I suppose I should be used to it by now, but Buddhism always amazes me, how accurate it is in showing us a path. And how?

[01:09]

how much it is a path. We're the path, but each of you is the path, but the path is also how you illuminate the situation, or how you and the situation are a path. your study and your personal experience and your meditation all keep confirming each other if you have a sense of this path. I talked yesterday about consciousness and concentration, and I'd like to talk a little bit more about this.

[02:47]

We have, at some point, we have to give up our usual logic, because the way we get confirmation, or the way the path appears to us, is often quite illogical. And as poets know, What actually reflects the mind is often a very illogical statement. Dogen said that the mountains don't belong to the country or the nation or country, but belong to those who love them. And I'm still trying to begin to talk about the fifth paramita of jhana and samadhi. And at this point I think we have to talk about love or what we generally call positive feelings of some kind.

[04:26]

Of course, we can say there's no good or evil, but practically, for most people, for anyone in the world of the products of the mind, there is certainly good and evil. But for samadhi, there's only good, maybe, or no good and evil. But samadhi is the kind of idea on which whole cultures or political systems can fall or rise. It's for us, I think, a revolutionary idea, and for us practicing. not an idea, an experience. You can't... As I've said, the first bhumi, the first stage,

[05:59]

of practice or enlightenment is the joyful one, and it's characterized by taking responsibility for the welfare of all beings, putting yourself into some relationship to others' welfare, because it's very clear without doing that you can't experience that joy, that bliss which arises without cause. So at the point I'm talking about now, maybe primary reality is your feelings, your feelings of... I don't know what word to use. Love? Harmony? Friendliness? sympathetic joy. You find this practically true, but then you find studying that. Before you can enter the four transits, four absorptions, you must practice the four unlimited

[07:33]

boundless feelings of friendliness, sympathetic joy, compassion, and even-mindedness. good sense tells us that we can't be so simple-minded as to, you know, out and out love flowers, or mountains, or weather. But this outpouring of pure feeling, unadulterated feeling,

[08:35]

which if you're not afraid comes out is preparation for, it's nice in itself, but it's also preparation for samadhi, this revolutionary, for us anyway, state, experience. You can ask the question, Well, I don't want to control my thoughts. Why should I control my thoughts? Why should I control? Where does the idea of control or discipline come in? Again, that's often justified with the idea that it's natural.

[09:48]

But we don't have to justify it with naturally some other controlling thing. It's natural, that's a controlling idea. But we don't like, we want to give our thoughts some freedom, which of course you do. And practicing zazen the first few years are actually giving your thoughts and feelings some freedom. as I said, just noting them, not taking action on them, until anything can have its play, until there's no reservation or unconscious. But then suddenly in your meditation you find you actually have control. You can clearly control your feelings. It's usually that state is simultaneous with the gross feelings of anger, etc., not arising anymore. So it would seem you don't need to control anything because you don't get angry anymore.

[11:14]

But you definitely find you can control things. You can control sensations on your body. They appear and you can move them around. Or you can control your thoughts, stopping them. I don't want to think anymore. No thoughts. Anyway, in various ways, the things that arise, the effects that arise, you can control. At this point, the idea of controlling them is about as... How can I put it? The idea of not controlling is about as absurd as saying you shouldn't control a car. I mean, you're driving down the hill and you should control the car. Well, when your meditation brings you to this point, the idea of not controlling, I mean, you're not identified with those products, so there's no reason to not control them.

[12:50]

occurs to you to change it, maybe. So at this point you find yourself with a kind of wishless control center that You can't exactly locate it, but it can move around from your fingertips to your head, to your knee, and it seems to be able to decide things. And it can be some burning, almost hot or cool, blissful sensation anywhere you want, or everywhere on your body, in your whole body. And any place that wishless control center is, it seems conscious and seems you, your finger or your breastbone or your shoulder. Now that's me. But is this

[14:17]

Of course, one question you should ask right away is, who's that? Who's that wishless control center? And is it really there? What is it? But clearly you'll find some things. You sense it more when you're concentrated. And also the question is, Is it really wishless? Because it clearly doesn't wish what you'd commonly call evil. In fact, you feel good. Physically it's a sensation of bliss. You can hardly believe it. And it's almost like bliss equals good, or something like that. Because as soon as, at this point,

[15:44]

Ego is not something bad, it's just something distracting because it makes you wobble. It makes you off-center. So your ego is not on-center. It makes you vulnerable. It gives you fear. It makes you concerned with something. The ego is some sort of concern. So the first four paramitas are clearly a practice in not straying from this, right now I'm calling wish-less control center, or maybe wishful.

