I think that zazen is very, that way of, that approach to meditation that's characteristic of zazen, a non-dual approach which doesn't include, which under-emphasizes a sense of judgment of states of mind, I think is very good for us because we have a whole cultural background that causes judgment of our own states of mind to be often tremendously corrosive and disturbing because we're so conditioned to think of the mind as me. In other words, if I have bad thoughts, I'm a bad person and I shouldn't have those bad thoughts and so on and so on. So identifying and working with positive and negative states of mind can be a little dangerous for us because we would tend to take it personally, so to speak, rather than just say, okay, let's roll up our sleeves and work with mind. We would tend to get into

[01:12]

guilt and repression and this kind of stuff. So that's why, in a way, zazen is quite good for us because it doesn't emphasize that side. But in reality, if you really undertake zen practice, that side is there, the side of cultivation is there, and this sutra emphasizes that side. So I'm just saying that so that we don't have a confusion about, oh, wait a minute now, I'm supposed to be doing something different in zazen. This is, in a way, another approach to meditation, another approach to working with mind. It is an approach that we can, if we hold it lightly and don't take it too literally, we can actually use it, I think. We can reflect on how we could use it in a way that would really work. But I just want to point out that it is, in that sense, different. So the sutra begins, as all sutras begin, Thus have I heard. Ananda, as always, is the speaker. Thus have I heard.

[02:15]

On one occasion, the Blessed One, meaning the Buddha, was living at Savati in Jada's Grove, Anadapindika's Park. And this is a famous location. The Buddha often went to Jada's Grove in Anadapindika's Park. And Anadapindika was a very good friend of the Buddha. He was a lay supporter who attended many of the Buddha's teachings in all his life. Most of his life he studied with the Buddha. The Buddha was with him when he died. And Jada's Grove was a particular location in Anadapindika's Park. And there he addressed the bhikkhus thus, Bhikkhus, venerable sir, they replied. And the Blessed One said this. In the other sutras that we read, I think, I forget how many sutras we read, but I think all the ones that we read, there was a little story at the beginning, a little incident

[03:23]

that explained, set a frame around the teaching that the Buddha was giving, explaining why the Buddha felt moved to give this particular teaching because of what somebody said or what somebody did. Here there's no such story. The Buddha just sort of launches into his discourse right away. And some of the sutras are like that, don't have a story connected to them. The stories are interesting because they give you a really good sense of the way that the Buddha worked with people and the way that the students in those days related to teaching and the way their lives were and so forth. But in this case we don't have any of that. We just have immediately a teaching about how to work with mind. So Bhikkhus, when a Bhikkhu is pursuing the higher mind from time to time, he should give attention to five signs. What are the five? So the higher mind means meditation, meditative

[04:29]

states. And as we were saying the other day in our Abhidharma seminar, the higher mind one of the striking things about the Buddhist view of life is that this world that we understand as the world, that we accept that this is reality, this is the world, and it's the only world, was understood by Buddha and his students to be one world that was real, but not the only world that was real. They usually talked about three different worlds. One of them was this world, which was called Kamadhatu, the world of desire, in which things appeared a certain way and there were certain consciousness and sense fields operating. But then there were also two other worlds. One was called Rupadhatu, and that was a world in which, that was this world, only purified and removed of certain kinds of troubles and afflictions

[05:35]

and wholesome aspects that this world has. And then the third world was called Arupadhatu, which is a world even more purified, in which it was a holy mental world without any matter in it at all. And these other two worlds were worlds that one entered through trance states, because they practiced very deep meditation states in which they would remove themselves actually from the Kamadhatu entirely, so that they would not be aware of sounds or visual objects and so on, closing the eyes and removing themselves from the world that we take as ordinary reality. And they felt that information and insight that appeared to them in those realms was valid information and just as real as this world. And they understood that in order to understand this world, one needed to penetrate those other two worlds and receive

[06:39]

insight that could only be received from entry into those other worlds. Again, this is quite different from our understanding of Zazen in which we, in a sense, see maybe the three worlds folded into this one. We don't see them as three separate worlds, but they delineated them as separate worlds. So when he says that when Abhika was pursuing the higher mind, he means when Abhika was entering these other worlds that are ontologically just as valid and as real as this one. In those worlds, you could see past lives and various kinds of phenomena. You could understand reality in a way that you couldn't understand in the Kamadhatu. And they accepted this just the same way that we have the whole notion of the laboratory and the scientific experiment of figuring out, being able to get an angle on what's going on with the world in ways that we couldn't in this ordinary world. They had the same idea, only they were masters of mind instead of matter. So they had these other two worlds where they could work. Anyway, so it's necessary for the path to be able

[07:47]

to enter these worlds and receive insights from these locations. So when you're working on entering those worlds and perfecting your meditation, you need to give attention to five signs. And here, what this means is five signs means five different, you could say, kinds of medicine to be applied when there's distraction, which distracted mind prevents you from entering into these other realms. The only way that you can enter into Rupadhatu and Arupadhatu is with a totally concentrated mind, a mind that's one-pointed. When the mind becomes one-pointed, you sort of slip out of Kamadhatu into the other dhatus. And

[08:48]

so if you notice your mind, within Kamadhatu the mind is distracted all the time. There's various distractions coming up because of attachment and aversion producing. The energy of attachment and aversion is always producing further thoughts. And if you say, I'm just going to focus on one thing with powerfully gather the forces of my mind at one point, you find that it's very hard to do that because the energy of attachment and aversion is constantly bringing the mind over here and you have to keep bringing it back. And so in order to enter these other realms, you have to have a one-pointed mind, and you won't because Kamadhatu is very persuasive. So in order to bring the mind to one-pointedness and be able to enter these other realms, here's five things that you can apply so that you can make your mind more pointed. And that's what this sutra is going to be about, what are those five things and what are the characteristics

