Tonight we talk about the second most difficult to talk about thing of the things that can't be talked about, shouldn't be talked about, and anything we say about them probably isn't true. We'll culminate with transcendent wisdom next time. But it's even harder and in some ways more futile to talk about meditation particularly Zen meditation. But because the context of this class is twofold, it's partly to help us with our practice in an immediate sense, to give us an encouragement, some background, some sense of where this practice comes from and what it's about. And because this particular course is on the six paramitas, the prajnaparamita, they're all part of the prajnaparamita.

[01:08]

They're all prajna. I think it's helpful to understand a little bit about where all this came from and where the meditation as we know it and as we practice it came from. Our meditation is deceptively simple. If you read Trungpa, he distinguishes between two generic types of meditation. Meditation that is designed to build concentration, to promote certain states of mind. Meditation which is primarily devotional and looking to help us connect with God or something bigger or better than ourselves. And a kind of formless meditation.

[02:10]

And he doesn't say that the formless meditation is superior, but he sort of implies that. And that is the sort of Mahayana and Vajrayana sort of later Buddhist thinking. And it goes along with the whole notion of paramita, the other shore, going beyond. So when we're talking about meditation from a Zen point of view or from a Mahayana point of view, from the point of view of the paramitas, we are talking about going beyond meditation. But first we need to talk about meditation before we go beyond meditation. And the meditation as it was practiced in Buddha's time, as Buddha taught it, was full of a lot of very specific kinds of instructions and specific practices which

[03:19]

Particularly in Zen school, we don't practice so much today. And we have to take classes like this to even learn about them. Some of them may not seem very quaint. Some of them may seem odd to you. Generically, for now, we're going to talk about meditation as concentration, samadhi. Samadhi is one of the... Right Samadhi or Right Concentration is one of the eight steps in the Eightfold Path. And from that point of view, Samadhi includes a whole lot of things. Samadhi includes mindfulness, being self-possessed, being content, being free from hindrances.

[04:23]

And it also includes a whole lot of very specific modes of concentration and a variety of states of mind and what might be called supernormal powers that can result from these various kinds of concentration. And just as the Eskimos have a lot of words for snow, the early Buddhists had a lot of root for concentration. And we're not going to go through all of them. But I think it's... I want to go through this because although the map is not the territory, it's often helpful when you go into new territory to have a map. And in your journey through this practice, you will be dealing, and you have been dealing, with a lot of the states of mind and problems of mind that Buddha addressed very specifically, and that our predecessors in meditation practice had wrestled with.

[05:49]

So the first component, maybe, of samadhi that they talk about is mindfulness, and that's something that we do talk a lot about here. Mindfulness, or very particular attention, not just when sitting in meditation, but in every activity, is a kind of consciousness, a kind of awareness that creates a pause, between our impulses and our action. And that slows us down, it creates a little space, some quiet. And that leads to self-possession, not getting rattled. We know we're rattled when we lose that space between our impulse and our action, and we're in an argument and we get riled. And self-possession leads to contentment, not grasping, always trying to catch up with things.

[07:02]

Freedom from the hindrances is another thing worth spending a little time on, and that is something we do talk about sometimes in Zen. and in the Prajnaparamita Sutra we talk about the mind is no hindrance and no fears exist, all that. The hindrances I think are worth listing because you'll notice a striking correspondence between the good things, the hindrances whatever the good things are on the other side. So the classical five hindrances are, and these are hindrances, mind you, to samadhi, hindrances to concentration, are lust, ill will, sloth and torpor,

[08:19]

That's my favorite one. Anxiety and or restlessness. So too much energy, too little energy. And skeptical doubt. Is that your favorite? It's my least favorite. It's your least favorite? Now, the Buddha is variously described in the literature as a great physician, and he considered these ills, and he had various prescriptions for these various ills, and these are some of the collections of practices, and there were 40 kind of classes, 40 kind of groups of medicines he had for the various ills of the mind.

