So if there's a topic today, it would be, what does it mean to be located in the world of form? What does it mean to be located in the world of form? Now, when I say it that way, I'm aware, I feel like I've got this big bucket of words. and I can take out world of form, located in, et cetera, and I can kind of put them together, but they can mean so many, I mean, they can mean almost anything. What does it mean to be located in the world of form? I mean, you're all located in the world of form. Where the hell else are you? Look at me in all this form, row, stuff. Yeah, and if you go to Denver, Your body goes with you, usually.

[01:01]

There you are located in your body in Dendur. Or you go to Albuquerque or Deutschland. I mean, almost always your body goes with you. Then you're located in the world of Rupa Dattu. which is what we're making use of the last few times, last few teishos, is the world of form. What does it mean, rupadhatu, the world of form, the realm of form? Well, we have an entry because it's in contrast to the realm of thinking about thinking, the sensorial realm. The realm of continuously re-presenting, reifying, re-presenting the world to ourselves. According primarily to our mental habits.

[02:03]

According to self-referential thinking and world culture referential thinking. That's not Rupadhatu. That's not the world of form. I mean, it's the world of form, but it's not what Buddhism means by the world of form. So where can I start? Now, I'm also then now speaking about the four jhanas, because the four jhanas are one way to speak about the world of form, the rupadattu. Now naturally enough, if I, since I'm practicing Zen, and the word jhana is derived from, the word Zen is derived from jhana, so Zen is the jhana school, the absorption school, the practice of absorption.

[03:08]

Absorption, all we can understand is samadhi, so it's not contemplation. We could say absorption is non-dual absorption. Absorption without any object of contemplation or meditation or something like that. And we can also understand absorption as absorption of phenomena itself. or absorption of the field of immanence. Now here I'm creating all these terms, field of immanence, field of immanence. But we're in the midst of our experience and I'm trying to, and we're trying to find out together What is this existence? We're trying to share this existence, and in the process of sharing this existence, discovering what is existence.

[04:20]

What is the existence we're sharing? And this is, you know, what I would call true friendship. to share not our personality so much, et cetera, but to share that too. Those are entries and fun, but fundamentally to share our existence, our fundamental existence. So we could also say I'm speaking about the basics of basics, the basic basics. For if, again, the Zen school is the jhana school, naturally, when I first started practicing 50 years ago or so, I... I wondered what the four jhanas were. The four jhanas are not even really Buddhist. They come from outside of Buddhism, but they were adopted by Buddhism. It became the name of our school.

[05:21]

And, yeah, so... What happens is you try to understand the four jhanas and you practice them. One jhana's got joy and the other jhana's got less joy and you think, what the hell do you, how do you function with joy or less joy? I don't have any joy, you know, or I've got very little of it or sometimes it looks like happiness. What's the difference between joy, happiness, bliss? These are distinctions that are rooted in the practice of meditation. So what we're talking about today, what I'm discussing, we're talking together in ourselves, sort of. What I'm discussing today is, yeah, perhaps rather technical. And really not available. I hate to say something's not available. I'm a Democrat. I want everything to be equal and everything shareable. But some things aren't.

[06:25]

If you're a physicist, it's hard to share your mathematics with non-mathematicians or non-physicists. I think that what I'm speaking about today really only makes sense or it can be entered into through considerable meditation practice. But if you can enter into it, it is also then not limited to meditation practice. It's part of your daily life, your daily activity. And in being part of your daily activity, in fact, you're sharing it. It's shared as another kind of power within the life. I mean, for a bodhisattva, Two people are one persons. Three people are one person.

[07:27]

All sentient beings are one person. Or there's such a powerful feeling of interrelatedness, it's hard to say two people are only two people. They also somehow make some wider mutual connection. Okay, when you first start, you kind of hear about the jhanas and you read about them and you have some experience in meditation. And you have to start somewhere and you end up having a rather rough course understanding. And at some time before you can refine your understanding with real clarity, and make the differences locations. Mental locations or locations, forms.

[08:30]

So we have some ingredients we've started with here in the last few weeks. And one ingredient is so basic, you know, the difference between discursive thinking and not inviting, coming back to that, to not invite your thoughts to tea. So now, if your practice is settled enough, if you've developed a non-interfering observing awareness, then you can really know the difference between discursive thinking Now I'm just going back to where we started the other day. You can really know the difference between discursive thinking and not inviting. The mental posture of not inviting. And you can settle in the mental posture of not inviting without going into discursive thinking.

