We have a new person joining us. What is your name? Kevin. Kevin. Kevin. Do you know everybody? No. Yeah. Who do you know? Anybody? A few. A few. Which ones do you know? You want me to name them? Yeah. Neil and Bob and Tim and Amy. That's it? My name, yeah, other cases of you. Okay, well, this is Carrie. And this is John. And this is Patricia. Patricia. And you know her, and you know him? You don't know him, right? No, I mean, she knows you. Oh, we do not. Yeah. This is Neil. I know who you are. It's Neil, right? No, it's... Dean. Dean. And that's Andrew. And what's your name again?

[01:03]

I know you're Neil. What's your name? Dennis. Dennis. Did you know Dennis? You don't know Dennis, right? Yeah. Let's see. And this is Steph. Next to... Shep. Steph. Steph and Shepard. Woo! Woo! Great. And June. June. And Margaret. Is it Margaret? Yes. And what's your name? Jackie. Jackie. And Angus. And Mark. Mark. Was there another Mark? Oh, yeah. Mark. Mark. And Catherine. And Nancy. You know Nancy? I do now. Okay. And Barbara.

[02:09]

And Dawn. She's going down. You know, if you say it sometimes, well done. Don't do that. They say, don't do that? Also earlier today, Shep, former step, used to be, was concerned about this chart, and how his practice related to it, something like that. Did you? Yeah, just matching up experience with concepts, these kinds of concepts. Yeah. Well, the central circle is a basic quality of our experience.

[03:16]

This is something like, according to Buddhist psychology, the center circle is referring to the samadhi quality of all your states of consciousness. But people aren't necessarily aware of this. So you might not have an experience that your mind is always one-pointed with what it knows. And the reason why we don't have that experience is because we have another concept, we have an innate misconception, innate misconception to feel like what the mind is aware of is separate from the mind. Like, you know, right, you might, for example, feel like this person over here that you're listening to, that you're aware of speaking to you, that this person is separate from the mind. Do you have any feeling like that? Huh? Yeah. Yeah. Well, a lot of people have that feeling, right?

[04:18]

Like the things you know are separate from you, which means also separate from your awareness. So this is an innate misconception that we have. And this makes it hard for us to appreciate that the mind is actually, has a samadhi quality. So then we practice Some of us practice samadhi practices. For example, if you meet everything with relaxation, you start to loosen up this sense that the things you're aware of are out there. You start to feel more and more the one-pointedness of mind and object. Because actually what you're paying attention to, what the mind is looking at, is the nature of mind. So that unifies the mind, or you become absorbed in the unified nature of mind.

[05:23]

And you start to feel calmer. So as you start to feel calmer, you start to develop the second circle. And so we have various levels of realization among us, various realizations of the second circle. The third circle, the third type of samadhi comes to us as we start to do wisdom work. So as we start to understand the nature of self, And understanding the nature of self means understanding it in a different way from our innate way of understanding. Our innate way of understanding it is that the self is separate from other selves, other beings, other things. That's our innate misconception. So as we start to understand and loosen up that misconception and try on a different view of what the self is, we're starting to move into the wisdom work.

[06:29]

And then we're starting to move into the third circle. So in a sense, there could almost be like a circle between the second circle and the third circle, where you've attained some level of absorption in one pointedness of thought. You've calmed down. And now you're training, but you haven't yet actually entered the third circle. You haven't yet entered the realm where you understand the selflessness of the person. So in a sense it could be another circle between the first, the second and third circle. A circle where you've attained some concentration and now you're starting to develop wisdom. Similarly there could be a circle between the third circle and the fourth circle where you've attained, you have an authentic understanding of the selflessness of your personhood. But you still think there's some, for example, duality between, not so much duality between you and other people, but duality between, for example, wisdom and delusion, or between freedom and bondage.

[07:46]

You haven't realized the non-separation of all things. So then there could be another circle between third circle and the fourth circle, between the third samadhi and the fourth samadhi, where you're training at the fourth samadhi. You've attained the third samadhi. You haven't yet attained the fourth samadhi, but you're training in it. But then I drew it this way, although there's training sessions between each one of these, between these circles. So there's actually, there's a training circle also between number one and number two. So You all have number one. You all definitely have number one in your heart right now. But then you train for a while in order to actually fully enter number two. And then when you attain number two, you train for a while before you fully enter number three. And then you attain number three, then you train for a while before you enter number four. So you can tell by what you're working on where you fit.

[08:48]

And this is a samadhi chart. But a separate chart could also, you know, like next week I'm going to do a workshop in Cleveland studying different types of wisdom. So parallel to the samadhi practice, you could be working on wisdom practices. When the wisdom practices don't have to be done together with samadhi practices, the first two levels of wisdom can be done without samadhi practice. The third level of wisdom is the wisdom that arises with samadhi. So you can do some wisdom work, and then when you go through two levels of wisdom work, then you take that understanding and bring it back together with samadhi number two. And then you can enter Samadhi number three. Because Samadhi number three and Samadhi number four are Samadhi joined with wisdom. Does that make sense at all?