[09:34]

And so just as, you know, if you go to the doctor with a sore throat, he doesn't throw, you know, the whole pharmacy at you, he gives you a prescription for whatever it is he thinks, you know, maybe you've got. and, of course, might be wrong, the Buddha tried to individualize his instruction to the person, to their temperament, and to the problem they were having right then. And even though, you know, it looks like in Zen we just have this kind of, we follow our breath, we don't, we just sit and think non-thinking, we don't get a lot of instruction of this particular kind, we do encourage people to make a relationship with the teacher and get some specific interpretation of the teaching for our specific problem. But the traditional 40 practices and then some that were prescribed by Buddha are described in the Vasuddhi Magga, which is the path of purification.

[10:43]

In order, they are ten devices for concentrating the mind, which lead to four super-conscious states. Meditations on the ten impurities, which are the disgusting aspects of bodily existence. These are the famous meditations on the charnel clouds, where young monks were sent to to the charnel ground where the bodies were stacked up, to meditate on the decomposition of human bodies, and the various stages of decomposition of human bodies, and to reflect on the fact that their body would someday be just in these various states of swollen, various colors. They're very descriptive. meditations. And these are designed to curb lust.

[11:54]

Remember that the monastic practices for centuries were monastic practices for young men all by themselves. There were ten recollections. which I forget what they were. I'm not having such a good memory. But the most important of the ten recollections, and again, each of these leads to, has a meditation that goes with it, that leads to a certain state of mind. The ten recollections, which this author was very or she just says, are less fearsome than the ten impurities, are the Buddha, the doctrine, the order, sangha, morality, liberality, goods, death, the body, respiration, and the peace of nirvana.

[13:03]

But the most important of these is respiration, breathing, and that's out of this whole list, that's one of the meditations that we use the most. And the form in which they used it, recollection, respiration, is described in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of the Breath, being aware of The disciple breathing a short breath knows that he's breathing a short breath. The disciple breathing a long breath knows that he's breathing a long breath. That kind of meditation in which one sits and follows the breath much as we do, but notes in the mind the quality of the breath.

[14:10]

Not trying to change it, but just Another one of these generic classes of prescription is the Four Divine Abodes, which Mel has talked about quite a bit in his lecture on this. It was published in Moon Valley a few years ago, and I'll talk about that a little bit in a minute. Then there's the Formless Spheres, on the loathsomeness of food, and that's to, the meditations on the loathsomeness of food are similar to the ones on the loathsomeness of the body, designed to diminish greed. And then there were meditations on analysis of the four elements, which is

[15:17]

kind of mentally separating all the parts of the body into what they saw as the four elements, earth, air, fire and water. But that gets us very close to the idea of things not having any independent existence. That everything is dependent on something else and is composed of other things and nothing has its own independent existence. The four formless, not the four formless spheres, but the four sublime abodes, or brahmapaharas, I think everybody should know those, And these are positive meditations. So there's, usually these are learned in the Sanskrit.

[16:27]

Metta is loving kindness. And karuna is compassion. And mudita is sympathetic joy. It's joy, joy for somebody else, not joy for somebody else's new job or their raise, but joy at their understanding, joy that they're getting enlightenment. And these meditations are, you may have done them, these are done in a lot of workshops, in the Theravada schools do them, and the Stephen Levine and other people who work in death and dying do a lot of

[17:58]

These meditations, they all start with centering, calming the body and the breath, and directing thoughts of loving-kindness first to oneself, then to someone you love, then to someone who's neutral, and then to someone you hate, and then to the whole world and to the whole universe and all sentient beings. And they all go like that, and they all start by directing and generating in oneself and towards oneself whatever the positive state of mind is. So all these meditations, which again, not all of them were done by all people, and so we don't need to feel badly that we're not going to learn all of them.

