Please forgive me for being the way I am. It'll be good for you. Not so much I'm good for you, but forgiving me will be good for you. Live it up. Have fun practicing forgiveness. I... I wanted to mention to you that, you know, Mary's been having headaches from the whole practice period, and she might be going out to see a doctor during Sashin. And also I want you to know that I have...something's happening with my nervous system such that this arm, I can't...this is as high as I can raise this arm. I can swing it up higher, but I can't actually...it stops right there. I don't know, I might have to go out to the doctor too. But I'll probably be able to finish this talk.

[01:08]

I'll probably be able to keep talking for a little while longer. Someone said to me, it might be nice to have you in this weakened state, except your mouth isn't weak. So the mouth has something to say about, more about what we call shamatha practice and samadhi practice. And I thought of, I know this is, that the way I've been talking about it is hard for some people to understand, and I understand it's a different kind of, different perspective, I have another way to talk about it, some other ways to talk about it. One is that when you're paying attention to something, when we're aware of something, it's not the direction directing the mind onto the object which is calming.

[02:13]

It is the not being distracted from the object that's calming. So when you're aware of something, could be the breath or it could be the image of a Buddha, when you're aware of the breath, it's not the focus on the breath that calms you, it's the not being distracted from the breath that calms you. But people tend to think that what calms is to keep the mind on the breath, but actually it's not to keep the mind on the breath, it's to let go of all the other things that you could be going off to think about besides what's happening. It's the renunciation of wandering away from what's happening that calms. It's the letting go of wandering that calms.

[03:18]

It's not the staying with what's happening. But in fact, when you let go of wandering, you stay with what's happening. The problem with staying with what's happening is that there tends to be grasping. And grasping doesn't go with letting go. So what calms is a combination of not grasping what's before you, not grasping it, and not being distracted from it or wandering off from it. What's calming is to just be purely present with whatever is there. In other words, to meet whatever happens with no grasping of it or distraction from it. But if something's appearing to you like breath or a person's face or a pain or an image of the Buddha or a concept of good, if what's appearing is not grasped and you don't wander from it, then in fact you are with that thing.

[04:30]

But if you try to force yourself to be with the thing, that's grasping, which disturbs the composure. And also, like the Buddha was saying in his last words, when talking about contentment, it is renunciation that brings contentment. It's not like drilling yourself onto the monk's rules. It's letting go of distraction from the monk's life. So, what's calming is, again, non-grasping and non-distraction or non-grasping and non-seeking something other than what's right in your face. To meet whatever happens, in other words, with complete relaxation. When you're relaxed with what's happening, you don't grasp it and you don't seek something else. You just say, okay, my arm doesn't work.

[05:35]

That's what's happening. And if the other one stops working, then that's what's happening. So I can practice Samatha even if I lose, even if I'm presented with the loss of function. And I also thought of a couple metaphors for this. So what some people do, all this stuff is just, all these teachings, even what I'm doing, even what I'm doing, is just, you know, trying to help, right? So the usual way that's, the way a lot of people talk, and I think they actually, some of them actually think this is the way it is, And the way many people understand instructions in Samatha, instructions in stabilization and calming practices, it's like what they're being given is like training wheels on a bicycle, except that this particular bicycle has training wheels only on one side.

[06:45]

Okay? And the one side that there's a training wheel on is the object that people think they're supposed to be directing their focus onto. So, if you turn your attention to, like, the breath, and you're on the breath, it's like you're riding a bicycle leaning into the side that there's a training wheel on, because you only have one training wheel in this case. On the other side, there's no training wheel, so if you lean away from the object, you fall over. That make sense? But leaning, of course, falling over on the other side isn't riding, well, it's sort of probably riding a bicycle, but it's not, what we usually call riding is not falling over on the ground. But leaning over on the other side into the training wheel, it's also not what's, strictly speaking, called riding a bicycle. You are riding on the bicycle, you're not falling over, but actually you are falling over.

