I wanted to mention that some of you have asked about the source, some of the texts, some of the readings that you might do about this teaching, and Well, there's so much, but in particular, there's a particular sutra that I've been using as a source, which is Sanskrit called the Samdhi Nirmal Chana Sutra. And I'll send, maybe I'll send to Tim a reading list on that sutra. So if you want to, you can read the original sutra along with the talks. if you want to further study this. Also, some people ask for readings on... And also someone asked, does that reading list have things about discussing the relationship between tranquility type of meditation and insight type of meditation? And actually that sutra has a chapter called the Yoga Chapter, which is...

[01:08]

actually goes into detail about the relationship between insight meditation and tranquility meditation. But that sutra is quite difficult. And so I actually recommend that you might get it as just something, you know, to work on for the rest of your life. But we've been studying at Green Gulch in various study situations, and it's quite difficult for people. But you sort of need to be studying in a group. But you can still study somewhat on your own, but you will have a hard time. And so my talks might help somewhat. You can also contact my assistant and get many more talks about the sutra, too, if you want to get more about it.

[02:15]

And so if you want to do further study on this, I'll send Tim some stuff, and you can also contact my assistant if you want to get more. There's tons of stuff on there. Also, I gave some talks at Minnesota Zen Center last spring about this, too. So there's lots of looking at this teaching at various venues all this year, and I will continue. Yes. Those talks at the Minnesota Zen Center are available for sale. They're on tape or CD if you're interested. That's a good contact. It's a website. HobsonWaterZenCenter.org. You can get them. Or you can call me. CloudsInWaterZenitCenter.org.

[03:32]

Those talks are related to these talks. They're not totally different. So I thought, you know, we're a little bit more than halfway through this retreat, so I thought it's a good time for a midterm exam. So what are the dimensions of compassion practice that we've discussed? Anybody? Go ahead. Generosity. Huh? Generosity. Yes. Discipline. Patience. Diligence. Diligence. Concentration. And concentration. And in particular concentration of which type? Tranquility.

[04:37]

Tranquility type. What's the other type of meditation? Huh? Insight, wisdom. Did you say insight? Yeah, insight or wisdom. So, in a sense, all of Buddhist practice is meditation, generosity is meditation, ethical discipline is meditation. So compassion really is, as a practice, is a meditation practice. But sometimes actually, I think quite commonly, what people consider to be meditation is actually a variety of compassion practice called tranquility training. And sometimes they say samadhi to that in Sanskrit, or dhyana. And how do you train in this Dhyana practice, or this tranquility practice, what's your basic training gesture?

[05:53]

Let go of your thoughts. Let go of your thoughts, what did you say? Yeah, let go of your thoughts. Relax with what you're aware of. What? Watching your breath. Watching your breath is often given as an exercise in developing tranquility. Can watching your breath also be a suggestion for developing insight? Yes. Yes. Yeah. So actually, you can focus on your breath. in order to train your tranquility, and you can also be mindful of your breath in order to train your insight. What's the difference between the two different ways of working with your breath? How can you describe the difference? When you're letting your thoughts go and when you're using your thoughts.

[06:55]

Yeah, in one case, you're looking at the breath, but you're letting go of your audience thinking, while you're wandering thoughts in relationship to the breath. You're just being with the breath and giving up all kinds of thinking about the breath, thinking about other things. Other thoughts do arise, but you just let them go. And then you calm down. Someone asked me, I think earlier today, about her work requiring actually to do thinking as part of her work. And she thought that it might be difficult to do the tranquility practice of giving up your thinking while you're doing work where you feel like you have to think. So would it be difficult to do training in tranquility while doing work where you had to do thinking? Would that be difficult? It's kind of contradictory to feel like you have to do thinking and feel like you should let go of your thinking.

[08:08]

So actually, that's why we actually sometimes have special sessions where you feel like for the next 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, I can actually, I don't have to do any thinking. It's okay with the world if I don't do any thinking. I can let go of it for the next period of time. And that's how you train your mind or train your attention. And if you train your attention this way for a while, This comes to fruit as tranquility. Once you have attained tranquility, you don't have to train it anymore. It lasts for a while. Once you actually... Actually, your body and mind change into a different body and mind as a result of spending time giving up your discursive thought. And it lasts for a little while. in that calm state, you can do your thinking again.

[09:13]

So after you train this way and become calm, then you can actually go back and do your thinking. And you will be able to think, generally speaking, unless you're thinking, I don't know, planning to murder somebody. But generally speaking, if you're planning, if you're doing thinking that's wholesome, you'll be doing much more skillfully. Once you obtain tranquility, you'll be much more effective at thinking than you were before. As a matter of fact, in particular, you will be much more effective in doing thinking about practice once you're tranquil. So during the training phase of tranquility, it doesn't work very well to feel like you have to do some particular kind of thinking. The little bit of thinking you have to do is more like a booster rocket. You have to think just enough to remind yourself to let go of it. You have to do that much thinking, to say, oh yeah, let go of thought. Let go of conceptual thought. Now, I wrote your conceptual thought, but strictly speaking, it's actually letting go of discursive conceptual thought.

