Those of you that still have a syllabus. OK, we're going to do something a little bit different today. Let me just say that Bob Zepernick, our librarian, came up with a clever idea about the tapes, realizing that all of us are very busy.

[01:05]

We have a bunch of tapes. separated out that are on the general topics that we've been discussing here in the class, old lectures of Mel's and other people's. And some of them are quite good. And particularly, there are several on the four foundations of mindfulness and the four divine abodes. That lecture has been printed in the Windmill several years ago, but the original is there. And so I recommend them. And you don't have to listen to them here. They're on reserve for this class. But you can take them home and listen to them when you have time and bring them back. So they're enough so that a lot of people can pass them out. Yeah, you name the phone number, and then each tape, in addition to having a title, has a number.

[02:35]

So if you tell us which one you've got, when we find that we can't find number 202, we know that you're the one that's got it, and we'll come after you. I added an extra reading. I don't want you to feel overwhelmed by this reading like you're in high school, but I found this wonderful a chapter by Joanna Macy in her new book, World as Lover, World as Self. And it's the most understandable rendition of dependent origination that I've ever seen. And as a matter of fact, the only one that I could ever even begin to follow. So I highly recommend it. And I'm handing this stuff out to you so you'll have it. I'm trying to put together some things that are real standard, like this book, with some things that are maybe a little more recent.

[03:43]

And so that between them all, you'll get it to the extent that this can be gotten conceptually. So having said that, what I'm going to do today, what we're supposed to do today is talk about mindfulness and investigation. And Buddha's teachings about mindfulness are mostly in two of the sutras. There's the Satipatthana Sutra, The other thing I want to do is to kind of get you familiar with some of these words so that... I know it's taken me 20 years to figure out the difference between a lot of these supras and what they came from. The Satipatthana, and I'm going to... my spelling, if Sanskrit isn't that great, means setting up of mindfulness.

[04:55]

And the other sutra that's very famous is the Anapasati Sutra. You remember about the sutras in the baskets? And that's the sutra on full awareness of breathing. And what these sutras contain, basically, is a lot of real, detailed, specific meditation instructions and a lot of specific practices. And all the practices and all the meditations have the same purpose. The purpose is twofold. the mind to stop its wandering, to concentrate, so that you can look, so that you can see things as they really are.

[06:11]

And if we were really going to study these properly, what we would have to do is devote the rest of our lives to sitting here together and going through these practices one by one and staying with each of them until it was time to move on to the next. But since we only have an hour and a half tonight together, and next week and the week after we're moving on to the big picture, of how it is when you see things as they really are. So tonight what I'd like to do is kind of give you a taste of what these practices are like. And we'll sample a few of them. And it'll be a little bit like going to a banquet given by a cooking school in which you kind of get to have maybe a quarter of a teaspoonful of every third thing.

[07:25]

and you won't get really satisfied. Hopefully, maybe your appetite will be whetted and you may want to have some more or you may want to get the recipe for something. So first, One of the things we'll do tonight, we'll do a lot more meditation than we usually do. I'll talk for a little while, and I'll lead you through a series of short guided meditations. And then I'll talk a little bit, not about the recipes, but sort of about the principles of what would be Buddhist cooking if this were cooking. The principles that underlie these practices. what it is they're doing and why they work.

[08:27]

Some of this, when I've been exposed to these mindfulness practices, which are many, I mean there are really lots and lots and lots of them, sometimes I've found my mind a little bit swimming, it seems like a lot, and it reminded me, studying this stuff this week reminded me of my experience as a new student listening to Suzuki Roshi talk. And sometimes I could kind of follow it as he was saying it. And sometimes it even seemed like he knew what I needed to hear. He'd been reading my mind almost. But once I left the room, I couldn't tell him what the guy said. And the other half of the time, I couldn't even follow it. It was nice to be there, and I could follow his presence, which was very easy to be with.