[19:38]

But some of them may be useful to you, somebody may suggest them to you, or you may discover them. One of the things about Buddhist practice is it isn't just something you made up, It's not something that you have to believe that these things are all useful. These practices come out of somebody sitting and wrestling with a problem and coming up with a way to deal with it, and then sharing it with somebody else. So when you read this stuff, you may come across a lot of stuff that sounds weird, and you may come across to your surprise something that seems very familiar. That happened to me recently in a group that I have at my house. We've been reading Pema Chodron's book, The Wisdom of No Escape, and she describes some traditional Tibetan practices that were taught by her teacher, which

[20:50]

I've had no exposure to, and they were very familiar to me. And they were ways that I learned to, in desperation, and Sachin figured out to deal with certain kinds of difficulties I was having with my body and breath. reading that kind of thing, it was very confirming to me that I wasn't the first person who had that problem, I wasn't the first person who dealt with it that way. In a situation, in Zen particularly, where very little meditation instruction is given, you never know, it's hard to know whether you're on the right track, whether you're going down or going down. So, the main purpose of study is to confirm your experience and to plant seeds. so that they'll sprout when the time comes when we need them.

[21:52]

But in Buddha's time and in early Buddhism, and actually before, long before Buddha, there was a long tradition of yogic practice in which certain very specific kinds of meditation very specific kinds of concentration were linked with very specific states of mind, and in which people practiced to cultivate very particular states of mind and very particular powers. From the Mahayana perspective and the Zen perspective, these powers aren't of much use, but it's important to know that they're the background. and that all these practices were developed to support certain kinds of concentration, to promote certain kinds of mental powers and experience.

[23:02]

And the generic word for these powers is jhana. And this is an important word. There are either four or eight jhanas, depending on how you count. There are normal ones and supernormal ones, and formless ones and form ones. And these were practiced by yogis before Buddha. But the important thing about this word is that it's very close to this word, Vyana, which is meditation, and which became Chan, which became Zen. So, Zen, all these concentration practices of the yogis, are like the evolutionary ancestors.

[24:11]

They're like the Cro-Magnon to our Zen. That's maybe sort of a heretical thing to say, but I think you get the idea that there's been an evolution of meditation practice and ways of thinking about consciousness. And the way Mahayana Buddhism thinks about all these various states of mind and supernormal things, which, just to give you an idea of these, the four basic jhanas are freedom from sensual desires, accompanied by reason and investigation,

[25:13]

Let me start over. Free from sensual desires, the first jhana of joy and pleasure is accompanied with reasoning and investigation. The second jhana of joy and pleasure arising from concentration is free of reasoning and The third one, indifference towards joy. The monk abides with equanimity, mindful and self-possessed. And in the fourth one, he is without pain and pleasure and with the purity of equanimity and mindfulness. He sits permeating his body with mind purified and cleansed. And there is nothing at all in his body untouched by his mind, purified and cleansed."

[26:19]

And those are the lower states. In the upper states there is There are psychic powers and the ability to walk on water, go through walls, that stuff you saw in Kung Fu, if you watched that show. Floating cross-legged through the air like a bird. And clairvoyance, telepathy, remembrance of former births, and the ultimate one, being able to see actually see beings vanishing from one sphere or realm and going into another one. Now, these may sound far-fetched, but in fact some of these things do happen to people. I haven't known anybody that actually through meditation could walk on water, I have to admit.

[27:31]

That I haven't seen. But being able to a certain amount of clairvoyance and telepathy, and just a kind of being able to read people very astutely, is a very common and everyday occurrence. And probably most of you who sat sashimi have kind of noticed that you become very observant and very intuitive about people. And there's a kind of... there are levels intuition and knowing people that just happen. People have all kinds of visions and all kinds of interesting states of mind arise. And these are all probably nothing that happens to any of us. It's something that hasn't been documented somewhere in Buddhist literature.

