At the time of Bodhidharma, we don't know what was going on. We have some teachings that are now said to be Bodhidharmas, but we're not sure if there was a person who had those teachings or if later Zen people went back into the mouth of their founder. But I think at the time when you get to somebody like Daido Shin. It seems to be a historical figure. Starry and did some teaching and and so there is his recorded sayings. Which you can read in. Which which you have now in the end on and also that reprinted article, that's that's a big. big part of his teaching you have. And you can see, I think, he actually spoke of samatha and vipassana.

[01:07]

He didn't use Sanskrit, but he used a Chinese translation of them, which is jir-guan. Jir means stop or calming or tranquility, which means to contemplate or insight meditation. So he was... an early person in the Zen tradition who was teaching Samatha and Vipassana as part of his teaching. He also used an art term, Anshin, the pacified or tranquilized mind. And Bodhidharma is also said to have used the term Anshin. Daoxin, as I've said before, one of his main points is to associate the tranquilized, the stabilized consciousness with what?

[02:18]

What? With higher vision? Yes, but what particular type of higher vision? What? And what Well, how did he put it? Huh? What? Mindfulness and mind. Well, mindfulness and mind, yes. But in particular, what? Well, I'm glad I asked. The dissociation in his case is between thought and stabilized consciousness. That's one of his points that reoccur in his text is the association between no external objects or having no objects of thought and stabilized consciousness, which is also the same as mindfulness of mind and mindfulness of Buddha or Buddha's mindfulness.

[03:32]

Buddha's mindfulness is without objects external to the mind. Does this sound familiar? So Daoxin saying, having no objects or grasping no objects, same thing. When an object is external, when we think an object is external, we can't help but grasp it. Don't think it's external. We can't grasp it. So when you met it, when you understand that there's that there's nothing external, you stop grasping objects. Stop when you don't grasp objects. The mind is stabilized. Understanding that there's no objects means you understand that everything, all the objects you see are mind. So when you understand that all the objects you see are mind. the mind is stabilized, and when those two are united, this is called one point, which the Samdhi Nirmacana Sutra teaches.

[04:44]

Okay? So this is the main thing in Darshan, key point. This is called correct mindfulness. Correct mindfulness Again, the Chinese term for it is the same term that the Chinese would use if they were talking about the Eightfold Path and they were going to say right mindfulness. They would use that same character. And he means right mindfulness too, but his right mindfulness means he doesn't have objects. And that mindfulness is stabilized without any contrivance. When the mind doesn't have objects, it's stabilized. And so you can see the close relationship between Dao Shin and the Samdhi Nirmocana Sutra.

[05:46]

Now, Dao Shin did not talk about the Samdhi Nirmocana Sutra, but I did. And you're listening to that. He talked about the Tathāra Sutra. And so, again, we say that our founder, Bodhidharma, also brought the Lankavatara Sutra. Now, Lankavatara Sutra is a very similar sutra in a very similar vein to the Samadhi Nirmocana. It's a much bigger sutra, but it has the same teaching of mind only in it. We could have been studying the Lankavatara. That could have been brought in, too. So behind Daoistin, And behind Bodhidharma is this teaching of mindfulness, Buddha's mindfulness. And Buddha's mindfulness is a mindfulness that doesn't have objects external to the mind.

[06:47]

All right. Now, another main point of Daoism is to maintain mindful deviation. One of his main points. Maintain mindfulness with no deviation. And so it means maintain maintain mindfulness of. Of what of of. No objects of thought. Shun-i-bu-shran.

[07:51]

Guard oneness without deviation. So his one practice, samadhi, He taught this one practice samadhi, but it wasn't like he didn't make it up. He got it from the sutra where Manjushri teaches prajna. And in that sutra, Manjushri teaches this one practice samadhi. Practice samadhi is one of the main characters of Darshan's teaching. So he's saying, stay on this one thing, this right mindfulness practice, the Buddha's mindfulness, which has no objects. Now, there's two kinds of oneness about this samadhi. One kind of oneness is that you're always on this one topic. But the topic also is oneness, because the topic is that everything is mind only. Everything is just mind. So it's doubly one.

