I vow to chase the truth of the Dvaita's words. This is the beginning, this one day sitting marks the beginning of our fall study period and we don't have a special ceremony to open our study period but Seshin is kind of like our opening and our subject during the study period for a study is bringing the dharmas into view, taking a look at the dharmas, the various constituents of our psyche and mind.

[01:15]

Basically, we're looking at the 82 dharmas of the Theravada school. can be any object or anything in the realm of phenomena, both mental and physical. But specifically, the Buddhists classified certain mental concomitants and certain physical elements as dharmas in order to classify and work within a framework. So what I want to talk about today is six, or actually twelve, dharmas. There are six dharmas, but because they apply both to mental concomitance and consciousness, we call them twelve.

[02:25]

But really we're talking about six things. And so they're called the six pairs. And I like to call them the lubrication of our life. What keeps our life lubricated? The first one is serenity called serenity and we find that that serenity is also one of the eight aspects of the enlightened mind. Do you remember Dogen's classification after Buddha of the eight aspects? So this serenity is the first one

[03:33]

And this is serenity of mind and consciousness. And the second one is agility, lightness of mind and consciousness. And the third one is pliability or easiness of consciousness. flexibility of mind and consciousness. And the fourth one is called workability of mind and consciousness. And the fourth one is called proficiency of mind and consciousness. And the sixth one is called uprightness of mind and consciousness. And these six work with each other and balance each other.

[04:36]

Our task is to be able to balance these six characteristics within ourself. So I'll talk a little bit about each one. is what we call calmness of mind or self-containment. Two examples of self-containment are when we are associated when we have joy, the dharma of joy. Joy is balanced by even-mindedness or balanced by serene mind so that joy doesn't turn into excessive kind of behavior where we lose our base.

[05:50]

And so our true joy has serenity as one of its factors. So we have what we call serene joy. This is joy which is allowed to arise, but it's held within some kind of framework and doesn't get out of hand. The second example is effort. And effort, which has serenity as its base, is effort which is within our control and doesn't get out of hand.

[06:57]

make us frantic or frenetic or overzealous. So those are two examples of how serenity as a base or as a factor in both joy and effort, which are two dharmas, acts as a base and keeps those two dharmas in control so that we have joy with serenity and effort with serenity. It's kind of like how we extend our practice into our daily life. So that this kind of serenity is a kind of maybe too much, you know, calm mind. is how we usually express it.

[08:05]

Serenity is a kind of exalted way of expressing it, but calm mind, which is one of the most important factors in our practice, to maintain calm mind under all circumstances. No matter what happens to you, you always have that calm mind or serenity underlying every activity. This is how we turn activity into practice. If we have that mindful, constantly mindful, calm mind, We always have a sense of practice, and we always know where we are.

[09:06]

And when we have that sense of serenity, we don't care so much about good things or bad things. We're not so, it's a help for us to curb our greed and ill will and delusion. And it gives us a sense of clarity. And a calm mind or serenity is also an access to meditation. It's an access and also a base.

[10:08]

In the old Theravada style of meditation, first you have access to meditation before you actually are engaged. And the access is in order to make our mind calm so that you can actually get into a meditative state of mind. In our practice we don't have that access, what we call access. You know, if you put your hands on your knees and sway, that's a kind of access. We're making our mind calm. When you come to the gate, you should already be thinking about dropping your stuff so that you can just come in to sit. And that's a kind of access.

[11:12]

You're already making your mind calm because you know you're going to be sitting Zazen. And so you're already entering into that access. So, and your mind is becoming very calm and serene. Maybe not serene, but you're trying to calm your mind down, especially in the afternoon. But we don't call it that. We don't say there's access to Zazen, because walking in the gate is already Zazen. Doing this is already Zazen. It's not preparing for Zazen. It's already Zazen. So we don't lose our calm mind or our zazen mind. We keep our zazen mind all the time. Maybe this is this kind of zazen or that kind of zazen, but it's still zazen. The second one of these factors is agility of mind and consciousness.