[09:50]

of them and how do you work with them. So number one, well it's number three, but the first one is, when a bhikkhu is giving attention to some sign, now the word sign means something different here. Here the word sign means the meditation object, because the idea was that what you would do is, you would take a meditation object, and there were various ones suggested, for example the breath, you would take the breath as a meditation object and then you would try to apply the mind to the breath and make the mind one-pointed on the breath. So in that case, that's what the sign means, whatever it is that you have chosen as a meditation object, there's various ones, but say the breath. Here because when a bhikkhu is giving attention to some sign, and owing to that sign there arise in him evil unwholesome thoughts connected with desire, with hate and with delusion, then he should give attention

[10:52]

to some other sign connected with what is wholesome. So I'm not so sure about this, owing to that sign there arise in him evil unwholesome thoughts, that's a little bit confusing to me. To me I understand this to mean, not that it's the fault of the sign that there should arise evil unwholesome thoughts and so on, but rather in the effort to pay attention to that sign, in the process of doing that, you would find evil unwholesome thoughts connected with desire, hate and delusion arising. Now, evil unwholesome thoughts sounds kind of lurid you know, like you would have devilish thoughts or something, but I don't think it means exactly that. I think it just means counterproductive distracting thoughts, counterproductive to

[11:56]

the goal of one-pointedness. You would have counterproductive thoughts which did not tend toward liberation, did not tend toward concentration, and those thoughts were generated by desire, meaning attachment, hate meaning aversion, and delusion meaning confusion about what was your purpose was and what you were doing. So in other words, these words make it sound like something very, you know, lurid or extreme, but I think it just means counterproductive and I think it just means our average everyday stupid, you know, deluded, confused thoughts, which we all have, you know. It sounds like it's pointing to an emotional state though, too, like I could imagine irritating you. Oh yeah, certainly. But I think that, I mean, that's a good thing to bring out that it is

[13:03]

in obvious ways, or not so obvious ways, our unskillful relationship to our emotional life that creates distraction to begin with. So sometimes we know that we're overcome with strong emotion and we call it emotion, but even when we're not conscious that we're overcome with some emotional state, there is almost always present at least some shadow, some taint of unwholesomely held desire or aversion, which then produces distraction. So when that happens, when you find that you are having these unwholesome thoughts connected with desire, greed, hate and delusion, then you should apply an antidote, something you should then bring up on purpose, something else as an antidote to those thoughts so that you can neutralize them. That's the idea. And although he doesn't say here exactly what those antidotes would be, there are many in

[14:16]

other texts, you know, many traditional antidotes that would be applied. For example, if you have distracted thoughts arising in the mind in relation to a living being, thoughts produced by desire, romantic desire and so on, let's say, or desire for food or something like that, the antidote to that is the meditation on foulness. So you recollect, you meditate on, like there's some very quite interesting meditations in relation to the human body that you can do, like remember that this body is just full of, you know, eight miles of intestines and inside the intestines is filthy, stinky material that was formerly food and it's, you know, very, if you saw it in front of you, you would

[15:19]

be disgusted by it. There's urine, bile, phlegm, pus constantly present in the body. The internal organs are not pretty and there's a lot of hair follicles everywhere and so on. And you would meditate on all this and you would, you know, say to yourself, well, so this is what I'm so attracted to and what's distracting me is, you know, desire for this disgusting bag of pus and shit and so on. And there's a kind of organized meditation on this where you go through all these points and then this would take the edge off, so to speak, you know. And the same with food, you would, you know, food stands out to be this, you know, disgusting, you know, very quickly, you know, unappealing. I mean, if somebody has a delicious dinner and then, you know, in one second somebody could put it in their mouth, chew it up, spit it out, put it on the plate and would you want it then? No, you wouldn't want it. But yet, you know, but yet this is what it is. I mean, it really is that, that substance. So why are you, you know, letting yourself be caught

[16:22]

by such a short-sighted view of these things? So then, right away, the idea is that meditating on that and you train yourself. You can imagine training yourself to see that which we take to be a certain way, to see that although it might be that way, it's also a lot of other ways. I mean, really, these are true things, right? I mean, there are eight miles of intestines or however many in the body and there are these disgusting things in the body and so forth. So you would train yourself to bring that up and sort of take the edge off your desire. If you had a desire for, you know, inanimate things, you would, the antidote to that would be to meditate on impermanence, to know that you desire this thing but actually it's impermanent, you can't really hold on to it and so you're spending time wanting it is beside the point, you should remember, you know, that its nature is impermanent. If you have hatred or ill-will toward a living being and you're sitting there meditating, you know, and you, I mean this is real, you're sitting there meditating and you see ill-will

[17:25]

arising in relation to another being, another living being, usually a person, then you meditate on loving-kindness. So you actually, and there's a whole organized meditation on loving-kindness that you would bring up in order to, you know, neutralize your obsession with ill-will toward the other person. If you had ill-will toward a non-living creature, some inanimate thing, then you would meditate on the four elements that everything is only made up of, you know, in the Buddhist kind of physics, you know, there's four elements, earth, water, fire and air, and everything is made up of different combinations of these things and then you would analyze the thing that you were, had ill-will toward in terms of those four elements and then you would neutralize your feeling. And the antidote to delusion is to move into

[18:26]

a temple and study with teachers and apply yourself to the teaching and listen to the teaching and so on, that's the antidote for delusion. So if you were to notice these things arising in your meditation, you would actually try to apply the antidote to them. And then what would happen? It says here, when he gives attention to some other sign connected with what is wholesome, in that way that I just described, then any evil unwholesome thoughts connected with desire, with hate and with delusion are abandoned and they subside. With the abandoning of them, the mind becomes steadied internally, quieted, brought to singleness, like I was saying, you know, one-pointedness, and concentrated. Just as a skilled carpenter or the carpenter's apprentice might knock out, remove and extract a coarse peg by means of a fine one, so too when a bhikkhu gives attention to some other sign connected with