[10:27]

Discursive thought is actually, I think, it's always conceptual thought. So you're ready to go on discursive conceptual thought, and that comes to fruit as a relaxed, calm, buoyant, alert, flexible state of mind and body, mind and body. Did you have a question? Please, would you say what you mean by discursive? Discursive, if you look up the word discursive, it means wandering. And it can apply to, it's related to the word discourse. And it also, it basically is wandering or running back and forth. But it also can be used for reasoning to a conclusion. And so it can be applied, you can have a discursive path through a field of corrent.

[11:32]

Discursive can just apply to a kind of movement, a physical movement. But it can also be applied to thought that runs back and forth, that wanders about. But sometimes also discursive thought can wander in a somewhat organized way to a conclusion. So its etymological meaning is to wander, running back and forth. Its first meaning in dictionaries I've looked at is usually a kind of wandering. And the second meaning is reasoning to a conclusion. So discursive could be put with thought. And I would suggest to you that discursive thought almost always applies to discursive conceptual thought, because we usually don't run back and forth in our senses. Our sensory quantities, we don't actually wander about and just look at a cover, and that's it. It's with that discursive thought that operates on concepts that we think about.

[12:35]

So again, when you train your mind in giving up this wandering thought, you train your mind in not moving. So when you give up the movements of the mind, you realize the stillness of the mind. So this is particularly the understanding, not moving among the different concepts that you're dealing with. Wang Bo, the Zen Master Wang Bo said, one of his most basic teachings, which he repeats over and over, is give up conceptual thought. So one kind of conceptual thought to give up, to give up discursive conceptual thought, and that will give you calm. But his instruction actually includes both tranquility instruction, but also wisdom instruction, because he also says let go of conceptual thought. even non-discursive conceptual thought. In other words, let go of your concepts, all your concepts. For example, your concept of self, let go of that too.

[13:40]

So his meditation instruction of giving up conceptual thought could include both tranquility instruction and insight. However, insight work, you don't have to give up your thinking, not even your discursive thinking. However, you do have to give up some of your discursive thinking. So if you're like, for example, let's say you have a feeling that you're experiencing, like a feeling of pain, at that moment, if you're practicing wisdom, you'd be mindful of that feeling because it's happening. You would notice it. So mindfulness practice you can practice while you're doing your daily life. So you're talking to somebody and you feel pain or pleasure in the midst of the conversation. So you can be mindful of that while you're carrying on your talk with the person.

[14:42]

In wisdom meditation, however, you probably wouldn't be using your thinking in such a way that you would be daydreaming in such a way that you'd be taking yourself away from mindfulness of what was happening. You wouldn't be doing that kind of discussion. And the other thing you can do, and learn to do anyway, is you can learn that while you're aware of a feeling, say, I feel a painful mental sensation or a painful physical sensation, while you're aware of a feeling, while you're mindful of a feeling, you can also practice mindfulness of Dharma and bring a teaching, the teaching, what are many teachings, but you might bring a teaching about the nature of phenomena to bear on the example that you're mindful of. So in that case, you're practicing mindfulness of feeling and mindfulness of Dharma. And generally speaking, that's how I recommend you that you practice insight, that you don't, I mean, part of practicing insight is to learn, listen to the Dharma teachings about the nature of phenomena.

[15:53]

You have to learn them first, right? But when you're actually practicing it, That's when you have to bring the teaching which you've learned to the present experience. Because most of the teachings are about experience. OK? Does that make sense? I think some of you are familiar with a text written by the Zen teacher Dogen called Genjo Koan. How many have heard about that text before? Most of you, okay. Genjo Koan, what kind of a text is it? Is it compassion text or wisdom text, do you think? Wisdom, I'd say. You'd say wisdom? Any other comments? Pardon?

[17:02]

Do you really mean it's either one or the other? Well, yes, I kind of do. Is there any instruction on compassion in the Ganga Kanya you can think of? Actually, it starts out, as all things are Buddha Dharma. Is that a compassion practice or wisdom instruction? As all things are Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, birth and death, and there are Buddhas and sentient beings. As all things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no Buddhas, no sentient beings, no birth and death." To me that sounds like a wisdom teaching, telling you something about the nature of things. And when things are like this, then you have things like this.