[09:50]

Yes, John. Where would that kensho experience then be? Kensho experience. Kensho happens when you enter number three. So could somebody number one actually leap? Can you leap from one to three? Yeah. You could. You could. But you might, as you leap over number two, you might sort of like, your toenails might catch a little samadhi as you're falling over. Do you remember his name? Yes. Kevin. Kevin, good. Yes? Could you say something about toenails? Just wholeheartedly sit and thus drop away body and mind in relation to... Just wholeheartedly sit and thus drop away body and mind?

[11:03]

Yeah, just wholeheartedly sit and thus drop away body and mind is similar to... When you impress the Buddha Sita on your three activities, The entire earth and the entire sky turn into enlightenment. Because of this broad awakening, it resonates back to you and helps you inconceivably. You will inevitably drop away body and mind. That's an expanded version of just wholeheartedly sit. So just wholeheartedly sit means you impress this wholeheartedness on your sitting posture, or your speaking, or your thinking. And wholeheartedly means what? The samadhi. Wholeheartedly means you're not holding on to something.

[12:08]

You're throwing yourself entirely into the sitting. You're not, you know, there's nobody left over. You're just sitting. You're sitting. That's it. There's not somebody doing it. You're totally relaxed into your posture. Specifically in relation to the circles? In relation to the... How does it work for the circles? Yeah. Well, it could be three and or four. So it's not the samadhi one or two? It's not there with each of them? Samadhi one is always there. You always got samadhi one. And when you really relax, you really have samadhi two to some extent.

[13:11]

But like Don was saying, could you leap from one over to three, over to Kensho? You can leap over number two, but once you get to number three, number two is included. But you don't necessarily have to go through some yogic samadhi training to get to number three. It's possible just to leap. But once you get there, This diagram I'm saying is the samadhi number three includes samadhi number two. It is for you when you understand who you are and you see your nature. Kensho means see your nature or satori means wake up to your nature. When you see, you have to be calm otherwise you wouldn't be able to see. So, but you don't necessarily have to go through a certain kind of training that you might think you have to go through to get there.

[14:13]

But in fact, you must have, there must be samadhi there. You can't have wisdom without samadhi. Wisdom without samadhi is not wisdom, not samadhi number three. So anyway, but literally I said this is samadhi number three, so I'm saying there is samadhi there. But you don't have to go walk a little boreously in number two to get to number three. You know, there's various ways to explain how this can happen, but it can happen. But some other people happily spend a lot of time working on Samadhi three, and then they do wisdom work, and then they join their wisdom work with Samadhi three. Some other people are working on wisdom work and Samadhi work simultaneously, and then they join them. Some other people don't do samadhi work that you can see, but they're kind of just relaxed. You know, they're relaxed, they're calm. They're not like doing some special technical training, but they actually are in samadhi to some extent.

[15:20]

And they study wisdom, and then they get it. It may seem unfair that it's so easy for them, but anyway, that happens for some people. Like the sixth ancestor, right? He's walking through the marketplace, in Guangzhou, southern China, he's walking to the marketplace, he goes by a fortune-telling booth, hears this guy chanting the heart sutra, the dynast sutra, and wakes up. Well, I would say he wasn't agitated. He was really cool there walking to the marketplace. So when that guy's words touched him, they just went really deep into that calm space, and it just really resonated with his body. And then he was inconceivably helped. And there in the marketplace, his body and mind dropped away. So he was at least in samadhi number three, at least a threshold or entry into samadhi number three, I would say. But in the lifetime that he lived, he had never gone, that we know in the story anyway, he never went to a monastery and had any training in Buddhist yoga.

[16:29]

And I hate to say it, but I'll just say it anyway, that in Buddhism we do have this thing about past lives. So probably he was an excellent yogi in many past lives. He might even have been Shakyamuni Buddha. Who knows? But anyway, he came into this life, didn't go to a monastery, walked into a marketplace, heard this teaching, woke up, and became this bodhisattva. And then he proceeded to get further training on this teaching, and then he entered samadhi number four. And then he went. He did go to a monastery, but he wasn't a regular monk. He was just a worker. They called him Woodman Lou. His last name was Lou. So he was just a worker in the monastery. He wasn't even a regular monk. So he wasn't sitting in the meditation room. He was just pounding rice. But he woke up.

[17:33]

Without going the formal course, he woke up. So there was samadhi there, but it doesn't have to be any particular story about how you go through, how you go from your basic samadhi endowment to realizing wisdom samadhi of number three. A lot of different stories. There are a lot of different paths to the realization of all these circles. Yes, June and Barbara. June, that's you. You're June. The circles seem to be concentric and flow outward. They're flowing outward? Uh-oh. Can I just imagine the concentric concentration circles? Yes. So I guess the question is, do they have a direction as well?

[18:35]

Actually, I drew another chart. I have another chart which has samadhi number four in the middle, then samadhi three, then samadhi two, and then samadhi one on the outside. I did the other way too. So samadhi four does contain all the samadhis, but also samadhi four is contained in all the samadhis. In some sense, samadhi one, not samadhi, yeah, the samadhi one, or the meaning of samadhi as a basic quality of mind, in some sense is the most superficial. So you could put it on the outside. But it also contains, the most superficial contains the most profound. At the center of the most superficial is the most profound. So our psychology... The way our mind is actually reflects ultimate reality. Just an ordinary mind that we have that just comes up out of this body, it actually expresses the non-duality of our mind and all other things.