[08:54]

It's one topic, and it's the oneness of everything you see. Everything in the universe is as one. nothing but mind. And, when you have this mindfulness, that is stabilization. So, this kind of vision is this understanding and this kind of understanding is Samatha at the same time. Okay? Got it? It's on tape. Listen to the tape. Read Daoshan over and over. Let it sink in. Mindfulness of Buddha is mindfulness without object. The kind of mindfulness Buddha has is mindfulness without objects. Mindfulness of Buddha is mindfulness of mind. Mindfulness of mind means you're always mindful of mind.

[09:55]

Nothing but mind ever. And stay on that. That's Daoshan's teaching. And In Dao Shin, still you can see the Samatha Vipassana going on, and he even speaks of it. But after him, we have trouble finding Zen people talking about Samatha and Vipassana. Did you want to say something, Robert? I think so. Let's see what happens. Could you speak up, please? You can't hear him, can you? Also, I want to mention that that the the bodhisattva meditation text that I went through one day by Kamala Sheila, Bhavanakraman. So.

[10:57]

Which is maybe there's only one copy of it at Zen Center. It's called Minor Buddhist Text, so it has the Bhavna Kraman in it. And but Susan has a trend, has typed it out, the Bhavna Kraman. So she almost typed it out. So when she finishes. A copy down to the Tassajara library so you can read the whole the whole text. Bodhisattva Samatha Vipassana as presented by Kamala Srila. So it's presented by Kamala Srila, Bodhisattva Samatha. It's presented in the Samdhi Nirmacana Sutra. It's presented in the Lankavatara Sutra, but hard to deal with there. It's presented by many Zen teachers. Now, what happened to the Samatha Vipassana? Well, what happened In the Zen tradition, it's the same thing that happened to, pretty much, to the jhanas and to the four foundations of mindfulness and to a lot of other traditional Buddhist teachings.

[12:13]

They kind of got demoted to A category which, you know, you might say a category called not really to the point. Are not quite as good as. Zen. Or not quite as good as this school. This school. What is this school? Well, I don't know. Something with something neat was happening with these people, these Zen people. They were like, I don't know, apparently they were really something. I mean, you've read the stories. And there's something very vital about all of these people. But they gradually seem to need to have or separation from the traditional Buddhist teachings.

[13:28]

And they even started talking about a special transmission or a separate transmission outside the scriptures. You heard about that, right? They have a special transmission outside the scriptures. They started to talk not like the scriptures. They started to not mention some of the main words in the scriptures, particularly some of the main words in the scriptures, which were some of their main practices. So when it came to their main practices, they very much were careful to use the words that were in the scriptures. Other things which didn't matter so much to them, which weren't their special contribution, they still talked in the old way. Like the Zen school is not like super famous and everybody coming to the monasteries to learn about giving or patience or chanting or ritual. They came to learn about meditation, the Buddha's meditation.

[14:35]

And these people said, yeah, we got the Buddha's meditation here. Graduates started talking about it less and less the way that Indian people talked about it. Now, Dachshund, by the way, when he says, he says, you know, all this stuff, you know, that I've been teaching you, all this wonderful stuff, the scriptures he said all this stuff is based on the scriptures then a little while later quite a while later the Zen people say that Bodhidharma I have a transmission a separate transmission not based on the scriptures outside the scriptures now Dogen's teacher, Ru Jing, said, outside of the scriptures means neither inside or outside.

[15:36]

In other words, free of the scriptures. But Daoshin looks like he said, I'm coming from the scriptures. But later Zen people said, we're not coming from the scriptures. And, you know, a lot of them didn't. Where did they come from? They came from a source which scriptures before the Zen school was there. What's that? Zen people talking. These dialogues that the Zen masters are having with their students became, in some sense, the literature of the school. So, the Zen school had a unique literature, which they could say, nobody else has got this literature. This is the literature of our school talking to itself. And this teaching, these scriptures, they're not scriptures, but these records of these dialogues between our people are more efficacious than the sutras.

[16:42]

If you look at the polycanon, or if you look at the Agamas in Sanskrit are the same, basically, as the Buddha's teaching. A lot of the sutras are Buddha's talking to his students, and in a lot of those students, a lot of those talks, the students were enlightened in the talks. Just like in the Zen stories. But the language style is a little different. In the Zen stories, the language is more terse and concentrated than the Buddha's conversations. And the Buddha laid out big, long meditation instructions sometimes to his students, which culminated in enlightenment. And the Zen people almost never did. But also their instructions, when they were, they very seldom did they refer to the Indian dialogue, the Indian descriptions.