[07:48]

It's just that the training wheel keeps you in the neighborhood of where you would be if you were riding a bicycle. That make sense? If you're leaning, if you're riding a bicycle leaning into the training wheel, you can sort of like move along the ground in that way, but you don't have much flexibility. I mean like, you know, it's hard to turn corners if the training wheel is on the right, it's hard to turn to the left and stay leaning into the training wheel. So if you're like focused on your breath, then what are you going to do when there's no breath? Well, I don't know. Good luck. So the concentration in Buddhism is not being focused on something. But if you practice this way for a while, like leaning into the object, and you feel like, well, I'm not falling over, and you're right near being upright, you're right near being...

[08:49]

What? Not distracted. You're right near being not wandering off. And you're also near wandering off. But since you're leaning into the object, you don't fall into big time wandering off. But when you let go of the object and you ride the bicycle, without using that training wheel, you don't wander off. You just ride the bicycle. So it's actually giving up wandering that is stabilizing and calming but without dependence on some particular object you can turn anyway and you don't fall over and you're relaxed and you're buoyant and you're clear and so on. That's one example or one metaphor. The other one is the one that can be used in many ways, but it can also be used for the way a lot of people approach Samatha practice, is like that... I don't know who wrote this, who conveyed, who transmitted this story, but it's a story of a duck who was born and then his or her mother went away and

[10:11]

I don't know, she grew up with dogs or something, so she didn't realize she was a duck. So one day she was walking by a pond, and there was a bunch of ducks in there, and they said, hey, come on in. And she said, well, I would, but I can't swim. They said, oh, sure you can. She said, no, I can't. She said, you're a duck, you can swim. She said, I'm not a duck. And they said, well, would you like to come in? He said, yeah, but I don't want to drown. He said, well, here. So one of the ducks gave her what's called a sky hook. It's similar to an umbrella handle, which happened to be floating in the pond. He said, here, hold this, hook it on the sky, and that'll hold you up. So the duck hooked it on the sky, went in the water, and sure enough, she didn't sink because she had the sky hook. So you had all these ducks plus one duck with a skyhook. And then one day, I don't know what happened, but some kind of a hubbub happened, and she and all the ducks jumped into the pond, and she excitedly jumped in with them and forgot the skyhook.

[11:25]

And she was swimming around, and they said, where's your skyhook? She said, I don't know. You know that she's swimming? Yeah, I am, aren't I? See, you're a duck. So... Some people seem to think that they need this object to not wander. So, okay, here, have an object. But it's, you know, it's extra work to be holding this thing around, especially, this hand's not so bad, but to be swimming around holding this holding this skyhook while you're swimming, it's like, you know, it's unduckly. But it's okay, you know. You're still basically a duck. So, you know, if you have some idea that you need to be focused on a particular topic like your breath or the Buddha image, then I won't be able to talk to you because I'm not on your agenda to be paying attention.

[12:36]

And even if I keep talking about Breath, I guess, that would be alright for you. Breath, breath, breath, if that's your thing. Or Buddha, Buddha, Buddha, if that's what you're concentrating on. But as soon as I go off into something else, then I would be a distraction. Unless you listen to what I'm saying without grasping it, or... If you listen to each word without, not for, and you listen to each word without grasping each word and also without wandering away from each word, then I can present you sentences about various topics and meeting them with this complete relaxation, you will enter more and more deeply into tranquility, flexibility, and radiance of the calmly abiding mind, which is already there. And I say this because I'm going to tell you another story now, which, you know, it doesn't have to be wandering off, as long as, as I say it and as you listen, there's no grasping and no distraction.

[13:46]

There's just hearing each word of the story. And it's a story about one of the more endearing moments in my relationship with Richard Baker, second abbot of Zen Center. We were in Japan and he cut his thumb and it was wrapped with a big bandage and he wanted to go swimming I thought of this because of the skyhook thing. He wanted to go swimming. Not swimming exactly, he liked to snorkel. This is in the Japan Sea. He liked to snorkel with a snorkel and goggles and look for rocks. They had beautiful rocks in this place. So he would spend some time when we were there, you know, snorkeling around looking for rocks and he would then bring many of them back to the United States. Now, on this particular day, he had just cut his thumb and it was wrapped with this big bandage.

[14:52]

So, he didn't want to get it wet, so he was swimming around snorkeling with this one hand up above the water, the one, the thumb, so there was a snorkel and the thumb sticking out of the water. Okay. And I understand that this is different from what most people think is how tranquility and composure arrived at. But I want to read one of the basic Mahayana texts on bodhisattva yoga and on bodhisattva samatavipashyana practice, bodhisattva, what do you call it, tranquility and insight practice.

