So, we've been studying Dogen's Zazen-Gi, this short, pithy fascicle, which on the surface seems very simple, but actually it's a great mine of practice information. it's everything about practice, even though they're very short and simple. And so when we come to the end, to again sense an effect, we don't do, zazen is not the practice of learning concentration. And so we wonder, what does that mean?

[01:11]

Because isn't that what Buddhist practice is about? Well, concentration is a very important aspect of practice, but in Suzuki Roshi, he used to talk about not doing stepladder practice. First you accomplish this part, and then next you do that part, which is the way you do in school. You go to the first grade, then the second grade, and the third grade. Or you study this first, which leads to studying that, which leads to studying this, which is a step-letter practice. So Suzuki Roshi says, our practice is not stepladder practice. So learning concentration is what Dogen means by, stepladder practice is what Dogen means by learning concentration.

[02:22]

There are a specific, as you may know very well, a number of concentration practices, which are called the jhanas. specifically. So, I want to explain Suzuki Roshi's understanding of concentration practices, which are the eight jhanas. If you heard Jen Nathier's talk on Saturday, she talked a little bit about that. She said there are the eight jhanas of the which you practice, and then you come around and start practicing the first two levels of four practices. The four jhanas in the realm of form, and the four jhanas in the realm of formlessness.

[03:33]

seemed to be something that people practiced. But actually, she says, they're just a formula. People didn't actually practice them in that way, as one step at a time. But they contain all the practices of Zazen, but not in a step ladder way, not in an accomplishment way. So around 1970, Suzuki Roshi gave some lectures on the echo. Echo is the dedication in our chanting, right? We dedicate to merit of the subject, that's the echo. E-K-O. means dedication of merit, basically.

[04:43]

You dedicate the merit of this chanting to the, right? And so one of the chants that we do, which was eliminated from the San Francisco, when Richard Baker became it, but he eliminated that one from the repertoire, the long echo that we do for the Arhats. Maybe all the Arhats have been with us in our effort, He and I translated that together. David Chadwick translated, or not translated, but helped Sudipta Goswami translate some of his explanations for the echo, his echo talks. So he gave a series of talks on the echo, what the chanting means for, maybe the chanting And in that explanation he talks about our attitude toward the jhanas, and how we respect the arhats' practice, because we do the practice of the arhats.

[06:00]

He used to say, our practice is yin yana practice. with the Mahayana attitude or mind. So, I'm going to comment on his explanations. So, that chant that we do for the arhats, which is the longest one, We do it for various chants, but we used to chant this every day.

[07:03]

He talks about how they do this in Japan a bit. the buildings, the various buildings in the monastery and what they're used for. And then he gets around to talking about So he says the second service and the second chanting is for the arhats. Anybody know what arhats is? Somebody doesn't know? The arhats are Buddha's disciples in his time who were his enlightened disciples.

[08:12]

There are 16 outstanding disciples of the Buddha, Mahakasyapa, Sharanputra, and those. They number among Moggallana and so forth. They're part of the group of 16, and then there is another group of 500. arhats that are mentioned. You know, if you go to Japan, if you go to China, or Japan, they have, in some monasteries, they have an arhats room, and they have 500 arhats, and each one has a different And you just walk through and you just want to look at all these, you know, fingers.

[09:30]

They're great. They're really great. So, the Arhats were Buddhist disciples, but they're considered inferior to the Bodhisattvas. One reason why they're considered inferior is because I don't want to get into talking about which is better, which is worse. For Soto Zen, our hearts have a very high place, and Suzuki Roshi talks about that. The original practitioners, the original

[10:39]

You could also say that the Arhats are the Bodhisattvas. You could say that. You can say anything you want. It's all mythology anyway. It is. So we appreciate it because it's mythology. But the mythology has some meaning. So the Zendo, no, no, no. He says, the second service of chanting is for the arhats. chant for Hinayana arhats. So why do we chant for our Hinayana arhats? But we strictly observe chanting for arhats who are called Hinayana Buddhists.

[11:45]

Hinayana, of course, means small vehicle. Mahayana, maha is great, the great vehicle, and the hina, or small vehicle. When Mahayana Buddhists arrived, they denounced the Theravadan Buddhists because the Theravadan Buddhists or Hinayana Buddhists' practice was just for themselves and not for others. It's for their own salvation. Mahayana Buddhists' practice is for themselves and for others as well. But this is a kind of discrimination which we should not have as a Buddhist. I think in Minzak 2, we recite a sutra for the arhats, who are direct disciples of Buddha. There are many arhats. We count at least 16, and we find many of Buddha's disciples, which include the ten famous Buddhas, outstanding Buddhas, and their disciples.