[17:50]

Sometimes the question is the monk comes with a question using the Indian terminology and the Zen teacher comes back with something totally. And the monk is awakened. So. On the generous side, you might have had these. just simply uncontrollably enlightened, and they just had to do something really different. On the more mundane side, you might have said you have the Zen school, which wanted to be something which is also somewhat like to be uncontrollably enlightened. They wanted to relate to Chinese society with a whole new teaching. They didn't want to use Indian stuff to relate to Chinese people.

[18:53]

They wanted to make a new way of talking about what Buddhism was that they felt was more appropriate. It worked for them, and they thought it worked for Chinese culture. And they also wanted to say, but we're not just totally making this up. So we have a special transmission. We have a transmission from Buddha. This is Buddhism, but it is not Indian in any way. And you notice we're not talking that way, but it's a special transmission, but also gradually it's a special transmission that obviously had nothing to do with India in terms of the actual material because the dialogues between Zen people, Chinese people talking to each other becomes the source of a lot of the teaching and discussion. And somewhere between The early ancestors of Zen, like Daoxin, and when the Zen people are using are Mahayana sutras, which they use some, but also using Zen dialogues and Zen encounters equally or more so.

[20:13]

Somewhere in between there, the Indian description and the early Chinese description of systematic presentations in terms of Samantan Vipassana, it gradually that language disappears. But I feel that the actual process of samatha-nipasana still goes on. There isn't really a break, but there's a change in language. And there's an adaptation to a culture And I feel it's important that we understand that actually the basic principles of how the mind works haven't been revolutionized by the Zen school. The basic workings of the mind have not changed much since the time of Buddha.

[21:19]

Self that the Buddha found out is the self that is now being discovered by the interdisciplinary approach to the study of the self by psychologists, neurologists, biologists. You know, all these people are they're finding basically the same self that Buddha found. And. So I want to say that. I also want to just to just say. a couple of things. One is, I just want to mention that Vimalakirti said that Sesshin is the place of enlightenment. The Chinese, I think that the Vimalakirti Sutra was written in Chinese. That's what I think. And there's a Tibetan one, but there isn't a Sanskrit one. And if you look at I don't think the Indians would ever come up with such a person.

[22:23]

Anyway, Vimalakirti said, Sesshin is the place of enlightenment. In other words, Sesshin is the Chinese characters for Sesshin is the place of enlightenment. I thought that was interesting for you. What? Do another Sesshin. I just want to mention a few other things here. Just a few other things. Here's one thing I want to mention. This is really basic. The shift between early Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism, I don't know what it's called, Theravada Buddhism or whatever, to Mahayana Buddhism, one way to characterize the shift that I think is really, for me, helpful, is that The foundation of the practice shifted from personal virtue to compassion.

[23:26]

At the early Buddhist practice, the root, the ground of it was personal virtue, was ethical conduct. The Suddhimagga, which is a wonderful book, has three sections. First section is the ethical precepts. Next section is compassion. shamatha and the other concentration practices, and then wisdom. But in the bodhisattva practice, compassion is the ground. Then, from compassion you go into giving precepts and so on. Of course we practice the precepts, but compassion is more important to the bodhisattva. It's the ground. So, If you're very ethical and very careful of all the precepts, this is great. But you're not going to get enlightened that way unless you have compassion at the root of that.

[24:35]

You can get very wise based on personal virtue and concentration and insight. But the deepest understanding has to be rooted in compassion. Some people who have compassion Don't have much personal virtue. Which is too bad. It is. Have you ever seen anybody like that? Not much personal virtue. You know what I mean? No, you don't. Well, like they have. They're compassionate, but they're compassionate, but they drink a lot of alcohol. You know. Or whatever, you know. They got a lot of problems. They're sloppy. They don't pay attention, but they got compassion. They will eventually develop personal virtue. Compassion doesn't allow you not to. You have to. But you could develop personal virtue for a long time without developing compassion.