[15:56]

And so the bodhisattva Maitreya, Maitreya means love, the bodhisattva love is talking to the Buddha and the love bodhisattva says, Bhagavan, at what point do those bodhisattvas solely cultivate the practice of vipassana, insight? Can you handle this? I talk about insight too? Huh? I know this makes life more complicated, but he said, the Bhagavan replied, when they attend to mental signs with continuous mental attention, so you're practicing just insight when you're looking at appearances, you actually attend to appearances, you attend to objects. So like some object appears and you just attend to the object.

[17:08]

That's why it's like if you just practice insight alone. Then he said, then Maitreya says, at what point do they cultivate shamatha or tranquility alone, solely? And the Buddha said, when they attend to the uninterrupted mind with continuous attention. The uninterrupted mind is... the mind of pure presence. The uninterrupted mind is the mind which, whatever happens, it meets... whatever happens, it meets the object purely, simply aware of the presence of the object. It doesn't even attend to the object. It just is the... This uninterrupted mind is just the bare awareness of the presence of the object.

[18:15]

It isn't attending to the object. And what is stabilizing is to direct the attention onto that way of being with objects. So you're not actually looking at the breath or the Buddha. You're looking at a way of being with what's happening. You're looking at an inner... state the inner state is the uninterrupted mind every moment there's this uninterrupted mind is pure presence every moment there's this pure presence sometimes called the unbusy one a stabilizing is to direct the attention towards this uninterrupted mind which means to renounce Grasping and seeking. Grasping and distraction. Because this uninterrupted mind, that's the way it is. So you're directing the attention towards this uninterrupted mind.

[19:16]

Pure presence. And then, Maitreya says, at what point having combined Samatha and Vipassana, having combined tranquility and insight, at what point, having combined them, do they unite these two practices? And the Buddha said, when they mentally attend to one-pointed mind or one-pointedness of mind. So the insight and tranquility are united. when the attention is on the one-pointedness of mind, namely that the subject and object are one point. Then we enter Samadhi. Now, every moment of consciousness has samadhi because in every moment of consciousness, in fact, subject and object are united.

[20:33]

If they weren't united, there would be no experience. So samadhi is a universal characteristic of all states of consciousness. But when we say enter samadhi, we mean that there is non-grasping of the samadhi and non-distraction from the samadhi and understanding that the mind is one-pointed. This is the samadhi. And this samadhi, again, is the way to enter all samadhis because, in fact, There's just one samadhi. But training in this way, practicing renunciation of grasping and seeking, the sort of the gate to the samadhi opens.

[21:34]

Any questions about that? Did you have a question? Yes? Linda? Sometimes I had an experience and I wondered what you were talking about. Yes, go ahead. There was a moment when I was just sitting somewhere and in my mind there was all these states like... loneliness, feeling rejected, loneliness, and it was just kind of going on. And after some time, there was this kind of magic moment when, from one second to the other, my body was just relaxed, and the thoughts started to feel. And I felt that I was just kind of diving into this with what... I don't remember really what I thought, but the state was kind of just this one thing, this one feeling, or one thing.

[23:09]

What was the feeling? It was a feeling of loneliness. Uh-huh. Feeling rejected. Uh-huh, right. So there was just a feeling of loneliness. Yeah. It was just a feeling of loneliness, not me having the loneliness. There isn't like loneliness plus me, but just loneliness. In a way, I was kind of overwhelmed by this thing, and I... Yeah, right. In that sense, in samadhi, the self is overwhelmed. That's one way to put it. The self is so overwhelmed that all there is is the object. And of course, there wouldn't be an object if there wasn't a subject. The subject's there. It's just that the subject isn't on top of the object. It isn't object plus subject. So when there's just the object, like just loneliness, or just pain, there's samadhi. You know, there's an interesting moment when it somehow, something shifted. So there was some tension for the first part of the event, and then... Yeah, that's the interesting part, right.

