As I was listening to the recitation of this vow, some new people here for this session, I would guess, are not familiar with this vow that you just recited. Is that correct? It took you quite a while to find it in the book, didn't it? It's called Eihei Koso Hotsugamon. which Eihei is the name of a Buddhist teacher named Eihei Dogen. You know that name? Dogen? So Eihei means eternal peace. It's the name of the monastery that he founded in Japan. And koso means high priest, so the high priest of the monastery of eternal peace.

[01:06]

And then it says, hotsu ga mon, and hotsu means giving rise to. And gan means bow. And mon means verse. So it's this Buddhist teacher named Dogen. It's the verse of giving rise to the vow. So you read his own personal vow. He wrote that vow. And I thought it was such a nice vow that I decided to adopt it and share it with you. So for the last several years, before giving talks, we've been reciting that And so while I was listening to you recite it and as I was reciting, it got to the part where it said, by revealing and disclosing our lack of faith in practice. And I thought, maybe I should reveal some things here.

[02:10]

But actually what I thought of revealing is not about lack of faith in practice, which I could do also, but I actually thought maybe it would be helpful during this session to reveal to you what I go through as I groped for the way to teach Dharma. I have these feelings, you know, these kind of Dharma feelings in me of things that I think are important to study, important to learn, important to express, and then I wonder when and how to express them to others. And although some of the Dharma that I want to share with you, I wonder, I actually wonder if you want to hear it. I do think you probably would find it interesting to hear about the trouble I go through figuring out whether I should tell you, because that's very accessible.

[03:16]

So I thought that might help you, and maybe you could sort of share my struggle. about how to open up new realms of teaching in this country, this American country, which is exactly what I'm trying to do, is open up things. A lot of things are being taught in America, but some things are not being taught. Certain aspects of Buddhadharma are not being opened up for people for various reasons, which I'll get into. But I would like to open up some of these things because I think they're important. But as I open them, I run into resistance, which is, you know, anything new is hard for us. So this year, before this year, I kind of declared to kind of specialize in a sustained effort

[04:20]

or a sustained effort in a specialized area of Buddhist practice for the whole year. And the area is the area of developing the mind of Buddha, or as we sometimes say, the samadhi of the Buddha. And to study various kinds of samadhis as a way to understand Buddha, Buddha samadhi. And part of what I had in mind was to present something, and then after presenting that, to build on that and build on that and go forward, forward, forward, deeper and wider into this area of studying samadhi. But Zen Center is a fairly open place, and we keep, so if I present some teaching, then new people come, and then we have, I have, so part of the phenomenon I have of teaching something at Zen Center is I teach something, and that new people come and the new people don't know what happened the week before.

[05:26]

And then if I repeat it, the people who are there start to go to sleep. And if I don't repeat it, the new people kind of like don't know what I'm talking about. So this is part of the character of trying to teach something to a whole community, not all of whom are participating in all the teaching offerings. Now, if I'm willing to repeat something, supposedly others who have heard it before would be willing to listen to it, but that's not always the case. I really don't mind going over things again and again. And the reason why I don't mind is because of samadhi, one of the merits of samadhi, that you don't mind saying the same thing over and over. It's always interesting just to say, boo, boo, boo, or oh, oh, oh, because of samadhi. So I don't mind, but some people get bored hearing the same thing over and over.

[06:26]

They want to learn more. And I do too, but sometimes it's just not possible. That's one little revelation of the difficulties, some of the difficulty I have about how to proceed. So three months into the year of trying to relate the teachings of Samadhi, although I was doing them all last year, last year I didn't declare I was going to be working on these teachings, so it wasn't quite so scary. But this year I made this New Year's resolution that that was going to happen. In other areas, too, I've tried to do this, too, like studying certain scholastic presentation of wisdom teachings, which we call the Abhidharma. I've been doing that for about 30 years, and I would have a class, and then that class would end, and then I'd have another class, and then just a few people from the previous class would sign up for the next class, and new people would come in.

