So I'm open to whatever you want to talk about. Any suggestions? Yeah. We were just talking about reading with us. That's really the only thing that you really can trust in, that anybody can trust. We don't have anything else to trust in learning that our own What do you mean trust? What do you mean by perfect faith? Say to be sure that you can take another step. What do you mean be sure you can take another step forward? Although you don't have an experience of what it might be, or you don't know of what the ground will be, but you feel it's right, so you go forward or go action without any security, which tells you that it's safe.

[01:17]

Well, then I ask, why do you need feelings? If you have no security, why would you even need the security of feelings? Because feelings are not... We don't have a logic for our feelings. I think feelings have a logic. Yeah, I think so too, but our mind can't click. No, it's not. Well, we can't grasp it, what do you call it, without thinking. Thinking has a logic, and feeling has a logic, but thinking can't grasp the logic of feeling. Thinking can't grasp the logic of feeling. I don't think so. It's a different logic. So we are actually doing something which, what we can't tell, what we are doing. We cannot tell what we're doing.

[02:24]

You say, right. So is it right to say that the only thing we can trust in are our people? Well, when I asked you what trust... Or is it the awareness of a certain... composition of our human. Is that mind state or mind state that lets us tell that it's okay, although there's no reason for anything you can grasp on that will tell you it's okay? I don't think that something can tell you that it's okay.

[03:27]

I think you can only be told that it's not okay. But okay, I think you could say okay if you look very superficially at something, you could say okay. But I think if you look deeply, you can't really say okay. I mean, you can say okay, but it's not really okay. I think that what you said before, going forward without knowing and not have an okay there. I think the okay is like... It's not really okay. Okay is like something you stand on to take a step. But you could also stand on anything else that you want to step forth from. But to say it's okay, I think more it's kind of like, well, let's try an experiment now. Let's take this step and see what happens. I think it would be helpful.

[04:31]

I hope it's helpful. I want it to be helpful. Let's take a step. That kind of approach seems to be, if you took that approach, then I would say, well, you're putting your life into that approach, so you have faith in that approach, which I wish we just described, or going for it without having a fixed idea. That's what's called having faith in the teaching of producing a thought that has no support. That you trust that way means you live that way. That's actually the summary of all the fields. That's the summary? The summary of all the fields. What's the summary? It's the okay. The okay is the summary? I mean a whole party.

[05:54]

Do you want to have a topic? Do you want to have a topic? I was interested in continuing with the power of power. Which one do you want to talk about? One meaning of the word samadhi is that Again, the definition of the word samadhi is sometimes said to be mental one-pointedness. So one kind of samadhi is the kind of samadhi which every state of consciousness is imbued with. In other words, all states of consciousness have one-pointedness. The second kind of samadhi is a kind of practice where you cultivate the awareness

[06:56]

or the appreciation of this one-pointedness of mind. It's kind of like an exercise. Various concentration exercises to get a feeling for how the mind is always peaceful and one-pointed. Another kind of samadhi is a samadhi where you kind of absorb yourself into a topic. Like, for example, there's millions and trillions of samadhis. So here's some famous ones. There's what's called the three doors of liberation. which are called the signless, the wishless, and the empty. These three doors to liberation.

[08:01]

But they're also sometimes called the concentration on the signless, or the absorption in the signless, the absorption in the wishless, and the absorption in the empty. What is it called? Shunya samadhi. apranihitta samadhi and animita samadhi. Emptiness, empty samadhi, absorption in emptiness, absorption in wishlessness, and absorption in signlessness. Those are three samadhis. So you take the topic of emptiness and you absorb yourself in emptiness of things. Or wishlessness means you absorb yourself in not wishing for something other than this. Of course, your intention, your intention,

[09:05]

human dualistic intention is you want to become free and happy. You want to be free and happy. And in order to be free, in order to be liberated, you absorb yourself in the emptiness of things. Or you absorb yourself in the state of not wishing for something other than this. Or you absorb yourself in the fact that things don't have signs, actually. Characteristics. Or what we were just saying before, you absorb yourself in the path which has no signs. Like that poem, accomplishing the work of great peace has no signs. You absorb yourself in a signless path of goodness, for example. You absorb yourself in that topic. Another samadhi is called The samadhi of, I just mentioned before, the samadhi of the oneness of all life.