[25:39]

So compassion, the shift is from the ground, from personal virtue being the ground, to compassion being the ground. And then after compassion, personal virtue is part of the deal. You can't skip over personal virtue just because you've got compassion. You can't. You don't get excused, but you also, compassion won't allow you to. But personal virtue, you could maybe postpone compassion. And some people have a lot of personal virtue, and they look down on these other people who don't. You ever see anybody like that? And rightly so, right? The person, you know, doesn't have any personal virtue. It's not good that they don't have it. I mean, the person who has compassion doesn't think that's good, but they don't look down on them. They look up to them. This is their life. So, anyway, that's the really important thing about Mahayana, is that compassion and then personal virtue and samatha-vipassana.

[26:45]

I also wanted to give you a couple more examples of the places where you can find shaman of Vipassana hidden in the Zen tradition. Which you haven't heard about, one of them I'd like to mention is in the. You know, very characteristic Sun dynasty Zen text. The moon con or the woman can. Woman gone to real text. which are the first koan is mu, and the second koan is the story of Baijong and the wild fox. Those two cases are the first two cases in the book, and those two cases are the meditation orientation of the book. And the first case, mu, is shamatha, and the second case is vipassana. Don't say anything about it. But that's what those two cases are. When you study those two cases and you learn them, you're learning first shamatha, then vipassana.

[27:56]

Yeah. It's a story about karma, of cause and effect. Basically, the story is, and he said no, and became born as a fox for 500 lives. And then he went, the head monk, went to the Zen teacher's talks and asked, And the Zen teacher said, okay, ask me. So then the wild fox man asked Bai Zhang, does an enlightened person fall into cause and effect or not? And Bai Zhang said, he's not blind to it. He doesn't ignore it. In other words, you study cause and effect. In other words, you practice vipassana. You're studying vipassana. Vipassana, but the Vipassana has to be based on Samatha, which is the mu koan, in that case, in this book. Mu can be used other ways, but in this book it's Samatha and Vipassana.

[28:59]

But they don't tell you that, but it's right there. Very clear. That's the way mu is used, just like a Samatha practice. And Dogen Zenji grew up in the Tendai school. In the Tendai school, the main school, the main text, the main scripture of the Tendai school is the Lotus Sutra. But the main commentary is the Mohojirguan or the Maha Shikhan, the great Samatha Vipassana. He grew up in that tradition of Samatha Vipassana. He left and became a Zen monk, an inheritor of the Zen tradition. But in his teaching, I tell you, there is Samatha Vipassana all over the place. Where? Turn the light around. Whose teaching is that? Darshan. That's a Samatha practice. Basic Dogen is Samatha. Then it says all over the place. Investigate, investigate, investigate.

[30:04]

What does he say to investigate? You name it. He tells you to investigate Abhidharma stuff. He tells you to investigate Zen literature. He tells you to investigate sutra passages. But first of all, when you really do the investigation, first of all, you stabilize your consciousness by turning the light around. He says you don't just go at this stuff like chasing the words of the Zen stories. and try to understand them just with your mind. Of course you do that to some extent. You study these. When you really do the work, first of all, you turn the light around. Then you investigate. So, Dogon II is teaching Samatha Vipassana. And Yangshan, case 32, you see, I'd say, he says, turn the light around. Reverse your mind. But in another place, Yangshan, literally, every one of you should turn the light around inwardly, and look at the self within.

[31:08]

Right on, same as darshan. Except he adds in the vipassana. So he first does shamatha and vipassana. And then he says, forget my words. Because when you do this practice, you have to forget the words that you've got. When you do the shaman to practice, you have to forget the instruction. In other words, you're getting instructions in a non. They have to forget the concepts that directed your attention towards the non conceptual. And so I would like to also say that just generally speaking. This is a school which is called the. It's called the Hongzhou School. Hongzhou is a town in China where, first of all, Matsu taught, and then finally, Wangbo taught.

[32:11]

So in the reading list, there is Bodhidharma, Daoxin, and then there is Matsu, Baijiang, Wangbo. That lineage is the Hangzhou school. And the Hangzhou school is a school that, again, transformed the Zen into something where you couldn't see the Indian stuff there anymore. But it is so straightforwardly mind-only. It's so straightforwardly right out of the sutras, out of the Mahayana sutras. They don't say it, but it's there. who are teaching actually Bodhisattva, Samatha Vipassana, they all taught, you know, all these people say the same thing. Daoshin, Matsu, Baijong, Wangbo, they all say, outside of mind there is no Buddha.