[07:30]

So we kept going back to the... had to keep going back to the earlier material because the new people couldn't understand, and the old people would drop out because they kept being on the low level. And same with koans. I took koan collections, like 100 stories, and started studying them. And then after a while, people would drop out so that I'd keep going back to the beginning. But finally, with the Koan class, I just said, even though people will drop out, I'm just going to keep going through the text. So I made that decision about 12 years ago with a collection of 100 stories, and we're now on 85. And people have come and gone, but I just kept going. And that's what I'm going to do with the samadhi thing. I'm just going to keep going, but I'm going to share with you my difficulty in the process a little bit during this session. And it may help you help me continue on this somewhat foolish and heroic path of teaching something

[08:33]

so extensive as the practice of samadhi in the Mahayana. That was pretty accessible, wasn't it? I made a chart, and the chart's about the relationship among different classes and meanings of samadhi. How many people are not familiar with the word samadhi? Okay. So this chart is posted on one bulletin board, on two bulletin boards out in that cloud hall there. So you can look at it up close. And if you'd like a copy of it, if you have a copy of it, would you raise your hand? You've got a copy of this concentric circle chart. Okay, and how many people who don't have a copy would like a copy? Maybe, could you make about 40 copies and maybe put them on the altar?

[09:48]

So you can pick them up when? After lunch? Yeah. So if you want, you can have a copy of this. We say not to read during Sashin, so don't read this. Just look at it, okay, and memorize it, but don't read it. So I wanted to like start again with this image of the world of samadhi. And the image is four samadhi circles or four concentric circles of concentration, four kinds of concentrations. Samadhi, translating the word samadhi, translating the word samadhi could be translated as joining, uniting, collecting.

[11:05]

And the Chinese translated the word samadhi using a word which means to be settled, resolute, firm. But the definition of samadhi, not the translation into English, is citta e kagatas, which means the one-pointedness of mind, literally, one-pointedness of mind. But you can expand that definition to the one-pointedness of mind and its object. So samadhi, the definition or the meaning of samadhi is that mind and what it knows or knowing and what is known are actually one point. So, that's basic, okay?

[12:15]

basic definition. Now, in the various Abhidharma teachings of Buddhism, and Buddhism is presented, and early Buddhism was presented in the Pali tradition as the Nikaya. Nikaya. No, not Nikaya. Tripitaka. Tripitika. Buddhism was presented in the form, Buddhist teaching was presented in a form called Tripitika. And the pitikas, pitika means basket, and tri means three. So it's presented as three baskets, three pitikas.

[13:18]

And one basket was the basket of the discourses of the Buddha called the suttas or sutras. The next basket was called the basket of discipline for the yogis, the vinaya. Tell them the procedures for living together and practicing together and Buddha telling him lots of stories about his history. And the third category was Abhidharma, which is a scholastic presentation of the Buddha's teaching. And in some sense, these three baskets are sometimes put in parallel with the disciplines of The Vinaya corresponds to the discipline of precepts, precept study, precept discipline, ethical discipline. The suttas are put in correspondence with samadhi, and the Abhidharma is put in correspondence with wisdom.

[14:27]

So these three baskets correspond to ethical discipline, meditative discipline, samadhi discipline and wisdom discipline or prajna discipline. Okay? So, in the suttas and also as condensed and summarized in the Abhidharma, it is taught that all minds have ten mental factors that accompany them. So no matter what kind of experience you're having, whenever you're having an experience, whenever you're knowing anything, like knowing a sound, knowing a thought, knowing an emotion, knowing a pain, knowing a pleasure, whatever experience you're having, there's certain mental factors that accompany all your experiences.

[15:29]

And one of those mental factors that accompanies all your experiences is samadhi. No matter what's happening, your mind is always one-pointed with what it knows. I should say, whatever experience is happening, mind is one-pointed with its object of knowledge. Okay? So this samadhi, the central circle samadhi, is a characteristic of all your states. It's a factor in every experience throughout your life. Or at least, I don't know, there'd be some debate about whether a zygote actually has consciousness which knows objects, but I'm of the opinion that it does. So even a newborn embryo has consciousness and knows something, and it has samadhi.