[24:12]

The interesting part is the shift. That's the fun part. But the samadhi actually is not interesting, because there's nobody to be interested. Now, of course, there can be interesting, that could be the thing, and then it would just be interesting, but nobody would be there to have the interesting. So, yeah, that's probably a taste of samadhi. Yes? I think I remember you saying at one point that the un-dizzy one is not... Do you elaborate a little bit on that? He said the unbusy one, I said the unbusy one could not be an object of thought. So anyway, there is some debate about this in Buddhism about whether, because the unbusy one in some sense is what sometimes is like awareness itself.

[25:12]

So it's unbusy in the sense that awareness knows things And that's it. It doesn't elaborate. It doesn't move around. It doesn't accept or reject. It sort of accepts. It doesn't pick or choose. It doesn't grasp or wander. Because if it wandered, there wouldn't be any... Nothing would be happening. So it has to be simply... It has no life other than just simply noting the presence of the object. So it's just pure presence. So... There's two schools of thought. The Prasangika Mahajamaka school says that you cannot be aware of this basic awareness itself. But Yogicara and Satrantika schools say you can direct the attention towards this state. And so when I was saying that you couldn't, I was...

[26:19]

temporarily a Prasangika Madhyamaka yoga instructor. But I want to also mention that there is a lot of other people, very great scholars, and some of them have studied Prasangika Madhyamaka quite a bit, who say it is possible to direct attention towards this reflectivity of mind. That could be another occasion we could go into detail on this in a class or something. Han has given me several books on the topic written by this famous 19th century scholar, Mipham. Okay, anything else at this point? Yes. But usually we get that too high up.

[27:34]

Samatha would be like, Samatha would be like, you know, this is a good example. If you went to a movie to practice Samatha, you'd probably think, if you thought about it before you went, you'd say, am I going to pay money to not see this movie? Samatha, you would go to the movie and you would watch, you'd pay attention to Samatha. how the mind does not grasp the objects on the screen or seek or wander from them. So you'd kind of like, you would have a hard time getting into the movie. Mind like a wall means when you see the objects up there, you don't get involved. You know how it is sometimes in the movie, what do you call it? You suspend your disbelief and then you get into it. To go in the movie and practice shamatha, That would be a big renunciation for some people because he went all the way to the movie to, in some sense, it isn't that you wouldn't see it, it's that you wouldn't get involved in it if you practice Samatha.

[28:47]

Vipassana doesn't really get involved in it either, but it looks at the objects. But when you look at the objects together with Samatha, you don't get involved in them even in Vipassana or insight. But you look at them and you have a chance to see what they actually are. So, I would think that it's not so much that Samatha is the objects or the screen. Well, Samatha is like the screen in the sense the way the screen receives the images. It would be directing your attention just to the screen, right? That's right. The screen isn't shamatha. That's right. That's right. That's right. The screen doesn't care.

[29:51]

Wong Bo uses the example of the sands of Ganges. The sands of the Ganges, you know, the holy people go down to the Ganges, they walk over the sands. Buddhas and bodhisattvas go down to the Ganges, but also cows go down to the Ganges. And the Ganges, the sands of the Ganges don't say, oh, fantastic, Buddhas are walking on us. Bodhisattvas are treading on us, squishing us down. They don't do that. And when the cows come and drop cow pies on them, they don't go, oh, yuck. So that's the uninterrupted mind, the uninterrupted sands of the Ganges. That's the untripped mind. But that's not shamatha. Shamatha is to direct your attention to that way of being, which is always there. There's always the sands of Ganges in your experience. Every experience you have has got the sands of Ganges aspect. It's always there. But if you forget it, then you tend to get into another aspect of your mind, which is, get the cow out of here.

[30:55]

Bring the Buddha back. And let's have some cute little other legs over here too. Samatha is to attend to that uninterrupted sands of the Ganges mind. It's always there. When you pay attention to that, that means your attention is now on to what is not picking and choosing. That is, your mind is, your attention is being turned on to what's not grasping or wandering. So, you're giving up wandering, you're giving up picking and choosing, you're giving up control over who walks on your mind, over what walks on your mind. That's calming. This is called relaxation. But vipassana is, it isn't vipassana, it's like picking and choosing. Vipassana is just like, oh, it's a Buddha foot, it's a Bodhisattva foot, it's a cow pie, it's a duck foot, it's a frog foot, it's a cow foot, it's a human foot. It just notices.