[19:34]

what is wholesome, her mind becomes steadied internally, quieted, brought to singleness and concentrated. And so, I guess that's, do the carpenters still do such things? No, just take a finer peg and use it to knock out a coarser peg? It's a part of carpentry technique. Not American. Yeah, maybe Japanese carpenters do it. Apparently, that was something that they did. They would, I guess if you had a peg and you wanted to knock out the peg, you'd get a smaller peg and hammer it in and then it would pop out a big peg without having the smaller peg stick in there, right? So in that way, so the positive state of mind that you're using as an antidote is a peg also, but that peg won't get stuck in the hole because it's smaller. It's a different kind of peg, but it's capable of knocking out the other peg. But one interesting thing is that I often find when I read these old sutras, I should

[20:40]

write a monograph about this, but many phrases that are commonly used in Zen, Chinese Zen texts that seem anomalous, like where do they come from? But they actually come from these old sutras, and this is one of them, because maybe you remember, those of you who have studied a lot of Zen literature, one very common phrase in Zen literature is, knock out the pegs and wedges. They often say that the purpose of, that the teaching and the teacher is there to knock out the pegs and wedges, which means knock out all ways that we're putting ourselves together so that we can be free. You can imagine like we're all sort of stuck together with pegs and wedges, and the idea is that it's all very flimsy kind of, you know what I mean? It's all these different parts that are somehow knocked together with pegs and wedges, and because it's all knocked together with pegs and wedges, it's unfree, it's stuck. So the purpose of meditating and studying with the teacher is to knock

[21:43]

out the pegs and wedges. Well, I think it comes from this expression in this sutra and other sutras about using, in Zen of course the idea is not to knock out one peg with another, but eventually no pegs, so that in non-dual meditation, you see, it's not about let's have these states of mind and not those, because these are better, it's about let's just be free with whatever state of mind arises. But here, what's being emphasized is using one state of mind as anecdotal to another. And that's the first of the five anecdotes. Second one is, if while he is giving attention to some other sign connected with what is wholesome, there still arise in him evil and wholesome thoughts connected with desire, hate and delusion, then he should examine the danger in those thoughts thus. So in other words, these go in order. So first you apply the anecdote, but you might notice that sometimes

[22:46]

that doesn't work. And I think my understanding of this sutra is that this is in ascending order of difficulty. In other words, you may have noticed that when you are in a particularly nasty state of mind, you know, like you're really, definitely pissed off at something or other, and then you say, okay, well now wait a minute, you know, I should apply the anecdote, I'm going to meditate on loving-kindness. You say immediately, what the hell with that? And forget that, there's no way I'm going to meditate on loving-kindness, I'm really upset here, you know. Loving-kindness doesn't touch this, you know. So that happens, right? But on the other hand, there is a degree of ill-will, right, in which you could apply loving-kindness, and it would work. So this is a very subtle thing, you know. So there's a time when it would work, but there's another time when the degree is strong enough. So here it says, if you try that, and it still doesn't work, here's what to do. See? So it

[23:51]

goes like that in order. If it still doesn't work, you should examine the danger in those thoughts thus. These thoughts are unwholesome, they are reprehensible, they result in suffering. So now this is pretty good, I think. This is a good, I would recommend this method. And the only way that this method will work is when you know it's true. In order for you to know it's true, you might have to suffer a certain amount. In other words, you need to, you know, if you, ill-will is, to hold on to a feeling of ill-will is a very, very uncomfortable, difficult situation for you. It causes pain and suffering for you. You have to really believe that in order to have the incentive to let go of ill-will. How will you believe that? Well, you'll believe it by observing your conduct in the case of ill-will. So you know, try it out. Have ill-will, encourage it, insult your friends, you know, punch somebody

[24:55]

in the nose, see what happens, you know. And if you are sensitive to your life at all, you will instantly, you know, realize and be able to see that it's really true that unwholesome states of mind are, it's not that they're bad or you should be a good girl or something, not like that. It's that they actually create, you know, problems that you don't want. And so I always recommend that the practice of mindfulness to actually look and see what happens. And it doesn't take all that long for you to recognize that in these so-called unwholesome states of mind, the whole characteristic of them is that they cause you suffering. When you know that by your own experience, then when you see the thought of ill-will or the thought of obsessive desire coming, you say, wait a minute, I don't really want this. I really don't because I really can see what's going on here. I can see that this kind of thought, this kind of feeling is really not what I want, leading

[25:59]

to suffering. I really don't want it. So that kind of reflection will interrupt the habitual and natural grabbing on to the ill-will or grabbing on to the desire and it will stop it and you'll let it go. So that's the next thing to do. And if that, if you can do that, then any unwholesome thoughts connected with desire, hate and delusion are abandoned in him and subside. And then as you saw with all the other suttas we've read, it's always repetitive, the same thing is repeated over and over again. So here it's repeated also. When they're abandoned, her mind becomes steadied internally, quieted, brought to singleness and concentrated. And then with each of the five, a different simile is given. Just as a man or a woman, young, youthful and fond of ornaments would be horrified, humiliated

[26:59]

and disgusted if the carcass of a snake or a dog or a human being were hung around his or her neck. That would be, you know, a drag. Think of it, a person hanging around your neck, a dead person, instead of a gorgeous diamond pendant or something. So too, when a bhikkhu examines the danger in these thoughts, the mind becomes steadied internally, quieted, brought to singleness and concentrated. So this is a, you know, this is a, I mean, we have a lot of socially given attitudes and notions that we have to shed, I think, in the course of doing something like this. Because there's things like, yeah, but I'm right about this and she is really rotten so-and-so. Now, you know, we're brought up to feel this kind of righteous indignation about something like that. So of course I

[28:04]

have ill will and of course I'm going to get revenge in this case because, you know, I should because she's like this and blah, blah, blah, you know, and all those kind of things. Or, of course it's right for me to want this particular thing that I want. Of course it's a good thing for me to desire to have this giant car or something like that because it's my, that's what I'm here for, that's what I'm working for and of course we should all have that, you know. Well, I mean, we're encouraged to think this way, right? And in our heart of hearts we have thoughts like that, actually. We really do. And you catch yourself justifying. So you actually need to do a certain amount of deconstruction, you know, in your own mind and recognizing that the obsessive desire for something outside of yourself, if it gets out of scale, and it's easy for it to get out of scale, becomes something that causes suffering and harm, never mind to others, which is often the case as well. But even