[16:36]

I'm not saying necessarily it's a human, but it's kind of like it has samadhi. And there's other mental factors also, but I think maybe I won't go into those today because if I do, I might get off the track of samadhi. Will you excuse me if I don't get into the other nine mental factors that are present in every state of consciousness? That could be another handout. So if you want to learn about those, tell Reverend Luminous Forest over there in the corner, and we can maybe provide that to you after session, because you might get too much reading, right? Okay, that's the center circle. So imagine a circle which represents, or even maybe not even a circle, maybe a dot that represents one pointedness of your experience.

[17:46]

The next circle around that, which we sometimes call circle number two, or samadhi number two, is... represents the phenomena wherein a living being, it could be a human living being who's a yogi, officially or unofficially a yogi, And this person has practiced concentration practices so that they've become immersed, they've become absorbed in this fact of life. They've become absorbed in the one-pointedness of mind. That's the second circle.

[18:54]

So not only all people have this quality of consciousness which is called stabilization or calm or concentration, but not everyone appreciates that in themselves or in others. Actually, if you notice that somebody else is concentrated, you're a little bit concentrated. Does that make sense? If you can stop in your busy life long enough to notice somebody who's like really there, you have just slowed down almost to a stop. Does that make sense? Something came in my mind now which might be relevant and it is a film I saw one time of a Kenyan distance runner.

[20:01]

He's a gold medalist, I think, in the, is there 15,000 meters or 10,000 meters? Huh? I think maybe it was 10,000 meters. Might have even been marathon, but anyway, he was a long distance runner and it was a film of his face while he was winning a gold medal in this race. And, of course, his legs were like working away, moving him across the earth. But they took the picture of his face, and he looked like somebody sitting still and relaxed. He looked like somebody in meditation, just like... But it was slowed down. I think probably the head probably would have been going up and down a little bit if he speeded it up. But in slow motion... It looked like he wasn't moving and looked very calm and present. So me watching that, of course, I get a contact samadhi, right?

[21:04]

I feel calm looking at this guy running because I see that he's actually one-pointed about it in a gold medal way. That's the second meaning of samadhi which I present to you, or second kind of samadhi. This is also called sometimes dhyana or jhana. That word is often translated as trance or concentration. But again, the definition of dhyana is samadhi. But it means just a more thoroughly established realization of this basic nature of our mind, which I think a number of you have had some experience of this second circle.

[22:06]

And the Buddha Shakyamuni, before he was a Buddha, when he was a bodhisattva, he practiced the second kind of samadhi very thoroughly and attained very deep states of absorption in one-pointedness of thought. But he found that they didn't produce liberation. So the second kind of samadhi, although when you're in these states, you do feel calm, and as they get more and more deep, you feel calmer and calmer, but also relaxed and buoyant, light, full of light, joyful, flexible, and you're going to feel really good. And you feel like the mind's just ready to do whatever wholesome deeds need to be done.

[23:12]

Okay, let's do them. So as a result of training in this second circle, it's obtained this very nice condition called concentration. But on the chart I also wrote in the second circle, still holding a view of self. So before the Buddha was awakened to the nature of self, he held a view of self which wasn't quite accurate. And actually, I probably better say holding a view of a self like that the self is something that really can be held on to. So the second circle is not really a Buddhist situation. Anybody who does the yogic practices of concentration can attain the second kind of samadhi.

[24:17]

And many people throughout the world have attained the second kind of samadhi. But it's not really Buddhist because there's no Buddhist wisdom, really, in the second samadhi. What we mean by the second samadhi is that Buddhist wisdom has not yet penetrated the state of concentration. However, the afflictions that come to human beings, the normal afflictions and pains of daily life, are temporarily, as long as you're in this state of concentration, they're basically at bay. The afflictions and poorments of being unenlightened are at bay by the power of the samadhi. That's why samadhi is good even without wisdom. But anyway, the second circle represents concentration not yet united with wisdom. Okay?