[09:36]

But about ten years after he died, I was helping Mel type and edit some of Suzuki Roshi's lectures that hadn't been published. And I was sitting there at my typewriter, watching these words come by, and it was like they were really alive, and they all made sense, and it was like lights just kind of going on. And it all seemed very familiar, as if, you know, I just heard him give that talk yesterday. So the point of this is that this is all wonderful nourishment, but it's sometimes slow to digest, and so the wonderfulness of it is that once you've been exposed to it, your system will absorb it at whatever rate is appropriate for you, so you don't have to worry about

[10:44]

something that you don't understand, or some of these you may kind of want to spit out, they may be distasteful, and you can just kind of notice that. So the foundations of mindfulness that we're going to talk about tonight are mindfulness of the body in the body, mindfulness of the feelings in the feelings, mindfulness of the mind or the activities of the mind, and mindfulness of the objects of mind. Another word for objects of mind is dharmas. And this is dharma with a small d. And we'll talk about that more. The fourth one actually includes all the others. And when you're practicing, each of them includes all the others. The classifications are somewhat arbitrary. but classical.

[11:48]

All these practices which are designed for stopping the mind and concentrating the mind lead to liberation. They lead to getting free from being caught in whatever it is that your mind might be doing. Freedom from getting dragged back to the past or pulled into the future. So, these practices give us various ways to stop the mind, to look at what's happening, to move on. And the kind of awareness that these practices cultivate has certain qualities. The awareness of mindfulness is clear, like a mirror.

[13:02]

It doesn't distort, just reflects things just the way they are. It's also fluid, kind of like a zoom lens. And you'll notice that different practices will focus you at different focal lengths. So sometimes you'll be looking very, very close up. And other times, you'll be zooming way back to the big picture. And just as in nature, If you look at things at a cellular or molecular level, there are parallels if you study astronomy or the cosmos or theoretical physics. So you can understand things as they are from many points of view, from very close up in detail, from very far away. And the other quality of awareness is continuity.

[14:14]

And the continuity of mindfulness is the always coming back. Always coming back to the breath or to whatever it is that the specific practice is bringing our attention to. And whatever it is that we're attending to, the awareness of meditation, of mindfulness, lets whatever it is be the way it is. It doesn't hold a grudge. It doesn't judge what's happening. So this kind of awareness both requires and cultivates gentleness, to not be judging, and courage, because you don't know what's going to come up. So Buddha talked about 16 methods of promoting full awareness of breathing.

[15:17]

And the 16 methods are divided handily into four groups, one for each of the four categories. Again, these divisions are partly inherent, and remember that people were reciting this for hundreds of years. And so it kind of went in stanzas and divided itself up in even ways so that people could remember it. And you'll notice a lot of overlap between these practices. And the first practice that is described, and it's described in both of these mindfulness sutras, is the very most basic breathing practice. The breathing practices, for most mindfulness practices, can be done anywhere, anyplace, anytime, in any posture.

[16:25]

And in fact, there are mindfulness practices for the day, for your whole day, involving noting in your mind when you're standing up, sitting down, walking, opening the car door, that kind of thing. But the breathing, mindfulness, full awareness of breathing, for that it's recommended that one sits in some kind of an upright meditation sort of posture. So the meditations I'm going to lead you through are I'm going to emphasize the breathing ones, because that's what we do so much of in our practice. But you'll notice these are a little different from the meditation instruction that you probably received when you first started sitting.

[17:27]

So get yourself comfortable in whatever posture you'd like to be in. And I'll start each of these meditations with one bell, and I'll end them with two. And again, these will be sort of guided a little bit, which is also something a little different than what we usually do. It is like this, monks. You're in the forest, at the foot of a tree, or in any deserted place, or in any meditation hall, holding your body quite straight, breathing in. Know that you're breathing in.

[18:29]

Breathing out. Know that you're breathing out. and you can say this to yourself. Breathing in a long breath, say to yourself, I'm breathing in a long breath. Breathing out a long breath, I'm breathing out a long breath. Know what quality of your breath is. But as you note it to yourself, and say to yourself, breathing in, I'm breathing in a short breath, or whatever kind of breath it is, let go of the I. Let it just be breathing in

[19:38]

out, breathing out, long. And let your whole consciousness be filled with awareness of the quality, the length, in each out breath. This is the fundamental practice, and we'll be returning to it in various forms.