[28:35]

So that's very reassuring. And from the Zen point of view, it's not very important. From our point of view, the purpose of concentration, and in fact from Buddha's, the sutra says, the purpose of concentration is to see things as they actually are. All the practices all these practices actually have the same aim, and that is to strip away the distortions that come from our believing in our sense perceptions, the distortions that come from our identifying with our sense perceptions, our identifying with what's happening at the moment, or how we feel at the moment. from our point of view that maybe the most sophisticated of these is the one, the analysis of the elements, because that's the one, they make an analogy that just like a butcher cuts open, kills a cow, once he's got the cow cut up into steaks and stuff, he doesn't think of it as cow anymore, he thinks of it as meat.

[30:00]

And once we mentally dissect our body and our experience into pieces, we don't think of it as I anymore. We think of it as these heaps of stuff that we talk about in Prajnaparamita. So now we've arrived at what we call meditation. What's common about our kind of meditation and all these other things that we've been talking about is that they all help us see things as they are, right now.

[31:01]

And for any kind of meditation, as Trungpa points out, The biggest generic obstacle is some kind of ambition, what Suzuki Roshi called gaining envy. The more you want to overcome something, the harder you try, like we talked about last week, the farther you tend to get away from it. So when we want something, we want enlightenment, It's based on some idea, some idea about what's going to happen in the future, or maybe we had some wonderful experience in the past and we'd like to get it back, or we're feeling really good and we don't want it to go away. But past and future don't really exist.

[32:05]

And that brings us back to the Diamond Sutra. Probably the most famous line of which is, past mind, present mind, future mind cannot be grasped. Mind cannot be grasped. That's what we learn in meditation. Can't get a hold of it. Do you know the story about the tea lady? I may need some help with the story. The scholar, the Diamond Sutra scholar had all the his scrolls on his back, and he was traveling around impressing people with his knowledge of the Diamond Sutra. And he stopped to have some tea, and the tea lady asked him who he was, and he told her, oh, this is the Diamond Sutra on my back, and I know all about the famous Diamond Sutra scholar. And she said, huh? And he said, well, I want some tea cakes, and tea and cakes, and she said, with what mind will you eat these tea cakes?

[33:10]

And of course our scholar was stymied and he figured there must be a Zen master around here somewhere and he figured he'd better go find him. And I forget who the Zen master was. She was your new friend. Right. He knew this lady couldn't have figured this out by herself, of course. This is one of the stories that was one of the first stories quoted by the Buddhist feminist movement when they were looking for our ancestors, our female ancestors. Most of the nameless tea ladies would be defeating famous monks right and left, but we don't know their names. So, let's sit for a few minutes the way we do.

[34:19]

We sit in the posture, some of us in the posture recommended by Buddha. And the most important thing about posture is of course having the back straight and the belly soft and loose so that the breath can come and go very freely. So we want a stable and upright posture. The lotus position is considered the most stable. And if you can sit that way, it is stable. But for most of us, some other stable position with lower body immobile and very supported by the ground, rooted to the ground, and our pelvis tipped so that the belly can be forward, and the spine straight but without a lot of muscle in it.

[35:35]

Not a lot of tension. Spine should be supported by the lower body. And the shoulders relaxed. And the chin tucked in a little bit. Pretending that the head is being pulled by a string. Top of your head up towards the ceiling like a plumb line. And being aware of the breath, just feeling the breath. Not trying to bind the mind to breathing, but becoming one with the feeling of breath. This is Trungpa's instructions, a little different from ours, but the feeling is the same.

[36:38]

So whether you're just watching the breath as the rise and fall of the belly, or if you count breath, counting the breath is a way, it's kind of a way of binding the mind to the breath. It shouldn't be used that way. It should be used as a way of becoming one with the breath. one-pointed concentration. The point of our awareness is just on the verge of the movement of the breath. And as your trunk resonates, it's at the bottom of the breath. There's a still point.