[31:57]

It also doesn't say, oh, give me a different kind of foot. It just notices what it is. But the shamatha is not so much noticing what it is, it's noticing the way of receiving it in this non-grasping, relaxed way. But again, relaxed, remember, relaxed doesn't mean relaxed and wandering off into daydreams. Because when you're relaxed, you don't wander off. The unbusy one, isn't that the unbusy one is meeting things and not jazzing them up? I mean, it is that. The busy one sees something and it doesn't elaborate on it, but it also doesn't go away. It's so relaxed, it receives without elaboration, but it also receives without wandering. It's right there. It's present. It's present and non-elaborative. But it is really present. It is really, really present. Because if it wasn't, there would be no experience. So the unbusy one is...

[32:58]

always there. It's uninterrupted. So no matter how busy you get, like Yun Yen said, yeah, you call me busy, but no matter how busy I get, you should know the unbusy ones there. Shamatha is to be trained onto that. Okay? Yes? She said, speak louder, please. together, what? Well, I think that you said mind and the object being. I said the uninterrupted mind and the object not being separate. That's right.

[34:01]

The uninterrupted mind, just basic cognition of the presence of the object, they're not separate. They're different. They're not the same thing. Again, I can elaborate on how they're not the same, but that's too much right now probably. They're different, but they're not two different beings. They're one being because you can't have an awareness without something happening. So they are one being that can be discriminated into two parts, two dimensions. But the interrupted mind also is one with the object. All the kinds of graspings and seekings around the object which create the turbulence, they are also one with the mind. So when when the attention is settled with the uninterrupted mind, that's stabilizing. Because that's stabilizing through attention to non-grasping and non-seeking.

[35:09]

That's stabilizing. When Vipassana is there, or insights there too, then there's understanding that this uninterrupted mind that we're attending to is one with the object that it doesn't grasp or seek. So there can be attention to the uninterrupted mind and calming through that attention. But that's not the same as understanding that this object that's being attended to with no elaboration and no grasping and no seeking is one with the mind which doesn't elaborate and seek. When you understand that, that means Vipassana is now united with the Samatha. And it's kind of hard usually to understand that, to have that insight without this kind of relaxation with the object.

[36:11]

So it's an insight, you could say, into the object. In other words, you understand that objects are mind. They're mind, even though they're different from mind, they're mind in the sense that they're completely united with mind, and they have no life other than mind. So this is a big insight. This is a basic insight. Okay? And so that's another attempt to convey a rather different idea of what calming practice is. Now, again, I'd like to sort of make another kind of warm-up to entering into these samadhis So this is one way to talk about how to enter these samadhis, but here's another way.

[37:13]

This way is to talk a little, now to give you a hint of what it's like in some of these samadhis, and then to notice how there's some recoiling from entering these samadhis. And part of the recoil is due to not being deep enough into relaxation. So one example is this following one. Actually, there's a whole bunch of examples of fear that's coming up in the meditators here. Fear of what would happen if they relaxed. Fear of what would happen if they let go of trying to control what happens to them. And until we let go, until we stop grasping, we're going to block entry into these samadhis. So I'm trying to bring up actually some of the problems one might have in entry.

[38:17]

I don't want to go into the samadhi and leave people outside. So I want to bring up some things that may be holding you back from the samadhi before entering, so we can all enter together, hopefully. So here's one example. Someone was talking to me about having a relationship with me. And so I was discussing what kind of a relationship would be appropriate. And I don't remember exactly what happened. I mean, I have a memory. This is my memory, okay? This is my story. Something like this. And I could make other stories about it, but this is one I'll tell you. We came up with something like, well, you know, what we could talk about is... or what he could bring to our conversations and our meetings would be some discussion about himself or his self or what he thinks the self is.

[39:20]

We could talk about that. That could be something that we would have as a point of our relationship. And then he said something like, that there was a sense of self that he sometimes had, of a self that was not supported by the world. You know, have you ever seen that self? A self that's not supported by the world? You ever seen that one? You know, there's a you, or there's somebody else, but there's a you who you don't see how the world's supporting you. Does that make sense? Does it make sense to you, what I'm talking about, Shoho? It does? This is what we call an unfulfilled self, an isolated self, or a partially isolated self. So we... Hmm? Well, like, for example, I think you're not supporting me.