[22:30]

Now, the other practices that go with mindfulness of the body deliberately directing yourself to calm the body and mind with the breath, to become aware of your whole body with each breath. There's a set of mindfulness practices and awareness that the body exists, and contemplating all the different factors of the body, all the different things that make up the body. There are also reflections, meditations on

[23:47]

What is translated here is the repulsiveness of the body, meditating on all the pus and blood and sweat and fat and tears and things that make up the body. And there are meditations on the elements, the physical elements that the body is made of, water, heat, the different body parts. And the most advanced of the body meditations is the eternal ground. There are a series of nine cemetery contemplations. And these are obviously meditations on... very graphic meditations on impermanence. And pointing to the understanding that everything in the body, everything that we call ourselves, is impermanent, is put together in this way, in this particular way, quite temporarily, that what we call ourself is made up of many elements such as blood and sweat that we don't identify

[25:15]

So the second of the set of four breathing awarenesses lead to awareness of feelings. And as you breathe in and out, you breathe with awareness of joy, of happiness, of the activities of the mind. And you can direct your breath towards enhancing calmness. There are sort of two big categories. They're the ones that notice what is, breathing in, noticing a feeling is arising, anger, something pleasant or something unpleasant, something neutral. And then there are the other ones that kind of aim at cultivating a certain state of mind.

[26:34]

So we'll try a couple of these breathing ones. These are a little different than maybe what you're used to doing in Zazen. Maybe you've done some of these before. So always starting with a stable posture. Deep breath. I'm breathing in and feeling joyful. Breathing out and feeling joyful. This is how the monk practices. Dropping the I am, just breathing in, feeling joyful, breathing

[27:48]

And you can use the words as anchors. Maybe if it's too many words, just in. Now letting go of the joy, just breathing in and out, notice any feelings that arise.

[31:15]

And if a pleasant feeling arises, say to yourself, If an unpleasant feeling arises, say to yourself, unpleasant feeling arising, or it may be a And you can always come back to the breath as an anchor.

[33:19]

And notice that you're breathing in. And notice whatever feeling is present. And in these particular practices, giving it a name, giving it a label. So when you talk about feelings there, it's feelings in the sense of emotions rather than feelings in the sense of body feelings.

[35:22]

Well, the first category is body. The examples... In other words, if I have a feeling of pain in my leg, Well, but that's also a painful feeling. It's a painful physical feeling. The categories given in the sutra are pleasant worldly feelings and unpleasant worldly feelings, pleasant and unpleasant spiritual feelings, painful with painful spiritual feelings. Pleasant, unpleasant, painful and neutral, spiritual and worldly. These, they're very specific things like

[36:38]

The monk who practices this lives contemplating feelings and feelings internally, or he lives contemplating feelings and feelings externally, or he lives contemplating feelings and feelings internally and externally. The idea here is that you notice whatever it is that's arising, see if you can catch it arising, see if you can catch where it came from, see where it goes, and notice it. The classification, I think again, is a tool to break the terrain down into cars so that you can get it to stop. I had a little frustration with the joyfulness meditation because it seemed like I had to do some mental formation to make, you know, remembering the sunset tonight or appreciating the color of the floor.

[37:43]

It was like, oh, I'm doing, I'm noticing, I'm finding something. It was like this little dialogue, can I just be joyful without doing something? It felt like I was neutral versus So you were looking for something to make you joyful? Right. I could make myself focus on joyous fantasy, but it seemed like just to be now joyful didn't happen. So you were judging what was happening and trying to get something to happen. So what you noticed, actually you went, you jumped ahead several lessons to an awareness of mental activity and you noticed how you got from the beginning instruction to thinking about what might make you joyful and how you were going to get

[38:59]

this joy that was in the words of the meditation. Yeah, and just sitting, it was like, joyful, you know, and then just like, joyfulness, joyfulness. You know, it was like, oh, I remember joyful, you know, but joyful was not there, you know. The... If you were to do this for a long time, what you would do, is just repeat it to yourself like a mantra with each in-breath and with each out-breath. And it would be the same as zazen, you know, when your mind started going off into thinking about how it wasn't working or whatever your mind, you know, what you were going to have for lunch tomorrow, whatever your mind decided to go off to, you would just come back On the in-breath, breathing in, I'm joyful.

