm asking here. Yeah, Chris. It is who we were.

[67:28]

We let it go. What was the word? Questions. Part. Part. Part. I thought you said flatulence, and I couldn't believe it. But that is what you said, right? Exactly. It's like flatulence. It is who we were, but we let it out, and it's not Well, you know what they say, though, right? Don't say it. OK, I'm not going to say it. Some of you know what I'm going to say. He who dealt it smelt it. He who smelt it dealt it. No, but it's precisely what I was saying earlier that The application of practice, the application of the factors of enlightenment to the hindrances is the shining of the light of awareness and practice on those obstacles.

[68:43]

And the shining of that light is transformative. In that light, as soon as you turn your mind to, it's not gonna work for flatulence, actually. You may have to take an antacid. But for your ill will or any of these hindrances, as you put your awareness on it, as you practice with it, which means, This is where mindfulness is an active principle. As you turn your mind and your attention to that, and this is where we use the factors of enlightenment, then one is naturally disidentifying with it. And as you put that attention on it, you change

[69:44]

you have the possibility of changing that hindrance. As you see it, but even as you look at it, it's changing. It may not go away because some of these things are very, very deeply seeded. So it may not go away, but that is the way, that's our method. That's the method of Buddhist practice, is actually to shine the light of mindfulness on the difficult places of our life. The difficult... That's right. That's right, and you know, like one of my teachers, said, you know, I really only want to work with people who have a regular Zazen practice, because I know that if they have a regular Zazen practice, they are working with themselves.

[70:53]

It's not that's the only way to work with oneself. But he had confidence that if they are doing that over a period of time, you cannot sit here and face the wall without in one way or another really encountering yourself. And that's, we trust in that process. That's certainly the process of Zazen as conveyed by Suzuki Roshi and Dogen and Sojo Roshi. Yeah. I was just thinking about the koans and the sayings and instructions about if it's cold, just be cold. If it's hot, be hot. And thinking about that and non-identification. And it's kind of a little bit different I guess I'm wondering, like, in this RAIN methodology, it makes sense, and it also, at least where I am right now, there's still an I. Like, I am not identifying with this.

[72:20]

Right. So I'm wondering about that. I think that that's, you know, there's different, there are categories of koans that are getting at different places, different aspects of the self. And some of them, you know, it feels to me like that one is a very strong medicine. And so it's, you know, it's a practice that is about a kind of, it's a very radical disidentification that is perhaps an antidote to a very strong identification. Each of these koans and each of the Buddhist teachings is about unlocking aspects of the self.

[73:29]

And they are particular tools or keys that go into those areas. So, you know, to say, when you're cold, just let the cold kill you. When you're hot, just let the heat kill you. Those are radical teachings. that are designed to push you beyond your usual preferences and discriminations. But it's not, to me it's not saying that There's a distinction, and this is one of the things that we see, Nyanaponika talks about it, and it's framed differently in, perhaps in Mahayana, there's the two truths.

[74:34]

There's the relative and the absolute. In Theravada, it's also framed as mundane and super mundane. You know, so in the mundane world, we have a thermostat on that wall. And if it's too hot, we open the windows. And if it's too cold, we close the windows. Because we're actually operating in that reality. In other places, I've been in places where Zen practice is really intense. It's like all the doors are flung open, all the windows are wide open, and you either broil or freeze, and that's what you sit with.

[75:38]

That's another dimension of practice, quite legitimate. And, you know, if you read, but if you read actually, if you read Dogen's Fukan Zazengi and all of the earlier Zazengi's, you know, the earlier Zazen instructions, they always say, you know, a place that's not too warm, not too cold, you know, they're trying, you know, because in that sense, We carry our suffering, I carry my suffering with me into this room. And so it's not, I don't need it to be warm or cold because I've got enough shit within me to work on. But if you give me, if you open the windows and it's freezing, maybe I have another angle to work at my suffering, if that makes sense.

[76:45]

So these are just different approaches. And the koans are appropriate to different aspects and different dimensions of our practice. They are not the truth. That's really important. They're not the truth. They are They are a truth or a perspective that is pointedly coming from a direction so that you have something to work with. And working with that may help you disidentify with the bag of shit that you carry with you into the zendo and sit down in your lap with. Does that make sense? So, you know, a really good teacher, sometimes they'll be very kind and generous and granting and sometimes they'll be tough and mean, you know, and it, it may be instinctual on their part, but it's a mark of what,

[77:59]

the teacher thinks, hopefully, hopefully the teacher thinks will be helpful to you. You know, on the, just I wanna say on the shadow side, it, you know, it can be a reflection of what the teacher needs for him or herself, but that's another problem. That's not what I'm talking about. We have a couple minutes left. So I think what's going to happen is that next week I'm going to go through the hindrances one by one. That sort of structurally makes sense to me. But let me see if there's something else I want to import. Oh, I wanted to say something about the chart. You have that chart? Okay, I found this in Sri Lanka in a Buddhist bookstore about 15 years ago and brought it back and trying to figure out.