[29:05]

forgetting about others and how much it harms others, just considering oneself, you know, the state of mind that one is in, in grabbiness, removes oneself from the present moment of one's own life and one's sense of well-being and you're constantly outside of yourself, you know, looking for something. And when you see how painful that is, so as I say, this is not a small thing is what I'm trying to say. It actually takes some work, some really reconditioning and really understanding for sure by your own experience that, you know, aversion, attachment and confusion about the way things are does lead to suffering, that you really do have an unpleasant experience as a result of that. And you begin to identify those habitual thoughts and attitudes, and everybody has their favorites, you know, according to karma, that get you, trap you, and that are sources, particular sources for you of

[30:05]

your own suffering. And you begin to see, wow, you know, even though all my life I felt good about that and I justified that and I thought it was all right, now I'm beginning to see by observing my conduct in my mind that that is actually causing me pain and I really don't want pain. So let me reflect that when I see it coming, rather than saying yes, yes, yes, I'm now going to say, you know, hold on. So this is a big one and this is very real. I think that in a sense, you see, working backwards, you have to apply the other ones till you get to the place where the arising of these states, negative states in you are low enough in energy that you can apply antidotes and it doesn't become impossible or, on the other hand, feel like you're doing a number on yourself, because that can be the other thing. You know, you're brainwashing yourself by trying to apply loving-kindness

[31:06]

when you're actually full of hatred. You're kidding yourself. But if using the other ways you can lower the intensity of the feelings, then you can actually apply loving-kindness and it doesn't feel like you're doing a number on yourself and it doesn't feel stupid or like you can hardly even dare to do it. You can actually work with that. It becomes possible. So this is a real good one and I really recommend that. And like I say, it begins with the simple observation of what happens. And again, meditation practice, and not only meditation practice but the whole context of a situation in which you're given the space and time to actually be able to, a simple enough situation where you're not so beleaguered by the difficulty of your life that you can barely keep your head above water, here you're given a special situation, say, in a place like this or any situation you can create in your life where you have enough spaciousness to actually begin to see what's going on. In other words, begin

[32:11]

to observe the contents of your own mind, observe the causality of what happens when this happens, that happens, be able to observe that and see that it's really true, that excessive desire, aversion and confusion do lead to suffering and that you can begin to see those things arising in the mind and begin to say, well, that's the second one. The third one, if while she is examining the danger in these thoughts, there still arises, in other words, that didn't work either. You tell yourself that but you say, forget it, I really do want to beat him up, never mind about this stuff, this is going to cause me suffering, I don't care if it causes me suffering, I'm going to do it anyway. So if you still have evil and wholesome thoughts connected with desire, hate and delusion, then you should try to forget those thoughts and not give any attention to them. When he tries to forget these thoughts

[33:13]

and does not give attention to them, then any evil and wholesome thoughts connected with desire are abandoned, etc., etc., etc., repeating the same as before. So, how can you do that? How are you going to forget them? Well, you put your mind somewhere else. So in other words, practically, go out and chop wood. If you're feeling full of hatred and aversion towards someone, go out and chop wood, go out and run ten miles, you know. Apply yourself to something else. Go volunteer in the kitchen and chop vegetables, even though it's your day off, because otherwise you're going to spend the entire day obsessed with these things. So do something else. Apply some, withdraw the attention from it. And in meditation practice, a very simple example of that kind of thing would be that you would really make the breath more interesting or just as vivid as the mental state that was arising, a mental

[34:17]

state that was arising that you couldn't get rid of by applying the antidote, which seemed stupid, you know, because you didn't believe it. You couldn't get rid of it by noticing how it's destructive because your feelings were stronger than all those kind of arguments and whatever knowledge you had in that direction. But maybe you could, in meditation practice, having cultivated a vividness with the breath, you could say, okay, it's true that I'm all upset about this and I can't apply an antidote and I can't talk myself out of it, but I can turn to the breath and really breathe in and breathe out and be with each breath. So anyway, some version of that, something else that you could substitute or something immediate and that would draw the attention away. So that's another one. Like I often recommend to people, mindfulness of the body. When you're in strong emotional states, you tend to forget that you're even walking around in a body. You don't even notice your feet. You don't

[35:19]

notice your hands. You don't notice your breathing. You don't notice your, because you're all entirely in your head and in your distracted heart. So in those times, I usually recommend to people that you really focus on mindfulness of the body. When you walk, you really pay attention to your walking. When you're in a strong emotional state, when you lift something, you really pay attention to the way you're moving your body and work and so on and so on. So that's the third one. The fourth one, yes? It seems like you're saying to distract yourself from a distracting thought, and that's what I'm hearing anyway. Well, the thing is that the nature of this thought is, it's not so much that it's distracting. The nature of it is that it's leading you to suffering. Whereas if you stay with the breath, that's not leading you to suffering. It's neutralizing the thought that's going to lead you to suffering. So the next one is, if while she is trying to forget those thoughts and is not giving

[36:23]

attention to them and implied, is giving attention to something else, there's still a rise, more evil. In other words, that didn't work either. This is getting serious. This is a strong mental state. And maybe you've had really strong mental states where you just couldn't let go of it. Then you should give attention to stilling the thought formation of these thoughts. And then that's going to help. So what does that mean? That means investigating the cause, finding out where that comes from. So I'm now, you know, full of hatred in relation to someone. Where did that come from? Why does that arise? What's the root of it? Investigating like that. Now I think that the way that I've done that, and I've also practiced this, and the way I've done it is not so much, and this is a very typically Zen approach to it, is

