Some people like to be in the back, particularly against the wall. But if you want to move forward, it's fine, or make a smaller aisle from the middle, it's fine. Can I just put the microphone a bit closer? Oh, sure. Thanks. We don't need those announcements. Well, someone wanted to make some announcements about dishes to be washed or something like that. We'll do that later. Okay, fine. And Lynne, maybe you could find me an old table or a couple of chairs. Just two chairs would be a little better. We've got a table that we can do like that. Okay, great. And almost all of you came to meditation this morning. I was impressed. So I'm not so much trying to introduce you to Zen, but of course, unavoidably, I will be doing that because it's all the only thing I know anything about.

[01:21]

But given that, I'm more trying to introduce you to your own mind or the capacities of mind or possibilities of mind. And I'd like to do that as well as possible, but again we only have two days now. The construction crew is coming in. Although I'm going to try to have a central theme that runs through what I'm speaking about. Also, I'll just ramble or speak about what occurs to me or what I feel from you in...

[02:28]

What am I supposed to do here? Can I help? Just relax. I like the way the construction crews of these new communities are women. You got that done wrong. That's too high. No, that's good. That's good. This is from our children's groups. Yeah. Contributed to the weekend. Oh, that's nice. Actually, the little signs, they're not really around, called On Money Paying Home the Children's Group, put together, and they don't mean toilets. So, yeah, it's nice for toilets, but we do have On Money Paying Home the Children's Group. Okay. Is the microphone okay here, like this? All right.

[03:54]

This is in case I'm obscure and you want to buy the tapes. Is that right? You don't sell tapes, though? We do. Okay, let me say something about meditation itself. The main posture... of meditation, of zazen meditation, is your backbone. And Zen, of all the Buddhist schools, is very precise about meditation because it wants to create the conditions in which, for the most part, Buddhism teaches itself to you. At a certain point, your body-mind begins to reveal the world to you as teaching. So, the posture is... What Chinese Zen folks tried to do was to bring, basically, Yogacara or Chittamatra, Majjhāmakā and Huayen teachings together

[05:18]

in one merged way of teaching and a merged way of practicing. Now we shouldn't be surprised, now that we know about acupuncture and homeopathy and things like that, that small differences make a big difference and if you can reach the whole body through a point, a particular point in the ear, not any point in the ear, or the arm or your toe, then it's... And my guess is that acupuncture points, for the most part, were discovered from inside by meditators. So that... So the precision of the posture, the developing precision of the posture, has a lot to do with how we are actually constructed, the preciseness with which we're constructed. Now, we experience ourselves at a very gross level, but at a genetic, molecular, cellular level, it's highly precise.

[06:27]

Exactly what's going on with your cells and hormones and so forth. So we could say that meditation is trying to increase the precision with which you participate in your own life, because the mind which we function through, which the job of our mind is to establish three-dimensional reality. And we don't live in a three-dimensional world. We live in a multi-dimensional world. But we need to live in a three-dimensional world through our senses in order to jump out of the way of tigers and wombats and things like that. Leeches. I guess you have cold, moving, slow, dangerous snakes right now. But I was told, on a warm day, watch out.

[07:30]

So for that kind of experience... and to walk around and so forth, we need a three-dimensional reality. But a three-dimensional reality is very simple compared to how we actually exist. Your body isn't three-dimensional, it's an immensely complex event. And is the world outside, so-called outside, it's actually kind of inside. Now, I'm... Speaking here about, in a way, what you aren't or aren't yet or a potential for how to be. But still, all of it resides in how you actually are. And however you can be, might want to be, depends on accepting how you are.

[08:35]

And how you are is just fine. It better be, because that's how you are. How we are, how I am. But the energy, the direction of accepting how you are, that is not just simply accepting how you are. It's a direction, a kind of energy in accepting how you are. And that energy of accepting how you are is very dynamic and is the root of development. So likewise, in this posture, you're really working with two postures. You're working with the posture that you have and accepting it. That's the base. But that posture that you have, that you're accepting, in this dynamic of acceptance, it's not just a passive thing. This posture that you have that you're accepting is in dialogue with an ideal posture.

[09:45]

So you're always, your body is always talking to the ideal posture but accepting the posture you have. Does that make sense? So you can feel the possibility of the ideal posture. Let's say now your back, you want a lifting feeling through your back. A little bit as if I put my hand here and I tried to lift this. That happened. So you're not curving your back in so much as lifting through your back and lifting through the back of your head. And there's the feeling of being lifted from the back of your head up. Sometimes it can feel like you're being lifted like this. If your mother was a cat. No, cats don't get lifted in this way. Anyway, so that's the most important part of posture. And I would actually like, Lynn, you don't have to do it now.

[10:49]

Can I become your servant? It'd be nice to have some chairs in here because I'd like people to be able to, I see one there, be able to sit in a chair if they want to. Because it's one thing to sit in zazen, but to sit all day on the floor, unless you're used to it. So if you sit on a chair, the idea is to sit with your, at least start out. with not leaning against the back of the chair, but have your own backbone, as we say, and sitting as upright as you can. Now, the problem with sitting on a chair is you get cold. The other problem is you have to use musculature to support yourself. So ultimately, it's rather tiring to sit in a chair, and we have to shift, and so the Dutch introduced us to comfort, and so we have big soft chairs and things like that.