[33:19]

Outside of mind, they all teach that over and over. And they all say, therefore, no seeking and no attainment. You can't grasp mind because mind is Buddha. And Buddha has no characteristics. So there's no seeking, no attainment. And that's the way to enter into Buddhism. So they feel, and it looks like they were right, that they had this very direct way of initiating their students into Samatha Vipassana. They didn't mention it. And very straightforward. And so I encourage you to look at the traditional Indian, to get familiar with the traditional Indian presentation, and then see how you can see that actually this Hangzhou school, very important school, out of which also the Linji or Rinzai school comes, in accord with this bodhisattva mind-only yogacara, shamatha vipassana practice,

[34:28]

even though you don't see any sign of it in their language in terms of specifically, literally mentioning it. In fact, what they're teaching is exactly the same thing as in the Samadhi Nirmacana Sutra. There's nothing out there. There's nothing to seek. So you check that out. Same thing. Exactly the same in all these people. Okay. So those were the things. Oh, one more. I think this is also in case three. Of the Book of Serenity. Is where Bodhidharma teacher goes to lunch. After lunch. Oftentimes, Buddhist monks, firstly, you'd feed them, and then they would chant at your house.

[35:31]

They'd chant scriptures or give you a Dharma talk. So a Bodhidharma teacher, after lunch, did not chant the scriptures or read the scriptures to the king. And so the king says to the Paraprajanathara, how come you don't read scriptures? And he said, this poor wayfarer, when breathing in, does not dwell in the realms of body-mind. Which means, literally it says, and breathing out does not get involved in myriad circumstances. But literally what it is, is it's like the 18 dhatus, you know, the realms of sense, like eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, so on. This scripture, 100, 1,000, 1 million times. What is his practice? he doesn't get involved in the five skandhas, he doesn't dwell in them. In other words, you don't dwell in them, you don't get involved in them, but also you don't reject them, avoid them.

[36:42]

In other words, when it comes to the five skandhas, when it comes to feelings, perceptions or whatever, you don't activate your mind. So Bodhidharma is his disciple. In other words, he has a mind like a wall when it comes to the five skandhas. Right? Okay? Does that make sense to everybody now? In the commentary on this case, it says, maybe before you try Prajnaparamita's teaching, practice, which is very mystical, you might want to ground yourself in some of the more traditional presentations of meditation on your breath. So he's breathing in and out, body and mind breathing in and out, and the five skandhas are happening with every breath. And he doesn't value the five skandhas or devalue the five skandhas.

[37:43]

He doesn't cough or sigh at the five skandhas that are arising while he's inhaling and exhaling. That's his scripture, right? Same as Bodhidharma, mind like a wall. Very subtle teaching, right? So the commentary says, do some background work before you try this. And the text that they recommend is the Six Subtle Dharma Gates by Tiantai Jiri. And Jiri is the Chinese. who wrote that text I told you about, which is the main text of the Tendai school, which is the great Samatha Vipassana. But he also wrote another book, which was recommended particularly in this case because it concentrates on breathing. So this book is, I believe, on the list, isn't it? Book on the list. No, too bad. Yeah, you can put on anyway.

[38:47]

we have a translation of this book called The Six Subtle Dharma Gates. And in that, The Six Subtle Dharma Gates are counting, following the breath. The third stage is stopping. It doesn't mean stopping the breath. It means you shift from the breath being a, what do you call it, a conceptual object to a non-conceptual object. So it's like it's, The breath that you were working with before, now you're working with a non-conceptual object. Then the next one, the fourth one, is called guan, vipassana. So stopping, jur. I mean, stopping is shamatha. And the next one's guan, vipassana. And the next one is called returning. And returning is... Turn the light around and shine it back.

[39:52]

Look back at the mind which has been thinking. So it's shamatha again. And then the next one is puritana again. So it shifts from, it shifts, it makes you shift. So you start with the counting the breath. And then it explains that when that gets too rough, you go to following. Then you go to non-conceptual shamatha practice. Then you go to vipassana. Now you're not looking at the breath anymore. Now you're turning around looking at the mind which thinks of things. And then you turn and purify the whole system by understanding suchness. So that's a text you might want to look at to help on this practice that Prajnatara is doing. But you don't have to do that if you feel like you can go right in to do Prajnatara's teachings. Practice of. In the midst of the five standards, which means in the midst of your.