[25:21]

Third circle, third type of samadhi is samadhi which is illuminated by wisdom. And in this case we mean a wisdom, strictly speaking, of the type that we consider to be Buddhist wisdom, where there is a realization of the selflessness of persons. You realize the selflessness of your personhood. In other words, you realize a fairly unconceited version of yourself. And this is personal liberation from suffering in the third type of samadhi. And in order to realize the cure for personal bondage, this selflessness of the person is a sufficient medicine to cure us of the disease of the ignorance

[26:38]

of not understanding the self of our person. So it's a wonderful samadhi. The third samadhi, the fourth samadhi, is an even deeper understanding of selflessness. And this goes beyond personal liberation. The wisdom here, the selflessness understood here, goes beyond removing the hindrances to personal liberation. It goes beyond to remove the hindrances to, excuse the expression, unsurpassed, complete and authentic awakening of a Buddha. That's the fourth type of samadhi. It's the samadhi of those who wish to become optimally beneficial to all beings.

[27:42]

Now, of course, realizing that they're a type of samadhi and being personally liberated, you're like good news to the world, to most people. Now, some people, however, still might be turned off by seeing a free person. And So you wouldn't necessarily be able to help everyone. But in the fourth circle, if you give yourself, if the person in the fourth circle is given a chance, well, if the person's ready, they can help him. But even there, not everybody's ready. So those are the four samadhis which I would offer to you. And then, so now the next step is that I would like to talk about the wisdom practices by which we enter into the third type of samadhi.

[29:01]

So we have these four samadhis, and now I'd like to introduce to you the teaching of three wisdoms, three kinds of wisdom. And these three kinds of wisdom are taught in the early Buddhist teachings, in the Pali and Sanskrit versions of the Buddhist teaching, and they're also taught in the early and later Abhidharma works, and they're also taught in the Mahayana scriptures. And these three kinds of wisdom are wisdom which arises through hearing, literally. It's the first type. And the second type is wisdom which arises through reflection or examination And the third type is a wisdom which arises through or in samadhi.

[30:14]

So if you're studying the first two types of samadhi, in a sense, you're doing some wisdom work by studying concentration. But most of the work you're doing when you're working to develop mental stabilization or concentration is actually Fundamentally, you're basically like giving up discursive thought. You're not really using your intellect, you're kind of like giving it away. Giving away your intellect, not trashing it, not fighting it, just like some people say, cut your head off and put it next to your eating bowls when you're sitting.

[31:35]

And also, even during Keen Heen, Or maybe keep some kind of guidance device going. So basically, give your intellect away for a while and you'll calm down. Because your intellect, bless it, bless the intellect, because it's the source, it's where, you know, it'll be doing the wisdom work eventually. But our intellect, when it's not doing wisdom work, or even when it is first learning how to do wisdom work, when the intellect's first trying to learn how to do wisdom work and hasn't learned it yet, Or even when it's not doing wisdom work and doing delusion work, the intellect, when it's active, when it's working, usually it's getting involved with things and usually that's agitating. Usually it makes us not understand what anybody's talking about when they talk about concentration or that we are concentrated. So we kind of give away the intellectual activity for a while, give away discursive thought, don't get involved with thoughts and so on.

[32:37]

So that's the training in Samadhi number two. Does that make sense? Okay. So when you start studying wisdom, however, when you first start studying wisdom, you activate your discursive thought again. Now if you're practicing concentration, which some of you have been doing for quite a while in your Zen practice, and being willing to let go of discursive thought and thereby calm down. I'm not telling you to stop that practice. In fact, I would encourage you to continue the practice of giving up wandering around in your mind I would encourage you to give up and continue the practice of not moving around among the objects of thought. In other words, moving around the object of thought, wandering in your head, discursive thought, these are different ways of talking about the same active mind.

[33:43]

Okay? I would think still the practice of developing, giving all that up, and thereby calming down and realizing Samadhi number two, still good practice. Okay? But I'm opening another door now. I'm opening the door to Samadhi number three. And in order to enter, in order to move from Samadhi number two to Samadhi number three, in order to move from calm, in order to move from calm and temporary relief from affliction to a actual liberation from delusion and suffering, not temporary and not permanent. To move to authentic liberation from suffering, personal liberation or universal liberation, to move in that next step requires bringing the head up off the ground and putting it back on again for a class on wisdom.