[19:42]

And that comes at the center, this inconceivably wonderful Buddha Samadhi is at the center of our life. And it ramifies out through various things, through our body, to our mind, to our psychology. So our most superficial nature has the most profound at the center, but also, of course, the profound includes the superficial. But that's also part of Mahayana Buddhism is that we include each other. You and each of you include all of us, and each of us include all of you. So this mutual, simultaneous inclusion is part of what these samadhis could be demonstrating, too. So you can make the talk the other way around. I think it's equally true. And someone else said, could you make these lines dotted? I said, fine. You can do whatever you want with this chair. You can make paper airplanes out of it. It could be a phone, yeah.

[20:46]

Or it could be a pit. Yes, Barbara? You mentioned this morning that you would tell us somehow where to find ourselves on this chart. I really have no idea. So you tell me about your practice, and I'll tell you where to put yourself on the chart. I feel like when you say you're all in number one, I go, I am? It's not so much that you are in number one, but you all have number one. You've all realized number one. According to my understanding and according to what I've studied in Buddhism, everybody's got number one pretty much down. It's your nature of your mind. All minds, all different people's minds, and all the minds of each person have this quality. So that you've got. But as I said, it's hard to register it because you've got this misconception also.

[21:49]

Everybody's got that too. So you actually are one-pointed. Okay? Just like you're actually a Buddha, but you have this misconception that you're two-pointed. So you're born with one-pointedness, and you're also born with a misconception about that. But the misconception is a misconception, and the samadhi is not a misconception. It's just a conception. And it's accurate. That's why it's hard for you to feel sometimes this basic quality of your mind. Because, and based on this misconception, we feel like our mind is jumping from thing to thing. And when we feel like our mind is jumping from thing to thing, we feel agitated. And also, because things seem to exist out there on their own, and we seem to exist over here on our own, That tends to make us want to grasp things. So we also have this innate grasping, innate clinging to our imagination.

[22:55]

So we imagine things and we cling to them. This is part of the deal. We have an afflicted, our mind is born afflicted. But it also has this little Buddha nature inside of it that can take over if sponsored properly. So anyway, you have trouble understanding that you've got number one. So that's part of where you are, is that you're in this space between number one and number two. This panel that we didn't draw in there. So it sounds like Barbara's in the panel between number one and number two. And in that panel between them, you kind of feel like, I don't get number one. And I just don't get, I mean, I've heard about it, but I just, it doesn't make that much sense to me. That's sort of where you're at. So you're in the panel between the two. Now somebody else may feel like, well, I kind of feel, yeah, I kind of feel like, I can kind of see that one point in this.

[24:01]

And actually, I've been thinking about the one point in this and feeling a little bit more calm. This person's getting a little bit over onto the outer part of the panel and ready to jump into samadhi number two. They're starting to like relax with with the idea that they're not in samadhi number two. They're starting to relax with the idea that they don't have samadhi number one. If you relax with the idea that you don't have samadhi number one, you start to feel samadhi number one. When you start to feel samadhi number one, you're moving into samadhi number two. Does that make sense? Does it? He doesn't? I think so. It's kind of hard to hold on to. And not holding on to it, that also moves you towards samadhi nirmatthi. Bless me? You're going to make me feel good about myself no matter what I try. Great.

[25:03]

So, even if you do grasp what I'm saying, and hold it dearly to your heart, and don't let go of it, you've still got samadhi number one. But if I tell you something good, and you let go of it, you move to realize samadhi number one, which is to move into samadhi number two. So if you relax with all the good news I've been giving you, and let go of it, and he said some good things about me, but I've forgotten them entirely, and I'm okay with that. That's like samadhi number two you're moving into. Samadhi number two, you're not trying to remember how to be concentrated with. And yet, I can't remember how to get concentrated, but you know what? I feel pretty concentrated. I'm relaxed. I'm calm. I'm buoyant. I'm light. I mean, my body is and my mind is. That's how I feel. So I guess I got to admit, I'm in samadhi number two. All those telltale signs are there. And I went to check with the teacher, and the teacher said, yep, you're in somebody number two.

[26:11]

So I guess I am, but I guess I expected to be uptight when I got in somebody number two, but I'm not. I'm really relaxed, and it's no big deal, and I love it. And now I think I'll start working on wisdom in a very relaxed way, because I'm relaxed. What can I say? It sounds like you're not quite there yet. You're still kind of on the verge of entering into samadhi number two. And if you can relax with being on the verge of it rather than being in it, that's how you're trying to enter. Seeking samadhi is not samadhi practice. Samadhi practice is the samadhi of not seeking samadhi. Do you practice samadhi practice? Yes, I do. How do you practice samadhi practice? I don't seek samadhi.

[27:12]

Are you, like, totally into samadhi practice? Totally. I mean, I am the devotee. I'm one of the devotees of samadhi, and I practice it by not seeking it. And when not seeking is happening, I'm totally in samadhi. In fact, that's the case with everybody. When you're not seeking samadhi or anything else, Or as I say at Green Gulch, you know Green Gulch Farm? How many of you have been to Green Gulch Farm yet? Andrew worked on the farm, didn't you? Yeah. So at Green Gulch we say, you're in Samadhi now. You're not behind the clock. You're in Samadhi now. Do we sing that in English? He was digging a ditch, so he didn't hear me.