[37:48]

And the exhalation is complete. The inhalation is about to come. Suzuki Roshi says the mind is like a swinging door. When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, air goes out to the outer world. We say inner world and outer world, but actually there's just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door.

[38:55]

The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door. If you think, I breathe, the I is extra. There's no you to say I. What we call I is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there's nothing, no I, no world, no mind nor body, just a swinging door. Keep your awareness on the verge of the movement of the breath.

[40:00]

I think of it as the hinge. Sweet dog. And there is just awareness of the movement of the breath. And the body and the breath and the mind are just right here.

[41:01]

And all our senses are open and aware. but not judging, not seeking, not demanding or desiring, then all the precepts are being kept. When discrimination arises or desire Then we start violating precepts. When we're not with our life, we spend most of our life thinking about the past or the future. wanting things to be different than they are, kind of like stealing.

[42:20]

So this is part of the way in which meditation can shield our mind. When the mind It includes everything, whatever is happening inside and outside. Compassion and generosity are already present. You really experience and want everything. The buzz in the tablecloth. If you would like to share your experience in meditation, any of the little images, try anything else, please feel free.

[44:10]

And if you'd like to sit quietly, that's okay too. I've tried to also read the book also. It's a different twist to meditation. Interesting. I've also used a similar kind of thing with pain. There are various ways to deal with pain. Some people try to make it bigger, some people try to make it smaller, some people try to focus on something that doesn't hurt, and to distance themselves from what does hurt.

[45:20]

And for me, in general, I'm more exposed to focus on what it does to let it take up everything. And it's going to take more and more. You know, I think again, it's one of these things of different medicine for different people, why I'm allergic to such drugs, maybe it's something like that. Right. In a way, some people are Somali addicts. Some form of basic focus on the breath,

[46:24]

We all breathe. There are lots of different ways to follow the breath, but we all breathe it and take it wherever we go, so it's a good place for everybody to come together. You know, this may sound strange, but I don't have any problem with that familiarity that you talk about. It's some kind of ancient knowledge coming through your body. The other night, Robert Eakins said, if you find yourself, you wake up and you find that you've been dreaming about Buddha, embrace that as ancient knowledge coming through. Do you feel that at all? I feel it as ancient knowledge or as... My experience is almost that it's It's like experience of who we are as human beings, kind of biologically.

[47:35]

And it's not even that it's like ancient or contemporary, but it's just universal. I don't know what it means to be an experience. I have a question. How do I square this life with setting goals and achieving them? It seems like they're opposed to one another. And related to that, my understanding of contemporary mind theory is that if you don't choose your direction, your program for a default that is maybe not that healthy, that will take over if you don't choose a direction.

[48:48]

The other side of the practice is form. We've been talking about emptiness. And form creates a containment. So the form that we're dealing with, the form that pertains here, what we're talking about is all of this is kind of subheadings under Bodhisattva vow. Our goal, our purpose, is to save all beings from suffering and confusion. That's our eyes on that horizon. And all the practices that we do, and everything we do, is to save all sentient beings from suffering and confusion. Understanding all sentient beings to be that they're not out there.

[49:55]

They're out there, but they're all in here too. So, how we do that, and I think we might actually do that next week, to kind of pull this together, because I think that's really important. The goalless goal, or the unattainable goal, however you want to call it. And of course we all have intermediate goals, getting a better job, that kind of thing. But those are all kind of subheadings under saving all sentient beings from suffering and confusion in our life. Once our life begins to be about practice, that's what we're doing. So that's what we have vows, and that's what we we take the vows together, repeatedly, is to remind ourselves and Allah of why we're doing this, why are we practicing, and so that we have some basis on which to choose the small stuff.

[51:19]

How does this contribute, this decision that I'm making right now? If I take a nap this afternoon, how will that benefit all beings? It will benefit my family because I will be less cranky. So if I can say that, and that makes sense, then I can say that taking a nap this afternoon How you can develop two to four months away from the same point of start?