[34:55]

So Samadhi number three, so studying Samadhi number three and number four means that you start studying wisdom. And when you first start studying wisdom, it's going to like, it might be at the cost of some of your calm for a while. But you can go back to the calm if you want to right after this talk's over. But while this talk's going on, you have the opportunity to have, what do you call it, a pass or an excuse to depart from your concentration which you were in prior to this talk, if you are willing to listen. In Samadhi number three and four, we are studying the wisdom that enlivens and illuminates all the samadhis.

[36:01]

In three and four you're learning about the wisdom which will illuminate samadhi one and two. You can even illuminate samadhi number one. In other words, illuminate the samadhi before you even know that you have samadhi. Studying wisdom are studying the wisdoms that are joined in blissful union with these samadhis. Samadhi three is samadhi two, united with wisdom, a wisdom which sees the selflessness of persons. Was that easy to follow? Anybody have a hard time following that?

[37:06]

No? Samadhi 3 is Samadhi 2 united with wisdom that sees the selflessness of persons. and also then the selflessness of other persons, of your personal person and your non-personal person. Or you could say, if you excuse the expression, I don't want to actually, I'll take it back. I was going to say this, but I don't want to... After I say this, disregard the witness's comment, okay? What I wrote down was Samadhi 3 is Samadhi 2 improved by wisdom. It's not improved. I should say it's transformed, or it's illuminated. Samadhi three, and then I could also say that wisdom number three, the wisdom that arises from samadhi, is samadhi, the wisdom which arises together with samadhi is wisdom number two,

[38:22]

which has been united with samadhi number two. Samadhi deepens wisdom. So there's wisdom number one, wisdom number two, and then wisdom number two is deepened by samadhi into wisdom number three. And wisdom illuminates samadhi. Samadhi deepens wisdom, and wisdom illuminates samadhi. So do you get the relationship now about sort of the overall relationship between working with wisdom and working with samadhi and the reasons why we need to do both?

[39:32]

You can have some wisdom without samadhi, but to deepen the wisdom, we need samadhi. And you can have a lot of samadhi without wisdom, but to convert the samadhi practice into liberation, you need wisdom. Does that make sense? Some Buddhist people actually de-emphasize samadhi quite a bit. And the traditions which have de-emphasized samadhi and emphasized wisdom, because wisdom is really the cure for our disease of ignorance, not samadhi. Not samadhi in the sense of samadhi number two. They actually mostly teach wisdom practices and not much emphasis on calming practices, partly because I think people have so much trouble giving up discursive thought, which is necessary for, like, the fruit of mental stabilization.

[40:47]

But even people who aren't willing to give up discursive thought, well, they can use the discursive thought to practice wisdom. So for some people who are, you know, very into discursive thought and just can't dare to give it up, you can just work on wisdom with them and they can get really developed wisdom. Of course, it will get deeper if they connected it with samadhi, but they just are not into it. So they do pretty well with wisdom without samadhi. I'm trying to bring them both together for, you know, for the deepest realizations. So I've been talking today and you've been listening to me and whatever understanding you're developing here through listening to me talk about this, you're actually hearing teachings about Samadhi and teachings about wisdom and teaching about the relationship between them.

[42:14]

And as you listen, this is the kind of work that develops wisdom arisen from hearing. It's also sometimes called wisdom which arises from learning. And it's in a situation somewhat like this where you're receiving teaching and eventually you understand it. The next level of teaching is a teaching where you start to use even more of your intellect and more of your language skills and more of your discursive thought, more intensively, and you start analyzing and pondering and debating with the material. inwardly and go even deeper. And so when that state reaches its culmination, then you give up the discursive thought again. So even you use discursive thoughts to follow what I'm saying today to some extent.

[43:21]

And that's the first kind of wisdom. Then the next kind of wisdom, you even go deeper using discursive thought more intensively, going beyond what you learned and learning well what you didn't learn well. And when you understand the teaching well, then you give up the discursive thought by which you understood the teaching well. giving up the discursive thought and putting aside the teaching and putting aside understanding the teaching and just giving it all up, then you go back to calm. Then, with that calm, then you turn back, not to discursive thinking so much, a little bit, but not so much at first. You just turn back to what you understood, but what you understood is now occurring in samadhi. It's occurring in a different world. than it originally arose. And so it has another, it has all the previous meanings, but now it's illuminated by the tranquility of giving up, the tranquility of, the tranquility of renunciation, the tranquility of non-attachment.