[28:16]

He was on a farm when I was in the zendo singing, and he was in the corner, so he missed that one. So he did get rich digging a ditch, and then he went to pull a dolphin. So you've heard about samadhi. If you want to be devoted to it, just relax. in all your interactions, and you'll enter samadhi by that relaxation. Now, if you're relaxing to get into samadhi, that's not real relaxation. So you have to relax, including relaxing trying to get there. Relax means don't seek samadhi. Those who seek samadhi do not get samadhi. Now some people seek, excuse me, some people seek samadhi and then they give up seeking samadhi and then they get samadhi. So some people do that. Like, one time I ran to the top of the hills at Green Gulch and when I got to the top and I was walking on the level ground, you know, then I was like, I was cool.

[29:25]

But I had to run up the hill to quit, you know, I had to run up the hill to like make more effort. When I got to the top I was like, Wow, I'm just here. So it's okay to seek samadhi, seek samadhi, seek samadhi, and then stop seeking samadhi, and then you enter. So it doesn't mean that if you have been seeking samadhi, you'll never realize it. It just means you realize it and you stop seeking. But some people have to seek it a lot in order to stop seeking. They have to see the fruitlessness. Actually, I shouldn't say fruitlessness. You have to see the bad fruits. the sour fruit of seeking samadhi. Then you get convinced this is not working. I mean, I'm successful. I'm totally seeking, but it's not giving me calm. It's just giving me, you know, I'm just like in total control. I'm in control.

[30:28]

I have my mind in control. But this is not calm, this is just final suppression of your life. Which is not what you want, right? But sometimes you have to do that in order to see that's not what you want. Like I told somebody a few minutes ago this story about I had this dog, you know, Wonderful dog. And she was in heat. And I did not want to have puppies. So I wouldn't let her go out without me. And she wanted to go out. And there were people waiting outside. I mean, there were dog people outside waiting for her. They could smell her through the door. And she wanted to go out there. And one time, I don't know what happened, but anyway, one time she got out.

[31:29]

I ran after her. By the time I found her, she had already coupled with somebody. Actually, I think that wasn't quite the story. I let her out, but then I kind of said, okay. But then when I saw who she coupled with, I was like, Like Polly was choosing her son-in-laws. Then I said, no. I said, come in the house. And she was very obedient. And so she came in the house. But she had already gotten together with this undesirable son-in-law. So as she came up the stairs, she dragged him with her. And then I said, then I felt, okay, I get it.

[32:35]

I get it. In other words, sometimes you see the constant, you try to control and you see how ugly it is sometimes when you get control. If you say come in the house and she doesn't come, then you may feel frustrated. But when you succeed at your control, then you find out it's not what you want. So I was in control. He did come. But that wasn't what I wanted. It was very ugly. My control, if it's unsuccessful, produced something very ugly. So I withdrew my control and let nature follow its course. Sometimes you have to try to control yourself into samadhi or into some other good state in order to see, and be somewhat successful in order to see, this is not what I want.

[33:36]

You know what I mean? You need to finish the story. You remember the rest of it? No, I don't know what the rest of it is. You're right, Angus. You're right. There's more to the story. Do you want to hear the rest of it? Really? You want to hear the rest of it? Okay. So then she started to become pregnant and started to grow and so on. And then after a while, her rear end starts to open up to make room for the puppies to come out. That's not where puppies come from. They don't come from the rear end?

[34:41]

Well, this dog, they came from the rear end. There's the tail, tail's on the rear, and under the tail's the anus, and under the anus Right under the anus, this area in the anus started to swell and ooze and get bigger. Right? What is usually just a small area was a big area. What was usually a small hole got to be a bigger hole. Plus it was all oozing red, red stuff. So she was dripping this red stuff all over the kitchen. I kept her in the kitchen. where she could ooze it on this linoleum, and I could clean it up. And also, she could ooze it in her bed. OK? Are you sorry? No, he's not sorry, are you? Please go on. But anyway, this is another kind of control thing I got into.

[35:43]

She's pregnant, but I don't want her to ooze all over the apartment. Trying to keep her in the kitchen and on her bed. But she oftentimes wanted to go up in my bed and be up on my bed. But I didn't want her on my bed because I didn't want all this stuff all over my bed. Didn't want all that red gooey stuff all over my bed. I was trying to control her, right? So then I came home one day and I came in the house and she was up on my bed. She was sitting on my pillows. My white pillows. And there was red stuff all over my white pillows. This is not what I wanted to have happen, right? So I told her to get off my pillows. So she did. She got off my pillows and went back to her room, her bed. So then I went over to the pillows to clean them.

[36:46]

And I saw next to the pillows four puppies. And then I said, okay, you can go back on different things. But because of her obedience in both cases, she showed me that really, you know, what we're usually trying to control is not really the point. If she had growled at me somehow and resisted me, I wouldn't have been able to see the consequences of my control were not love. She showed me in both cases obedience and love. And that woke me up to the futility, and not the futility of control, because you can get control of your dog sometimes. But the futility in terms of what you really want to do in life is to have a loving relationship with beings. And it's the beings who respond to you with love, who respond to you with control and with love, wake you up to love.