[10:15]

Or you absorb yourself in the uniform quality of all life. So like you've been living now for a while and you're alive right now. What is the uniform quality of your life? And you find, look for that uniform quality, or the quality of uniformity in your life. Absorb yourself in that. That was the early definition of zazen. Another samadhi is what's called the self-enjoyment samadhi. You enjoy... You enjoy the working of yourself. It's kind of like sometimes described as like a vigorously swift, like a spinning top. It's just sort of sitting there, but it's very energetically spinning on itself.

[11:19]

Like that. You absorb yourself into the spinning of your life, or the activity of your life. Another image of it is it's like a vigorously jumping fish. Kind of like, or it's like Rumpelstiltskin. You know Rumpelstiltskin? Do you know Rumpelstiltskin? Me, son, do you know Rumpelstiltskin? Do you know Rumpelstiltskin? It's a European fairy tale. It's about Rumpelstiltskin. Well, it's about this guy who helped this girl out. And after he helped her out, He said, I'll help you out if you give me your first child. And she said, okay, anything, just help me. And after her child was born, she said, I don't want to give you my child. And he said, you said you would, you have to give me your child.

[12:27]

She said, please, I don't want to give you my child, but I want to keep my child. And you have to give it to me, you promised you have to give it to me. She said, but I don't want to. Please, please let me keep my child. He said, well, okay, okay. You can guess my name, I'll give you the child. So because he helped her out, he saved her life. Plus, as a result of what he helped her do, she became the queen of the kingdom. And so she had all the people in the empire trying to find out names that might be his name. So he came back to visit and she read all these names. No, it's not my name. That's not my name. So anyway, then he came back. She said, give me another chance. He came back again. She read all of his names. No. So give me one more chance. So then she snuck out one night. to where he lived and listened to him while he was by his campfire. And he was dancing around his campfire saying some kind of magical stuff like, she'll never guess my name is Rumpelstiltskin.

[13:33]

So the next day he came to visit her and she said, is your name gobbledygook? He said, no. We have one more guess. He says, could your name possibly be Rumpelstiltskin? He said, a demon told you. He jumped up and down and jumped up and down until he went right through the floor of the earth, disappeared into the ground. That's like self-enjoyment samadhi. Until... Until you die? Until there's no more you. You die, yeah, until you die. And then you get to be reborn as the princess's baby. Male or female, it doesn't matter. Because when you die, you don't get to say, I'm dying, but I also can specify what my next sex will be.

[14:41]

Any time to spin the gold? He taught her to spin straw into gold. Her dad told the king that she could spin straw into gold. That's how she got to be queen. That's how she got to be queen. I recently wrote a paper for somebody about Shakespeare and Wittgenstein and how they related to my life. And I mentioned this idea to somebody, and he asked me to write this paper, and I agreed to write it. But then after I wrote it, I realized I didn't know how to write it. And so finally I wrote him a letter saying, I think I've agreed. I'm like the miller who told the king that his daughter could spin a straw into gold. But I'm also like the daughter sitting in the room with a room full of straw crying all night. And I've been crying for five years.

[15:46]

And finally I'm ready to write the paper. So I just wrote the paper before I went to England and took it to England to this guy who's been waiting for five years for his paper. He wants me to publish it, but anyway, I made the Rumpelstiltskins inside me. So it's worked out alright. Anyway, it's like that. That's another kind of samadhi. And then there's one more kind of samadhi. What is it I thought of? Ocean seal samadhi? Right. And then there's the ocean seal samadhi is when you're swimming on the top of the ocean, you know, on the surface of the ocean. your feet touch the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean at the same time. That's the samadhi that seals the ocean. So you're on the surface of your life, swimming along up here in the superficial, illusory, fantasy, feeling realm.

[16:58]

At the same time, your feet down at the bottom of the ocean in complete stillness. Is it Mahamudra? No, literally it's called the sarangama, a sarangama mudra samadhi. Mahamudra is very similar. Mahamudra is like this Samadhi, this fortune seal Samadhi. It's like the self-enjoyment Samadhi. And it's also like what we call the jewel mirror Samadhi, which we chant in the morning. You know that one? It's another Samadhi. So if you absorb yourself in the state that's described in that Samadhi, what's that like? It's like you absorb yourself in you are not it, it actually is you. Absorb yourself in that state or that way.