[37:29]

not so much to analyze, try to think about, why do I feel this way about this person? And speculate, now maybe it's because of this, or maybe they remind me of my father, or something like that. But not that there's anything wrong with that. That could be a good way of working with it. But the way I have worked with it is make it into a koan. So I remember I had a period, a number of years, when I had a lot of suffering, and I had the koan, what is the cause of this suffering? And whenever suffering, that kind of suffering would arise, a powerful suffering would arise, I would bring to my breath, what is the cause of this suffering? What is the cause of this suffering? Without speculating about it, but just focusing my mind on the cause of the suffering, because in that way I was honoring the fact that this powerful mental state was not going to go away. I couldn't apply an antidote, that wasn't going to work. I couldn't put my mind on something else. In other words, I was really there, I wasn't going to be able to put my mind elsewhere, I couldn't get rid of it. But I could inquire into it, you see. I could use the suffering itself as the

[38:34]

way out of the suffering. Because when I said, what's the cause of this suffering? I was not spinning the suffering, I was just present with it. Do you understand what I'm saying? So then I did that, and that was very helpful. I mean, it was not easy, because the suffering was there at the time that I was inquiring into its cause, but the suffering then became a practice object, rather than something that was spinning me on and on and on into more difficulty. So the difficulty was still there, but it wasn't increasing, and it was becoming an object of inquiry. And of course, eventually, practicing in that way reduced the suffering, and then other things became possible, just like here. So that's what this one is, number four. And then the last one, if doing that doesn't work, and you still have the suffering, and

[39:35]

you're still evil and wholesome. I understand this one to be like almost semi-psychotic obsession, where you get this kind of raging, powerful, unwholesome state, and nothing works. Then he says, then you should, with teeth clenched and tongue pressed against the roof of the mouth, he should beat down, constrain, and crush mind with mind. Now, of course, you see, when you read that, you think, wow, that's totally insane. How's that going to help? And of course, it is insane if the degree of your intensity around these things is such that some of the other things could be applied, then this would be counterproductive. But this is talking about total mind-numbing, paralyzing terror or obsession, in which there's

[40:38]

no way that you can do anything at all. Then you just have to tie yourself up in a straitjacket or give yourself medication or something. And I've seen that. I have not too often been in states like that, but I've certainly been with people who've been in states like that, and really and truly, there's absolutely nothing that you can do. And that's where sometimes nowadays they have medication, anti-psychotic or something medication. Because sometimes, really and truly, you really need that. You really need some kind of special restraint and support, because that kind of a mind, if it becomes suicidal or homicidal, things like that happen. We read about them in the paper every day. Why do you think it goes on when people are shooting people and so forth? Because they're in states of mind like this. And what they need to do is they need to be restrained somehow, either by others or by themselves, knowing that they're in raging states of mind that cannot be encouraged. They have to stop those states of mind somehow. And the interesting thing is that Buddha described

[41:41]

this state of mind in his Night of Enlightenment. Isn't that astonishing? That on the Night of Enlightenment, Buddha was beset by demons, and we could translate it into our own modern day terms, fears and distress, to this degree, in the process of his becoming enlightened. Because in letting go, there's a lot of fear involved here. Because you really have to, I mean, more or less, what it comes down to is you have to conquer death, right? You have to conquer your fear of death. You have to let go of your life if you're going to really be free at that level. And so Buddha was determined to be free at that level, and so these things came up for him. I find that very astonishing, that he had to start here and work his way back. And that's what he did. He started here, he worked his way back to where he could get to the number one, where he applied the antidote, and then he could make his mind one-pointed. And then when he made his mind one-pointed, he could go through the concentration states

[42:42]

in rupa-dhatu and arupa-dhatu, and he could see the nature of life itself and become liberated. But he had to go right down there into the hell realms. So that's interesting. And let's talk about whatever you have in relation to the idea of working with states of mind. This is the whole idea, you know, just our, as I often say, our received notion is that states of mind are not workable. States of mind are me. In other words, if I'm in this kind of a mood or that kind of a mood or this kind of a habitual point of view or attitude, I just, you know, our typical thing would be, well, that's just who I am and period. But the whole idea of Buddhism is that, not period, and it's not me, but this is the mind that's arising. Can I understand it? Can I understand what occurs if I work with it

[43:45]

in a certain way and what occurs if I work with it in another way? And can I be clear about my resolve to want to live in a particular way and cultivate that way of life and work with my mind over time? That's the whole point of Buddhism, actually. Without that idea, there's no point in Buddhism at all. And I think that, like I say, it is not by and large the attitude that we have been brought up with and that we understand in our culture. It's becoming more that way. Yeah? I was just going to say, it just kind of brought up an interesting point when you were talking about this last state of mind. You said, well, a mind like that can become suicidal or homicidal. It sort of changes your whole perspective on, you know, it almost is liberating just to even look at it from that perspective. It's just the mind. It's a mind like that. It's not a person like that who could do this or that. But once you change it to just a, or once you start looking at it, it's just another state of mind that maybe is more

[44:46]

extreme than a different one. It seems a lot more workable. Yeah. And it's all on a continuum. I mean, the seeds of that state of mind that could be suicidal or homicidal are present in the first moment of attachment and aversion. It's not the same thing. So what I'm saying is that we can understand, even though we might not experience suicidal or homicidal mental states, ordinary attachment and aversion includes the seeds of it. So we can understand that. We can understand that whole continuum. That's where compassion comes from. Compassion comes from our appreciation of our own suffering and knowing that the root of our suffering is completely the same as the root of the suffering of anyone else. And so we can understand the mind of a murderer or a person who commits suicide and not feel. I think we protect ourselves by saying, oh God, that's something over there.