[37:51]

by showing you how silly it is to try to control beings. So that's almost the whole story. Shep, your face is all scrunched up. What's going on over there? How are you feeling? OK. The question I had before is, if you're not seeking some knowledge, do you know, do you experience something that, of course, welcomes to one of those levels? Will you have an experience from your, or will the telltale signs be more in your actual sitting? Are you going to have a potential experience? Or, in some cases, could you just see it in a regular life? Did you say if you're not seeking samadhi?

[39:05]

Is that what you said? Okay. But remember, if you're not seeking samadhi, but you're practicing samadhi, right? You're in the midst of practicing samadhi and you're not seeking in your practice of samadhi. Okay? but you are practicing samadhi, but you're practicing not seeking samadhi. You're not doing other things, you're actually practicing samadhi, and the way you practice samadhi is through not seeking and not grasping. That's how you practice samadhi. Okay? That is a practice which you're giving yourself, like you're sitting on your cushion, And you're not seeking samadhi. And you're not seeking other things either. You're not seeking fame. Maybe I'll get famous if I sit here long enough. I've been sitting here for two years. So if I sit seven more years, I'll be nine. And so maybe they'll think I'm Bodhidharma. Whatever, anyway. You're not seeking anything, but particularly you're not seeking samadhi.

[40:07]

You sit there without seeking samadhi and not grasping any attainment. You're training yourself at samadhi. Okay, is that clear? And maybe you're spending quite a bit of your life just sitting there, not trying to get anything. Now, most people spend quite a bit of their life trying to get something, right? Is that clear? Most people spend quite a bit of time trying to get something, which is fine. That's not samadhi practice. Samadhi practice is to spend your time not trying to get something. In other words, spend your time just being relaxed. Spend your time giving up, trying to control, just being relaxed. If you practice that way, if you practice not seeking and not grasping, you will enter samadhi. You will become, your body and mind will become flexible, soft, buoyant, bright, and calm.

[41:15]

And if someone asked you about it, if someone said to you, are you calm? You'd probably be able to say, well, I guess so. Are you flexible? Seems like it. Do you feel bright? Yeah. Do you feel ready to help us clean the kitchen? Yep. Are you ready to help us change diapers? Yep. Are you ready to help us put on the sashimi? Yep. Are you ready to do any kind of good things we suggest to you? Yep. You're kind of really ready and willing to do any kind of good. You have a lot of energy. So you think you're in samadhi? It looks like it. And if you're not sure, you can check out with a samadhi teacher. Go down the list. Yeah, you have this kind of body and mind now. You've realized samadhi. This is samadhi number two. Does that make sense? This can be checked. You can feel it.

[42:17]

This is a psychological state. It's not so mysterious as Samadhi number four. This is inconceivable. This is conceivable. You can know about this. You can share it with your friends. You know, this kind of thing. Okay, so that's, is that clear? This is Samadhi number two. Now what, do you have a question about something else? About Kensha or something like that? It just went to, you know, special experiences during Siddha. Special experiences? Like what? Like being very connected with the world. Feeling connected with the world? Yeah. Sometimes you can feel connected with the world even when you're not calm, right? It's possible to be quite agitated and feel connected with the world. Feeling connected with the world is more like it's not really samadhi. It's just a feeling. Samadhi is not a feeling. Samadhi is the one-pointedness of your mind. And the one-pointedness of your mind, when you appreciate that, you feel calm.

[43:21]

Some people can feel connected and not feel so calm, although feeling calm does go sometimes with being connected. So you could have a special experience like that, and that wouldn't necessarily mean that you were in samadhi. However, if you are in samadhi and you have a feeling like that, such a feeling goes deeper So my experience is when I do retreats, particularly at Green Gulf, where there's often a lot of people, I almost hesitate to give a talk the first day because I feel kind of like—and if I do give a talk, I hesitate to make it a good one. In other words, to tell people something I think is really interesting. Because I feel a little bit like at the beginning of Sashin, people are either asleep or real tough. So it's kind of like my words kind of bounce off them a little bit. So I hesitate to say anything of much use because it's just going to bounce off.

[44:22]

So that's what I sometimes say. I sometimes say, I feel like it's pointless to talk to you because some of you are asleep and don't know I'm hearing you right now. And others of you are resisting, so I hesitate to say anything. But usually when I say that, they start to loosen up. But anyway, that's my feeling. Sometimes I don't say it. I just give the talk and it just sort of bounces off. Then I say, well, I'll give it. At the end of Sesshi, if I go boo, it goes right in. It's like a plant that hasn't been watered in a long time. You pour water and it just runs off. But if you just spray it a little bit, It won't run off, and it'll moisten it. You spray it again, and it moistens it some more. And then if you pour the water in, it goes in. Once it's actually wet, it goes right through. That's the way it is during the sâshin, is that with people, as they sit longer and longer, they go more and more into samadhi. You get more and more relaxed, more and more open. And then when you give the teaching, it goes So the feeling of connectedness, or even hearing the teaching of interdependence, when you're samadhi, it tends to really go in, because you're like letting go of your boundaries.