[40:55]

Colors, smells, touches, tastes, sounds. Did I get them all by in the midst of this form, in the midst of your feelings of pain, pleasure and neutral sensation, in the midst of all your concepts, in the midst of all your emotions and all your impulses, in the midst of your consciousness, in the midst of all the five standards, in other words, all your experience. If you can just not get involved, you can have this mind like a wall. You're on. But if you feel like that's too much for you, take a step back. Study this Six Subtle Dharma Gates, which starts out like, you know, kind of, what do you call it? What do you call that? Conceptually, it's over into the non-conceptual. It's called a mixed text. So Giri wrote many texts about meditation, but the three ones that I think are most relevant here are ones called the shau jirguan, which is a little jirguan.

[41:58]

Shau is little. It means little shamatha vipassana. It's a short one for beginners. Then he wrote this Six Subtle Dharma Gates, which is like an intermediate text, which is half like his beginner meditation on shamatha and vipassana as a conceptual practice. and half non-conceptual, which is all non-conceptual and Mahayana. So there's three texts, and we have translations of all three. Tom Cleary has translated the Stopping and Seeing, is it called? So that's the Mohojirguan part of it. Translated the first chapter of the Mohojirguan. So this is Chinese Chamathavipashyana. You can study that. This is Dogen grew up in that tradition. It's in his background. He knows about that stuff, but he doesn't refer to it much. But it's in his background. It's there.

[42:59]

And one other thing. And that is this way of practicing where as you're breathing, You don't get involved in the midst of your experience, in the midst of your feelings, in the midst of the colors you see, the faces you see, and the people you touch, and the things you think, and all that. In all the midst of your five skandhas that are happening moment by moment, you don't value or devalue. That practice is shamatha. mind like a wall, but it then takes you into vipassana. And you see that all this stuff is nothing but mind. And you see suchness. And this same practice takes you back out of that world of realization into the world.

[44:09]

Because when the bodhisattva returns from seeing that there is nothing out there, existing separate from our mind, When they return to the five skandhas again, it's the same practice. Namely, you don't value or devalue. The same way that you went in, you practice when you come out. The difference is that you have this realization in between. And you understand that this stuff, which you before dreamed. In other words, if things are a dream, you're not going to get too involved with them, right? Maybe say, hi, but that's enough. But now you understand it's a dream like the same way you did when you went in. You treat it like a dream from your understanding. Before you treated it like... I'm going to give you a couple more examples of the places where you can find Samatha Vipassana hidden in the Zen tradition, which you haven't heard about.

[45:10]

One of them I'd like to mention is in the You know, very characteristic Sung Dynasty Zen text. The Wu-Mong-Kan, or the Wu-Mung-Kun, Wu-Mung-Kwan. Real typical Zen text, which the first koan is Mu, and the second koan is the story of Bai-Zhong and the wild fox. Those two cases are the first two cases in the book And those two cases are the meditation orientation of the book. And the first case, mu, is shamatha. And the second case is vipassana. I won't say anything about it, but that's what those two cases are. When you learn them, you're learning first shamatha, then vipassana. The wild fox story? It's a story about karma, of cause and effect.

[46:11]

Basically, the story is... And he said no and became born as a fox for 500 years. And then he went, the head monk, went to the Zen teacher's talks. And afterwards, he told him this story. And the Zen teacher said, OK, ask me. So then the wild fox man asked Bai Zhang, does an enlightened person fall into cause and effect or not? And Bai Zhang said, he doesn't ignore it. In other words, you study dependent core arising, you study cause and effect. In other words, you practice vipassana. You're studying vipassana, but the vipassana has to be based on shamatha, which is the mukha, in that case, in this book. Now, mukha can be used other ways, but in this book, it's shamatha and vipassana. But they don't tell you that, but it's right there. Very clear.

[47:12]

That's the way Mu is used, just like a Samatha practice. And Dogen Zenji grew up in the Tendai school. In the Tendai school, the main school, the main text of the Tendai school, the main scripture of the Tendai school is Lotus Sutra. But the main commentary is the Moho Jirguan, or the Maha Shikhan, the great Samatha Vipassana. He grew up in that tradition, Vipassana. He left and became a Zen monk, or a an inheritor of the Zen tradition. But in his teaching, I tell you, there is shamatha vipassana all over the place. Where? Turn the light around. Whose teaching is that? Daushin. That's a shamatha practice. Basic dogen is shamatha. Then after shamatha, he says all over the place, investigate, investigate, investigate. What does he say to investigate? You name it. He tells you to investigate Abhidharma stuff.