[18:00]

That's another way of saying signless or wishless, right? Same thing. Or it's like facing a dual mirror. You are not it. It actually is you. Or it's like a massive fire. Turning away and touching are both wrong. So you absorb yourself in relationship to something that you definitely wouldn't want to get too far away from because you'll freeze. But if you get too close, you'll burn. In other words, you don't want to identify with it and say, this is me or this is mine or it's me. At the same time, if you get too far from it, you wouldn't want to do that. That would be terrible. So you've got to have some kind of relationship with it where you stay close to it but don't do anything. That's called the Jewel Mirror Samadhi. So these are samadhis where you absorb yourself in different kinds of teachings.

[19:06]

So these are all the different kinds of samadhis, different meanings of the word samadhi. And so you practice all these samadhis. One, two, three, four, five, six, one hundred, one thousand, one billion samadhis you practice. You get skillful at practicing samadhis. And all these samadhis, of course, have the quality of relative degrees of composure, of tranquility. Which we could talk about how they might vary in terms of how basically the more universal the samadhi, the more tranquil it is. The more limited, the more easily it can be disturbed. But you can have, anyway, there's a whole range of kinds of samadhis. The perfection of samadhi, the samadhi paramita, is that no matter what samadhi you're practicing, these fabulous samadhis and these not-so-fabulous samadhis and these super-fabulous samadhis, no matter how great they are, no matter how blissful they are, you give them up.

[20:28]

So the perfection of samadhi is when you just throw away your samadhis and be an ordinary guy like Tim. Did you have a question, Tim? Yeah, I was wondering, I have a copy of a song of the Bright Mirror Samadhi. Bright Mirror Samadhi? How does it go? Where do you have it? I wouldn't mind. Would you? Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. We'll see when you get back what school it is. Okay? Now, is he Rinzai or Soto, that guy? Soto. Soto. Hermann says you're Soto.

[21:32]

Who's going to leave next? Okay. Yes? Well, you spoke of the Transpolite thing. Yes. Yes. Isn't there also an energizing quality to come in collision with these things? Did you want to answer that question? No, I wanted to just get my hand in the air so that when he's finished, I... Yeah, it's like a spinning top, you know? But if you touch the top, it can fly off. It's like a supercharged So you touch it, it says, hello. You rub it and it says, ooh, ooh, nice. It's alive.

[22:35]

It's really alive. It's so alive that whatever you do to it, it's alive. Samadhi is to absorb yourself into aliveness. so alive that you don't have to move a muscle. Like that story I told, you know, that's the coming story about the elephant who sat and did nothing all day, you know that one? You don't? You know it? How many people have heard this story before? Only two? Oh my gosh. Do you mind if I tell it again? That's okay. I think there's more people. You've said it. I've said it. Only two people have heard this story before? About the elephant and the butterfly? Well, I'll tell you, this is a short version, okay? Unless you want me to go to my house and get the one. Or you could go get it. But you wanted to hear about this.

[23:38]

But you could read it in the dark. With a flashlight, of course. Anyway, so there's this elephant who lives up in a little house. I think it was a little house up on top of a hill that had this windy, curly road going down from the house, which also went up to the house. And along the curly road were all these cute trees. And these trees could talk. but I'm not going to tell all the things they said. At the bottom of the hill was another little house, and in that house lived a butterfly. And one day the butterfly thought, I wonder who lives at the top of that curly road in that house up there. I think I'll go visit. So the butterfly went up the curly road to the house, and went up to the house, and... and knocked on the door with his wings, you know, softly.

[24:45]

Knock, knock. And the elephant inside, who wasn't doing anything all day, was sitting there kind of like, he heard the knock, knock, and he thought, oh my God, somebody's coming to visit me. And he was so excited that he couldn't move or speak anymore. This is the way it is, okay? You're just sitting there, not doing anything all the day. But when somebody knocks on your door, it's kind of like you're paralyzed with joy. Finally, somebody's coming to visit me. I wonder what they're going to do. What's going to happen now? This is not dead. This is not dead tranquility. This is... Then the butterfly knocks the game a little bit more loudly. Knock, knock, is anybody in there? But still the elephant is so excited and so happy it can't say anything.