[12:48]

So he says, Mahayana Buddhist practice is for themselves and for others too. But this is the kind of discrimination which we should not have as a Buddhist. So, you know, we say, what is your practice? Do you practice for yourself, or do you practice for others? So, for ourself is self-centered practice. Practice for others is other-centered practice. But it's still self-centered, because I'm doing something for you. A true practice is practicing just for the sake of practice. That's middle way, non-dual way. Middle way means non-dual way. So, when we take care of the practice, when we totally are involved in practice, then I receive the benefit and you receive the benefit.

[13:54]

So there are various kinds of Buddha's disciples. There was a disciple who was very forgetful, maybe like me. He couldn't remember a single word even. So Buddha didn't know what to do with him. So Buddha taught him to sweep the garden, and he always swept the garden. At the time he was sweeping the garden, he was sweeping his mind. He practiced his way so sincerely that at last He attained arhatship by sweeping the garden. This is actually how we practice. Yes. But it would be a good question. How do you hear he attained arhatship in the context of what you just said? Yeah. He became one with his activity. Totally one with his activity. Why is that not complete bodhisattva practice? You didn't say it wasn't. He became an Arhat. He went and said it wasn't Bodhisattva precepts or it was Bodhisattva precepts.

[15:12]

I don't know why. It's a question. Not making a division, it's just talking about what happened at the time. I'm confused about speaking of Arhats not being different than the Mahayana. Okay, look, just be patient. So Buddha taught him to sweep the garden, and he always swept the garden. At the time he was sweeping the garden, he was sweeping his mind. He practiced his way so sincerely that at last he attained arhatship by sweeping the garden. He is very famous. Good Buddhists put emphasis on actual attainment, not on wisdom, and not wisdom acquired by intellectual understanding of the teaching. This is important. You know, in Zen we say practice beyond the sutras and so forth.

[16:18]

We always put emphasis on practice rather than attainment. We always put emphasis on practice rather than attainment, which doesn't mean Practice itself is attainment, but we don't realize our attainment. Anyway, so the practice for arhats, or practice of Theravada Buddhism, or something we call Hinayana practice, anyway, it's just a term that's used, is, as you know, the practice of the four stages of meditation. So those are the jhanas. Most teachers who come from the southern countries or from Tibet talk about the four stages of practice which we will attain by our meditation. For Zen students, it is important to know the four stages of zazen, the four jhanas.

[17:25]

He's talking about the four, but the four stages in the realm of form. The first stage is the practice with many desires. Ignorance or the cause of ignorance. We count maybe four or five. One is ignorance. Ignorance has a very deep sense. Because of ignorance, we appeared in this world. It is more than ignorance in its intellectual sense. Another is greed. Those are two of the important ones. And anger is another. In the first stage, we shouldn't have drowsiness. When you're sleepy, even though you're sitting, you're not actually sitting. So drowsiness is the enemy of practice, and anger is also the enemy of practice. If you are angry, you can't sit. When you start to sit, you are not angry anymore.

[18:27]

But as long as you're sitting, you have no anger. really sedate anymore than sleep. You know, there is, he's talking about it in a very strict way, but actually, even though you're sedate, there's some anger, or maybe drowsiness. But anyway, that's splitting hairs. So, but as long as you're sedate, you have no anger. You will have some desires, but these desires will be controlled, and you can sit pretty well. And when you sit, your mind becomes clear, and you can think in the first stage. So the first stage, you still have desires, but your mind is clear. And when he says think, he means intentional thinking, not just having thoughts come through your mind.

[19:31]

It's still possible to, you know, that's the first stage. It's like kind of a beginner's stage. You sit down, and you still have all this stuff going on. I mean, beginner's stage doesn't mean I'm a beginner. Beginner. But every time you sit, you're a beginner, right? You're always a beginner, every time you sit down there. So this is a beginner's stage. And sometimes, you know, we sit down and don't have anything. to bother us. So in the first stage, you will have a clear thinking mind, and you will have some control of the various desires, and you will have no longer any drowsiness. So that's the first stage of the jhanas. In the second stage, you don't think. When it means don't think, it means volitionally. This is the second stage. You have emotional desires, but you don't think.

[20:32]

In the third stage, you don't have emotional problems. Emotionally, you're calm in the third stage, and you have the joy of no emotional problems. In the fourth stage, you do not even have the joy of calming down or conquering your emotional difficulties. You have no joy And there you will attain arhatship. In other words, you're totally free of joy and suffering. You're free of everything, basically. You're free of thinking, you're free of emotional problems, and you have perfect calmness And you don't need to do anything.