[12:24]

and agility is the ability to have a buoyant mind which quickly catches on to things and as it's described as a kind of lightness and is quick to turn to good states of consciousness. if your mind happens to be getting into a, wandering off in some way into some unwholesome state of consciousness, that agility quickly brings you back. And the opposite of that agility is sloth and torpor or heaviness. kind of denseness and inability to move, so quick and nimble movement of mind.

[13:41]

Quick and nimble movement of mind is also associated with crookedness, you know, or unwholesome states of mind. In the Buddhist context, it's nimbleness which is always ready to associate or take up wholesome states of mind. And it's not the molecules of your mind are not stuck together and they're very loose and whirling in a very free manner. Kind of like the earth, when the earth is tilled well and has a lot of loamy soil.

[14:47]

It's very loose and the water moisture can percolate up and down very easily and plants can root easily and there's a kind of easiness and friability that makes everything work very easily. So that's the second dharma. The third dharma is pliability or elasticity of mind. Suzuki Roshi always used to talk about soft mind. When you talk about our zazen, you should have a soft mind that accepts everything easily.

[15:55]

And it's like bamboo. The Japanese say bamboo, which when the wind blows, bamboo leans way over, or the grass leans way over and accepts the wind. and merges with the wind, but doesn't break. And then when the wind goes by, it comes back up. This is one of the most important factors for us, especially when we sit zazen. All of these factors are contained in zazen. We deal with every one of them in zazen. And it's this ability to let go. Its opposite is rigidity and the inability to accept things, to accept new things, and the inability to learn something, the inability to

[17:08]

Take in new information and use it. Dogmatism and arrogance are its opposites. Dogmatism is hanging on to your own opinions and ideas. And arrogance is thinking more of yourself than having some special idea about yourself, which makes you very stiff and makes it hard for you to move easily. Hard for us to bend when we have arrogance and a wrong view, which is dogmatism. dogmatism of wrong view.

[18:15]

So these are very hard, hard kind of dharmas, as opposed to soft mind, or pliability. So this is a very hard one, very important factor, and a very difficult one to work with. And it comes up constantly, moment after moment. How do you respond to every situation with pliability? And it's such an important factor in forming our character. It's, you know, you can ask somebody to do something over and over again. And they say, yes, I understand. And then they do it the same way they did it before. It's like you make an impression, but the impression fades.

[19:16]

Because there's no acceptance. And so we have to learn the same thing over and over again. Over and over again we have to learn the same thing day after day. So we say, I just keep making the same mistakes over and over again. We should be learning from our mistakes, but we're all the same, you know, and it's very hard to do, because we have this fixed picture of ourself. The next one is workability. Workability refers to the balance between softness and hardness. It's the factor that keeps pliability and uprightness in balance.

[20:22]

Uprightness is a kind of structure, we haven't talked about it yet, that is sincerity and If we get too far out on the soft side, we become very impressionable and things would just get carried away by things. So that's kind of the danger of pliability. So we need to have some kind of strength on the other side, but strength turns into hardness or unadaptability. So this workability is the constant watching to see that these two factors don't get out of balance.

[21:35]

You don't go too far on one side or too far on the other. we always, you know, the ability to catch ourself. When we see that we're going too far in one direction, we catch ourself. And it's a constant pulling in the reins, you know, but if we pull the reins in too tight, we can't move. So then we have to ease the reins, and then we can move. And so it's constantly going like this, constantly pulling in the reins, and then letting out the reins, pulling in, letting out. going quick, going slow and knowing how to constantly keep that balance so that we always maintain our serene mind and our agile mind and our pliant mind

[22:39]

And the next one is called workability, not workability, but proficiency. And proficiency is the kind of confidence you have by doing something over and over. And it's opposed to meekness or indecision. or that kind of self-doubt that stops us from doing anything. We get stopped. It's also called sickliness. Skeptical doubt is its enemy or its opposite. We always want to know what's going to happen, you know, how everything is going to happen before we do something.

[23:54]

If everything's safe and just right, you know, and if it's not just perfectly perfect, we can't move. That kind of attitude. We should know what we're doing, but we also have to be able to step out. We have to have some courage to do something. If you sit sasheen, you don't know what you're going to feel like at the end. You don't know how your legs are going to feel at the end, or in the middle. But you just step out. You don't give it a thought. You may think about it. Without giving it a thought, you just step into it. And then you take it out completely. That's the only way. You think about it. Well, this is the second zazen and my legs hurt already. What's it going to be like the tenth zazen? If you think like that, you're already defeated.