[25:48]

And then the butterfly kind of really whacks at one, you know, wham, wham. And loudly says, is anybody in there? And finally the elephant said, Yes, I am. And the butterfly pushed the door open with his wing and went inside and said, Who are you? And he said, I'm the elephant that does nothing all day. I said, Oh, I was wondering who lived here. That's great. And they had a little chat. After they were chatting for a while, then finally the butterfly said to the elephant, Do you love me a little? And the elephant said, No. I love you a lot. And I think the butterfly said, oh, good. And so anyway, they had a very nice visit. And then at a certain point, the butterflies decided to go down home, and they agreed to see each other on a regular basis.

[26:53]

And they all thought we were going to go down and visit the butterfly sometime. And the trees had wonderful things to say, too, but I won't bother you with that right now. And they helped him. And they helped him. So, what? In the drawings of this thing, the butterfly was a fairly big butterfly. Oh, there was something about the elephant put his arm around the butterfly at one point. But it was a pretty big butterfly, so it wasn't like, you know, it's a little tiny. Well, a butterfly was about, you know, like, maybe it was wingspan or about eight feet. If the elephant was a full-size elephant, they're about the same size. But anyway, everything worked out quite well. And that's right. So this tranquility is not a dead tranquility. It's a supercharged... Remember that samadhi follows in conjunction with the practice of patience, where you're really getting into the present, and enthusiasm.

[28:12]

You can't practice, it's not really samadhi if you're not patiently settled with what's happening. And, couldn't find it? Sorry. That's true. You've heard of thoroughgoingness, haven't you? Thoroughgoingness. Thoroughgoingness. Well, it's probably Rinzai anyway, don't worry. It probably was the same thing. I don't know. It was pretty much the same thing. Well, maybe somebody could fax it to you. You want to call? We could have it in a few minutes. Do we have a fax machine here? Probably the same thing, but I don't know.

[29:18]

We'll find out eventually. They might be... But it might just be a different translation of the same text. Because sometimes jewels are kind of bright. Yeah. It's probably in one of those books. So it might be the same one. Anyway, if it isn't, then there's another samadhi called the Bright Mirror Samadhi. There's also the Jewel Ensign Samadhi. There's also the Bright Moon Samadhi. There's also the radiant sun samadhi. There's also the lion's roar samadhi. There's also the crouching tiger samadhi. There's also the elephant walk samadhi. There's also the samadhi where all things come together and dance happily. There's also the samadhi from which all true teachings emerge. There's also the heroic march samadhi.

[30:21]

sarangama samadhi there's also and the ocean seal samadhi is the samadhi from which i think the buddha spoke the originally spoke the avatamsaka sutra and there's the samadhi king of samadhis anyway there's zillions of samadhis each one has wonderful dharma qualities And these other paramitas of giving, ethics, patience, and enthusiasm are operating in these really joyful samadhis. You can practice samadhi with all these things, but your samadhi is not going to be very satisfying if you don't have patience, because you've got to have enough patience to stay in your seat in order to experience the spinning on the seat. So patience is a little... Part of patience sounds like what people think samadhi is.

[31:27]

In other words, just being able to be in the present. But samadhi, although it includes that, samadhi is also in particular emphasizing being very flexible and being able to stay with the present as it's changing. Patience is more your ability to accept the difficulty of the latest rendition of your life and not flinch. Samadhi is more like not flinch from the change and go with the change and stay close to it. And enthusiasm is to keep saying, this is really fun. Whether you believe it or not, this is really fun. Somebody thinks it's fun. Even if you don't think it's fun, somebody's having a ball here. If you could see yourself from a distance, you'd realize how much fun you're having. Look at yourself from the point of view of Buddha. You know, you go into a sashin, you can see sashin sometimes, the people sitting in sashin. You look at the people, they look. beautiful, deceitful, sitting.