[21:38]

So can you go back? Do what? Good morning. One, two, three, four. Can you reiterate this four? Oh, OK. Well, I would like to finish it. So in the last stage, the fourth stage, you do not even have the joy of calming down. or conquer your emotional difficulties, you have no joy of anything. That is the fourth stage, and there you will attain arhatship. At the fourth stage, you have nothing to attain, or nothing to study. This is the highest stage. But later, they added one more stage. But in actual practice, there are four stages in the form world. And over the form world, we have the no form. So the first stage is the practice with many desires.

[22:57]

Ignorance, or the cause of ignorance. We count maybe four or five. One is ignorance, and ignorance has a very deep sense. Because of ignorance, we appear to this world. It is more than ignorance in its intellectual sense. It's more of a deep ignorance. Another is greed. So these are the important ones. And anger is another. We shouldn't have drowsiness. When you were sleepy, even though you were sitting, you were not actually sitting. So drowsiness is the enemy of practice, and anger is also the enemy of practice. So if you are angry, you can't sit. Then when you start to sit, you are not angry anymore. But as long as you are sitting and have no anger, you will have some desire And when you sit, your mind becomes clear, and you can think in the first stage.

[24:02]

So this is kind of like when we carry all of our stuff, and then we sit down. And it's still all there, you know. So in terms of Xing, the first day is, you know, all the stuff is from outside, it's still going on. And little by little, we enter into various other stages, but not in a sequential way. In the second stage, you don't think. You stop thinking about things. And that is the second stage. And you have emotional desires, but you don't think. In the third stage, you don't have emotional problems. Emotionally, you are calm in the third stage, and you have the joy of no emotional problems. In the last stage, which is the fourth stage, you do not even have the joy of calming down or conquering your emotional difficulties.

[25:13]

You have no joy of anything. That is the fourth stage, and there you will attain arhatship. At the fourth stage, you have nothing to attain or nothing to study. And this is the highest stage. But later, they added one more stage. But in actual practice, there are four stages in the form world. And over the form world, we have no form world. So when Buddha, they say that Buddha went through the eight jhanas when he was on his deathbed. He went through the eight jhanas and came back around to the first four. And then that's where he left off. So, I'm assuming that greed, hate and delusion have been purified, for lack of a better word. And the second stage is about being aware of emotions.

[26:18]

I think that most emotions that arise are connected to greed, hate and delusion. Unless you're talking about just basic human emotions, like sadness, like greed. But to purify those would mean that we would be inhuman. Could you explain that? Yeah. You're no longer human. You are not attached to anything. It's basically not attachment. So it's not attachment to grief. It's not attachment to... Yes, it's not attachment to grief. to all the things that we are endeared with because of our emotions. But it's not to say that they won't still arise. Sometimes Theravadan practitioners have a sense of dispassion about them. It's really very sweet.

[27:21]

But we can reify that, because I always want to feel in response to suffering, but I don't want to quantify it. Because these are formulas. And if we get attached to the formula, then we think, well, we should never have any emotion. That's not it. So it's pointing at attitude, not about, this is what actually happens. Right? That's why the jhanas are in are in Zazen, but we don't, there's not the first and the second in sequence, it's just that you see how all of these arise when you're sitting, they just arise.

[28:26]

And anyway, I don't know I was going to say that one easy way to understand the jhanas is that the further you go up the ladder, it's actually the more you're taking away from the process. So in the first, the entrance samadhi is equanimity, joy, rapture, tranquility. And in the second stage, you drop the tranquility. And in the third stage, you drop the rapture. In the fourth stage, you drop the joy. You're just left with bare equanimity. That's my understanding. And also, to your point, and this is just the difference between Theravada and Mahayana, to your point, original Buddhism was meant to be a turning away from your humanity. I mean, it really was meant to be an extinguishment of human desire.