[18:02]

And when things are like that, you have things like that. Now this teaching is a compassionate teaching. Buddhist Buddhas are basically compassionate, wise people, and their teachings are compassion. But some of their teachings are about wisdom, and some of their teachings are about compassion. He doesn't say anything here about being kind to people, about being patient, about practicing the precepts, about diligence, or he doesn't say anything here about practicing tranquility that I can see. Check it out. Okay? He's talking to you about the way things are. As a matter of fact, this one translation here is actualization of the fundamental point, but another translation is things at hand, or the way things are, or the realization of the way things are.

[19:03]

That's what this is about. This is an example of the Zen teacher Dogen teaching you wisdom. If you read this text and learn this text a little bit, just remember, even without any comment, you can take this text and apply it to, for example, a feeling that you're mindful of. You can apply it to your body posture. You can apply it to your breathing. You can apply it to your mind state. As a matter of fact, I did that this morning when I read you, I recited the part about where it says, when the Dharma does not fill your body and mind, for example, this Dharma, anyway, when the teaching about the way things are doesn't fill your body and mind, then you think it's sufficient.

[20:04]

When the teaching does fill your body and mind, you understand that something's missing. For example, when you sail out in a boat in the midst of the ocean where no land is in sight and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square. Its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. All things are like this." Okay? This is the teaching about all things. When you haven't listened to the Dharma enough, you think you know enough about things. So most people have not listened to the Dharma enough, so they look at somebody and they say, oh yeah, that's Don.

[21:13]

About him, Don. Oh yeah, there's Amy, okay. In other words, you look at people and you think, got it. Nice person, jerk. You think you know what they are, because you are not filled with Dharma. When you're filled with Dharma, you look at somebody and you say, you wonder, who is that? Who is that unmasked woman? You wonder, because the Dharma is filling you, you realize something's missing here. What's missing? Oh yeah! Their dependent origination is missing. I don't see it. All I see is like the finished product. I see this thing sitting there all by itself. I don't see how all the Buddhas and everything are coming together to make this person. You understand that. You've heard the teaching of dependent core arising. It's filled you enough so you know you don't see it. This is not the whole story. This is when the Dharma is like sinking into you.

[22:14]

When the Dharma is sinking into you, you're suspicious of what you see. You understand that something's missing. You're not so arrogant because you've let the Dharma in. It's filling you. It doesn't mean you have perfect wisdom yet. It just means it had impact. And you understand that you see a circle of water, but really there's an ocean there. And you also understand that everything's like this, Like it says here, you know, this is shorthand, he says, it's like a palace, it's like a jewel. This is shorthand for like when you're looking at the ocean, when we look at water, we see water in a certain way. Like if you look at a river, you see water and you see it flowing down the river, okay? That's the way we see it. But that's not how a fish sees it. A fish sees it as a shopping mall. They see it as a palace. This is like their house.

[23:16]

They don't think their house is flowing down the river. We think it's flowing. If you go up to a fish and say, your house is flowing, they say, what? My mall is flowing. My parking lot's flowing. My house is flowing. No, no. It's not from their perspective. Things are as, you know, they're stable. Fish think it's like set. They don't think it's like flowing. And if divine beings are living in the water, they're living in jewels, flowing jewels. If hungry ghosts are living in the water, they think it's blood and pus. If hell beings are living in the water, they think it's burning sulfur. Different beings see it differently. None of them actually see it the way it is. Just like if a Buddha comes to us and tells us where we're living, the Buddha says, you're living in your world's flowing too.

[24:18]

We go, what? The Buddha sees us going flowing open. Or if a redwood tree comes and tells you what it sees, you say, you people are out of here. What? You're just flying by. We are? So different beings look at the same situation in different ways. None of them actually can see it. through their own narrow view to the totality of it. Everything's like that. So I'm just pointing out to you that here's a Genjo koan which is telling you that this one little paragraph here is telling you about the nature of things. You can listen to this teaching from the Zen teacher. This is a wisdom teaching which he wants you to take that teaching and apply that teaching to what's happening. whatever, name it, color, sound, smell, thought, feeling. But he doesn't speak about how to apply it in the same way necessarily as the traditional Buddhists do, but almost he does.

[25:26]

He also says in here, when you carry yourself forward, you carry yourself, got yourself already, you carry yourself forward and experience all things, carrying yourself forward and experience all things, that's delusion. Like you're already here and you experience things. Another translation, instead of experiencing things, is to practice and confirm all things. You got yourself, and then you're going to go practice Zen. You're going to go to a retreat in that room, and you're going to practice Zen. That approach is delusion. When all the things come forth and experience themselves, that's enlightenment. But another translation is when all things come forth as your experience.