[32:28]

Inside, they're thinking various things. You know, like, boy, I'm really distracted, or this is stupid, or who got me to do this? Why did I agree to this? When's it over? When's this period over? When's this moment going to be over? This person next to me stinks. This person next to me smells good. This person next to me is gorgeous. I think I'm going to ask this person on a date. You don't think that way, I know, but some people think that way. So people are thinking various things. Some people are thinking, I'm actually meditating properly. Some people are thinking, I am totally concentrated. Amazing. Some people are thinking, I'm thinking I'm not thinking.

[33:31]

Some people are thinking, I've been paying attention to my breath for 26 minutes. It's terrific. Some people think, I've been calm all day. Some people think, I haven't been angry for four and a half hours. People are thinking many, many things here. But if you look at them, you think, those people are sitting still. It's amazing. Just beautiful. One time, the first time I ever saw people sitting, I used to sit in the Zendo, right? I still do. Anyway, I was sitting in the Zendo. I sat in the Zendo for a couple of years. And one time during Sashin, I left the Zendo to go to the toilet and I was late for the period. So I went in late. And the first time I actually saw people, where I got to actually sit there and look at people sitting, and I just, it was just so, it was like, I felt like I walked into the generator room of the Hoover Dam. You know what I mean? You know what I mean?

[34:40]

It's like those long generators, those long things, you know, they're just sitting there and they're going, Very quietly, you almost can't hear, but just you feel the electricity. These rows of people just sitting there, just going, it was so beautiful. But again, inside they're going, or they're going, cool, unmoving. Self-enjoyment samadhi, dual mirror samadhi, you're not, it's you, all that, everything's going on there, but basically, whatever they think, anyway, anyway, actually, they're just sitting there. They're just sitting there. Exactly, precisely, not one of them being the slightest bit different from what they are. Every person sitting exactly on their seat. Nobody's sitting in anybody else's seat. Perfectly organized seating chart.

[35:41]

Perfect. In other words, nirvana. Nirvana. Okay? Nirvana. But they don't think so. Or they think so. But anyway, whether they think so or don't think so, that's what it is. That's the samadhi. Which I accidentally fell into because I was late from going to the toilet. So I walked in there. I was in a samadhi called nirvana. Samadhi. I didn't do anything, it just, there it was. I didn't do it, the people did it. But I got to watch. And then I went, sat down, thought, whatever I was thinking, I forgot what it was, right after I sat down. Probably I was thinking, oh, this is painful. Let me get out and go to the bathroom again. But the perfection of samadhi is just give that all up. And the better your samadhi, the more difficult it is to give up.

[36:47]

Or I should say, the more blissful, the more you're going to tend to hold on to it. So the perfection of samadhi is to go beyond that bliss. And just when the bell rings, and sometimes, you know, it may happen to you someday, I think maybe it had to stop already. You're sitting there, you're, like Suzukra, she says, I sit there and sometimes I just sit there forever. And now the period never ends. And the bell rings, I get up. Ding, get up. That's the perfection of samadhi. That's going beyond samadhi. Into kinheen. And then get into kinheen sometime. Ding, time to go back to sit. Give up kinheen, go back and sit. This period may not be quite as good as the last one either. Couldn't we just stay in that last period? Yes, you can. That's fine. That's samadhi. The perfection of samadhi is bye-bye. Bye-bye, loneliness.

[37:47]

Hello, sweet caress. What do you want to talk about? Well, you know, samadhi is an intensely personal experience, it seems like, for every individual. And it can have maybe the quality of almost like a personal parlor trick or something. You know, you can have this wonderful thing, but then maybe you experience, you know, the Hoover Dam samadhi. But there it ends, and you... walk down the street and you may be just the same fool as you were before if you were a fool or whatever so my question is is samadhi always wholesome and is samadhi what's the difference between samadhi and wisdom the answer to his question is samadhi also wholesome what's the answer That's one answer.

[38:49]

What's another answer? Is samadhi also always wholesome? No, it's not. Why isn't it always wholesome? What's one reason why it's not always wholesome? That's one reason why it could be not wholesome. But it could even be wholesome and not complete, though. The reason why it's not wholesome is because samadhi is present in every state. Okay, I understand. Any state of consciousness has samadhi in it. So unwholesome states can have a samadhi in them. You can be completely concentrated on trying to hurt somebody. Yes. It's possible. As a matter of fact, when you want to hurt somebody, you are focused on her. You're one pointed about hurting them at that point. Or you're one pointed on that they hurt you, and now you're one pointed on you're angry at them, and then you're one pointed on some aggressive thought. So samadhi is not necessarily associated with wholesome states of consciousness. But all wholesome states of consciousness do have samadhi.