[09:44]

Now, discursive thinking, I just defined, is really thinking about thinking, thinking about the world, and thinking about the self. And you're always in the middle of thinking. You always enter, whatever we're doing, you know, you don't just start, you enter in the middle of some kind of discursive thought process. But in the middle, there's an edge. And one of those edges is not thoughts about the world, but, how can I say it using the same old words, the thought of the world. What do we call the world? Instead of thinking about the world, reifying the world, reaffirming the world, we now have a thought of. In the middle of thinking, the thought of the world scatters discursive thinking.

[10:52]

If you can hold to the mental posture of the thought of the world. Now, here we also have assumed in Buddhist practice the body is a... is fully represented in thinking, fully engaged in thinking, I don't want to say that, fully... you notice your thinking through the body. And you notice that a certain more investigated thinking of a certain kind happens because the body feels differently. So you know, again, let's make it simple.

[12:01]

You feel discursive thinking. You feel the you, the identity that functions within discursive thinking. And you feel when you have postural attention, attentional posture, when the fullness of attention is your posture. Well, there's much less you present. There's almost no you present. You wouldn't even say my body. I mean, you might go to Denver and you bring your body with you and you'd say my body is with me, but now you wouldn't say my body, you'd say the body perhaps. It doesn't feel like it feels, I mean, more you than you ever felt before perhaps, but it doesn't feel like it's possessible.

[13:03]

It's a location that can't be reflected on. So you're in the midst of get a feel for a location that can't be thought about even or compromised. This postural attention. And this postural tension doesn't allow discursive thinking. Okay, now you're in the first jhana, or the edge of the first jhana. And you're in the realm of form, and in this case form means Postural attention and its form in contrast to thinking about thinking which isn't form It's a bunch of thoughts.

[14:09]

I mean Gregory Bateson says thoughts aren't pigs or chairs thoughts are just How do we have thoughts that are more like pigs and chairs I Well, here, when you're located in, let's keep it simple again, postural attention, that's the world of form. It includes body, mind, etc. And it's not the world of sensorial, defining yourself primarily sensorially. Now it's hard, I mean the words, you know, I can't, it's hard to separate the words because the words can describe all the same things.

[15:10]

But we, through practice, you begin to feel it and you more and more know this feel of, let's say, attentional posture, postural attention. And there's not much discursive thinking, or almost no discursive thinking. There's some investigative thinking and reflective thinking, and there's particularities of thought, but not really much reflection on it. when you're really the identification of discursive thinking has pretty much stopped there may be discursive thinking but you don't identify with it anymore a kind of bliss appears and you know it took me I've said this a few times in the past it took me a long time

[16:21]

To take bliss seriously. That sounds funny. Taking bliss seriously. This sounds ridiculous. But I noticed, of course, in that sitting that I, you know, that's sort of good feelings. But, you know, I grew up in New England or sort of in New England and puritanical background, bliss, you know, joy, happiness, work, do things, be productive. Bliss is some kind of vacation, permanent vacation, or some kind of indulgence. But over years, I mean, I'm a slow learner, over years, this kind of bliss kept coming back more and more present. And finally I recognized one day it's because an identification with discursive thinking is gone and bliss arises.

[17:22]

And it's just a physical state. It's not something you say, I don't know, you pay for anything. It's just... And the body feels at ease. A kind of ease and bliss. And then there's simple joy that appears because water comes out of the faucet or the ground supports you when you walk. These are all the world of form from the point of view of Buddhism. And establishing yourself in the First jhana is the big step. And we can try to understand it now just to have some sort of signpost. Because, you know, it's like there's these street signs. There's a kind of inner path of a body as a palace or something like that. Halls, rooms, etc. And there's signposts.

[18:27]

And you get so you can use certain terms as signposts, as signs to locate yourself. So let's just take postural attention. You can more and more feel the absorption of postural attention. until it really becomes a location. It's where you're located. And the more it becomes a location, not a location you identify with, just a location you are. There's no place to identify with it. You just are, you are, you is. And that is a thusness, we say. It feels good. It happens to feel good. I mean, maybe it's embarrassing that it feels good, but it just feels good.

[19:33]

And it's a relief, too. Now, there's still particularities. And the second jhana is when you begin to find there's a certain amount of investigative thinking, but no reflection. And now more fields of awareness appear, not particularities. Maybe the first one is accompanied by one-pointedness in the sense that you can just put your mind anywhere and it stays there. So you can put your mind on postural attention. It doesn't go off with discursive thinking. Rudimentary, basic Buddhism. And it takes some time to establish that. You can practice 10 or 20 years and still not be able to establish attention in and the mind, the presence of mind as mind itself.