[12:00]

So then we get cold because our extremities are down on the floor and so forth. And one of the qualities of this posture, why we sit this way, is because you're folding your heat together. And heat and being alive are closely connected. A dead body is cold, obviously. And when you're depressed or you feel low energy, your body tends to be cold. And you're folding yourself together in this way because it gives you greater stability in sitting so you can relax without making much effort. And the structure of the posture rather than your muscles supports you. So if you want to learn to sit for... you know, it's something you do daily. It's good to work towards sitting cross-legged. I'm very stiff. I mean, I've been doing this all my adult life, basically, and I still really, except in a very hot tub, can't sit full lotus.

[13:14]

And... It took me a long time. I used to sit in what I called the half lily because it nearly killed me. LAUGHTER With three pillows, you know, stacked up. I felt like Carmen Miranda on her high heels, you know. But through great persistence, I can sit moderately well now. Now, the other posture I mentioned last night, it's called Seiza. And that posture is to sit like this. And that's a pretty good posture. Your back can be straight. And you can also do it this way. You can take a pillow or a wooden table or something, put it in, you see. In this posture, you can sit, sashim, you can sit quite well.

[14:19]

The problem is, again, your feet get a little cold. And you're not quite as concentrated. And it does take musculature again to support yourself. You'll tend to slump more than if you sit cross-legged. But this is quite a good posture. And for anybody who's not going to try to be a professional, I would suggest this is quite good for most daily sitting. Any questions about that? Doesn't that cut off... I mean, if you sat like that for 40 minutes, I would feel like I had no circulation, I'd stand up... Well, I think if you use a pillow, then it's... To sit like this is actually quite hard to get used to, unless you live in Japan or something like that. But with a pillow, it doesn't cut off your circulation much. You can try it. I mean, for most people, it's considerably easier than cross-legged. This sponge I'm on, every time I sit down, it kind of throws me toward the wall.

[15:27]

If I knock myself out and administer first aid, I'm trying to be like a llama. so there's this lifting feeling through your body and your tongue is usually at the roof of your mouth there are a lot of reasons for that which I won't explain and your ears tend to be want to be in line with your shoulders your nose unless it's particularly large wants to be in with your navel things like that And your hands out here somewhere are okay.

[16:28]

Japanese, I can usually tell when a person is a Japanese teacher because they sit this way with their hands up here. And it's really taught that way because Japanese have long torsos and short legs and their short arms, and their hands don't reach down here. So they can't put their hands down here so easily. So I think it's OK to rest your hands on your heel or your robes or your leg. And if you put your hands here, at least in Zen posture, you don't want to put them out so it pulls you forward. You want to have them where But again, there's a certain circulation of energy in the body that happens after you get settled that I think it's useful, in Zen at least, to keep your hands together. Okay. That's enough on posture, unless someone asks me some questions.

[17:32]

When you say that you raise, is there anything wrong with your shoulders? I'm not sure what you're waiting for. Well, not with your head forward, with your head... And we don't exactly pull our chin in, but this lifting feeling this way moves your chin in a bit. And generally, if you're sitting like this, you're thinking. If you pull your head in a little bit like this, it tends to inhibit thinking. And if your thumbs are like this, you're usually thinking. If your thumbs are like this, you're usually sleeping. So we're trying to make a nice oval. And what were the three dimensions you referred to before? Three dimensions? Oh. You know, I said last night? Yeah. Last evening. Okay. The three-dimensional world we live in.

[18:39]

Oh, height, width, breadth. That's all. But I will speak today probably about the three, what I call the three minds of daily consciousness. Now, any questions so far? Anything you'd like to... Maybe you could do me a favor. Could each of you tell me your name and what you do? And if you want one line about why you're here or something. But let's go quickly so we don't take the rest of the morning. So maybe you start. Okay. I think quite a few, more than that missed some of last night, though, so... I don't want to repeat myself, but... So what we're talking about is what I'm trying to talk about and what you're trying to think about.

[19:59]

is feel about is pretty subtle. And by the nature of it, rather difficult because we can encapsulate it, how does the eye see the eye? How does the mind see the mind? It's not very easy. And for us to do this together, we have to do it together. I mean, there has to be some kind of feeling of a mutual attentiveness. And a mutual attentiveness will generate mind.

[21:04]

a synergistic mind, a mind we share and our individual mind. Attention is the seed of consciousness and it's also the fruit of consciousness. So practice, basically practice starts with curiosity, with looking at things, with wondering what's there. And when we wonder what's there, if we look carefully, if we bring attention to it, we... You can have confidence, I think, that if you bring attention to a person or an object, you come to know it better than if you don't give it attention. So, we could say practice begins with a natural curiosity. And the more you bring attention to something, Now, this requires a certain kind of basic confidence.