[24:57]

Just one moment, this moment and this moment. You have to have the courage to be in each moment. and deal with the situation of that moment. So, by allowing ourself to exist in each moment fully, Without those hindrances, we gain some good confidence and faith in ourself and in our life. We don't expect life to treat us in some special way. We know that we create our own life out of the raw material that's presented.

[26:06]

So, the last factor, sixth factor, is uprightness, which means sincerity. It's in right intention. Which means that when we do something, we know what our intention is. And when we do something where we have a secondary intention, we know This is the secondary intention, or maybe the secondary intention is really the primary intention. Am I fooling myself? Or what's what? So uprightness is knowing the difference between, say for instance, you want to give some money to charity. And you say, well, I'm just going to give this money to charity because I'm... just because.

[27:29]

That's a kind of sincere reason. If you say, I'm going to give this money to charity just because, but underneath you really want some recognition and maybe something will come back to you, you have some vested interest underneath. That's a kind of secondary reason. If you give the money and you don't get any recognition, you get angry, very angry. So you can see that your secondary reason is really your primary reason. uprightness is knowing what your reasoning is, knowing what your intentions are, and being straight and honest with yourself so that you always know where you are and you always have a serene mind. Knowing your intentions.

[28:41]

And it's very difficult because even though we have certain intentions, there's always some part of us that's picking at it, you know. Some part of us picks, or wants to attach, or wants something. And this is very dangerous, especially for someone who is in a position dealing with people. A teacher has to always know his intentions and you can't change your intention in the middle. Whatever is given is freely given and whatever is received is freely received. But there shouldn't be any grasping in between or accumulating or acquiring It's not clean.

[29:45]

What we do should be very clean. So, we should always have a good conscience. If you're the treasurer, you can't take something, you can't take your hand and take something out of the treasury, because it doesn't belong to you. So these factors work together. They say that in the Abhidhamma that these six or twelve pairs, six pairs, always arise in a wholesome state of consciousness. They're always present in a wholesome state of consciousness and they always arise together.

[30:52]

and they reinforce each other, and there's interaction always between all six. And on any one moment, we have to be able to balance all six at the same time, so that each one finds its place according to the situation. Sometimes one is in the ascendancy and the others find their place around it. So they're always finding their balance and harmony with each other. Serenity balances agility, because agility wants to bounce around. Agility is the free spirit of mind, and serenity holds it down, or calm mind holds it down.

[32:03]

And flexibility is held in place by workability. which keeps our flexible mind, gives it some form, always keeps it balanced, keeps it from getting too flabby. And there are many other examples of how they work together. and we should know how they work together. If nothing else, I think being able to investigate these dharmas, if we don't do anything else, we should investigate these dharmas during these six weeks and be conscious of them and

[33:19]

be aware of how they're working, we are working with them, and how they arise in our consciousness and mind all the time. This is really mindfulness. And they arise in every situation, moment to moment. Really? You distinguish between mind and consciousness. Yeah. Ah, how? Well, what I mean by that is mental concomitants, you know, like cetasikas, and consciousness, which is the base.

[34:22]

Well, did you say at the beginning that there were six of them, Well, they're called the pairs because they apply to both. They're applied to mental concomitants and they're also applied to consciousness as consciousness. It's just a kind of definition, classification. I feel a lot of gratitude to the avidhammas for being able to give us this kind of way of working with our mental states and consciousness. And when we study avidhamma, it looks very forbidding, you know, because there's so many classifications and factors to work with.

[35:34]

But there's a practical side which if we are very patient we can use. And this is being aware of these states of consciousness of our mind and being able to balance these factors in our mind and be aware of them. is the interesting side, the applicable side, the side that applies to our subjective side. Let's say we are aware that we don't have these factors.