[45:36]

And so you're open, and so the teaching can really go in. And then you can have these awakening experiences, and then you're samadhi number three. You can see the illusoriness. You can see how deluded you have been. You can see, God, I... You can see this. And you're relaxed about it. So that realization really goes deep. And then you can go, hopefully go talk to the teacher and get reflected back and it goes deeper. That's why in Zen, a lot of times, after the monk's enlightened, the monk goes to see the teacher after the enlightenment. Or sometimes the teacher gives a teaching, and the monk wakes up, but then the monk has to say it back, and then the teacher says something, and it goes back again, and it goes deeper. That's why that's the... That's the play part. We start interacting.

[46:41]

You said, Siddharth Biraj, you said you never had Kanshasa. Did I say that? No, no. I was saying that one of the early talks I heard by Suzuki Roshi, he said that he wasn't enlightened. He didn't use the term then. But I think if some people tried to corner him, and said, did you experience Kensho? And he couldn't get away from, somehow, the question. But I think, depressed, he might say no. But I'm not sure. What do you mean? What did he mean by that? You said Kensho was the number three. What's the relationship between Kensho and Samadhi? Can you have Samadhi free without Kensho? No, no. Kensho is really the beginning of Samadhi 3. Well, Kensho is like when you actually see the nature of things, or see the nature of self.

[47:49]

Actually, the show in Kensho, the character show in the term Kensho, ken means see, and show is translated often as nature. So literally, see nature. But that character for nature means human nature. It doesn't mean the nature of all phenomena. It means human nature. And also it means sex. So you could say, see sex. Human nature and sex are very closely related in Chinese by that character. That's kensho. And satori means wake up. It means wake up from your deluded idea about your nature and see your actual nature. So that's, in a sense, I would say, Kensho is like Samadhi number three, where you start to understand the nature of yourself, of your personhood. So we can sometimes say that in sotos anyway, we say kensho or satori is when you become free of your illusions about yourself.

[49:02]

You're liberated from illusion. And then samadhi number four is more what we call, they use the term sho, which means realization. In realization, you're liberated from kensho. you're liberated from liberation. You go beyond wisdom. So number three is kind of like, you're cool. You're free of suffering. You're liberated. But you still think there's a difference between your liberation and your bondage. Number four, you see there's no difference. You're not afraid to be in bondage anymore. So that completes the Bodhisattva picture. Back in the marketplace. Totally back in the soup with all the diluted turkeys. Cooking away, just the same as them. Not afraid.

[50:05]

And bringing the blessings of this understanding to all beings. But this includes khencha number three, I mean, circle number three, two, and one. All that's there with you with all beings. That's a picture I'm trying to draw here. And of course, this picture, this circle can be, now you can elaborate it and put kind of people in the marketplace and monks having awakening and monks on the verge of awakening. Let's see. It's 4.45. We're supposed to stop at 4.50, and then we'll be on schedule. Is that right? Mm-hmm. Okay. Wow. These are going to slow this afternoon, yes? Oh. Will you ask me, will you call me? I was calling you, yeah, because you had your hand raised. Yes, okay. I think part of what might be puzzling, like as the questions come up around these circles... Yes?

[51:11]

...is... A feeling, or maybe because the circles are so rarely defined and strongly drawn, that these are sort of absolute steps. Whether you skip one or not, once you get to there, you're never backsliding. You're never just going. And, you know, like in the fourth circle, you're a great lotus outfall, like, all the time. And I would accept, um... Okay. Accurately. Do you hear what she said? Mm-hmm. This morning you said to make sure the human life is always that separation of judgments. Is there still adding that in some people? Definitely. But, uh... But, you know, you understand...

[52:14]

And in fact, that's the only way you can understand, is by actually having this seething mind. That's the only way you can actually test to see if you really do understand the non-duality between your seething mind and the Buddha mind. If you've got no seething mind, you just have Buddha mind, then how are you going to understand the non-duality? So to actually prove the non-duality, you've got to have it right there to say, this is non-dual with Buddha mind. And the hard line between these is an illusion. The whole chart's an illusion. It's just an illusion I thought might be helpful. We do need illusion. In order to come out of illusion, you need illusion. In order to come out of our own version of reality, we need illusions to come out.

[53:17]

This is one of them. And strictly speaking, you don't backslide from samadhi number three into samadhi number two. You don't backslide from there. Once you understand nature, you don't forget. So you don't backslide there. But that's backslide you don't do. But there's other stages as you're moving up from samadhi number three. There's other stages of development where bodhisattva still can backslide until they get to the eighth stage of bodhisattva, and then they don't backslide anymore. But between the first stage of bodhisattva to the eighth stage of bodhisattva, you could get to stage six and go back to stage two. But stage one of the bodhisattva is simultaneous with the third samadhi. So you don't go back below the third samadhi.