[22:08]

And part of that confidence is not only that you can do it yourself, but that no one else can do it for you, and that there's no other alternative. There's nothing, from the point of view of yogic culture and Buddhism, there's nothing outside the system to help you You are it. So you need this basic confidence that you already are enlightened or you already are whatever the world is. And somehow it's hidden from you or not accessible to you. But you need the confidence that you aren't separate from whatever reality is. If you don't have this confidence, you can't go very far in practice. So what do you do if you want to study something?

[23:21]

Well, I mean, there are certain kinds of things we can learn from other people and by example. But even that is rooted in our own natural curiosity and bringing attention to something. Now, if I'm speaking to you, if you want to learn from what I'm saying, you have to bring attention to the listening. Now this is true of anybody, it's not just me as a Buddhist teacher, but it's particularly the teaching of Buddhism has been developed as kind of packages or units that open up if you give attention to it. So a certain kind of attention has to be given and then you mull over, you ponder about it.

[24:27]

So say, like last night, I said, we should recognize, or it'd be helpful to recognize, that space also connects. Now, if you want this to open up for you, you have to bring attention to it. Now, many athletes, I have a friend who, Michael Murphy in the States, who wrote The Psychic Side of Sports, and now called been republished as something else. I can't think of what it's been republished as. He also wrote Golf in the Kingdom. And through him I know a lot of the lore of... He's one of the pioneers in working with visualization that athletes use and so forth. But this ability to visualize every step of a race, say, or some athletic event, is rooted in the same sense of knowing...

[25:35]

of entering into a feeling of connectedness, of doing what you do almost in a field of connectedness. So if we were going to take the standard Buddhist way to study something, maybe I should start with that, because we're studying together for these two days. is the first step is you bring attention to what's being said or any aspect of the teaching you want to look at. And you can't look at everything. I mean, I'm going to say probably quite a lot. In fact, I'll probably say more than you want me to. And this is also because I'd like to kind of flood you a bit so you relax and give up. and then maybe one or two things you pick and work on.

[26:44]

So first, let's just say we picked already connected as a phrase. or space connects, and that you attempted to bring attention to this. This means when you're walking around here, when you're going to bed, when you're washing your face, whatever you're doing, you have a feeling, you bring, you hold in view, is the phrase we use, that space connects. Now you're holding it in view Now, intellectually you can understand this. I think it's intellectually understandable. But to understand it intellectually and then put it on a shelf, your basic habits of living as if space separates will never be touched by an intellectual understanding.

[27:59]

You have to hold it in view in confrontation with obvious mental habits we have, and then habits that are much more subtle that only will be touched by holding this in view as much as you can. 24 hours if it's possible. So if you really want to practice something, you bring attention to it and you ponder about it some, think about it, mull it over. And so, say that you've mulled it over to the point, which I already gave you last night, that you're going to use a phrase like already connected. So, now you bring sustained attention to the fruit of mulling it over. You following me? This is just basic, the way everything is studied in Buddhism.

[29:02]

And it's actually really an evolution of attention itself, which is a kind of natural phenomenon of human beings. This isn't necessarily Buddhist, you know. So now you bring sustained attention to this phrase already connected, or you bring sustained attention to what I'll... present later the three minds of daily consciousness or something like that. Now, the next step is you begin to get an operative understanding. You begin to understand how something works, how it interrelates. And that takes sometimes months, sometimes years, sometimes... Once you get good at this, this habit, this way of studying something, studying not out of books, but studying in... through your lived life. Because you want to study your life.

[30:09]

I mean, what you want to do here is study your life. So you have to use your lived life as the medium of study. Does that make sense? So you're bringing this sustained attention to the fruit of mulling this over, you've decided how to bring yourself. And you begin to feel how this operates, functions in the world. The next stage is that you begin to be able to envision this as if the world was thus. And let's just make it simple. Say that you're a fearful person. and you have habits for psychological reasons or from whatever, systemic cultural things, you feel unsafe in the world.

[31:11]

You feel wary all the time. Well, if you came to the conclusion that the world could be safe or it's something, And you began to feel, you brought some attention to this, and at some moments you began to feel safe in the world. Does that make sense? It's possible. You suddenly relax in a way and feel safe. And you will find that your body changes. Things settle down. You stop holding yourself a certain way. And a different body creates a different material world. So your view of the world is unsafe has been holding your whole posture in a certain way. Now, you have this habit for 30 years or 25 years or 40 years, whatever your age is. What's remarkable is not that this takes a long time, but it's possible at all if you've got 30 years of habits. So if in a few months to a year, or faster if you're diligent, you can alter basic

[32:17]

Embedded views that are dysfunctional you've I mean this is an immense accomplishment So you are Bringing sustained attention to this you begin to see how it operates and Then you begin to envision the world as safe you walk around in the world as if it were safe and or you walk around in the world as if it were, you're not absolutely certain yet it's safe, but you're able to have the feeling that it's safe. You're not absolutely certain yet that everything's connected in a way that you can participate in, but you have a sense of it. Now, Buddhism is also an acupunctural, excuse me, a homeopathic medicine in that it works in small doses, luckily. So if you bring attention to things in small doses on a regular basis, it begins to shift things.