[36:43]

And so the way to get it more is to be conscious when you see that you're not acting in that way. If you have these factors in mind and really absorb them, then when you find yourself in some state of mind which is where one of them is out of balance, then things are getting funny here, you know? It's not working. Then you think, well, why isn't it working? Well, it's because my mind is hopping all over the place, you know? And what do I do? Well, I come back to zazen, come back to my calm mind. That's the balance for The monkey mind is the one that's just jumping around all the time, it's agility, you know, but it's agility out of context of serenity.

[37:50]

So we want to bring that, we don't want to get rid of it, but we want to bring it down to where it works. Would your advice for most of them be to do self-limiting practice? It all is taken care of in zazen. You're dealing with all these factors in zazen. Every one of them are right here. And that's exactly what we're dealing with. We're dealing with serenity, agility, pliability, balance, workability, proficiency, with confidence and uprightness. Zazen is nothing but sincerity. Zazen posture is just sincerity. So we're working with all these factors every moment in Zazen.

[38:59]

That's why it's so easy to discuss. We're just looking at the factors of what we're dealing with in a very minute way, a very careful way. And it applies to the zazen of our daily life. Same thing. Yes. In my daily life, I find it very hard to accept what I feel is very selfish and rude behavior on the part of other people sometimes. And I guess that's one of the things that disturbs me the most from being calm. That I'll sort of be calm and someone will, you know, pull out in front of me and at her and just sort

[40:08]

take my turn when I'm driving or biking or walking, that just makes me very angry. The reason is because you care more about being angry than you care about the practice of being calm. It's a matter of choice. You think it's not a matter of choice, but it's a matter of choice. You'd rather be angry than calm. Think about it a little bit. Practice takes effort. And the effort is, no matter what happens to me, I keep this calm mind. So no matter what happens. It's not no matter what happens some of the time. No matter what happens all the time. Wait a minute. means no matter what happens all the time, I keep this mind.

[41:16]

That's Buddhist practice. It's very hard. We call it hard practice. Nobody said it was easy. This is hard practice. Hard practice. I'm not very good at this kind of practice. I'm not either. None of us are good at it. But that's what the practice is. We'd rather stay with the practice and let everything else go. We'd rather stay with what we believe is correct practice and let everything else go. When you trace that back, you know, That's what a monk is. A monk has given up everything except right practice.

[42:18]

It's not saying that you're all monks. But that, when you trace it back, you look at any Buddhist sutra, a monk has given up everything except the factors of practice, the factors of nirvana. What you said about, we'd rather be angry than calm, triggered in my mind that we'd rather be right. There's no feeling right. Right. Yeah. That's a kind of rigidity of mind. Which is the opposite of pliancy. Pliancy of mind means that you can accept somebody doing something wrong. You may not like it, you know, and you may reprimand the person, but With the pliancy, it gives you the ability to see things as they really are, not just through the eyes of your own anger, which is biased.

[43:26]

It gives you a much broader way to see things with a bigger picture. So anger, we may feel justified, but still, it's not big enough. So we can use anger. If we know how to have a soft mind, then anger is something that we can contain and use. You can use it. No. Because in a situation where a person is not going to do something unless there's some anger, unless they get a shock or some kind of, you know. But if you are nothing but anger, you lose yourself.

[44:32]

But if you know just how far to expand yourself, then anger can become part of that. And you look for the right moment and you express your anger. But it's not... and then it's over. It's just being used for something. It's not... You know, if you reprimand the baby, you say, I don't want you to do that, you know, and I mean it. But it's over. You're only saying it for an effect. You're not really angry, you're not... You know, first you calm yourself before you do anything. And then you use what anger is a means. You use anything. Everything's at your disposal to be used as a means. That's called controlling your mind. And that's Buddhist practice, is to control your mind. Never let your mind get out of hand. It happens. Of course it happens.

[45:35]

But our practice is to control our mind so that we use everything. Everything is ours to use. in however we want to use it. But we're not used by things. We're not used by our emotions or by the emotions that are... We don't react to... Reacting is like when you shake a stick at the dog, the dog bites at the stick, barks at the stick, you know. That's nothing. There's nothing to that. It's just... Reacting is just a lot of motion. But if you... The lion doesn't react to the stick. The lion jumps at the man. The lion stays calm, and the dog loses his temper. But the lion, what's going on here? It goes for the person.

[46:39]

Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

[46:48]

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