[48:19]

He tells you to investigate Zen literature. He tells you to investigate sutra passages. But first of all, when you really do the investigation, first of all, you stabilize your consciousness by turning the light around. He says you don't just go at these stories of the Zen stories. and try to understand them just with your mind. Of course you do that to some extent. You study these things. When you really do the work, first of all, you turn the light around. Then you investigate. So, Dogon II is teaching Samatha Vipassana. And Yangshan, case 32, he says, turn the light around. Reverse your mind. But in another place, Yangshan says, literally, every one of you should turn the light around inwardly, and look at the self within. Right on, same as darshan. Except he adds in the vipassana.

[49:24]

So he first does shamatha and vipassana in one sentence. And then he says, forget my words. Because when you do this practice, you have to forget the words that you've got When you do the Samatha practice, you have to forget the instruction. In other words, you're getting instructions in a non-conceptual meditation, so you have to forget the concepts that directed your attention towards the non-conceptual. And so I would like to also say that speaking, there's a school which is called the called the Hongzhou School. Hongzhou is a town in China where, first of all, Matsu taught, and then finally, Wang Bo taught. So in the reading list, there is Bodhidharma, Daoxin, and then there is Matsu, Baijian, Wang Bo.

[50:33]

It's a Hangzhou school. And the Hangzhou school is a school that, again, really transformed the Zen into something where you couldn't see the Indian stuff there anymore. But it is so straightforwardly mind-only. It's so straightforward out of the Mahayana sutras. They don't say it, but it's there. And these people who were teaching actually Bodhisattva, Samatha Vipassana, they all taught, you know, all these people say the same thing. Daoshin, Baijong, Wangbo, they all say, outside of mind there is no Buddha. Outside of Buddha there is no mind. They all teach that over and over. And they all say, therefore, no seeking and no attainment. You can't grasp mind because mind is Buddha, and Buddha has no characteristics.

[51:45]

So there's no seeking, no attainment, and that's the way to enter into Buddhism. So they feel, and it looks like they were right, that they had this very direct way to bring their students into Samatha Vipassana. They didn't mention it. It's very straightforward. But it's there. And so I encourage you to look at the traditional Indian, to get familiar with the traditional Indian presentation, and then see how you can see that actually this Hangzhou is an important school, out of which also the Linji or Rinzai school comes. They really are in accord with this bodhisattva, mind only, yogacara, shamatha vipassana practice. even though you don't see any sign of it in their language, literally mentioning it. In fact, what they're teaching is exactly the same thing as in the Samadhi Nirmacana Sutra. There's nothing out there. There's nothing to seek.

[52:51]

So you check that out. Same thing. Exactly the same in all these people. So those were the things. Oh, one more. I think this is also in the case three. Of the Book of Serenity. Is where Bodhidharma teacher goes to lunch. And after lunch. Oftentimes, Buddhist monks, firstly, you feed them and then they would chant at your house. They chant scriptures or give you a Dharma talk. So Bodhidharma's teacher, after lunch, did not chant scriptures or read the scriptures to the king. And so the king says to the Paraprajanathara, how come you don't read scriptures?

[53:57]

And he said, this poor wayfarer does not dwell in the realms of body-mind. Which means, literally it says, in the skandhas. And breathing out does not get involved in myriad circumstances, but literally what it is, it's like the 18 dhatus, you know, the realms of sense, like eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, so on. I always chant this scripture 100, 1,000, 1 million times. What is his practice? He doesn't get involved in the five skandhas. He doesn't dwell in them. you don't dwell in them, you don't get involved in them, but also you don't reject them, devalue them, avoid them. In other words, when it comes to the five skandhas, when it comes to feelings, perceptions, or whatever, you don't activate your mind as his disciple.

[55:01]

In other words, he has a mind like a wall when it comes to the five skandhas. All right? Okay? Okay? Does that make sense to everybody now? In the commentary on this case, it says, maybe before you try Prajna Tara's teaching practice, which is very mystical, you might want to ground yourself in some of the more traditional presentations of meditation on your breath. So he's breathing in and out. in mind, breathing in and out, and the five skandhas are happening with every breath, and he doesn't value the five skandhas or devalue the five skandhas, okay? Doesn't cough or sigh at the five skandhas that are arising while he's inhaling and exhaling. That's his scripture, right? Dharma, mind like a wall. Very subtle teaching, right?