[54:24]

You can still practice the practices of the second samadhi, but the second samadhi I defined as still holding a view of self. That's it. So the same level of concentration of samadhi number two, if you don't hold the view of self, you're in samadhi number three. Once you give it up, you don't backslide. However, When you enter samadhi number three, even if you forget about samadhi number four for the time being, in samadhi number three, when you're actually there and you actually are liberated from the illusions about yourself and you're quite free on that regard, all the habits which you developed prior to entry into samadhi number two are still, they haven't been touched. As you enter, they don't get touched. So all the habits that were developed under the auspices of misconceptions, they still have their habit life.

[55:26]

That's why it is possible. This is something you should know as you walk around the spiritual marketplace. It's possible to have people who have gotten into samadhi number four, number three, who have had real insight, but who still have lots of bad habits. I shouldn't say bad habits. I'll admit I'll say evil habits, who have habits based on delusion that were developed before they understood. But they're still the same habit. They're not any better than they used to be. So when you see somebody who's supposedly a teacher acting like a non-teacher, acting like a jerk, doing something that looks stupid and petty and defensive. Maybe they are acting that way. And it's not just your misconception. And it would be nice if you would help them work with that.

[56:34]

But what sometimes people do is they either say, the person couldn't understand, otherwise they wouldn't have this habit, which is not necessarily so. But that's pretty good, though, actually, to challenge their enlightenment because of their behavior. But when you challenge it, you should do it in a playful way because they might be quite enlightened even though they have bad habits. Such a thing is possible. And hopefully, if you challenge them, because they're somewhat enlightened, they'll be able to maybe, there'll be a little space in their habits where they can say, thank you. I'm still doing that, I can't believe it, but it's true, I still act like that. It's very embarrassing. But thanks for pointing it out, and thanks for challenging my enlightenment, because as you see, it hasn't really blossomed much. This is what they could possibly do. So they need your help to challenge them. But the worst scenario would be if you said, well, since they're enlightened, this probably isn't a problem. So to ignore the problem. Then they don't get help in bringing their enlightenment together with these old bad habits.

[57:41]

So what you need to do after you get enlightened this way is you need to bring your enlightenment to these habits and juxtapose them again and again until they gradually drop away. Does this make sense? Sounds like a good deal. Huh? Sounds like a good deal. You can get your enlightenment and carry on with your favorite bad habits. It is a good deal. And not only that, not only can you carry on with them, but you can be embarrassed about them. And when you're embarrassed about them, you can tell people, you know, I'm really sorry that I have these bad habits. I'm having a good time with them. I'm enjoying the show, and I think these aren't going to last much longer, but I'm enjoying them while they're happening. But they will eventually drop away because of the juxtaposition between your understanding and things that were based on a different understanding. Like someone insults you, and you understand that nobody got insulted, and you still act like somebody got insulted.

[58:44]

And you go, well, nobody got insulted, and somebody's squawking about this. This is really weird. I'm sorry that somebody's doing that. And I think this habit is still there. I don't agree with this. And that can go on for a while, quite a long time, actually, years and years. So such phenomena occur. But then the other phenomenon that occurs is that the person gets over them and all the habits that were developed, all the habits that were developed are gone. But still, the seething mind is still there. It's just that there's no habitual response to the seething mind. Just seethe, you know, seethe, seethe. Nobody's grasping any of the seething anymore. The habits of grasping the seething mind have been dropped. There's no grasping or clinging to these strange illusions arising in the mind.

[59:53]

So there's liberation from the illusion. So at the beginning of Samadhi number three, there's liberation from illusion, but there's habits which developed from delusion, from illusion. They're still going on. After a while, those drop away. Then there's just liberation from illusion. Illusion is still flying all over the place. In this mind, in those minds, illusions still live in, but there's like, there's freedom from it. And it looks like it. It looks like the person's free. And you can poke them, and you get back some beneficent response. And even without poking them, you can ask them what's going on in their head, and they can open their head and show you all kinds of worms crawling around, you know. And it's like the greatest blessing to see the worms doing this thing and nobody's like embarrassed about it. Like, I don't have to be embarrassed that I got a worm head. Like, well, I got a really nice head. No worms here. No, you're beyond that.

[60:55]

That's samadhi number two, where you're kind of like, okay, got rid of the worms. I'm cool. Still concerned about being a good yogi here. And I am one. That's samadhi number two. You're good. You're cool. Samadhi number three, you're beyond that, but you still have habits of uncool. Samadhi, when you finish samadhi number three, you're free of being cool. You are cool, but you're free of it. Therefore, bring on the worms. No problem. So then you can really engage with the world. Not afraid to get back in the mud. Now, I'm not saying that everybody in Samadhi number three is afraid to get back in the mud, but some of them are. They're really saints, but they're a little bit queasy about certain areas of the universe, certain pits of delusion they're a little queasy about.

[61:57]

Some of them aren't, though. Some of them are light. But really, if they're in Samadhi number three and they're not queasy about pits of illusion, they're really a move to Samadhi number four. So in a sense, I guess I would say, if you're limited by samadhi number three, you still think that the worst situations in the world are separate and dual with the best situations. You still think spiritual liberation is separate from total mundane bondage. So there's a little bit of hindrance there to be a bodhisattva. That make sense? Excuse me for talking about such lofty things. But they're lofty at the same time they're perfectly ordinary. This is a spectacular freedom that totally includes the unspectacular. And that's one of the nice things about Suzuki Roshi, not being so unlikable.