[45:49]

That's something in the newspaper. That's something. But actually the roots of this kind of suffering are common everyday stuff for all of us. And we need to appreciate that. We need to take a look at that in ourselves and accept it and work with it. We have a great word in our culture called denial, which is where we refuse to acknowledge these roots of suffering in ourselves and then do a great deal more harm because they're operating in us and we're not able to work with them because we don't recognize that they're there. So recognizing what's there for what it is, is sort of like the first step in Buddhadharma. You recognize the mind for what it really is, not for what you would like it to be or what it should be or something like that. But you step from, the first step is on the mind as it actually is. So that's a very important point. And in that way, I

[46:53]

think Buddhist psychology, because we're talking here about Buddhist psychology, right, working with the mind, is very consonant, I think, as far as I understand, with some of the insights, recent insights of Western psychology. In a way, more consonant than Judeo-Christian approach, which emphasizes should and, you know, I think a Judeo-Christian approach can foster, at least as it's traditionally been received, can foster denial, right? I'm not supposed to be bad, so if I am bad, I better not notice, you know, because then I'm a bad person. So I better not, and I remember I was telling again in the seminar that I've had some times in meditation classes which involved some fundamentalist Christians down in the city. People stopped coming to the meditation class because their pastor told them that you do not want to meditate, because if you meditate and you allow evil

[47:58]

thoughts to appear in the mind, the devil will get you. So what you want to do is not ever allow those thoughts to be there, because you know, you're a background follower, you're not supposed to have that, and so you better run away from that and put something else in there. But in Buddhism, that's poison. You have to allow what's there to be there, and then you work with it. It is workable. Any state of mind is workable, as you see from these are all tools, right? It's a bag of tools, and throughout these sutras there's millions of these kind of things, how to work with states of mind, and states of mind are always workable. They're not your fault. See, the state of mind that you're in is not your fault. This is one of my ways of explaining it. The state of mind that arrives in this moment is not your fault. It's the result of causes and conditions in the past. But the state of mind that arrives in this moment asks of you, what will you do? And that's

[48:59]

your responsibility. Do you understand? So you can't say, I'm a bad person because I've got this murderous thought. No, I have a murderous thought. Okay, now how will I work with it? That's my responsibility. No use complaining about the murderous thought. It's there, see? It's no use beating yourself up about how you shouldn't have it and blah, blah, blah, because it's not your fault, really. The person who produced that murderous thought is gone. Now there's a person here who has the responsibility of working with it. What will that person do? And that's where you're responsible. See, so we have sort of, it's a beautiful, karma is a beautiful notion. You know, it means that we have total responsibility and total freedom now, but it's not our fault. So you don't have to worry about it. It's not your fault. I'm just thinking about my sister. I just talked to her a couple nights ago, and she's 17 or something. So she's just now starting to break away from my parents' conditioning

[50:04]

and the church's conditioning. Mormon church. Yeah. Tough church. But she was telling me that she doesn't even know what thoughts are her, or what feelings are hers, and what feelings are hers, or what she's supposed to feel, because she's just been told, you should be this way, you should be this way. So she doesn't even know what's her thought anymore. Oh yeah, it can be enormously confusing, right? I mean, and think how disorienting and disconcerting such a thing is. It's no surprise that people have such troubles. I was thinking about, instead of, this seems to be talking about kind of like engineering your mind, or manipulating your mental states, what about just, even in the worst case, what about just total surrender to your worst mental state? Experiencing versus acting. Just total surrender. Well, that would be more the non-dual approach, more like Zen. That's what I said in the beginning, that this

[51:08]

whole thing could easily sound like. I mean, it's not that, in a certain way, it's not that far away from manipulation, or brainwashing yourself, and so on. You have to hold it in the right way. And that's why I think that the Zen approach of just turning toward whatever state of mind is there, without encouraging it, or trying to run away from it, or substituting or anything else, but just being, like you say, totally surrendering, giving yourself to it, is probably an easier approach for us, because it's pretty hard for us to hold this kind of thing. We have to actually be very familiar, I think, with Buddhadharma, and have over a long period of time really made it our own, to where we can work in this way, and for many people. That's why I think the kind of Zen approach is very, in a way, if you take the Zen approach to be basically the faith that we are already Buddha, that

[52:09]

what arises in us fundamentally arises out of Buddha, that we can surrender and turn toward anything that we are. If you take that as the essential point, the essential underlying fact in the way that we work with our mind within Zen, then really and truly I think all Western Buddhism shares that point of view. Even the Vipassana, which comes from the Theravada in the West, the Vipassana has more like a Zen attitude toward what it's doing. And I think there's no accident. That's the attitude that's most skillful for most of us, because of our previous conditioning. I can see the attitude, but in my experience sometimes when I sit there with a difficult mental state, I say, okay, I just surrender, and what is it? Just try to be there. It actually goes down. It kind of gets more dark and more, and I realize I'm just kind of fooling myself.

[53:14]

And then I go for a run, or sing, or I don't know, do something, which takes me a little bit out of it. It seems to be more helpful. And so hearing what you read tonight to us, without me having read it before, I can see that I've done it before. I reacted very naturally. If there was some state, like this morning I had a state of mind, I could watch that I had no control. I know I didn't like that, I didn't want to do it, but my mind just took me to do something I didn't want to do, and I didn't have any control or power except my awareness. And then after I did it, I just said, I don't want to do this again. And that was real, this kind of, I don't want to do this. So I think those tools can be kind of helpful. Yeah, definitely. Oh yes, and you know, I think one of the things when you reflect on

[54:19]

what's being said here, you can appreciate the subtlety and sophistication of all of this. For example, what works for rain maybe doesn't work for you, and what works for you today maybe doesn't work for you tomorrow. And what works for you in one mental state doesn't work for you in another mental state. So the real issue is, can you be alert enough and subtle enough to see what's going on? So you try something and you see it doesn't work. So you say, okay, well, it might work tomorrow or maybe it worked yesterday, but right now this is not a good way. So you have to get the hang of it. What am I trying to do here and what's this all about, and can I be skillful in working with myself? And what's really going on, what are really the effects of what I'm doing here? And as you say, sometimes we have to suffer more. In other words, sometimes we have to do the thing that we know that we