[56:04]

So the commentary says, maybe you want to do some background work before you try this. And the text that they recommend is the Six Subtle Dharma Gates, which is Tiantai Jiri. And Jiri is the Chinese guy who wrote that text I told you about, which is the main text of the Tendai school, which is the great Samatha Vipassana. But he also wrote another book, which was recommended particularly as it concentrates on breathing. So this book is, I believe, on the list, isn't it? Is that book on the list? No? Too bad. Yeah, you can put it on. Anyway, we have a translation of this book called The Six Subtle Dharma Gates. And in that, the six subtle dharma gates are counting the breath, following the breath,

[57:10]

The third stage is stopping. It doesn't mean stopping the breath. It means you shift from the breath being a conceptual object to a non-conceptual object. So it's like the breath that you were working with before, it's like stops. Now you're working with a non-conceptual object. Then the next one, the fourth one, is called guan, vipassana. So stopping. I mean, stopping is shamatha, and the next one's guan, vipassana. And the next one is called returning, and returning is turn the light around and shine it back. Mind which has been thinking. So it's shamatha again. And then the next one's purity, which is vipassana again. So it shifts from, it shifts, it makes you shift.

[58:14]

So you start with the counting the breath, and then it explains that when that gets too rough, you go to non-conceptual shamatha practice. Then you go to vipassana. Then you go to, now you're not looking at the breath anymore. Now you're turning around looking at the mind which thinks of things. And then you turn and purify the whole system by understanding suchness. So that's a text you might want to look at to help you get some background on this practice that Prajnatara is doing. But you don't have to do that if you feel like you can go right in and do Prajnatara's teaching practice of the five skandhas, which means in the midst of your colors, smells, touches, tastes, sounds. Did I get them all? Five, in the midst of this form, in the midst of your feelings of pain, pleasure, and neutral sensation, in the midst of all your concepts, in the midst of all your emotions, in the midst of your consciousness, in the midst of all the five skandhas, in other words, all your experience, if you can just not get involved, if you can have this mind like a wall, you're on.

[59:32]

But if you feel that's too much for you, take a step back, study this... which starts out like, you know, kind of, what do you call it? What do you call that? Conceptually, and shifts over into the non-conceptual. It's called a mixed text. So Giri wrote many texts about meditation, but the three ones here are ones called the Shao Jirguan, which is a little, little Jirguan. Shao is little. Little Jirguan means little Samatha Vipassana. It's a short one for beginners. Then he wrote this Six Subtle Dharma Gates, which is like an intermediate text, which is half like his beginner meditation on Vipassana as a conceptual practice, and half non-conceptual. And then the Mohajiraguan, which is all non-conceptual, and Mahayana. So there's three texts, and we have translations of all three.

[60:37]

There's a The stopping and seeing, is it called? So that's the Mohojiraguan, part of it. And Neil Donner translated the first chapter of the Mohojiraguan. So this is Chinese Chamatha Vipassana. Okay, you can study that. This is Dogen grew up in that tradition. He knows about that stuff, but he doesn't refer to it much. But it's in his background, it's there. Okay, so... And one other thing, and that is this is practicing where as you're breathing, you don't get involved in the five skandhas. In the midst of your experience, in the midst of your feelings, in the midst of the colors you see, in the faces you see, in the people you see, in the things you think and

[61:43]

all that, in all the midst of your five skandhas that are happening moment by moment, you don't dwell. You don't value or devalue. That practice is shamatha. Okay? Mind like a wall. But it then takes you into vipassana. And you see that all this stuff is nothing but mind. And you see suchness. And this same practice takes you back out of that world of realization into the world. Because when the bodhisattva returns, that there is nothing out there existing separate from our mind. When they return, when they come back into the five skandhas again, it's the same practice. Namely, you don't value or devalue. The same way that you went in, you practice when you come out. The difference is that you have this realization. And you understand That this stuff, which you before treated like was a dream, in other words, if things are a dream, you're not going to get too involved with them, right?

[62:52]

Maybe say, hi, but that's enough. But now you understand it's a dream, like the same way you did when you went in. And you dream from your understanding. Before you treated it like...

[63:04]

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