[40:02]

On the out-breath, breathing out, I'm joyful. The idea behind this is that the mind, in Buddhist psychology, is like a garden. And whatever you want to have in your garden, you have to plant those seeds. calming the mind is like cultivating the ground and saying something like breathing in I'm calming the mind or breathing in I'm joyful is like planting the seed of joy. What you're doing is like watering that seed and if you keep watering it and you have planted it in a reasonable place and you protect it from wild animals and things that are going to dig it up.

[41:03]

If you just keep watering it, eventually it will bloom. But you know, you also have to get at the weeds that are coming nearby because the weeds will soak up all the nutrients and shade the nice flower. So, these When you practice these mindfulness practices, they're watering certain seeds. And when you're aware of negative things, and you shine your attention on them, you kind of burn through them. you move on, it's like weeding the garden, because you notice, you know, if you don't know which are the weeds and which are the flowers, you don't know which ones to pull.

[42:08]

And there are, as there are four foundations of mindfulness, there are sort of four divine destinations that can be arrived at. or cultivated, and there are the seven factors of enlightenment that you read about. And these are like, you know, the ingredients in a balanced, you know, tasty mind. So we can choose to cultivate those things. but it's hard to do it. It's like if you go to the zendo and you're just going to count your breaths, you know, if you start getting annoyed at yourself because you can't, or proud of yourself because you can, you know, pretty soon whatever it is you thought you were doing, you know, is a muddle.

[43:22]

So in that sense it really is no different. But it does seem a little bit different. Well, I was going to say, no wonder these, many of these monks have this half smile on their face all the time. You know, they're practicing the meditation of joy. That's right. And these meditations are the daily meditations of Most of the Theravada monks to this day and Vipassana meditators use these meditations and I think they've become popular in Zen circles since Thich Nhat Hanh has written all these books because they use them in Zen in Vietnam. And they're all, and I think

[44:24]

because they were used for so many thousands, hundreds of years before Zen came along, there's certainly the background of Zazen as we're being taught it. And that's one of the reasons it's important for us to be aware of these practices. And you can try them. I've tried Now the Thich Nhat Hanh has a famous one that you've probably heard about that's kind of a variant of breathing in and feeling joyful. It's the breathing in and then breathing out with a half smile. And I did that for quite a while and it was really quite wonderful. Your mouth would get tired. Maybe you'd get a different kind of response socially too.

[45:31]

It's a good practice. The half smile practice is a good one for tense meetings and bad traffic. a little bit, it was like I was feeling more joyful, but it was like, oh, you're smiling. And it seemed like something you did before you felt, you know, I don't know, it just seemed like a little muddler. Cheating. That's being aware of the activities of your mind. And you notice, what does that mean? Does that mean, if you're cheating, does that mean, well, you're only really happy when you smile and is that you? Are you ready for consciousness?

[46:37]

Okay. This third set uses mind as the object of mind. I'll read you a couple This is straight contemplation of consciousness. You don't have to do it yet. And how, monks, does a monk live contemplating consciousness? Monks, a monk knows the consciousness with lust as with lust. The consciousness without lust as without lust. The consciousness with hate as with hate. He knows the consciousness without hate as without hate. He knows the consciousness with ignorance as with ignorance. He lives contemplating consciousness internally and externally.

[47:39]

He lives contemplating origination factors in consciousness and dissolution factors in consciousness. or his mindfulness is established with the thought, consciousness exists to the extent necessary just for knowledge and mindfulness. And he lives detached and clings to nothing. Thus monks, a monk lives contemplating consciousness in consciousness. So we're going to narrow this down a little bit. So establishing the posture and softening the belly. Breathing in, say to yourself, I'm breathing in and concentrating my mind.