[39:51]

That's also true. Now, if you develop in the state of... If you're in a samadhi of loving-kindness samadhi, that's going to be wholesome. Now, if you get into a loving-kindness samadhi, but then it switches over into... lovingly possessing this delicious whatever it is, then it's not loving-kindness samadhi, it's mucky-ducky samadhi. And you're getting all kind of entangled, and then it's not so healthy anymore. If you've got some of the other samadhis, meditation on... Emptiness is also wholesome, but it actually even goes beyond wholesomeness and sees that wholesomeness is empty. So wholesomeness and unwholesomeness are actually both kind of unwholesome.

[40:53]

So we want to go even beyond wholesomeness and unwholesomeness, but it turns out that in order to go beyond wholesomeness and unwholesomeness, you have to practice wholesomeness. Yeah. In that sense, it would say meditate. You can also meditate on bad things and become bad things. Of course, it's all illusory, but anyway, that's the way the equipment of illusion works. Is calm abiding the gateway to samadhi, or is it the same thing as samadhi?

[42:00]

Calm abiding is an aspect of samadhi practice. It's like the gate of... Can you be less than, you know, concentrated in calm abiding, like not at the nine stages, and still experience Samadhi? Yes. When you're on the first stage of practicing calm abiding, then that's the kind of Samadhi you have. But again, you know, The first stage of calm abiding is placing the mind or resting the mind on some object, okay? So as soon as you think of meditating on your breath, or you could say as soon as you actually pay attention to your breath, that first moment is the first stage of calm abiding, right?

[43:01]

Yeah, but then calm abiding doesn't work either, you know. But are you ready for this? Something's going to happen now. Are you ready? I hope so. So, when you first look at your breath, at that moment, your mind is on the breath. You're resting the mind on the breath. Is there any wavering there? For one moment. And how long do you put your mind on your breath? Yes. At the next moment, then what do you do? It may go off somewhere else. Then that's not putting the mind on the object, is it? No. No comma-biding. No comma-biding. Zero comma-biding. Okay. So, now, I'm going to put the mind back on the object.

[44:07]

Now, that's like the first time you did it, isn't it? just for a moment the first moment of calm abiding is actually perfect right then because you're not wavering at that time which is what I said before the mind is always one-pointed and then he says but then the mind moves off to something else. And you're not practicing common abiding. Right? I wonder what it moves off to. The other thing that it moves off to. The mind becomes one point and then it's common abiding. That's right. This way of talking is also common abiding but different kind of common abiding.

[45:09]

Because this kind of calm abiding, if you meditate on your breath and you switch to something else, you might not say that you got zero calm abiding. You might say, I'm calm abiding on my breath, now I'm calm abiding on a different kind of situation, which is still calm abiding. So that would be the key, wouldn't it? If you could switch from the breath to something else, but be aware of your mind resting on the other thing, then that would become a body too, wouldn't it? What possibly is described in your mind is just not aware of the bleeding. So you're aware of the bleeding. So, leaving means, what does leaving mean? Leaving, you say, the mind is not aware of the mind leaving, but that's just the same as you're not aware of the mind. Because the mind is not actually going anyplace.

[46:11]

The highest stage of calm abiding. Isn't it? I think there's a concentration at calm abiding from the continuity of keeping the mind placed on the habit without any worry. Yes, but it is also possible to think about that a little bit more and realize something else. And that is that there's no such thing as continuity. And really there's always just resting the mind now. But still, the more times you rest the mind now, the more deeply you appreciate that that's what you're always doing. And then you don't need anymore some idea of continuity. As a matter of fact, the less you need the idea of the continuity, the more the calm abiding is setting you up for a realization that there is no continuity.