[33:23]

Now, when you start being able to have a teaching and now envision that teaching as the way the world is, safe or connected or whatever, The next stage is that from the way a process of envisioning gives us a sense of satisfaction and so forth, it's still a medium, but it does give us a sense of satisfaction and sometimes we can think we've arrived. But what actually starts happening from this envision, from being able to envision a teaching or an understanding or an observation, is you begin to have threefold moments, momentary, fleeting moments of recognition. They're threefold in that there's an increase in knowledge, there's a realization, there's a turning around in your life, and there's a removal of doubt or obstruction.

[34:34]

Now, those happen very quickly. They're fleeting. But now what you've done by bringing attention to something, you've not only gotten to understand what you've brought attention to, You've not only gotten to understand what you've brought attention to, but you've developed attention itself. The bonus is you're really simultaneously developing attention. And we could say a more dense or congealed attention notices fleeting moments. It's like an insect. If an insect around a pond is flying, you cannot see its path at all.

[35:39]

But as soon as it touches the water, you can see it. And there's a quality to a developed, denser, shall we say, I don't know what word to use, attention, that you begin to see more subtle things happen in the attention. You understand? So you begin to have these fleeting moments that before would have passed by like an insect in the air. Now they pass by like an insect touching water, and you feel yourself turn on it, and you feel some obstruction released, and you have a gain in knowledge about the world. So these are called threefold moments. And again, it's not exactly Buddhism. It's the development of natural curiosity into sustained attention. Then the teaching begins to unfold into your life, unfold into all of Buddhist teaching. You begin to see how it fits together and it moves you along the path.

[36:40]

And at this point we would technically say you're a stream enterer. You've entered the stream of practice. Now what I've just presented you is a teaching. And it's a teaching about how you practice, how you study a teaching. But this very teaching can be applied to this teaching. is you can try this out by bringing attention to it, trying it out on something like space connects or already connected. Now for me, this is quite remarkable, exciting even, that to notice that basically, you know, we're not talking about something outside of ourselves, we're just talking about natural curiosity to look to turn towards something and to give it have the confidence and trust to give it attention and Attention itself develops so it begins to tell you things about the world Now this sustained attention when you can develop Attention to sustained attention This becomes a door through the layers of mind and

[38:01]

And meditation practice, in a way, is beginning to know the feeling of sustained attention and bring attention to that sustained attention, and it moves you more deeply into inward and interior consciousness. Now, I just used two terms that I haven't defined, inward consciousness and interior consciousness. I can't do everything this morning. But we'll come back to that. So I think it's a good time to take a break. But let's sit for one or two minutes. And then I don't promise one or two. We'll have a break and start again.

[39:04]

So I'd like to start out... I'd like to start out... I'd like to start out with having some discussion with you, or whatever. So if you have something you'd like to bring up, please do. Yes? As you were speaking about the development of intention, I just felt myself lifting up and expanding, and it was beautiful. We enjoyed that. Good. I saw... around me, the various experiences I've had in my life and the people I associate with. And... Now, many people use that experience as a justification for monastic life.

[40:27]

But I think that... And for the average person, probably to sustain attention, awareness, a field of mind, it's necessary probably to practice in a monastic type situation. But I think that for you remarkable people of immense capacity, that we should be able to find a way to practice more on our own. But it does, it is, you know, a craft and you have to work at it or think about it or embrace it. But I do think some kind of sangha and probably some taste of monastic life is good if you seriously want to practice. And that's why I maintain these two centers in Europe and America and it's you know it's not some one some of you you guys are so friendly in Australia already some of you are asking me if I'd stay here and start open a center and things like that you know how much work it is to open a center I mean just to get the get it right I mean it's going to take several years to get Europe right so I feel that we have the facilities to do a practice period a three month practice period

[42:01]

The three months practice periods are done at Creston. So I'm trying to, what I'd like to do with the rest of my life is make these two places beautiful and a good place to practice so that people can come for two weeks a year or occasionally, something like that, or two weeks once or twice every few years. So practically speaking, some kind of monastic life is probably helpful, a taste of it. Second, it's very helpful to have some kind of sangha, in other words, other people you practice with. Just two or three people who meet once a week makes a big difference. In fact, my rule in Europe was I wouldn't go to any city that didn't have an ongoing sitting group that met at least once a week. Because I went to some cities where we'd have very big seminars, but the momentum wasn't there from the practitioners.

[43:06]

So that helps. Now, that's all practical. From the point of view of practice itself, this happens. You just study it. You notice it happens and you notice it collapses. And in that noticing you attempt, and this is the key to Yogacara practice, you tend to get a... try to develop a bodily feeling for that attentiveness that you, in this case, liked, right? And you try not to achieve that or kind of cling to it, but you get to know the physical feeling of it and you begin to be able to sustain the physical feeling of it, and then, if the conditions are right, it tends to generate itself. So, the key to Yogacara practice is this development of a physical feeling for mind.

[44:11]

And the more you have a physical feeling for it, the more it will become stabilized. And if it's stabilized, then it doesn't collapse when your friend is in a distracted state of mind. Rather, it brings your friend into a more friendly state of mind. Okay? All right. Something else? That was a rather long answer, I'm sorry. No. Well, generally in Tibetan Buddhism it's called Chittamatra. But there are the major Mahayana schools, or Yogacara, Majjamaka, and Wayen. And Zen and the koans are a merging of these three teachings. And Yogacara practice... Majjamaka practice emphasizes emptiness. Yogacara practice emphasizes emptiness as Buddha nature, as an experienceable reality.