[44:34]

So you understand even more deeply what you already understood. And it's the third type of wisdom. And things go on from there, but I'll just stop at that point. Now the next step in what I thought would be reasonable would be now to start opening up for you some teachings in addition to these, some teachings about First of all, some teachings about what Buddhist teachings are, and then to give teachings of various teachings about what the objects of wisdom in Buddhism are. But it seems like that would be enough for today, and I'll start that tomorrow.

[45:44]

perhaps you have some questions about what's come up so far. So I see two hands. One is Jackie's. Yes? Wisdom number three, wisdom which is arising in samadhi, It could be three or four. Depends on what the wisdom knows. If the wisdom sees the selflessness of a person, then it's Samadhi number three. If the wisdom sees the selflessness of all phenomena, it's Samadhi number four. Does that make sense? Your eyebrows are furrowed, so I can't tell if you understood that.

[47:02]

You mean samadhi number three could be samadhi... Wisdom number three could be number two? It all helps. Using Samadhi three to mean a Samadhi, a state of concentration that's joined with wisdom, of a certain type of wisdom, okay? I call that Samadhi number three. But when I said Samadhi number two, I meant the kinds of Samadhis that are not joined with wisdom, which sees the selflessness of persons. In other words, it's possible Like this runner I saw, okay? He was probably in samadhi number two. But I don't know if he understood the selflessness of that gold medalist that he was. So he was that person, but I don't know if his samadhi was conjoined with understanding the insubstantiality of his personhood.

[48:05]

If it was, then he was in Samadhi number four, or Samadhi number three. But Samadhi number three means you've attained Samadhi number two. And also, everybody's attained Samadhi number one. In other words, everybody's basically cool. But in Samadhi number two, you understand that pretty fully. And the fullness of your understanding can basically disappear. can grow greatly through practice of that kind of samadhi. But I mean by number two, the samadhi which the Buddha and other yogis have attained prior to joining that samadhi with wisdom. Samadhi number three is the samadhi of joining samadhi number two with the Buddhist wisdom of understanding selflessness of persons. There could be also a samadhi number, whatever number you want to. There could be samadhi number... which is the samadhi can join to some other kind of wisdom.

[49:11]

There's other kinds of things that you can know besides the selfless persons. I'm not mentioning those. I'm mentioning the one that's most important for Buddhism, which is the one that's most important for liberating people from suffering. But it's possible that you could enter a state of concentration and join that concentration with a wisdom which understands the nature of the atom. or the nature of the heart, or the nature of cabbage. But that wouldn't necessarily liberate you from suffering. It depends on the type of wisdom. Yes, all three come into play.

[50:15]

The wisdom that comes through hearing is still the basis of the wisdom which comes through critical analysis. And the wisdom which comes as critical analysis is actually the wisdom that you're working with in the wisdom which arises from samadhi. So the third type of wisdom takes the second type of wisdom into samadhi. So it's the basis of the third type. And the first type is the basis of the second type. So you need all three. In other words, the teaching which you finally realize in samadhi is a teaching which you heard from the Buddha. And the Buddha actually heard those teachings from Buddhas in previous lives," he said. So we do originally need to hear the teaching of the Buddha Dharma from a Buddha. It's part of the deal. You may not notice it because we don't, you know, you don't see the Buddhas around so much, so mostly it's hearsay at this point.

[51:17]

Buddha said, I heard Buddha said this, I heard Buddha say that, you know, so we're hearing indirectly what the Buddha said, but most of us did hear some teaching along the way And we're now working on understanding these teachings. But in a lot of Zen centers, people are not working on understanding the teachings. They're just practicing samadhi, which is great. Now I'm talking about understanding these teachings. I'm talking about not just hearing about these truths, which is the beginning of wisdom, but after hearing these truths, to actually examine them and become very intimate with them and then understand them really well and then take that understanding into samadhi where you will have a penetrating vision and you actually see the actual thing that the teaching is talking about. You will see the truths rather than just hear about them. You will see the truths rather than think about them. There was another kind of cute way I thought of this.