[52:50]

I think there are many different ways, and I think they all come from the same source. I think they all lead basically the same place, and there's a lot of different scenery along the way. And all the stuff that's described in the many practices in the different directions are all different people's experience in seeing me. They've seen me along the way. But if you sit, how can I define me? I will feel this way, I like to feel this way. The active, when you sit. When you're actually sitting. Yes. I'm not sure why it's a problem.

[54:02]

I wonder if it means that the one way is the devotional way, and the other is through watching the breath, so that the devotional way, which is what is practiced in the Christian religion, we use a mantra like Jesus Prayer. I think that's how I understood it. And there's a lot of overlap. I think. Also, your mind can work differently. Just because you're sitting still, just because you're sitting in this position, in a zendo or some other context, Two people could sit that same way in the same context, but could go in different directions with that.

[55:11]

A different way of emphasis. Internal emphasis could be different, even though they both look the same. Did they affect you because that would be different? Because... Because of the way you're understanding... your method or your understanding, your relationship to a teacher, could be different. One teacher or one school could emphasize one aspect, and one school or teacher could emphasize another. And there are similarities, but there also could be differences. You can look around and you can see in the world that there are different meditation schools, and some of them, there are similarities, but there are also some big differences. So it's not, you know, maybe fundamentally it's the same, but the experience can be different, I think. Certainly the flavor is very different in the different schools.

[56:15]

So, are you thinking about what kind of result you're looking for and wondering if the practice you're doing is going to lead to that result? Yes. You said, for example, talk about, about the walk in the ocean. You understand? When I sit, I don't feel one day I can walk. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've never seen anybody do that either. You understand? Right. It's very different because the action is the same. But how the same action? can develop a different ability, different powers? I don't know. The Tibetan yogis can sit in the snow and melt the snow. And I don't know, you know, how they do it. I remember Suzuki Roshi, who taught us this way of sitting, when we were cold at Tassajara, those first few winters, he said, what's the matter with you?

[57:23]

Don't you know how to generate heat between your thumbs? You know, we thought, you know, he might as well have been floating around in this endo. Because as far as we could tell, you see, I mean, shake his hand, he was warm. And later? I never did learn to generate heat between my thumbs. Well, did he teach you? He just, he didn't teach it any more specifically than that. He seemed to think it was obvious. You know, he just generated it between your thumbs. And he wasn't. What relates to, you know, Tozant's goal where there's no heat or cold, and if your concentration is there, then there's not shivering or perspiration in the suffering sense. It's just the body's response to whatever the weather conditions are.

[58:26]

When I started sitting, it was in New York, and it was a cold wintertime, and the inside of the windows were frosted and all that, and you see your breath and that kind of thing. But when I sat and had moments of some kind of concentration, I didn't feel so cold. It was a lot different. And it's nuts. I mean, partly it's, you know, it's very hard to get up out of bed because it's so warm, and then you're cold running around brushing your teeth and whatnot, and then when your body starts moving, you warm up a little bit. And I think in Zazen, people don't think you're doing so much, but actually just sitting there, something's generated, and it's, [...] It's not like the way it's described in Tibetan practice, but still, on a real simple level, there are benefits to, as Tozan said, going where there's neither heat nor cold.

[59:28]

Whether one can melt snow or sustain that for long periods of time, of course, is up to the person sitting. But I was surprised, you know, I mean, they weren't going to cut the heat on the Zendo, so you had to generate something to get warm. Also, I think in answer to your question, there are schools that do try to teach that, what you're talking about. They have exercises that you can As you're meditating, you can concentrate on such and such and such and such in order that you can fly or that you can generate heat. Well, generating heat is a real sort of common Tibetan practice. It's really teachable and it's a yogic practice. It's a fairly basic practice that's taught. It's not like some It's not like walking on water. No, no.