[47:15]

In other words, there's not something lasting. And also there's not something being destroyed. Because every moment you practice being present has the influence of deepening your sense of your presence. So the practice of calm abiding is part of this, but the stage idea thing, you don't have to think of this in terms of stages or continuity. Although sometimes they describe it that way, it's not necessary to approach it in that way. And so the Zen approach to this same thing is a little different. However, you do need to realize that complete imperturbable composure. We do need to realize that. Why do we need to realize that? Because that's what our mind is really like. And part of our mind is always operating at a level of not having any objects.

[48:22]

And that part of our mind is never disturbed and is always calmly abiding. And it has no idea of any place else to go other than right here. It doesn't, it can't even, this is the unbusy one. It can't figure out how to go someplace. It can't rise, it can't walk, it can't sit, it can't talk. It has five aspects complete, but it can't do anything but just sit there. It has no objects, it's not the least bit disturbed. So in the level of our mind that thinks it can do something, we're kind of trying to unify that level with this level that's not disturbed at all. And the way we do that, one way to do it is this nine-step way of calm abiding. It's pretty good. Another way is, if you just don't have any objects at the level of mind that's busy, you immediately achieve calm abiding perfectly right at that time. As soon as there's no objects, the mind is immediately calm. Because... That's the way the mind, the objectless part of the mind already is.

[49:27]

So when you can look at me without thinking that I'm something outside yourself, your mind will immediately be at peace. That's also calm abiding, but it's instant calm abiding, simply by changing your attitude. So calm abiding is necessary, is part of this, and this stage wise practice is fine and wonderful to do. The problem with that stage wise practice is that I remember I heard about one really good yogi that went to a that went to a cave. He was a good yogi already. He went to a cave and practiced 18 years and he got to the fifth stage of a nine-stage process. One disadvantage of these stage-wise practices, although they make sense, you can understand and explain them pretty well, they're really hard. Take a long time to get good at them. The advantage of the Zen approach is that it's very easy to do it right away, but very difficult to explain it.

[50:30]

It's very difficult to explain because there's no kind of hook to get onto it. There's no contrivance. So without a contrivance, people say, oh, God, how can you do it? I think you also said, there's no yardstick. There's no way to measure if you're doing it or not. So it's... Anyway, so you bring up this one way, this stepwise prayer, that's fine, but I also tell you another way. There's no steps, you just flat out realize it. I'm glad you heard that. Please come again someday. Yes? Excuse me, Veronica? What you just said about the stage practice and being hard and slow and timeless and whatever.

[51:32]

I've heard a Zen called the Slow School. Have you heard that? Zen called the Slow School? You ever heard that? Yeah, I have heard it. I'm just curious about that. That's what you just said. Well, there's many ways to explain that. One way to talk about how the Zen is a slow school is, how do I put this? Take your time. Take your time. Well, actually, I am trying to answer your question, but I'm very slow, actually.

[52:35]

It does take me a long time to figure out the answer. I think the Zen school is, you know, in some sense, it is also called the stupid school. We're not very bright. That's another part of it. No? See, I can't even fool you. I want us to say one thing about these stages, okay? In Zen, it's not that you can't go through stages. You can. Like practicing, I practice this kind of abiding thing. It's a ball. I loved it. I won't tell you what stage I got to. Huh? I've never been so insulted.

[53:40]

Anyway, I won't tell you what stage Well, I'll tell you one thing. I did get to stage one. And stage one is the same as stage nine. So there. Those in-between ones are tough. And I'll tell you this also, that I've seen some people... at the Zen Center, not myself, I won't speak about myself, but I've seen some people here who I think definitely got up to five, six, and seven. Okay, yeah, and they were having a good time, let me tell you, up in those five, six, and sevens. There's some people who might have even got into eight or, I never, I don't think I've ever seen a nine,

[54:41]

firsthand, but I might have heard of them. But anyway, even up around five, six, and seven, people are pretty darn happy. And it's fun to do that kind of practice. I can tell you about some other stage practices, too. Maybe I will during session about these different stages of breathing practices. like the six subtle dharma gates in relationship to breathing practice. They're great practices, but the most important point is not to get stuck in the stages. It's not that we don't go through the stages and go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, or one, two, three, four, five, six, or one, two, three, four, five, all these up the stages, down the stages, up the ladders. The point is not to get stuck in the stages. That's all. So Zen doesn't, we don't not do stage-wise practice. It's just that we try not to get stuck in Now, one of the famous stories in Zen is about this. It's about this guy, you know, Sagan Gyoshi Daiyushu, Xingyurang, the guy who said, what's the price of rice and Lu Ling, you know that guy?