[29:32]

And the arhat is kind of like it's on another realm. Right, so Suzuki Roshi is expressing it in his own way. from his memory rather than from, or his understanding rather than from the formula. When we hear passionless, there's a response or reaction that, because we're very invested, I'm invested in my passion because that makes me feel alive, but I think in order There's a cloud in between yourself and this thing that you're responding to, but naturally what arises are this feeling of empathy and connection and wanting to save beings, but this practice or hitting on a mind is

[30:35]

that typically filters our relationship, to be clear. Well, I think you have to remember that the meaning of the word passion is suffering. So to be passionless means not to suffer. But we use that word to mean with emotional vigor. So that's very interesting because in Buddhist Dharma, emotional vigor is the cause of suffering. Emotional attachment is the cause of suffering. So passion kind of has this double meaning. But basically it means to have at least suffering. What about joyful? Well, in the case of the arhat, you know, in that jhana, it means you're not creating an emotional situation which is

[31:57]

So, joy is the opposite of sadness or whatever, right? So, actually it means not getting caught in duality. That's basically what it means. Not getting caught in some... because we love joy, we want joy, but it's called separation. But the way you've always described joyful is, you know, in the midst of difficulty, we can still have a clear place where we're joyful. Yes, but I'm not in Narhat. I've expressed it, you know, underneath is the joy of not... It's the joy which is beyond joy and sadness. That's the difference between Mahayana and so-called Vinayana. One difference is Mahayana always expresses the non-duality.

[33:17]

And the Heart Sutra, the meaning of the Heart Sutra, one of the meanings is the criticism or Shariputra asks the Buddha to explain the Heart Sutra, right? Or Shariputra, and then Buddha asks Shariputra, I mean, yeah, to explain it to him. Avalokiteshvara. Avalokiteshvara to explain it to Shariputra. And so Avalokiteshvara says, well, Shariputra, in order to understand this, you have to realize that form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. The essence and the function are not two things. Because the Hinayana way is to separate, to retreat from the world so that you'll never have to come back.

[34:29]

So that separating, and then you enter nirvana by leaving samsara. That's duality. You leave samsara. in order to attain nirvana. That's why the arhat is a skinny guy, you know, who doesn't eat very much, and they don't have anything to do with the world. But Mahayana way is, samsara is nirvana. Nirvana is only found within samsara. See, that's radically different. That's what the Heart Sutra is telling us. It's within. Nirvana is only to be found within samsara. It's a jewel, it's only to be found in a haystack or in a pile of shit, like a lotus in muddy water. First of all, I was just remembering visiting in Bangladesh. description of it.

[35:55]

That's the way I understand the description of the genres in a sort of technical way. But my understanding also is, and I think this works with what Suzuki Roshi is getting at, what you're getting at, is these were not designated They just, you know, they were descriptions of states. And then later, at the time of Buddha, Buddha Gosa, who wrote The Path to Purification, which is very sort of compendium of meditation techniques, they were turned into practices. And that has become what we've called, not early Buddhism, or Buddhist Buddhism, but Theravada Buddhism is part of the Theravada orthodoxy. So it took a description. and turn it into a method. And we don't necessarily have to take that as authentic or the last word.

[37:03]

There's a big debate within Theravada circles even now about whether to teach this as a meditation method or whether to just discuss it as a framework for the observation of one's experience. I remember a few years ago, in one of those Buddhist magazines, there was a guy who was vociferously telling everybody that there was no Buddhism except for the jhanas, and we should all practice Actually, originally they're not Buddhist practices, but a lot of things were taken up by the Buddhists that were not really Buddhist practices.

[38:11]

I think that's correct. He says, the first stage in the no-form, or the formless world, consists of meditation in which we experience nothingness of outward objects, or emptiness of all outward objects. And the next stage is the nothingness within ourselves. Even though you experience emptiness of outward objects, you have some idea of outward objects. Emptiness of outward objects. So your mind is directed to outer objects. But in the next stage, your mind will be directed inward, like a transparent jewel shining of itself. I like that. That is the second stage. And in the third stage, we have no idea of anything, which is inside or outside. And in the fourth stage, we don't have any idea of something or nothing.

[39:18]

That's neither something nor nothing. form for formlessness. And it creates the formless practices and form practices and formless practices. But we don't make that distinction because form is formlessness and formlessness is form. So we have no idea of nothingness even, there's less. So we count eight. The first to the fourth stage is the form world, and adding to them the four stages of the no-form world, in the last stage we can see the characteristic of Buddhism. Neither is nor isn't.

[40:20]

According to the ordinary meditation, including Buddhist meditation, those who meditate in the first stage will be born in the first deva heaven. And when you practice the second stage, you will appear in the second heaven. There are many heavens in Buddhism. There's a whole hierarchy of heavens and hells. But the problem is these stages are all creating karma. Desire, desirelessness. Still desire. And when you practice the second stage, you will appear in the second heaven. In this way, we have respectively four heavens. But someone who appears in heaven, according to Buddhism, should disappear from heaven, too. Because you can't stay anywhere.