[55:20]

shouldn't be doing or we don't want to do, and we can't prevent ourselves from doing it, and we do it. And then, having done it, we really understand, I really don't want to do that. I did it, and now in doing it, I really understand that I really don't want to do that. Sometimes that's what we have to do. We have to do it in order to really learn that lesson. Sometimes we have to do it more than once until we really learn, and that's the way it goes. So it takes a certain amount of suffering to understand that one doesn't want suffering, and to understand what causes suffering. So, you know, that's what happens. I was just thinking about being into or being with something, rather than pushing it away. My thought was, when you push something away, or you don't like it because it's a bad thought, and you just feel bad about it, and it just seems that if you say, oh, I don't

[56:26]

like that, that's not me, you know, it just seems to hang around or keep coming back. You know, and then, so then I was thinking that, well, you know, why don't I just one day, well, just be with it and just say, okay, this is just a terrible thought, and what's the worst that can happen, just to be with it. And it turned out it wasn't that bad, but it seemed like a freeing thing in that sense. That it was like, well, you know, it seems like when you want to keep pushing something away because it's an awful feeling to have, it just hangs around. Absolutely, yeah. That's why the three kind of holding on energies are desire, aversion, and confusion. That's aversion, we're talking about aversion, that wanting to get rid of something is an unskillful way of dealing with it. If you don't want it to be there,

[57:26]

and you insist on getting rid of it, it won't go away, because the aversion itself produces more of the same. So one has to be willing to just be aware of and accepting of whatever arises, and that's a more skillful way of working with it than thinking that you can push it away. So there's a certain degree of equanimity and patience involved in all this. So if you're going to apply the antidote, if you apply the antidote, if there's ill will present, and you apply the antidote of loving kindness, you have to do that with a spirit of not like, oh God, I've got to get rid of this ill will right away, I hate it, so I'll apply loving kindness. If you do that, of course, it's not going to work. You have to just recognize that the ill will is present, and this is what it feels like. I know that it leads to suffering, but I can have some patience with it, and I'm going to apply loving kindness to the best of my ability and see what happens. That kind of spirit, rather than, oh God, I shouldn't be feeling this, make it go away right away,

[58:28]

it will never work, just like you say. And you find this out, you just try it and you'll see that trying to run away from your own mind is never skillful. Yeah, it's funny how the mind works. It's very tricky, tricky the mind. It's like applying some loving kindness to yourself in a way. Yeah. It's what you end up doing. That's right. And the loving kindness meditation begins with loving kindness toward yourself. It's a practice which understands that ill will toward another is rooted in ill will toward oneself. And conversely, love for another is rooted in love for oneself. You can't let go of ill will toward another unless you love yourself. So there's a whole meditation on loving kindness which begins that way. Anything else? Well, I hope that you enjoyed this little sketch by the Buddha and reflect on how you

[59:38]

can work with your own mind and what works. And in a way, these are thousands of years old and we can write these down and memorize them and so on and so forth. But as Jeanette points out, first of all, we already know them because we've already ourselves stumbled into them on our own. And also, there are other ones that we can invent that the Buddha didn't mention in this sutra or maybe didn't mention anywhere else. So there's a certain degree of creativity possible with this imagination. Once you understand where you're going and what the basic method is for how to go there, you can figure out for yourself different ways of creating practices for yourself to encourage you to let go and not suffer. So let me just finish off. At the end of all that, on 2.13, number 8, the Buddha sort of,

[60:46]

as any good instructor will do, will do a little review, you know. So he reviews all five of the five signs that should be applied. And then it says at the end, this, at the very bottom of page 2.13, this bhikkhu is then called a master of the courses of thought. Having mastered, in other words, these five signs, this bhikkhu is then called a master of the courses of thought. She will think whatever thought she wishes to think, and she will not think any thought that she does not wish to think. And what this means to me is basically that the mind is flexible and pliable and light and easy. So that if,

[61:51]

imagine being able to have a mind where, you know, certain thoughts entered your mind and you said, well, that's no fun. We don't need that. And it would just go away. You wouldn't have to be obsessed with it. And you'd think other thoughts that you'd like to think or that you'd like to have be present in the mind, they could be there. There could be that kind of flexibility and pliability, that the mind was not exactly under your control, but in cooperation with your deepest desires, instead of in opposition. I was reading some book about psychology, and it said that, maybe some of you, I know, at least one person here is a psychologist. This is, I don't know if this is really true, but what it was saying was that the basis of Freud's idea of neurosis was conflict, conflicting psychological necessities. In other words, you want this and you want that, and they're both in the mind, they're in conflict, and this causes problems. Well, so that's neurosis. That's the generation of neurosis, and all sorts of twisted ways

[63:02]

that we are that don't really work out so well. This is the opposite of that. There is no conflict in the mind. There's an easygoing sense of, you know, what's in the mind is in cooperation with one's deepest heart's desire, and everything is in the service of that, and there's no problem about what one thinks. One can always work with it and deal with it and it doesn't become troublesome and obsessive. And that's the result of someone who masters these five signs, to be able to have that kind of mind. And then it says, she has severed craving, flung off the fetters, and with the complete penetration of conceit, has made an end of suffering. And that's the end of the Buddhist dharma talk. Now, these last words involve a whole kind of complicated, technical...

[64:06]

These are a description, these last words are a description of a person who has fully attained enlightenment, completely let go of all internal confusions that cause suffering and really is living in freedom and ease. And so, without going into the entire thing, which I was dutifully looking up and going over this afternoon, in my stupor and confusion, I'll try to give you just a basic idea of what this is about. In the Buddhist path characteristic of these old sutras, they delineated four stages of having... The idea was that there was a very definite entry point into having come to this place

[65:11]

in relation to the mind. And there were four degrees when you entered it. And then there were four degrees up to completely, no backsliding, possible perfection with working with the mind. And there was the identification of a series of what they call fetters, like locks that were on the mind that prevented you, that constantly got you messed up. And the idea was you would throw these off one by one, and when every one of them was thrown off, you would be free. And these locks, these fetters, could no longer subjugate you. Your own mind would no longer be your own worst enemy, kind of. Well, the fetters, there's ten of them, and basically what they amount to is... Well, these are the ten. View of self, seeing the mind as me.