[26:46]

Here it says, they interpret themselves. This translation is, when myriad things come forth and experience themselves, but most people translate it as, when myriad things come forth and realize you, or confirm you. Another translation is, when you... witness and act upon all things while carrying yourself. Okay? Can you picture that? Like I got myself here and I look at you and I practice with you. So to witness and act upon the events of your life while carrying the self, that's delusion. To witness and act upon yourself in the coming of all things is enlightenment.

[27:57]

When you see the coming of all things and then you witness yourself in that coming. You're not already there. You see the coming of the things and then there's you. To witness that and act upon that, that's enlightenment. He's telling you, giving you a Dharma teaching to apply to any experience. Got a body? Okay. You wear your body? Okay, now ready? Watch everything come forth and see how that body appears in the advent of all the things. and act from there. That's the instruction he wants you to apply, he hopes you apply to your experience. So I'm just pointing out that here we have a text full of wisdom teachings. Dozens, well, I don't know, dozens. Maybe a dozen. Dozen, 15 wisdom teachings.

[29:03]

each one of which you could spend months and months or years on, thinking about the teaching and applying it to what's happening. But I just wanted to say, see the difference between this kind of thing and sitting and just giving up discursive thought? He sometimes recommends that, but mostly he recommends wisdom teachings. Was there a question? Yes? When you said, act upon yourself, can you say that It's act upon the self which you witness being born in the advent of things. Like, for example, let's say... There's awareness, yeah. So like, for example, let's say... I sometimes have this experience, and some of you do too, you know, I think about who's in the room, you know, like, let's see, there's Barbara, there's Therese, there's Corrie, and Dawn, and I go around the room and I say, something's missing.

[30:13]

Oh, you mean? It's like, to me, there's just things in the room happening right and then you and then you see oh i'm here so you witness that kind of witnessing of yourself and when everybody comes in the room and then there's you that kind of way of seeing things is you witness how you are born in the coming of everything your body too you know so there's all the people in the room and then there's a body and then there's me That way of seeing is to witness yourself born in the coming of all things, in the coming of all the conditions. Now, if none of you are in the room, then it's like the fans in the walls in my body and so on are coming in and there's me. But it's not like I'm here before. It's like, it's like there's a room and then there's me.

[31:20]

to witness that, and then act from there. So like, you feel that room in all of us giving you life, you witness that, and you act from that understanding as enlightened action. That's what he's asking you to look at. Meditate on that. How you're born, not from yourself, but in the advent of all things at a given moment. And you're that way, but also everything's like that. Everything's born in the advent of things other than itself. You are born not through yourself but through the coming of all things at a given moment. And then the coming of all things stops and then you're gone. And then there's a coming of all things again and you're born again in that advent, in that coming. So here's again a wonderful wisdom teaching which you can meditate on and apply to your moment-by-moment experience.

[32:26]

And part of this wisdom meditation would be... This wisdom meditation is teaching you actually the way things aren't and the way they are. So you can use this meditation to identify how you deludedly see things. And then you can use this meditation to open up to the enlightened way of seeing. And the enlightened way of seeing things is to see how they make you, not how you are already here and then you act on them. That's the deluded way. So you can identify the deluded way probably, right? You're already here and then you go in the room and talk to the people rather than there's entering the room and then there's the people in the room and then there's you. You don't enter the room. There's room entering. There's a body going in the room. There's people who meet, who come to see, who arrive, and then there's you. That's the enlightenment. That may be harder to get to. That's not so familiar.

[33:27]

But by confessing the other way that you can notice, you start to get ready for the switch. So that's why I was suggesting this morning that I wanted to mention about confession because we have plenty to confess, because although we're dependently co-arising moment by moment, we don't usually see that. Although, actually, every single moment, according to Dogen and the Buddha, every single moment, everything in our life is coming forth and realizing this, making us happen. That's happening every moment. Every moment we're here, always here, dependently co-arising through the advent of other things. That's happening. but we don't see it. What we do see is the other way. I'm already here, and then I'm going to do things to these conditions that happen to coexist with me. Rather than I am nothing more than these conditions, I'm actually some core here, independent of this condition.

[34:31]

Now I'm going to act on these conditions. Rather than these are the conditions that give me life, these are the conditions I'm going to live with, which is actually not so far off. But I'm a priority. I'm an a priori self, and I'm already here, and I'm going to act on the conditions that arrive in the moment. That's delusion. And that's part of our life. And that we can confess. We can confess that we think we're already here. We can confess that we think we're independent of the very things that give us life. You know? Like the earth and our mother give us life, and we have to grow up to be a person who feels separate from that which gives us life. We're independent of our mother. We're independent of the earth. We have to go through that. It's part of our human nature to go through that, to think that way. This is something we can confess. We can confess that we're deluded like that.