[41:21]

Nothing stays anywhere. Something which appears should disappear. There's nothing which doesn't disappear. So even if we appear in heaven, You should disappear from heaven. That is karma. You have karma. You create karma to go to heaven. And as long as you have karma to go to heaven, that karma will continue and you will eventually go down to the bottom of hell. So as long as your practice depends on karmic activity or karmic practice, that practice is not Buddhist practice, because that practice is involved with karmic activity. So Buddhist practice should go beyond karmic activity. That's why we practice shikantaza, which does not expect any result from our practice.

[42:26]

That's it. When we sit in zazen, in shikantasa, there's no karma being created because we're not wanting anything from it. There's no expectation and no desire for anything except just to be present, totally awake and alive. So just to sit, to sit to resume our true nature is our practice. without trying to attain something and without being involved in karmic activity. That is Buddhist practice. Various teachers so far from the southern countries in Tibet emphasize this point. Our practice should start from nothing and end in nothing. That is our practice. We go from zero to zero. Although every day we go from zero into karmic practice.

[43:29]

How to practice is to, even though we are entering the karmic realm, to always be at zero within the karmic realm, within all of your activity, to be free from your activity, without creating selfish or self-centered problems called karmic problems. Can't. Is it possible to look at the eight stages that he's described as being the states that we pass through during day-to-day zazen? Yeah, that's what I said. This is not a... It's not a formula, but... It's not a state that somebody else attains. It's an actual reflection of our experience. Yes, that's right. It's not an attainment. They're not stages for us, they're not stages of attainment, they're simply places where we find ourselves.

[44:39]

Because there's no, for our practice, there's no special state of mind in Zazen. Every state of mind is the mind that we're experiencing at this moment. Compassion has two words and two meanings. Yeah, and how in Theravada or maybe Kiyosaki you want to just get past it and get rid of it, and in Mahayana you want to not be attached to it, but on the same semantic idea, compassion. I thought Buddhism was about compassion from the very beginning. where we don't get rid of passion. You know, even though passion means suffering, right?

[45:44]

You can't really get rid of it. Well, that's our version, but he was saying originally in Theravada, you were getting rid of passion. Yes. You know, they call nirvana the cool state, right? You put out the fire, right? But for a reality, rather than just thinking about ideal. What we're always talking about is adjusting and balancing passion so that passion works for everybody instead of working just for yourself and creating karma. So passion, in the sense of strong desire, doesn't have to be Self-centered. So you make anger, you allow anger to work for the benefit of beings.

[46:44]

You can't, I'll never be angry, or I'll never be, various, I've cut off all my emotions. That's cutting yourself off, right? So you have to be able to use those passions, use your, what we call our human ingredients, to awake everybody, I'm still talking to this guy, for the benefit of others, or for the benefit of the practice. So this is the difference between so-called Hinayana. I don't say Theravada is not right. Hinayana means self-practice. That's all. It could be Mahayana Buddhists that are Hinayana practitioners, and Theravada practitioners can be Mahayana.

[47:48]

So those terms are not quite correct. But the Hinayana attitude is to cut off. Mahayana attitude is how to use rather than to cut off. Because when you cut off a part of yourself, it's debilitating. I was going to maybe offer, I don't know, this might be buddying things more, but I was going to offer, perhaps it's kind of like a trade-off, where like on the one hand, if you get rid of passion, you end suffering. but then you can't really help anybody. On the other hand, you can keep passion, and you can help people, but you're still going to be creating karma, and you don't get rid of suffering. So it's like, do you want to suffer and not help people, or do you want to help people and still suffer? It's kind of like... Yeah, well, we choose to suffer while we're helping people. You have to step into the realm of suffering. But I think that's kind of like the basic dilemma between... Well, yeah, it's the basic... That's right, it's the basic thing, but...

[48:53]

When we cut ourselves off, we're also cutting off our humanity. Because we think that we're separate, when our realization is that we're not separate. So when I kill somebody, it means I'm killing myself. So the Bodhisattva enters the world of suffering and is subject to getting caught by it. But we take that. That's our nobility, is allowing ourselves to be caught in the world of suffering and suffer people, not eliminate my suffering from yours. I guess I just want to say that although this is not my path or my practice, it does seem like a pretty legitimate spiritual standpoint to say that I don't want to create any more karma for anybody and I want to remove myself from the situation, including my humanity. I mean, I feel like that seems like a very valid spiritual standpoint, even though that's not a path that I particularly want to take.

[50:00]

With passion, yeah. Compassion is to suffer, to suffer with others. To suffer with, that's compassion. You were just getting to the good part. Yeah, I know, I was just getting to the good part. Save your questions for tomorrow. It didn't work out very well.

[51:33]

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