[45:23]

Okay? Something else? I wink usually. No. The general instructions are to usually have your eyes slightly open so that you can see vaguely at the height away from you. So if you're about this height, about that distance out. And I think this is very important for beginners because... Your eyes closed is a physical trigger for sleep. Your eyes open is a physical trigger for consciousness. And so you've got to find an intermediate eye position which doesn't habitually trigger either sleepiness or conscious wakefulness.

[46:30]

In general, you want to find something physically that's not the way your eyes usually are. That's what it's about. Okay? So if your eyes are slightly open, there's a sighting of light that's the best for a beginner. But once you get more experienced in sitting and you don't need that problem, you've been sitting long enough that you're as familiar with sitting mind as you are with waking ordinary conscious mind, And then what I would say is that it's good to have the eyes shut lightly so there's a feeling of light coming through the lids, but it's okay to have them shut if you have that feeling of light, lightness and light, which is neither a trigger for sleepiness or too much conceptual consciousness. Okay? Yes. Can I ask you about, you know, you were talking before about having confidence in sort of the business.

[47:40]

And it seems to me like a lot of our hinges on it are knowing about Buddha nature. I feel like I would love to think that we all have Buddha nature, but I don't know. Try it on. Just try it on. Yeah. Yeah, try it on. Sure. Okay. And see if it's... Yeah. No, you can't. And, you know, we all have our, you know, you may have gotten from your parents a basic trust. You may not have and so forth. But this is also about reparenting yourself. Home leaving really means, being a home leaver means to reparent yourself. And you can know intellectually that you can't deeply function in the world without trust. That trust is really operative. It's operative truth. So you need to find a way to live, at least pretend that you trust at first.

[48:52]

And to work on it in the way I said. And see when you trust. Do you trust washing your face? Yes. Do you trust when you first wake up? You notice it. When you sit, you can practice. If you did nothing else when you first sit, notice the degree to which you trust or don't trust yourself or trust your body. Okay. I was wondering, you were talking about postures. Is there a postural reason for this? Oh, I don't know. Wherever you like. I don't sit this way, so I've never studied the difference. I was thinking in relation to the upright spine. Hmm? I was thinking in relation to the upright spine. Yeah. Well, there's definitely a reason that you don't want your hands forward to pull yourself forward. But other than that, it's up to you. I mean, try it out. I have. That's why I'm asking you. Well, whichever you like best.

[49:55]

You're the judge. You know, I was just thinking, you know, of my training as, like, there is a difference between that and that, and what it does to the spine. Yeah, well, I don't know. Just like a habitual thing that came up, like this one. I haven't worked with it, so I don't know. Yeah. Yes? This is a question I asked you during the break. I mean, talking about, we sort of lived with a sort of fearfulness about it, and I asked you... Pretty much. There's no question that it's just like going to a therapist. Often you get worse. Because you open yourself up to things, you see things that you were not noticing, and then you feel worse. But ideally Zen practice, sitting practice, gives you... The key to sitting practice, and why sitting practice is psychologically so important, and I'm going to be here in one of these rooms next week in a conference on Buddhism and psychology, and one of the things I will say is there's no psyche in Buddhism, and so there's no Buddhist psychology.

[51:12]

There's the Buddhist mindology, and where psychology is a study of the mind, then there's an overlap. But there are certain aspects of Buddhism, which Zen practice, which function within a psychological framework and are very helpful psychologically. And one of them is simply learning to sit still and not moving. which means that you decide that you're going to sit 20 minutes a day or 30 or 40 or whatever it is, and you create a schedule that you can do, not a schedule that stretches you so that you don't fulfill it usually. You create a schedule that you can do, let's say three days a week, five days a week, something like that. And you sit at a particular time for a particular length of time, whether you want to or not. Now, if you sit only when you want to, you may have some poetic inspirations and things, but you won't deeply get into what's going on with you because your ego is too powerful and it'll decide, ah, today you don't want to sit, this is ridiculous, nothing happens, it's boring, etc.

[52:27]

You're waiting for a bus, it's never coming, etc., etc. So you've got to get past the boredom barrier. But if you get past that and you just get the habit of sitting for a specific length of time, whether you want to or not, and not moving when ants appear and other kind of itches, you know, and things like that, you begin to have a confidence that you can sit through anything. This is an immense power. Once you actually know you can sit through anything your mind throws at you or your ego throws at you, you break the adhesive connection between thought and action. It means you can think anything without fearing you'll act on it. And until you have that confidence, you will not allow yourself to think a lot of things.