[35:33]

And that it's instinctive. It's instinctive in the sense that it's It's an adaptation of our species that we, as far as I know, are the only species on the planet that thinks it's separate from the earth. The other animals just don't think like that. They just walk around the earth and they chew on it and stuff like that. But they don't think that they're separate. But we have this fantastic imagination. We can imagine we're separate from what gives us life. This is something we can confess. It's instinctive. It's innate. It's pre-cultural. However, culture, what culture does is that it allows us a way to express that and act upon it, and then it reiterates itself in our consciousness so that it helps the next generation be like that, too.

[36:41]

obviously the instinct. Well, I guess you'd have to study child development and see how babies can do this before they have language, and how babies actually seem to be having language before they even have words. They seem to have language structures in the way that they relate to things, and then they learn words to put in the slots. So we seem to be born with linguistic ability, which is based on being able to project essences onto things. And so the sense of separation between self and other is something which you don't have to… You do need to have social relationships, but the other people don't tell you that they're separate from you. Not at the beginning, because you don't understand. But you think they are. That's why you get scared when your mother leaves the room, because you actually think she's out there separate from you when she goes away.

[37:45]

Wouldn't a little baby bear get scared when its mother goes away? Yes, baby bears can do this too. They just don't have language. But actually I think that other animals also project essences onto objects. I think they do. So they also are out of touch with dependent co-arising in a certain way. But in other ways, they're not. In certain ways that we are, they aren't. So we're more... We suffer in ways that they don't know how to suffer. So... Also, how many of you are familiar with what's called the Fukanzazengi?

[39:02]

Less people. Anyway, Dogen also wrote this, and I just want to point out that I'm just trying to help you see that Zen teachers teach wisdom meditations. There are all koans, all koans by the language that teach it. Almost all koans are wisdom teachers. I think koans are wisdom teachers, and they're given to people who are supposed to be practicing concussion. They're given to people who are students who have usually already received the precepts and are actively practicing the precepts, and actively, you know, generosity, and actively practicing patience, to living together with other practitioners in a way that's supposed to be as compassionate as they can be in their unawakened development.

[40:12]

And now they're trying to finish the picture by developing wisdom. But in the Zen context, these wonderful koans and stuff, are presented, but they don't usually tell you that these people that are being presented in the story are people who are really working on compassion all the time. Because stories of compassion on a daily basis are not necessarily as interesting. Sometimes they're really interesting, but sometimes they're not. So sometimes they forget to tell you the daily life of these people. And this text is interesting because this text is modeled on another text. There's kind of a lineage here of a text. In China, there was an important school called Tianhai.

[41:23]

very important school of Chinese Buddhist thought. And one of the main teachings of this school was the teaching of, once you're operating in Chinese, This is how you do it, P-U, zhi guan. And zhi guan is the Chinese way of saying and vipassana. So you've heard of the vipassana groups. Sanskrit is vipassana, Pali is vipassana. So all these vipassana groups are, they're called insight meditation groups, right?

[42:31]

So they're emphasizing insight and wisdom meditation, vipassana. But also, traditionally, it is often the case that shamatha, which is tranquility, or calm abiding, is taught together with vipassana. So as I've mentioned before, Chinese character for jir or shamatha is this character that you see on stop signs in China, Japan, Korea, or anywhere in China and Japan. This character means stop. So jir or shamatha or tranquility means stop. In a sense, stop what? Stop discursive thought. Or give it up. Give up moving, right? Stop. And the character that they used to translate Vipassana into Chinese is... It goes like this.

[43:40]

This character is pronounced guan. This character means to observe or contemplate. This part of the character here, this part here, this is an eye. This is like, you know, the eyeball. And this is legs. Eyeball and legs means to look. Put together with this, it means to contemplate. This is the character they use to translate. The Chinese chose to translate to contemplate or observe or have insight. This is the first character, you know, if you've heard of kangan or guanyin, this is the guan of guanyin. This is the character which means to contemplate the world, to listen to, to look at the world of suffering. So they use the word for insight, for the bodhisattva of compassion.

[45:13]

So the bodhisattva of compassion, he looks at all the beings who are suffering with eyes of compassion, but also eyes of wisdom. And in the Heart Sutra, in Japanese, as you may know, it starts off kanji zai. It's the same kan. And the G, character G means self, and zai means abiding. So in the Heart Sutra, it starts off by talking about this great bodhisattva who is observing the self-existence. Bodhisattva's observing the way the self exists. That's the name of the Bodhisattva of compassion. The Bodhisattva of compassion looks at the way selves exist. And how does the Bodhisattva see the selves exist? How does he see it? No.