[60:32]

It is a yogic practice. And it's a form of concentration, of concentrating on a visualization of heat and fire. You can do it with biofeedback. Yeah, yeah. Without the meter. It's in the book by Wentz. He gives you a series of exercises. Yeah, I did learn it with biofeedback. But I think also in answer to your question, I mean, that's the whole idea about mindfulness is that you're going to have all this stuff, you know. Like I went to Mel on time and I was complaining that, you know, my entire practice was taken up with thinking about the 49ers. And he laughed. Stop. 49ers awesome. Well, whatever it is, that's what it is, you know. But it went away.

[61:38]

Whatever it is, it's going to change, too. That's the Giants, right? That's right. Now it's basketball season. But you need a teacher to sort of pull you back into reality and away from putting judgments. interesting about another way to meditate. My question is, you sit to express something. You have, you can sit to do, to fly, to do many things. In Zen, this means a kind of definition You can sit, you can concentrate to do new things. In Zen, what's the basic?

[62:42]

We sit to save all beings from suffering and confusion, to see things as they are, to see things just as they are, without distortion, so that we can help other people to see things as they are. because it's seeing things the way we want them to be through the filter of greed, hate and delusion that causes suffering. That's why we seek to end suffering. Yes, this is my question because I read two different authors. One said we seek to get enlightenment. Same thing. Another said we seek to show Buddha's nature. Same thing. In this way, I became confused. Two different ways of saying the same thing. Enlightenment is Buddha nature. To express our Buddha nature.

[63:44]

To express our enlightenment. To realize our enlightenment. To actualize it. And also see things as they are. As they are. That's enlightenment. Is to see things as they are. Through the light of reality. to shine the light of reality so that we can see things as they are. And also you have to experience your mind being quiet. The other is the byproduct, the other that you are speaking of will happen, but first you have to learn how to sit so that the mind is quiet. It's not easy. It's like you try not to think and you try not to stop yourself from thinking. You just be there and allow yourself to experience eventually a quiet mind.

[64:48]

Aside from this matter of sitting This past summer, I was a little enamored about sitting, so I asked the abbot. I told him how peaceful his space was, and I asked him how many times he sat a day. Was it 8 or 11 times? And he said, every moment. And that just blew me away. But from a novice's point of view, you know, I think, well, maybe I should do it more It's changed the whole picture. The way I learned it is that there's this difference between the formal sitting, morning and evening, and the experience of bringing your meditation throughout your daily activities. So for me, to try to bring it into my everyday activities,

[66:03]

sort of recollect what it's like to be in a quiet state. And that is not easy. I find myself rushing around and I try to pull back and just get myself in a meditative state. I don't know if I'm making it clear. For me, it's not just meditating formally. It's trying to bring it into everything, everything you do all day long, even before you fall asleep. And upon awakening, when you're eating, when you're talking to people, that's the ideal. This is what it's easy to do. to inspire the tour.

[67:22]

As we talk, it's I'm always torn between wanting us to encourage each other and share what works for us, and feeling that we're always on the verge of getting caught by some gaming idea, some idea that we're going to get right, some kind of goal. And I think, for me, This is the most difficult part of the teaching. We do have our various reasons for sitting in there. We do get various benefits from sitting. And like the supernormal states of mind that were described by the yogis and the early Buddhists,

[69:19]

They're really not the point. Suzuki Roshi talked about giving some candy. We want some candy to encourage us. And we get it. We do have these encouraging moments, and they are very sweet. But when... If we can be encouraged and uplifted by what we see as our success, or getting it right, or feeling calm, or whatever it is we think we are trying to do. The other side of that is that we're discouraged and we beat up on ourselves when it doesn't work. And so if we're going to take credit for doing it right, then we're going to take blame for doing it wrong, and then we're right smack into duality, and we're into the biggest trap of all, which is what Trungpa called spiritual materialism, trying to gain enlightenment, trying to get it right, and all the kind of

[70:49]

pride that goes with that. And ultimately we have to give it up. And then you're really stuck. It's like if you really believe the four vows, beings are numberless, I vow to save them So that's always the trap. And it doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying to refine our practice and share with each other what we found that helps.