[40:22]

I think you're not helping me. I think you're opposed to me. I think you're against me. I don't, you know, you and, you know, you and maybe some of your friends are opposed to me. And you're not supporting my life. My life, I got my life over here, and you're not supporting it. Or I have my life, and then I see you, and then you don't, like, cooperate with me, with my life. You don't support myself. Sometimes that's the way it seems to people. Okay? That make sense? Then you feel ungrateful and scared and stuff, right? Right? Does that sound familiar? Have you heard about people like that? Okay, so that kind of thing happens to people sometimes. So we could look at that, we said. We could look at those kinds of cases. Those are cases of what we call the unfulfilled self. That's not the self which you receive and employ. That's a self which you've got and other people don't help you with. Okay?

[41:24]

Okay? That's carrying the self around and putting it on the world and sometimes the world says thank you and we support you and sometimes it says no. That's delusion. So in other words, part of what our relationship could be would be to come and confess the delusion of carrying a self around and putting it on things. To practice and confirm all dharmas while carrying a self. We could talk about how that's the way it looks sometimes. Okay? That's part of what a relationship could be. And then it came up that also what we can do sometimes, kind of like a koan, you know, a kind of like koan in the sense of look for something, look for reality kind of thing. If by any chance there was ever a glimpse or a witnessing of a moment or an occasion where the self which is supported by the world appeared, I said, well, you could tell me about that too. So you might just like kind of like relax and open up to what's happening.

[42:28]

Right? It's like your breath is happening. Relax. Open up to it. Forgive it. Don't grasp it. Don't seek something other than your breath. Your pain. just meet it with not grasping or seeking, and that way you open to your pain, you open to your pleasure, and you relax, you calm down, and then you open to also the self that appears in the advent of all things. You might, since you open to these things, you might open also to the self which is realized in the coming forth of things. In other words, you enter into the self-fulfilling samadhi rather than the unfulfilling self samadhi that we're usually in. The self which is somewhat supported by some parts of the world rather than the self which is not there until the whole world arrives.

[43:33]

So I just suggested that she might just keep her, just be open, just keep practicing, meeting all things with no mind, meeting all things with complete relaxation. But then just take this little, this little kind of like, it's kind of like a hypnotic, it's like kind of like what do you call it, a hypnotic, a post-hypnotic suggestion to keep your eyes open for enlightenment, which is all things coming forth and then there's a self. Or the self is born when all things come forth. So all things come forth and there's a self. This is enlightenment. Just sort of be open to Buddha, in other words. Doesn't mean to try to, like, deny the delusion part. Like, okay, here's myself. Here's myself. Got myself. A priori, before anything, I got a self. And now I live. And the world supports us to some extent and sometimes they don't. open to the pain of that, relax with that, relax with this painful deluded situation, open to that, and you're also open to another version of it, sort of the flip side, the enlightened side.

[44:39]

Okay? This is like some discussion about how to open to entering a samadhi. What samadhi? The self-fulfilling samadhi, the samadhi where you receive yourself. How do you receive yourself? By whatever happens. Whatever happens, you watch whatever happens and then you watch it and you wait. Oh, there's myself. First of all, you're not there. But then you're there too. Rather than you're here and then they're there. Oh, you're here and then the world comes and you do something with it. Like control it. No. You give up trying to control, you relax, and then something happens, and then I'm there too. This is enlightenment. It's a subtle and dramatic, radical shift from delusion to enlightenment. I suggested that we could work on that. That's samadhi. Since he brought up this thing about this self... In other words, since he brought up delusion, I thought, well, we could also, we could look at that and we could look at the enlightenment, which is right on the other side of it, which is right there with it.

[45:49]

Okay? So I brought this up because then he said something like, well, some fear's coming up. I think, I think she said it was a big fear. What could the fear be? The fear was, I mean, this shows that she got close to considering doing this. Because the relaxation, the non-grasping with our deluded state that opens us to our enlightened samadhi, which opens us to Buddha's mind, that relaxation, that letting go of trying to control, also opens us up to what...

[46:35]

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