[46:13]

He sees it with compassion, but it sees that they exist in the advent of all things. Bodhisattva looks at each person and sees them happening in the advent of all things. Bodhisattva looks at herself, this great Bodhisattva looks at herself and sees herself born in the advent of all things. That's the way she's, that's her instinct. That's her way of seeing. Okay? This school taught this. And then this school had various, texts, the founders of the school wrote various texts. And one of the texts is called the small ,, or the little text, or the little teaching on tranquility and insight, or tranquility and wisdom. And the form of that text is basically the form of Dogen's text. An important Zen teacher who lived about 50 or 100 years before Dogen wrote a Zen reworking of this text, this pendai text, which is a brief or small introductory teaching on how to practice tranquility and insight.

[47:33]

And then the Zen person made another version of it. And then Dogen patterns his on that. So in the beginning of this text, he actually does teach you tranquility meditation. So here's a Zen teacher in his basic meditation instruction. At the beginning, he teaches you tranquility meditation. He says... Just like in the start of the text, he says, Quiet room is suitable. Eat and drink moderately. Cast aside all involvements. Cease all affairs. You have to put aside your work for a while. Cast aside all involvements. Cease all affairs. Do not think good or bad. Do not administer pros and cons. Cease all movements of the conscious mind.

[48:39]

Do not engage in thoughts or views. Okay? That's instruction in tranquility. So he's giving you instruction in tranquility in his text, just like in the text he models on, models on, gave you instruction on tranquility, just like the text before that gave instruction in tranquility. Then he gives you instruction about how to sit, and then again he says, once you've settled into tranquility, then he says, Think of not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? Non-thinking. This is the essential art of zazen. In other words, the essential art of zazen is wisdom meditation. So I'm just pointing out to you for your further studies that this text, although it's different language from what I've been talking about, it actually is a tranquility and insight text.

[49:42]

But he puts the emphasis on insight. Most of Dogen's works are wisdom teachings. However, still the monks practice tranquility. He just didn't mention it very often. He mentioned it here. But actually they do practice tranquility. They do practice compassion. But the weight of his teaching, the essence of his teaching is about insight, about the nature of phenomena, And this story, I mean this instruction of think of not thinking, and then how do you think of not thinking, non-thinking, that is basically an instruction in what I've been talking about. In other words, the way you get to think of not thinking is through non-thinking. And non-thinking is

[50:43]

can also be translated as beyond thinking, which means meditate on dependent core arising, because dependent core arising is the way things are beyond your thinking. So now you look at people. You can't help it. When you look at them, you think about them. Just like that. You look and you think. You see somebody. And you're seeing them originally as not thinking about them. It's just like they're blue and green and brown and black. Or you hear people, you originally had this sense impression, but then you reinterpret it conceptually and think about it. And that happens very fast. That's thinking. Okay? You know about thinking somewhat, right? You know about right now you're thinking about me and you're thinking about yourself and the other people in the room and so on. You're thinking. All right?

[51:45]

Now what's the meditation? The meditation is think about not thinking. Well, how do you do that? By non-thinking. In other words, you are actually going to eventually get to thinking about not thinking. But how do you get to that place? Through non-thinking. And thinking about not thinking is thinking about emptiness. Because the way things are actually is that things are actually not thinking. I mean, they aren't thinking, plus nobody's thinking actually applies to the way things are. That's the way they really are. But the way you get to that place of verifying that is through non-thinking. So you have to start with non-thinking. You have to start by meditating on the pinnacle of rising. So I just wanted to again draw your attention to how I would suggest you connect these teachings, these basic Buddhist teachings on the pinnacle of rising to Dogen, where he doesn't necessarily put it that way.

[53:02]

The way he's putting it is based on a Zen story. that occurred in China. And that dialogue, he felt, the actual interaction between the teacher and the student, he felt, captured the essence of wisdom meditation. And he put that in his text here. So I'm suggesting, just like he does, that the way you get into the wisdom meditation, you start by meditating in the way we call the practice of non-thinking. Or you start meditating by being mindful of, however you want to call it, but just start by meditating and being mindful of beyond thinking. So non-thinking is to think of what's beyond thinking. And what's beyond thinking? Your dependently co-arisen nature is beyond your thinking.

[54:04]

However, although it's beyond, I also mentioned to you, it is the basis of your conceptual thinking. Your conceptual thinking is based on your dependently co-arisen existence, moment by moment. And also I want to mention that several people have spoken to me about different ways that they think about or feel about the teaching of dependent core arising. And they ask me, is it all right if I sort of think of it that way or that way or that way? And I would say, yeah. The language you use to refer to this teaching, this teaching is this, you know, can be put infinite numbers of ways. So, and there's no end to the ways you can think about because this teaching is about this ocean, right? Its character is infinite in variety. Every little way you put it is really just a circle of water about the ocean.