[48:55]

I'm breathing out and concentrating my mind. too many words. Each in-breath concentrate. With each out-breath Now try letting go of the word concentration, concentrating the mind, and with each breath, with each in-breath, and with each out-breath, just notice the content of your consciousness.

[54:41]

Notice that the consciousness is with some quality, some feeling. Anger, pain, lust, some other comes into your consciousness. Note it with each breath. See how long it lasts, how many breaths.

[55:50]

So did you notice anything change? Did you catch any states of mind arising? I found the first part to be a very primary Paradoxical. Part of the top nine. Oh, great. I found that a part of it, I was very aware of judgment coming up, and able to just observe it.

[60:19]

And that was actually, there was a shift from trying to avoid that, that was not right, to judge, you know, to judge the judgment, and then after a while, it was just a process of observing it, and the emotional charge that goes with that seemed to want to go away. And then after that, you know, just concentrating and concentrating, it seemed to be a way to bring it back, it was that everything was included in concentration, even when I dozed off, that that was all part of it. And then, when we dropped the concentration, and I observed the state, there was a fear, just the whole, that persisted, that seemed to persist, but that seemed to stay with me, fear. How did you experience the fear? Could you feel it in your body? in my chest, and I kept having, I dozed off, or I kept having images like a movie.

[61:37]

I wasn't really asleep, but I was at times, for moments, but it was, and I couldn't even remember what the scenes were, but there were scenes, and I was afraid, it was always, there were always scenes of not being able, And I thought, well, no wonder I don't concentrate much. But it was a way of observing it. It was interesting at the same time to see that that was there. I think what you're getting at is something that's real important, and that has to do with the observer. And as you practice this kind of thing, the observer gets very strong, the observer grows, but it's not you.

[62:37]

And all these, it's interesting, all these meditations. In Macy's articles she talks about how the instruction that she got from her teacher who taught her this stuff was, forget I am. just state what's happening in a completely neutral way, and the shift that happens is you as the observer disappear, and that's actually pretty scary. It's a very profoundly scary thing. We talk very casually about dropping body and mind, but hey, this is not a casual matter. If you spend a large portion of your life trying to be in control of something, and then you lose the sense of the I, which happens, and there just is breathing, there just is the thought coming up, there just is

[63:51]

There's really no control, is what it seems like. That's right. There's no control. You got it. It's very scary. It is scary, though. It is scary. And that's something that isn't described a lot in the literature. It's described how wonderful it is to let go. And it is wonderful. But it's also very scary. on enlightenment, you have to be willing to pay the price. If you want diamonds, you have to be willing to pay the price. And there is a price. And so even if you're using the joy, cultivating joy in meditation, as the observer disappears, you have to keep letting go.

[65:09]

doing something. You'd call it self-consciousness then, kind of, like what you'd normally think of as self-consciousness, I am now doing this practice or this breathing. Yeah. So the self breaks down into the various non-self elements, a thought, a physical sensation, breath. And that can be a scary feeling. Well, Franny, how is it different from anatomy? You're out of your body. But you're out of your body.

[66:14]

That's the difference. Because these are in-body experiences. Right. But they seem like a completely different order than an out-of-body experience. Hopefully. Yeah. I mean, if you start leaving your body, you're probably doing something wrong. Well, not me, certainly. Have you ever had an out-of-body experience? Oh yeah, right, but without drugs. It was sort of induced by auditory periodicity. It was a very powerful experience. But those kinds of things also do happen in medication. In Zen we generally consider them not so important. But earlier, particularly in pre-Buddhist kinds of meditation, cultivating altered states of consciousness was considered advanced.

[67:26]

And I think Zen sort of more considers them as sort of side effects, or from improper breathing, Indigestion. Nothing to pay too much attention to unless it really gets out of hand. I want to talk about this, the observer and the I disappearing. There's also just sort of an everyday kind of way of doing it. And my experience with that is I come back and say, oh, I didn't think about anything while I was doing it. I was just doing it. It was really great. And I look back on it as a pleasurable experience. Oh, I'll be experiencing this great pleasure in doing what I'm doing. And in that moment, I'll come back to myself again.