[52:22]

is to say that samadhi takes us from thinking about being to being itself. Samadhi takes us from thinking about the Dharma to the Dharma itself. For example, samadhi takes us from thinking about sitting to sitting itself. Samadhi training is to take us from thinking about sitting to just sitting, to thinking about Dharma to just Dharma. Because when there's thinking about Dharma, there's me thinking about Dharma. But Samadhi takes us to one-pointedness, where there's no more me thinking about Dharma, there's just Dharma. In mental one-pointedness, With, you know, if you're hearing dharma and knowing dharma and mental one-pointedness, there's just dharma.

[53:26]

There's not the knower separate. There's just dharma. There's not knower separate from sitting. There's just sitting. So samadhi takes us into that, into that. Then to bring, then we have to bring the dharma down there to get converted into being. we have to have an understanding, then we move from thinking about the teaching to just the teaching. I think we've already answered my question. I thought maybe so. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Yes. You probably answered my question already, but I didn't catch it. I'm not sure I answered yours, but I was pretty sure I answered his. He looked like he got over that thing. Yes? Just on a practical level, if someone is practicing samadhi at the second level, and practicing kind of jnanic or jnanic samadhi... Yes?

[54:34]

...and then... Could you hear the question? Okay, then you're getting some of these wisdom teachings, Now you're going to try... So you're talking, you said now, you have a person who's practicing jhanic meditation, okay? Yes? Okay, you're going to this third level, this kind of discursive level of getting some kind of wisdom teachings, and you're going to try to bring this into the jhanic practice. You're going to... Right. You're going to have some understanding. So you put aside the jhanic practice for a moment. Okay, so you have the jhanics. Okay, this is the practical. Okay, now how, when you're doing the jhanic, you come out, you get these wisdom teachings. So practically speaking, how do you do that? Well, you do it like this. First of all, you do it like this. If you're doing jhanic practice, okay, then you stop doing jhanic practice. You don't get heavy about it, but you kind of stop it. And you get involved in discursive thought in order to arrange for yourself to go into a classroom on wisdom teachings.

[55:39]

Or a person comes into the room where you're practicing jhana practice and they start talking to you about wisdom. And you start to let your mind move over to discursive thought so you can understand what he's saying. Because if you don't move into discursive thought, you can't understand what he's saying. And how do you bring this back in your sitting practice? Okay, that's the next question. So did I follow that part? Let's say you're sitting here and you're practicing jhana, and let's say you're successful. You're a happy meditator. You're a good little yogi. You've given up discursive thought. You're cool. And you're great, right? Somebody comes in here and starts talking about wisdom. You know, for example, Four Noble Truths or something. And then somehow your mind decides, okay, let's do a little discursive thinking here. Because again, you cannot understand the words without getting involved in discursive thought.

[56:43]

So you do that during the talk, okay? You start hearing wisdom teachings. And if you do that long enough, you get the wisdom, some wisdom arises. After a while, you're not just listening to the wisdom teachings. Some wisdom arises. You understand what was said to you. You understand the teaching. Including you could understand teachings about how to give up discursive thought. And you have a wisdom about samadhi practice. Okay? So then you got that understanding. Let's say just the first one we've got. First kind of wisdom. Lecture's over. Okay? And you say, well... I'm going to go back to jhana practice. Lecture's over, I go back to jhana practice. So you go back to jhana practice. Okay? That's it. You're back in jhana practice. However, you did have some... Your wisdom grew a little bit during the lecture. Okay? Is everybody following this? Okay, let's say then that sometime while you're sitting you...

[57:52]

a little knock on the door to let you know, hello, who are you? I'm a representative of the wisdom practice. And then you say, how do I know you're a wisdom practice? Well, because I'm going to tell you that wisdom, I'm going to bring up that wisdom that you got about that teaching. And you say, what do you want? I say, well, I want to know if you'd like to ponder this a little bit. I'd like to know if you'd like to examine this. And you might say, well, I don't know how to examine this. And then you say, okay, maybe in the next lecture they'll teach you how to examine this. So then in the meantime, since you don't know how to examine this, forget it, because you don't know what to do with it. You don't have teachings about how to do the next kind of wisdom. You already got this first level of wisdom, which is available to you whenever you need it, including in samadhi practice. So then you can have a little discursive conversation and say, see you later. It's not time. Then you get further instruction about how to do the second kind of wisdom. And then at that point, the practical thing is then at that point you will have to decide when you're going to do jhana practice, concentration purely, and when you're going to spend part of your time critically analyzing the previous teaching according to ways you've learned about how to analyze it to take it deeper and understand certain points that you couldn't understand before.