[53:28]

Because we are all have all the demons and angels of human beings in us and we don't let certain sides of ourselves come out where we might be pretty ferocious. So once you know you can sit through anything, you can open it up. But that confidence, that kind of confidence that comes from sitting practice, can also be a confidence that allows you to be extremely stable in situations in which you're very vulnerable. Does that make sense? So the vulnerability and openness and danger, I mean everything, we're actually, well look at what happened to poor Princess Diana. We don't know what will happen. And so the world is not completely safe. So I think within this world, which is not completely safe and of such suffering,

[54:39]

and of vulnerability to our heart and being, we need to find an inner stability of mind itself, which is what we're talking about. Because mind itself is more basic than the emotions which assail it. Okay? That's enough for now. We can come back to that. Is that helpful? Yeah, okay. Yes? Yes. When you're talking about emotions, it seems in Buddhist literature and philosophies, there seems to be a whole gamut of ways you deal with anger or hatred or whatever. And even like in Sam's interest it seems like they say just express your anger fully. What's your view on what you're doing when you come up in day-to-day situations with anger, hatred, whatever? Don't express it fully.

[55:42]

At least not around me, please. Feel it fully. But don't express it fully. So what, following up on what we just talked about, what practice does is give you a third alternative, which is neither expressing or repressing. Which is you can feel it fully without acting on it. So you can say that you're very angry with somebody. You allow yourself to feel that anger, but you may only say to them something like, you know, what you just did made me feel very angry. That's different than expressing it. That's noting it. And the basic practice of mindfulness is to note your feelings, but not interfere with them.

[56:44]

Now I'm angry, now I'm more angry. Boy, I'm really angry now. But again, what you're doing is you're creating a space around it. You're creating a field of mind around the anger by just noting it but not interfering with it. So you're not... I mean, the word is detached yet not separate from. You've created a mind which is inseparable from the anger but one that isn't... which absorbs the anger and doesn't have to either repress it or express it. Okay? you go fully into it, but you don't just sort of turn away from it and put your attention on something else. You allow yourself to be fully attentive. Well, you have to do whatever allows you to function. But ideally, you sometimes allow yourself to really feel your fear or your anger or your hatred and just stay in the midst of it.

[57:49]

And the more often you do that, or turn toward what upsets you, but not so much it overwhelms you, but keep turning toward what upsets you, you eventually develop an absorbent mind which absorbs these things and isn't fragilely kind of destroyed by them. Okay? I don't know if these answers are helpful or not, but... I'm sorry to just, you know, yeah. Yes. It is telling you is that you should stay with one more than many. But it's, you know, in the end, let me say again, Buddhism is based on knowing for yourself what's wholesome or unwholesome. Now there's a teaching about this called the four abandonments, but I don't think I have to go into it.

[58:53]

Let's just say to know for yourself what's wholesome and what's unwholesome and what situations now lead to unwholesome activity and what situations lead to wholesome activity. Now this sounds rather moralistic, but really what it does is free you from society. Because it means that society is not determining what's right or wrong. You determine what feels right to you, for you. And this again is a practice. So you, in the end, have to decide whether you want to sit this way or that way or concentrate or something. But in general, in Zen, we emphasize, first of all, concentrating on the breath, and second, concentrating on mind itself as an object of concentration. Okay. Oh. Well, I mean lots of things, but I'll give you a simple example.

[60:00]

Oh, no, it's okay. All right, if you concentrate on this, if you all concentrate on this, Now, if you learn to concentrate on it, you'll find that actually there's a pattern in which, again, a natural pattern, the development of concentration, in which you will be more concentrated on it and then you'll forget about it. You'll find your identification, not just your concentration, your identification shifts to your thoughts and things like that. But if you practice with it, you find you can eventually bring yourself back to it. Then it gets so it's easier to bring yourself back to it. That's the second or third stage. And then, when you lose concentration, it comes back to it by itself. That's a more advanced stage. And finally, without any effort, it just rests on the object of concentration, and that's called one-pointedness, okay? So, this is at present, to concentrate on this, what I just described are the main stages of shamatha.

[61:17]

Okay, now if you concentrate on this, a stick, this is a bell stick, let's call it a bell stick, a bell stick mind arises, okay? A mind has arisen through your concentrating on this bell stick. And you might feel quite concentrated, right? Okay, now let's imagine you're quite concentrated on this, and I take this away. and your mind stays concentrated. What are you now concentrated on? You're concentrated on mind itself. That makes sense? That's called samadhi. Samadhi is the capacity of the mind to be concentrated on itself. Now, If you maintain this concentration of mind on itself, then you bring this stick back up into it and examine it with a concentrated mind that's arisen through mind and not through the stick.

[62:20]

That's called vipassanara insight. That make sense? So now you're observing things through a state of concentrated mind. And that produces insight because it's like a denser mind, denser, not stupid, precipitates insight. So you begin to precipitate insight through a mind concentrated on itself, which is the same as I was teaching you this morning, where you have these threefold moments of realization. Okay? Yeah, yeah. Boy, we're going to know everything there is to be about Buddhism pretty soon, you know. Or everything I know, anyway. Okay, what else? Yeah? Would you mind just talking a bit more about the threefold experience you mentioned, just what exactly you mean by that?