[55:08]

But in this case, the circle of water you know is referring to the ocean. So what code or cue you use to remind you of the oceanic, dynamic, interpenetrating, create creative context for every little event you're aware of what you will use to cure yourself into that you can be creative with it and basically go ahead you know try different things because it's important that you find something that you actually want to be mindful of if you if the word dependent co-arising or other dependent or if those words don't strike you as something you want to think about all the time, how would you put it such that you would be happy to think about that all the time? And also, someone said to me that he went and did an errand for the retreat, and he found it difficult to reply to Dharma teaching at the Pentecostal horizon while he was involved in the experiences of the supermarket.

[56:15]

And I understand that it's difficult. It's difficult, actually, for most people to be mindful of the experience of being in the supermarket, period. But to be aware is, for most people, difficult to actually feel the shopping cart and feel your feet and being aware of these colors going by and this texture of people. It's actually not that easy to be mindful, right? But it's possible. It's possible. is possible to be mindful of what's happening. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm just saying that if you want to develop wisdom and you're not practicing mindfulness, you're not going to be able to. You have to be somewhat mindful. Now you can, even to hear the teachings, the Dharma teachings, you have to be somewhat mindful. Once you hear them, Then to apply them, you have to apply them by being mindful of what's happening. So it is difficult to be mindful driving down the road.

[57:18]

It is difficult to be mindful when parking. It is difficult to be mindful when entering and leaving supermarkets. It is difficult to be mindful when choosing which product to buy. These are difficulty, but it is possible to be mindful of these events. OK? I propose that to you, and if you have some questions about them, we'll talk about it later, but I want to take one more step and then say it's also difficult then, once you're mindful, to then also bring the dharma to bear on what you're being mindful of. But the teaching of mindfulness is that not only are you mindful of your body Are you mindful of your feelings? Are you mindful of your mind states? Are you mindful of your opinions? Are you mindful of your attitudes? Are you mindful of your greed, hate, and delusion? But you're also practicing dharma, smriti upastha, the foundation of mindfulness of dharma, which means you bring the dharma teachings to bear on these phenomena that you're mindful of.

[58:19]

It's not easy, but again, the instruction is being given because the Buddhists thought people could do it. And the Buddha did it. The Buddha brought Dharma to his experience. But you have to be in your experience first if you're practicing wisdom at the level of actually meditating. If you're practicing wisdom at the level of teaching, you're just getting the Dharma teaching. You're learning what the Buddha says about experience. When you're meditating, you actually are bringing the teaching to your experience and seeing how life goes when you apply the teaching to your experience. Usually we apply our own delusions to our experience and we know how that goes. We have experiences, yes, and we apply our misconceptions to our experience and we suffer. The Buddha is saying, give up those experiences, those conceptions if you can, but if you can't, just confess them and listen to the teachings and learn to apply the teachings to your experience and gradually wean yourself

[59:28]

from believing your idea about what things are and start to accept more and more what the Buddhas are saying is the nature of your experience. This is not easy to learn, but it's being given to you by the tradition because people have the capacity to learn this. But again, you need to practice compassion so you're in good enough shape so you can do this practice. If you're not practicing compassion, You're going to be too, you know, unpresent with your life to be able to practice wisdom. Okay? Yes, Bob? Dependent co-arising is the source for conceptual thinking? Yes. Conceptual thinking is based on dependent co-arising. Which means that that's the segment that I look at so that I can hold reality, the concept. It's my effort to... You lost me.

[60:31]

Let me say it again. When you think about something, what you're really thinking about is some fleeting phenomenon. Like you think about a color or a sensation in your body. That sensation, that color, dependently co-arises. Okay? It is a dependent co-arising. That is the basis of your conceptual version of it. So all you're thinking is based on what's really happening. In that sense, the other dependent character of your experience is always the base of your conceptual experience. So just to imagine that something exists all by itself, not depending on anything else, we all know that that's impossible. Right? Nothing can exist all by itself. Everything depends on other things. But we can imagine that something exists in this impossible way.

[61:34]

Right? You can. That's just something you know. You're just imagining something impossible. The funny thing is, we apply that to actual events that don't arise that way. That's when the problem occurs. If I think that somebody exists independently of everybody else, that's not a problem until I apply it to an actual interdependent being. Then I have problems. Because if something exists all by itself in this impossible way, one aspect of its impossible existence is that it's permanent. If something doesn't depend on anything else, it would be permanent. It also wouldn't arise or cease. It would just be forever. That's just a fantasy about the way things can't exist. But we apply that to things which exist in an impermanent, other-dependent way, and then we suffer. Because those things, they go along with us for a while. Like we say, okay, you are cute, permanently, forever cute, darling, adorable, right?