[66:12]

Not seeing that the mind is something that arises and passes away, and it's not my fault. It's a process. I am a process, rather than I am an eternal fixed entity. That's the first one. The second one is doubt. In other words, not cooperating with the path toward freedom, but resisting it. Which one does? It's the fetter to have constantly corrosive doubt that will not enable you to work with the teachings. So you have to have a willingness and an ability to actually work with the teachings as appropriate. So getting beyond the fetter of doubt is the second one. The third one is, oddly, and this was, I think, particularly one that was important in Buddhist time, superstition and belief in rites and rituals as effective as a way of working with the mind. In other words, taking full responsibility, that nobody's going to do it for you.

[67:13]

You're not going to take some special medicine or potion or something like that. You're going to do this. You're saying not believing in them? Yeah, not believing in them. Not believing that rituals and rites are going to solve your problems. And the next one, the fourth one, is being caught by sensual desire. Not being able to be in the presence of sensuality and enjoy it for what it is and let it go, but rather being caught by it and having to have more of it and having to get hooked by it. And also the fifth one is the opposite of that, ill will or aversion. Not being hooked by either ill will toward someone or ill will or aversion toward the sensual world. And then the sixth and seventh ones are, now we're into the higher stages of freedom. Because the sixth and seventh ones are letting go of attachment to rupa-dhatu and arupa-dhatu,

[68:16]

which are the two meditation realms that I mentioned earlier, the three worlds, those two worlds. The idea here is that you become a very strong practitioner and meditator, and you really withdraw from the sensual world. You don't have ill will, you don't have sensual desire, you're very pure. But now you're attached to the purity of the meditation realms. You love rupa-dhatu and arupa-dhatu. So those are fetters now. They prevent you from really being free. Because you've just got, in other words, a higher class of a more subtle form of attachment and aversion beyond the material realm, but still it's attachment and aversion, so you have to drop that. And then comes this one that's mentioned in the text, conceit. That's number eight. And conceit here doesn't mean conventional sense of conceit, although what we mean by conceit is just an intensification of what's meant here.

[69:19]

Conceit means, see, the earlier fetter is belief in a self, right? So now you understand that there is no fixed self. You understand that you are a process. So you've gone beyond common sense belief in self, but you have a subtle attachment to self. So you're attached to your enlightened self. You have some feeling of it that it's really there, that there's something to it. So you have this phenomenon of people who are enlightened people, skillful spiritual teachers who have a shadow of an attachment to that and believe that they are that. A real person who's an arhat, who's fully realized, doesn't see any arhat anywhere. They look around like there's a famous story. I don't know if this is exactly illustrative at this point,

[70:20]

but there's a very famous story of Suzuki Roshi. I was talking to a woman who was involved in this story where he went to visit the Cambridge Buddhist Association and they were very excited about him coming. So they were doing a big cleaning. They were cleaning everything from top to bottom because the Zen master was coming and they really wanted everything to be just right. Well, he made a mistake and he came like two hours early. So he showed up and they were all madly with their aprons on, cleaning everything in preparation for the great Zen master. And they explained that to him and he said, Well, I better help too because the Zen master's coming. We better clean everything up. So according to her, she said that the best part was that he took off his robes and everything and he was standing there in his underwear. She remembers him standing there in his underwear on a big ladder cleaning the windows in preparation for the famous Suzuki Roshi who was going to come up and show up any time. So in other words, no shadow of attachment.

[71:24]

So the idea here is that somebody really is enlightened and they really are a spiritual master and they really give great this and that, Dharma talks and this and everything, except that they have this shadow. They believe that it's so. They don't see that there's nothing there. It's just a fantasy. There is no such thing. So that conceit is what is meant, a very subtle form of conceit. And that's one of the last things to go, right? So it just goes to show you how powerful conceit is. And then the ninth one is restlessness. When there's that kind of conceit, there's a subtle... One is there's still a shadow of desire to escape or go on to something else, not a total and complete commitment to just this is it, whatever this is. And then the tenth one is ignorance. Ignorance about the nature of things, the empty nature of things. Not appreciating the empty nature of things.

[72:26]

So those ten fetters, the idea is that for a person in the first stage, they have gone beyond the first three and next stage and so on. So here it's saying that this person has severed craving, cut it off and freed it and flung off all of the ten fetters and really has let go of this subtle form of conceit and really has made an end to suffering, no more suffering. Now, we've talked before in here in this class and other classes about that doesn't mean that there's no more experience of an unpleasantness or painfulness. Because as long as there's a body, there's the possibility of an experience of unpleasantness or painfulness, even emotional unpleasantness or painfulness. But the fetters which cause us to take the unpleasantness or painfulness and spin it around and make it into what's technically called suffering or dukkha,

[73:33]

that possibility is no longer there. And one only confronts the suffering as suffering or the pain as pain and lets it go. In other words, there can be equanimity and acceptance within the pain that arises. So my understanding would be that an arhat, particularly in our practice with the Mahayanistic sense of it, would be able to feel sorrow and loss and physical pain, but would have equanimity and would be able to accept and bear that as a necessary and even a beautiful part of human life, rather than anguished effort to escape it, which leads to more suffering. So that's pretty good. The last one sounds like the first one also. Is it just a subtler form? Which last one? Ignorance. Yes, it's a subtler form. I think basically the ten fetters really come down to three,

[74:36]

attachment, aversion and delusion, except on more subtle levels. So I think next time we'll study the Bhaddhakaratha Sutta, which is very short, and I'll think about whether or not it makes sense to find another short sutta to read also in that class. But maybe we'll spend the whole class on that, I don't know. And that's our last class next week. We'll end there. So next Tuesday night. So thank you for your listening to my talk and everything, and I hope that this material is of benefit. May our intention be...

[75:34]

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