[20:46]

But, you know, if you haven't been able to get there yet, you've got something to do. I mean, you know, something worthwhile to do. And I would say now the presence of mind as mind, the presence of mind as mind. Again, I'm just trying to string words together to give some kind of signpost. So it's not the awareness of mind or consciousness of mind. Consciousness of mind is something secondary. Awareness of mind, the presence of mind as mind. The best I can say it. You experience the presence of mind as mind as you experience and are settled in postural attention. And the presence of mind as mind is formed.

[21:51]

It's what rupadhatu in this case means. That's also one kind of form, matter, mother, matter, mother. But this is form in which we actually, I'm not located in this form, I'm sitting on top of it. But it resists, as Lustav said, it resists my penetrating it. I'm just sitting on top of it. It's very nice, very convenient. But the form of rupadhatu is form you inhabit. It's form that is you, that there's no separation between you and that form. So the presence of mind itself as mind. And when you begin to feel this the presence of mind as mind, this is the second jhana.

[23:00]

There's still bliss, there's an underlying sense of well-being, but there's no, it's just a background. There's more like a field of of clarity. And you can locate yourself there. If you can't locate yourself there and stay there, it's not rupadhatu. It's some, you know, taste. Taste. As they say, it's like a bee flying into an unclean hive. It's great in here. It flies out. So you find after a while you discover the location that you inhabit

[24:11]

of the presence of mind as mind. And then there's the third is mostly just equanimity, evenness, neutrality. You've let go of of Attention is no longer occupied by joy. Does that make sense? Attention, yeah, there's joy, but attention isn't occupied by joy. Attention is occupied by a kind of neutrality. Sounds negative or just to be neutral, but it's a kind of neutrality. Everything is equally present. And then the fourth is when the body disappears, the shape of the body disappears.

[25:24]

And then that's the entry to the next four, the formless, arupadattu. Now, there's a kind of mystery to the life of a practitioner, an adept practitioner or a monk, because you're loke... I mean, this isn't... The four jhanas aren't asceticism. It's a realm of bliss, joy, clarity, freedom. And you... It's almost like a keyboard. It's not like one is... higher stage than the other in some sense they are successive and you don't find they do go one precedes the other and one is based on the letting go of the previous it's a little different than the three bodies of which you start with Dharmakaya realize Sambhogakaya and then Manakaya in this case it's

[26:35]

But sometimes you do have applied thinking or discursive thinking with reflection. So that's useful. And how do you explore these? I mean, in a way, you're bringing the power of mind, joining the power of mind to the power of consciousness. I don't know, I don't like the word power. It's power, you know. But it means to enable, to be able. To be able. To be an enabled being. and the shift from what we could say one-pointedness to one-fieldedness, perhaps.

[27:39]

And you begin to feel things as clusters or circuitry, a circuitry, a kind of field circuitry which you can enact. And there's a kind of direction to it. So in a way, we have the path appearing, compassion appearing. Because you feel how this field of immanence, this field of interdependence is constantly awaiting to be enacted. And you can enact it as a bodhisattva, you can enact it as compassion, you can act it as path. But it does take some yogic skills.

[28:42]

Yeah, simple ones. Being located in the breath and not thinking. Being located in the breath and establishing continuity through the breath and phenomena and not through discursive thinking. How simple to be located in the breath. And located in the breath becomes a power of engagement with this field of immanence, this field of interdependence which is constantly appearing. So you may think, oh, I'm looking at my breath. This is kind of boring because I'd rather be in there in Detroit. Detroit? I don't know. And again, there's a kind of mystery because other people look at your life and they say it's not very satisfying. He doesn't have much or he doesn't do much and blah, blah, blah, or she doesn't. But as I said, it's not a satisfying because it's a feeling of being so fully located you don't need anything.

[29:52]

At each moment you're so fully located that all one's attention is engaged in that location we call rupadhatu. And we practice this location several times a day here. And the more you practice it, the more it becomes quite clear. Distinctions that were coarse and muddy before become quite clear, and they're not only clear, you can enact the distinctions. With a body which tells you things, because the body feels The connectedness or the non-separation of the recognition, the allowing.

[31:05]

All right, probably that's enough, huh? Thank you very much.

[31:41]

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