[63:26]

There's not much to say about it except that you can imagine that you say that you recognize that the world is already connected and you have that as a feeling of recognition. That turns you in a different direction in your life. That turning is called a realization experience. Does that make sense? There's a turn on the basis of how you look at things. And that constitutes the threefold? No, that's one aspect of the threefold. The second is there's a gain in knowledge about how the world is, which affects your views, etc. So there's a gain in knowledge. And third, there's a freedom from obstructions that interfered with your knowing from that in the past. So it's knowledge, realization, and a freedom from doubt or obstruction. And those threefold fleeting moments... are the result of sustained attention, often through visualizing and understanding.

[64:35]

Okay? You know, I'm a little embarrassed I'm being so precise. But, you know, I actually think it's useful because we're in a muddle of English words which don't have much to do with Buddhism. So I'm trying to be precise as I'm undressing up here. Disrobing. Okay. Yeah. I have actually a question that leads on from that. I live in a situation of relationships where the people around me have no expressed interest in what I'm actually following all the course of my life. And I find myself constantly caught in a trap of trying to articulate what I'm experiencing. I think the rule is only respond seriously to a question when it's asked three times.

[65:48]

Before that, kind of brush it off or say something ridiculous or, you know, agree with them. If they're serious enough, they'll ask again. This just means only ask when they're really ready to hear. And second, when you are motivated to introduce something to somebody because of your own compassion, don't tell them, show them in your own actions. And this helps your own practice because it's much harder to show them than to tell them. So, okay. Okay. Yes. Yes. I'm led toward integrating my... That's good, what you're doing. I mean, that's basic to practice. Why don't you ask me that question again Sunday afternoon? And we'll see if we've made some progress.

[66:55]

And maybe we can ask... Okay? Okay. But obviously I'm trying to say something about that as I'm going along. Okay, that's enough unless somebody has a pressing question. Yes? I just want to ask one more. You discussed last night about developing awareness, the difference between awareness and consciousness. Are we only supposed to be in that state of awareness during meditation or during sleep, that we pass from consciousness into sleep? Or can we develop it so that... throughout our conscious existence, we'll have this awareness and the consciousness. To make that kind of distinction suggests, shows me that you have the capacity for practice. And just being able to see those possibilities is important, and basically what you said is right, but how to work with that I'll try to talk about. Now I'm trying, let me say a little bit about what I'm trying to do again.

[68:06]

I'm trying to speak with you about practice, obviously in English words. And I'm also trying to speak to you about practice in terms of experiences that are familiar to you. And in terms, or through metaphors that are accessible to you. So this is my own discipline to sort of try to make this practice relevant to you through experiences you already have or are familiar with and the language which you're familiar with. Now, let me ramble a little bit here. This all goes back in India, a very long time before Buddhism. in which the Indians, these ancient Indians, observed, naturally enough, that we have three minds, waking mind, dreaming mind, and non-dreaming deep sleep.

[69:16]

Now, for some reason, they were inclined, and I think you can look at religion. A lot of it was inspired by India, and some of it went off into Sufism and so forth, Christianity, and had some strains from India that went off toward Europe. And another strain, the more yogic side, went off toward Asia and China and Vietnam, Japan and California and so forth. Australia. So... They observed that these three minds we have, which we're born with, in effect, that don't know each other. I mean, waking mind sort of knows a little bit about dreaming mind, but not much. And non-dreaming deep sleep has no images or language, so we don't know it at all, except it's understood in this... ancient way of looking at things that actually non-dreaming deep sleep is a state of bliss of non-dual bliss when we're most connected with the world that we absolutely need to function one reason sleeping pills are so bad because they don't allow this to happen they just conk out consciousness but don't give you non-dreaming deep sleep

[70:37]

And this non-dreaming deep sleep is a state of bliss that's essential for us, but we forget it more thoroughly than we forget any dream. Just as we forget dreams, we have no capacity to remember this. Now from the point of view of meditation practice, again, meditation practice is an attempt to allow this non-dreaming deep sleep or state of bliss to surface in you in an accessible way. Now, what these, again, these ancient Indian folks asked themselves, okay, we have these three minds that don't communicate with each other very much. Is there a mind that connects these three or a mind that absorbs these three or a mind that's even larger, more inclusive than just these three? That's an interesting and obvious question. And the whole effort of dharmas and stuff like that is to find the basic units of reality which they tried to find inside and we tried to find outside with atoms and so forth.

[71:50]

It goes back to sort of particles of emptiness. Now they discovered that dharmas, these units... were infinitely divisible, just like we discovered that atoms, the word atom means can't be broken, but we discovered it can be. So, dharmas then became units of experience. So the basic quest of Buddhism Is there a mind which unites these three minds or is more inclusive, a wider mind than we even would imagine these three together would make? Am I making sense? Okay. So now this results from asking a fundamental question. A kid might ask, you know, I wake up in the morning, I've been dreaming and sometimes I'm not dreaming.

[72:53]

Do I have a mind that unites these three? We might ask this, but our culture doesn't support this question. Tell that to your parents, your parents would say, be a lawyer. Or something, you know. Be a doctor or something, right? So what we're trying to do here, and I as a Westerner, I think, am trying to do is find a way we can intimate ourselves into an experience of this more inclusive mind, or to find out for ourselves if there is such a thing. Are you still with me here? Okay. Now, I made a distinction last night between awareness and consciousness, so already I've said that the mind is both awareness and consciousness.