[71:59]

But we have to be careful about the attachment. It's interesting to me that when I first began sitting, the instruction was very much to watch your breath and count your breaths. And all of Zazen instructions that everybody gave said, count your breaths from 1 to 10. And I think we all did that a long time. And then something's happened. And the breath counting is has become very optional and I understand the people at Page Street who gives us an instruction on how to say catch your breath. Dogen doesn't give us instructions about catching our breath.

[73:07]

No, but... There is rules for meditation that Dogen has, which we use for that. We used to read a short classical about karma and death. Yeah, but this was not short. It's two pages. Two pages is short. Yeah, that's true. The Tukang Dzogchen doesn't say anything about counting the breath. It also speaks of goallessness. Goallessness and think not thinking. And that's the description of pure Shikantaza, of just sitting. I remember when I first met Robert Aiken in Hawaii about 20 years ago. I'd just spent two practice periods at Tassajara and moved immediately from a cold winter at Tassajara to Hawaii.

[74:19]

You can imagine that I spent my last practice period before that dreaming. So I went to Doksan and he asked me what my practice was and I told him. And he said, how long have you been doing this? And I said, oh about five or six years, and he said, you've been counting your breath for five or six years? Aren't you bored to death? And I said, well, yes, as a matter of fact, I am. That's probably what happened. We all got very bored. Well, I began to notice that I could count all ten and never even think about it. I never miscounted, and I wasn't present either. So I decided it wasn't that useful. You were impressing with what? With the breath. With anything. I was, you know... It was mechanical. Maybe you were impressing with the breath. It was mechanical. No, I wasn't.

[75:21]

I was thinking about other stuff along with it. Oh, well, sure. Did he say anything more? Well, he asked me if I wanted to do koan study. That's what he said. What did you study, Fran? He can't speak. Well, I tried it, but I was not really in a position to do it seriously at that time. So, I really kind of... He sort of encouraged me to do Shikantaza, because I wasn't in a position to study it more seriously. I wonder how these Tibetans, the people who do the prostrations up to 100,000. 100,000. How many people try? They do it with the beads. They do them in groups of 108. You still have to keep track? Well, you have a chart on the wall. I have a neighbor who did that. Oh, yeah. They write it down, but they do them in groups of 108 with a set of beads, and they have a certain number that they do every day. So it takes a certain number of days, a certain number every day.

[76:23]

This guy was a very interesting guy. He's a firefighter, and he's sort of like And he got it all the way in four months. He did it ten hours a day, seven days a week, and he just ran right through it. I wonder what happened to his knees. Well, he was sort of a tough guy. Yeah, he must have been. He was a firefighter, and he had sort of an elevated board, so he didn't have to go all the way down. This is like the Japanese monks that have the board across their lap so that they have a place to rest their mudra and they have a little heater under there too. Next week we're going to talk about prajna and Meili has Xeroxed some poetry for us, this is Wallace Stevens, to help sort of prime the pump.

[77:42]

So we invite you to bring your offerings of any bits of transcendent wisdom you may have lying about the house, or any that you may have lying around your head that you may want to And if you have time to copy them out or would like to copy them out for everyone, that would be lovely. If you need help with that, you could call me or call Ross. But if you would like to bring something to share next week, that would be great. We'll talk about Prajna. And I think that we'll talk a bit more about the Bodhisattva ideal and the Bodhisattva way and the purpose of practice.

[78:47]

And if it's okay with everybody, I'd kind of like to end with an informal Bodhisattva ceremony to sort of bring us together in that commitment. Maybe we have to go in the same room and do it, but maybe do it.

[79:07]

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