[63:09]

You see, he wasn't so enlightened, so it was kind of like he was pretty accessible. A little bit awesome, but not too awesome. Yes? If somebody was enlightened and you asked them, is it likely they would say yes? it's fairly likely that they would say no. Or that they would try to evade the question. So generally speaking, Buddhist etiquette is to not say yes very fast. However, the founder kind of said he was. Yeah. He said, you know, a number of occasions he said, now some people may think that I'm not liberated, but I just have to tell you that I am. So after the Buddha, though, there's been some hesitancy to say that. And there's actually a rule. One of the rules in the monks, early monks' discipline, the precepts for the monks, was not to claim spiritual attainments without justification.

[64:25]

In other words, if you say you're enlightened without justification, you'd be kicked out of the community. But the way they usually interpret it was, don't say, even if it was justified, don't say it. Partly because if you start saying it, other people might start saying it, and then they're going to get kicked out of the sangha. So even if the leaders don't say it, then other people might not be tempted to do so. It's kind of like also they had some other rules. And in a sense, you know, it's okay. I mean, they had rules like, for example, do not have sexual intercourse. You know, Shakyamuni could have had sexual intercourse after being Buddha. It's not like when you're a Buddha you can't have sexual intercourse. Buddha had sexual intercourse before. After he's enlightened, you think he can't? Of course he could. If that would be helpful, he could do it. But there's no record of him doing it, partly because he told the monks not to, because he thought that would be helpful to them.

[65:34]

But after being Buddha, Listen, are you free or are you not? Of course he's free, so of course he could have sexual intercourse. Also, he was only like 35 years old. He was a young man. Of course he could. But he didn't, just probably because. And even in one case, he also said to the monks, they were talking about the regulations, and he said, these regulations are for you, not for me. I don't need these rules anymore. I don't need these precepts. And the monk said, what? He said, it's like if a king has a hunting preserve. Nobody can use that hunting preserve without the king's permission. But the king can use it whenever he wants to. So it's like that. So he could have done some of these things. He could have claimed his enlightenment.

[66:36]

He could have had sexual intercourse. But he didn't. But he did claim his enlightenment. And the successors didn't do it partly because we don't need to claim our own enlightenment. It's not necessary. If we're enlightened, if we're doing good things, great. Great. Let other people say so. If possible, avoid answering the question. And if you have to answer it, say, well, no. But as I said, one week he said, I'm not enlightened. The next week he said, I'm Buddha. But to say I'm Buddha is a little different than I'm enlightened. But I also said, that when he said he was not enlightened, I thought, my first response was, that's too bad.

[67:37]

I hear I gave up my life to come to study with this guy, and now he's saying he's not enlightened. So my first reaction was, that's too bad. But then I said, but he's still the best teacher I've ever found, so I'm staying. The next week he said, I'm Buddha, and I thought, good. But I would have stayed with him if he hadn't have said that. So anyway, we've got to be careful about saying that we are. And sometimes it might be helpful to say yes. But particularly if you're in a teacher position, you should even be more careful. If you're just a beginning student, it's probably OK to say yes, if it's true. you won't cause so much trouble. You have a few enlightened people wandering around the community. If the teacher's enlightened, it may actually hurt the community if the teacher says that he's enlightened or she's enlightened.

[68:42]

It may stimulate non-samadhi activity. Does that make sense? Stimulate people to seek, to be greedy, to be afraid to make mistakes, to be afraid to admit that they're not enlightened, or that they're deluded or they're upset. And if we try to hide our mistakes, then we can't play. And if we can't play, we can't enter into wisdom. So in some ways, if the teacher's not so high, the students can dare to play. That's what's most important. It's not so important if the teacher's high. It's important that the relationships are good. That's what's really the most important thing, is our relationships. If you come in the community, everybody's friendly, supportive, honest, loving, and they've got kind of a lousy teacher, it's OK.

[69:47]

Yeah, yeah, we forgive that teacher. He's not so good, but we have a great community here, so we're all happy. Maybe we'll get a better teacher some other time. But sometimes you go in a place, got a great teacher, and all the students are scared today. They're real stiff. They hate each other. They're very competitive. They're all checking to see who's closest to the teacher. Here's the teacher, and he's number one, he's number two, he's number three, and calculating it. And sometimes the teacher switches him. It's a big deal. That actually promoted somebody over somebody. This is not the environment for enlightenment. Unless everybody's enlightened, then we can sort of put on this show of kind of, okay, now that you're all enlightened, now we're going to have status. Okay, ready? You're number one. Number two, number two, number two.

[70:52]

Even jokingly, it has an impact, right? Yes. Who will he jokingly say is number three? Who will he jokingly say is the last one? Is that the reverse order? Is he playing with this? Did he carefully do it the opposite of the true way? So this kind of thing is done in very advanced communities where everyone really doesn't care. It's just a test. You think they don't care? They don't care, really? Well, when you think to the point that everybody's relaxed, nobody's attached to enlightenment even, then you can start promoting people left and right to see if anything comes out. It wouldn't work. I thought you guys were enlightened. Now I see you're fighting with each other. Is that enough for today? The kitchen left?

[72:01]

@Transcribed_v005
@Text_v005
@Score_83.54