[62:39]

And you say, mm-hmm. And I'm going to marry you, and you're going to stay cute and nice and subservient and... Right? And you say, mm-hmm. And then things start changing. You say, wait a minute. You said you were... You agreed with me that you were cute and nice and subservient and obedient. You agreed with me, yeah? I did. And now you've changed. Yeah, I did. Sorry. You need Buddhism. Hello? How come you went along with it at the beginning? Why didn't you tell me that you were going to change? Well, I'm sorry. I should have told you. At our marriage ceremony we used to say, we do sort of say it, do you, will you love and honor this person through sickness and health for better or worse and rich and poor?

[63:46]

You're going to love this person and win them. old and sick and crazy, you know, instead of young and sane and healthy, going to love them and honor them even then? In other words, do you understand this person's going to change a lot every day, and you don't know what they're going to become, and you're going to hang in with them even though you don't know what they're going to become? They're going to become practically anything's possible, and you're going to stay with them? Maybe I should reconsider. You try to find somebody else. The priest should say again, here's another one. Do you realize this one's going to change? It's not going to be like this tomorrow. You want to stay with her even though you don't know what she's going to become? Why would you? Why would you be devoted to somebody not knowing what they're going to become? because I love her.

[64:49]

And even though she may become a monster, I'm going to keep loving her. I don't know what she'll be, but I'm going to try to see if I can be devoted to this person who is unstable impermanent and not worthy of confidence. I can't have confidence she's going to keep being like this because of the Buddha's teaching. And I still want to be devoted to her for the rest of my life. I want to learn how to be devoted to people the way they really are. And I'm going to work on this one right here. But we don't do that. We should do that, but we don't. We should do that more. We should tell people that when they get married that they're marrying an unreliable being. Somebody is not going to stay like this. They're not always going to be like this. Even their love is not going to be the same. It's going to change too. Your love is going to change. But are you going to keep trying to love and keep trying to honor and obey knowing that this person is going to change? And if you don't honor and obey, are you going to confess it and reiterate your intention to love, honor, and obey?

[65:58]

Are the men going to obey, too? Or maybe cross out the obey, just love and honor. But obey really is related to obedience, which means to listen. Are you going to listen to this person, really listen to this constantly changing person who's at the basis of what you think of them right now? then go to work. But of course, if people did this, they would be much more careful when they got married, if they got this kind of dialogue beforehand. It might die out. It might. It might. It's possible. But some people actually, if some people practiced really sincerely, they might devolve to such a place that they actually would want to be married to somebody who was impermanent, that they actually might get to a place where they think, yeah, I think I actually would like to, for the sake of the species, marry you and have unpredictable little offspring.

[67:14]

And be devoted to them, too, as they become teenagers. And... Yeah, God bless them. God bless them. And I would like to join the blessing committee to bless these people who are trying to find out what it is that they can do to test my love to the limit. To see, can you love me if I do this? How about this? How about this? You love this too? You mean you won't just love me if I do what you want? You'll love me even if I don't do what you want? Yes. Well, let's see if you will. Watch this. How about that? You still love me? Yes, I still do love you, but I also hate you. I hate you. I really hate you. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, but I love you. And I'm still your devoted parent, but I hate it when you do that. And they understand the difference between liking and disliking and love.

[68:21]

Because that's the way they test your love, to see if you'll keep loving them when they do something that you really, really, really don't like. For example, cutting their flesh. That's the latest thing they're doing now. They're cutting, making incisions into their body and showing their mother, Hey, Mom, see this? What do you think? They love me still? I'm suffering. I'm trying to distract myself from my suffering. It works pretty well, too. Plus, I also get to test you. They don't do it just to test us. They don't take drugs just to test us. They take drugs because they're suffering and they want a little break. But it's an additional treat if they can show it to you and see what you're going to do, rather than hide it from you. When they hide it from you, it means that they're afraid to find out. They're scared to find out whether you'll keep loving them when they do something harmful to themselves. But if you practice this wisdom teaching, you can convey to them that you really would like to see who they are, rather than have them go along with the charade that they're what you think they are.

[69:36]

And if you're really up for who they are, if you're meditating on who they are beyond your thinking, you convey that to them. And they dare to be honest with you and show you that they have to do some unskillful things Right? So the essential art of Zazen starts with the practice of mindfulness of what is beyond thinking. So all day long you meet people one after another, you meet your experiences one after another, and you interpret these experiences, which are originally beyond any conception and always actually beyond conception. And you interpret them through your conception. So we mix our conception of things with the way they're dependently co-arising so we can grasp them and label them and have a conventional world.

[70:45]

So that's going on. That's what we confess. That's why confession practice is good. And I must admit, you know, sometimes Sometimes I think it's a little funny if you're supposed to be a long-term student, been practicing Zen a long time, right, supposed to have developed a little bit, and you're still confessing. Don't you get to a point where you're not confessing anymore? Confession is part of enlightenment. If you're not confessing, enlightenment is off. Enlightened people confess

[71:28]

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