[59:18]

And you'll be spending part of your time doing that. And you could do that with a book in front of you, or you could do it with some text you've memorized, or you can do it without the text. If you've memorized the text, you can do it without the text, just sitting and thinking of the text and going over your mind. Or you could also do it by writing poetry. You can also do it by making an outline of what you said. You can also do it by teaching classes. yourself on that topic, and you get a better understanding. Okay? Then when the class is over, your study period's over, which you have set some time for, okay, period, and you go back to jhana practice. Okay? And then, again, while you're doing jhana practice, some time, Or we could do it this way, that you could say, either while you're doing jhana practice, get a knock on the door again. And the knock is from the wisdom, which is the second type of wisdom, is knocking on the door and saying, would you like to?

[60:20]

Now move from this jhana that you're in and look at the wisdom which you attained before. And you might say, yes. So then in the jhana state you turn over and now you switch from like giving up discursive thought and withdrawing from what's happening to this inner nature of mind, one-pointedness of mind. And you turn and you start to observe the truths that you learned. So now you're actually observing these things. But you're observing them in samadhi, so they look different. They're much more illuminating. They're kind of like taking their clothes off and saying, look how I look now. So you go deeper and deeper and deeper. There's more space. There's more time around these things now because they're in this new world. So then you get the third kind of wisdom and then the third kind of samadhi or the fourth kind of samadhi. So practically speaking, you have to be practical. You have to say, now I'm going to stop dhyana practice and do study and learning.

[61:24]

I'm going to study and learning. And then once you attain that on some topic, now I'm going to ponder. And I'm putting aside dhyana practice. I'm going to ponder. I'm going to examine. I'm going to analyze. I'm going to compare this to other understandings of whatever the topic is. I'm going to criticize. I'm going to interpret. I'm going to innovate. I'm going to be creative. Because that's part of it. When you're first learning a teaching, you take it literally. You don't argue with it. Second level, you get creative. You get interpretive. You get innovative. You get poetic. And in that poetic realm, you understand more and more and more. Then that reaches its limit, though, and you feel really good. that you've got this much deeper understanding. You feel like you understood as well as you can. Then you go back into Samadhi. You give up all this wisdom work for a while and you go back to Samadhi.

[62:25]

And then in Samadhi, because you've been working on this, it will come up. Or you can decide, I'm going to go into Samadhi and after I get to, you know, fairly stable, I'm just going to turn and look at it. But you don't have to make that decision. It'll come up naturally because you've been working so hard at it. It's like your life. Just like if you have some person you're taking care of that's sick, or some teacher you're devoted to that's sick, or some teacher that you're devoted to that's well, or some person that you're devoted to that's well, because you're working on these people and these teachings, they naturally come up all around you all the time. But when you're practicing shamatha or stabilization or jhana, when you're practicing these things, you're like not getting involved in all that stuff. You're letting it all go. And you're calming down. You're going inwardly, you're settled inwardly in samadhi. And then once you're settled, you say, I'm happy, I'm settled.

[63:29]

And then that settledness, you naturally, without, you don't have to make any big heavy decisions, that settledness naturally opens It's done its work. Now you're ready to be open without getting agitated. Then all these wisdoms, all these things you've understood in the previous level of wisdom, they resurface to you. And now, very, very deep, the samadhi penetrates, settles into, and also the wisdom teachings illuminate this samadhi. Does that sound practical? Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. So it's kind of a practical consideration. Is that enough for today? Is that enough? There was a hand, but he gave up. He said it was enough. Did he? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I'll just keep working on this. And thank you for your question.

[64:33]

Thank you for your question. And thank you for your question. Oh, man.

[64:40]

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