[73:54]

And I think that we could spend this weekend just on, and maybe in effect we will, spend this weekend on attempting to get a feeling for awareness and consciousness so that you can begin to know when you're in either, either, or when you can bring them together or mix them or discover one in the midst of the other. This is basic Zen practice. It's called the five ranks, actually. And then within awareness, is there a further clarity? Now, this is... What I'm saying to you is extremely simple, but it's a lot to accept or absorb all at once because it's all new for many of you. It's like new categories of looking at yourself, and it takes time to absorb these new categories. Just the category of awareness and consciousness is already a really big step if you get that.

[75:00]

But then the awareness itself may have categories within it is a level of subtlety that may take some... It's not more complicated. I mean, your car is more complicated than that, you know, within fourth gear, third gear, you know. So we're used to things which have overdrive and back and low, low, low, four-wheel and so forth. But if I start saying your mind has low four-wheel, you know, you'll think, Jesus... This is much too complicated for me, but it's not too complicated when it's sold to you by Chevrolet or Toyota. Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing. So one thing we have to recognize, I'm trying to define mind. for you. So we talked about awareness and consciousness. Now the way... Well, let me enter from this point.

[76:08]

Mind has structure. This amorphous thing we call mind has structure. You have to know it has structure or you can't, again, practice much. What do I mean by structure? What are you doing when you tell a kid to learn their ABCs? A, B, C, D, E, F, G, E, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, E, Q, R, S, D, etc. You're basically teaching them to structure their mind. That's why kids are taught that from the beginning. They count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. They begin to say, this is there and this is here. That's mental structure. You cannot separate these two things out unless there's an element of mental structure. Does that make sense to you? So when you say here and there, you are exhibiting mental structure. So when you teach a kid, and all the... Francis Yates, who is a female woman historian, who is quite a marvelous historian, wrote about memory and the history of developing, you know, people who could memorize the sutras over generations in a tradition and so forth.

[77:23]

The techniques of memory just extend into memory palaces. You create a memory palace in which you can, which is basically an extension of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, up and down. And the mandalas are basically memory palaces, Tibetan mandalas. They're blueprints that a good, an adept can pop up and say, okay, that floor there, there's a Buddhist sitting here, Manjushri's here, and so you've got it wrong because the Manjushri should be turned that way because you come in this door, etc. But that requires you to be able to pop it up in your mind and visualize it. So those are all examples of that the mind has structure. The mind also has direction. It can be directed a particular direction and that's intention, energy and so forth. Chitta, which means thought actually and also the thought of enlightenment also means that the mind can have a direction. And just to have a thought shows you your mind can have a direction.

[78:30]

It can be compulsive thinking or it can be compassionate thinking or whatever. Mind also has the capacity to be concentrated on itself. Samadhi. Mind also has a field quality. Now, some of these things I can answer or respond to questions about But the field quality is extremely important. And mind also has the ability to be generated on particular, through particular senses. And each sense, the word vijnana means to know things together through their separateness. So you begin to work with each sense and you find out, just as Proust did, you know, with Hawthorne bringing forth a six-volume novel, The Smell of Hawthorne, or The Taste of a Madeline with his tea, that you have a particular identity within each sense that is usually lost because we homogenize ourselves all into conceptualized consciousness.

[79:50]

Am I making sense? Going too fast? In any case, there is a structure to mind and also there is minds that develop around each sense that we can uncover. And mind has an own organizing, I like it better than self organizing being a Buddhist, an own organizing capacity. For example, when you want to wake up, mind, when we use the word mind in Buddhism, we also mean something that has homeostasis and self-organizing. Now, homeostasis means it tends to stay in place and organizing it tends to organize itself into a coherent whole. So if you are, if the alarm clock goes off and you don't want to get up, It's clear that your mind has homeostasis and you also may not want to get up because you want to keep dreaming because there's an own organizing quality of that mind that keeps the dream in place.

[80:56]

So you see what I mean by own organizing and homeostatic. If you're in zazen, if you're in meditation and you don't want the bell to ring, it means you're actually in zazen mind because zazen mind is homeostatic. It doesn't want to change into another state of mind. It tends to begin to organize your experience in another way Okay, so I've given you quite a lot of definition of mind and the reason I'm giving you these definitions also is so that you can become familiar with These capacities of mind and know that they're participatory You participate in this And you can participate in this. We do with our kids when we teach them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And if you begin to see the structure of mind in yourself, you can begin to work with. And the self is nothing but a mental structure.

[81:59]

It's no big deal. It's just a mental structure. an own organizing mental structure and you can change that you can enlarge it there's ways you can work with this functions of self and one of the things we could talk about is that are the three functions of self and how the three functions of self relate to the three functions of Buddha nature but whether we can get into that I will see I'll see if you ask questions about it later so let me now before lunch which we should end in about 15 minutes probably I'd like to give you the three minds of daily consciousness because I think it's the best introduction to getting a feeling for or the taste of mind, okay? Somebody say okay. All right. Otherwise, I feel I did a little too much.

[82:59]

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