[79:12]

It is a, what it is, is it's a, you see on the left says, meditation chart mindfulness of breathing. But it has all of these different, all of these are systems of dharmas. So, towards the top, You have that straight line across which says, it says, initial and sustained application, bliss and one-pointedness. You see that? So those, they're misnumbered, but those are the seven factors of enlightenment. For some reason, they are two number fours. I have no idea why. I think that's an error. You see that? So those are awareness, investigation, effort, rapture, calm, joy. We'll talk about that in detail. That's one of the factors of enlightenment, a kind of lightness and happiness.

[80:17]

And then on the lower arc, The second ring, it says sensual craving, ill will, sloth, torpor. See that? So those are the hindrances. And you can now spend the next week trying to figure out how this all works together. In someone's mind it does. This is one of the things I want to say about the contrast between our Zen practice and the Theravada practice. So a book I've been working with a lot, which is a fantastic book, it's called Satipatthana, The Direct Path to Realization.

[81:21]

by Analayo, A-N-A-L-A-Y-O. And when you read this and when you read sort of the traditional Theravada, the suttas and the commentary, it's so complicated. You know, it's like, there's this which leads to this, which leads to this, and then it's affected by this, and that's what the way this chart is, right? And it's like, this is not our practice. And yet, it's good to understand aspects of the way that this is analyzed. You know, the Buddha didn't necessarily analyze it. I'll read you some of the Buddhist commentaries on the hindrances are quite beautiful and clear. And then the later commentators, very complex, looking at, you know, they have a very, an idea of the mechanism of how this works.

[82:33]

And to me, the mechanism of how it works is a profoundly, their version of the mechanism of how it works is a profoundly Indian way of thinking. It's an Indian philosophical way of thinking, which is quite different from the Chinese and Japanese, which is different, again, from how we think about it. And yet, I enjoy for myself the intellectual challenge of looking at the variety of human mind and human expression and how they think of what is at base The same goal, the same understanding, the desire to understand about suffering and the end of suffering, which is what we're doing, what we're trying to do. So before I close, any last thoughts or questions?

[83:35]

Yeah, Tim. Where are you here? Yeah, okay, so the six realms are, that's a cosmology. So these are six types of beings. And these six realms are, so you have the human realm, the heavenly realm, which is sort of God realm, which is like, you know, sitting around, under a tree on a warm day, drinking wine and eating, you know, and eating cake and fruit and, you know, doing that for a couple thousand Kalpas. The Asuras are fighting demons. So if you're, you know, we all know people who are Asuras, you know, who are just pissed off all the time and ready to start a fight at any minute. The animal realm, which is to me, this is a big mistake, but the animal realm is described as, animals are described as stupid.

[84:48]

you know, kind of just pushed or moved around by their instincts and dumb, which is, I don't think that's how any of us actually encounter animals. The hell realm is just, you know, the realm where you're suffering every minute. you know, where you're like burning in hell and, you know, it's not so different from Dante's vision of hell. And the pretas are hungry ghosts. So they are beings who are eternally hungry and they're depicted as having huge swollen bellies like malnourished beings and very long, almost pencil-thin throats and gaping mouths but their necks and throats are so thin that they can't possibly satisfy their hunger.

[85:57]

So, you know, that's like I think in modern days, addiction would be, the hungry ghost is, an addict is a hungry ghost, if you will. Right, but what we're really doing, you know, so in one version of this cosmology, life after life, we're born in these and perhaps more realms. In the Buddhist, in the Zen, perspective, we are born in these realms, potentially born in these realms, moment by moment. Something happens, you know, if you insult me, you know, I may respond as a fighting demon. You know, if I'm sitting here, I could be sitting here and craving, you know, a big glass of scotch.

[87:03]

One can be born in one of these realms moment by moment, and we're consistently transmigrating through those moments. So we're born moment by moment. That's not to negate that we may, that there may be lives or rebirths in which we exist in one or another of these planes for a long period of time, but I'm more interested in where we're born moment by moment. Yes, Judy? We gotta end. Well, no, I was more like, Yes, what I would say is for homework is look at the five hindrances and try to identify Which are the most relevant for you? Which one is the most relevant? Which one or two is most relevant?

[88:07]

And I think when we come in, if you'd be willing to share that, that would be great. And then once you've identified with it, really look at how that works in your life over the next week, okay? How do you do my homework? All right. Then you're excused.

[88:25]

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