[68:33]

Well, that can happen with this, too. When you slow it down that much, you can see the self beginning to go up. And when you're really involved in something fully, you don't notice it. You don't notice it. It's just gone. So the last one is contemplation of the dharmas, or the objects of mind. And the point here, if you haven't already figured it out, is that you can't separate mind from its object. Mind is whatever's in it. Consciousness, feeling, attachment, aversion. Consciousness has to be conscious of something. Loving and hating, or loving and hating something. So the something is the object of mind. And mind can't exist if there's no object. The mind doesn't exist if the object of mind doesn't exist. So the mind is

[69:36]

both the subject of consciousness and the object of consciousness. So physiological phenomena such as breath, psychological phenomena such as feelings and thought and consciousness, and physical phenomena such as earth and water and rivers, tables, are object of mind. So all of them are mind, and all of them can be called I know I was going to read you what it said on my Rok-Su, but I forgot to put my Rok-Su on, so I have to find it so I can read it to you. That's what's written on the Rok-Su. It says, There is no mind which is not moon. There is no moon. there is no moon, which is not mine.

[70:38]

And my name has something to do with moon. My name is Round Moon. So, the next breathing exercise is on the impermanent nature of all that exists. and the dharmas which are everything. Anything you can say exists is a dharma and they all come and go. So in the list of contemplation of mental objects, things that you can meditate on, are things like the five hindrances, which are anger, sloth and torpor, doubt, things like that, involve noticing when those specific things arise, just paying attention and looking specifically

[72:07]

for the hindrances. Or you can pay attention and look specifically for the factors of enlightenment, notice when rapture arises, notice when the enlightenment factor of investigation arises. And you may find it helpful to memorize some of those lists, the five hindrances or protections. And I'll give you at the end of the class a sort of a summary. I'm working up a chart of things that come in groups of 3, 4, 5, and 7. You can use that to refresh your memory. Again, these are just tools. They're tools to get the finger up there to point towards the moon.

[73:08]

They're not anywhere near the moon. They're just tools here to help us look at the finger that's pointing towards the moon. So, breathing in, observe the impermanent nature of all dharmas. Breathing in, observe impermanence. Breathing out, observe permanent nature. is to notice what arises in the consciousness, and notice what leaves.

[75:35]

Notice what's there and what's not there. So breathing in, aware that the mindfulness factor is not in me. Breathing out, I'm aware. Energy is present. So note, as specific states of mind arise, that they're there, and notice when they're absent.

[76:39]

investigation, approach, and what is the nature of mind. And when you take inventory, you know you can group things in various ways. That's how we got a lot of these groups, like the five hindrances and the seven factors of enlightenment. After lots of meditation, one notices certain repetitive contents of consciousness revealing themselves over and over again. And some of them seem to be hindrances, and some seem more positive, some are neutral. The whole system of taking inventory and classifying the contents of consciousness and cultivating various states of mind is Buddhist psychology, and that's the Abhidharma, and remember that it's the three baskets.

[80:18]

And when you study that, You study not only mindfulness meditations like this, but the sort of accumulated mental inventory and diary of centuries of people who have done this kind of meditation and noticed exactly what the contents of their mind was. What's important is, what's the content of your consciousness, and are you there with it? work with these, you can study them, and it's also helpful to work with a teacher. So we don't have time to do the four divine abodes.

[81:47]

Maybe next time, if there's time, I'll do a long guided meditation on one of the four divine abodes. all of which can be cultivated in this way. And next time, we'll really get to the punchline here with when the mind stops and sees things as they really are, and sees the self as it really is, what does it look like? And by class six, y'all should be completely enlightened. Or your money refunded.

[82:52]

Any other questions, comments, anything else? Well, that's the crux of the matter. That's the crux of it. I guess we've reached the crux of the matter. Thank you very much.

[83:26]

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