[16:46]

makes me think of Dogen saying, flowers fall with our longing and weeds grow with our disappointment. Anyway, you find that As soon as you start thinking, the wishless control center disappears. It's like whatever it is becomes thinking. And immediately you feel a loss of energy or of concentration or certainly you don't feel so good. In the moment, it becomes more complicated and it becomes more distracted. You feel less and less good.

[17:50]

And it's interesting how usually, again talking about good and evil or good and bad feelings, what characterizes bad feelings is that we mind them. I think that's an interesting use of the word mind. We mind them. We object to them. We mind them. We mind them cutting down the trees. mind being upset about them doing such and such. Anyway, when we start minding, in that sense, we get off-center. When we get impatient, when our conduct gets us, creates karma, we get off-center. When our energy and there's some idea, oh it's too long, or it's difficult, or we hesitate. Those are the opposite of the fourth paramita, energy. Energy is there because you have no reservation, no hesitation. Energy is there and concentration, there's

[19:29]

So, Suzuki Roshi said, right thinking is when you see something and you're so astounded that you can't say anything, that's right thinking. And that's right thinking. Now, that kind of concentration, if we could not waver from that, that even-mindedness too, that sustained consciousness, concentration. And acceptance, strangely enough, acceptance of suffering is the condition of bliss. It's so clear when you can

[20:32]

Practice, maintain the practice of these four paramitas. How good you feel, you wonder why anybody accepts any lesser goods like power, status, you know, the fears of loss of reputation, of the effects of your action, death, of how you're going to make a living. Why you get caught up in lesser goods, or trying to secure yourself from something. It's so clear that that rough thinking that possessiveness, that impatience, that conduct, uneven conduct, all clouded.

[22:02]

immediately are clouding. So your our Zen practice, our meditation, will bring you to an intimate knowledge of this blissful feeling. comes through the practice of the first four paramitas, non-possession, non-possessiveness. Conduct or the precepts, don't do this, don't do that, what you are is already okay. Patience or waiting

[23:32]

The right action is patience or waiting. Again, going back to the Sixth Patriarch's statement, the mind is a field of blessedness from which wisdom naturally arises and does not stray. Does not stray is interesting, very accurate. Your concentration

[25:04]

is almost like a laser. It's all the same except everything there that was there, except your breath and concentration and light. a right thinking, a non-thinking state, are all some kind of blissful and bliss, or some kind of experience that you can stay with to express things. What you express then are what in Redwood's lecture he called wholesome states. we can now I'm saying you know what you express is naturally friendliness sympathetic joy answering this bliss in other people compassion even-mindedness without effort your

[26:30]

Activity becomes these four unlimited, boundless activities or feelings. And include everything, mountains, flowers, each person, yourself. At this point you can very genuinely ask the question now, who is that? What is this wishless control center? You've given up preferences and it doesn't have any preferences, but it clearly prefers friendliness, compassion, etc. Something contradictory. You started out not caring about suffering, not caring if you'd be miserable all your life. You were just going to practice. If the pain in your legs is terrible, it doesn't make any difference. If on each breath you accept all the karma of the world and each exhale, you give out as much merit, positive as you can.

[28:08]

You started out with that feeling and yet now you find that you move most thoroughly in everything back before you were willing to give up some new kind of boundless feeling. Intimately at this now you begin to know your own experience. Buddha's own experience. And you can enter now so thoroughly into everything we call it Jhana.

[29:42]

So please, Follow your breathing. Stay on your breathing. No in or out. Don't expend any more energy than just to stay on your breathing. sitting so clearly it's like you were something tremendously hollow as if your body hardly existed suffused with air and light and hollowness

[31:17]

Hardly there at all. No one knows what's there. Just a not straying. Just a not straying. Each of you can do that and each of you doing it will help each other do it. Let us know that.

[32:23]

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