[55:50]

Okay, so he's one of the two greatest disciples of the Sixth Patriarch. So he goes to the Sixth Patriarch and he says, right away, he says, how can I avoid falling into steps and stages? So obviously they practice steps and stages, but how do you not fall into it? And the sixth patriarch said, well, what have you been doing? And he said, I haven't even been practicing the Four Noble Truths, which is not at the very beginning practice. In terms of mindfulness practice, it's the fourth mindfulness practice. But it's not a very advanced Buddhist practice. But he hadn't even started that. The patriarch said, well, what stage have you fallen into? He says, if I haven't even started practicing the Poor Noble Truths, how could I have fallen into a stage? And the patriarch secretly thought, mmm, yummy.

[56:57]

I got one. I got a good one. Anyway, so the way that Zen is slow is we're so slow we haven't even started yet. You know, we protect ourselves from even beginning to make any progress. We're so slow. But by doing that, we emphasize our, you know, our Buddha nature. Because Buddha is not trying to get somewhere. Right? Buddha is just enjoying being Buddha. Right? Wouldn't that make sense? Do you think there's nothing about that? What name? Oh, no, I don't know. That's just a theory. I just thought that's just what I thought of during the time between when you asked the question and now. I could do a different one if you want me to. Want me to do a different one now? Yeah. Why does somebody else want to think of a reason why they call it the slow school? That's the one I came up with so far.

[57:58]

But just for you, I'll think of a new one every day. A new reason why we're called the slow school. But actually... We're also such, here's another story, okay? We're actually so fast that we don't even do anything. So here's a story, I'll tell you this story, and I'll also tell you this story again and again. I think this is case 56 of the Book of Serenity. One day, Dengshan was walking along with his spiritual uncle, Mi, And a white rabbit ran in front of them, and the uncle said, fast. And Dengshan said, well, what do you mean? And he said, it's like a commoner being made into a prime minister.

[58:59]

And Dengshan looked at him and said, a venerable old person like you, still talking like this? And Uncle Mi said, well, how about you? Old Dongshan said, after generations of nobility, temporarily fallen into poverty. I tried. Do you want me to explain? The rabbit, the rabbit, he's a rabbit, right? You know, rabbits are fast, right? Not like tortoises. Chinese rabbits are much faster than Western rabbits, too. Like, they go... So they're just walking along, not suddenly... So he says, fast, right? This is fast. What do you mean fast? It's like you take a commoner and then make him into a prime minister.

[60:03]

That's what it's called. That's fast progress, right? Not like study, go to school, and those long stories about how they work up to the ranks. Not that kind of thing. Just like from zero to infinity like that. OK, that's fast, right? So they see a rabbit, and so being Zen monks, when they see a rabbit move, they see something move and they think, oh, this is how fast it is that one is transformed from an ordinary person into a Buddha. But they're Chinese, so they use Chinese governmental images of the transformation from ignorance to enlightenment. Follow that. And then the other guy, but then Dung San says, oh, but uncle me, this is really, I'm so sorry that you're talking like this. He says, what about you? He says, it's like this. Rather than you very rapidly go from being an ordinary person like us into being this super developed thing, rather than talking about that happening fast, it's rather that after being a Buddha,

[61:17]

for many generations, after having been in Buddha's family for many generations, many generations of being a noble being, you have temporarily fallen into poverty. Just right now, you're temporarily thinking you're not Buddha. So it's faster than fast. It's like you've already been there. This is just a little kind of like vacation in the slums to see if you can remember where you came from. OK? That's like really fast. It's like so fast, it's going backwards. That's another reason why we're so slow. We're so fast, we're incredibly slow. That's another way to put it. OK? This is also a samadhi. That's an instruction on samadhi.

[62:21]

You can meditate on that. And I told you the story about, at the beginning of the practice period, I told you the story about this guy, right, that got lost. Remember that? The guy who got lost and he left his parents and he wandered for 50 years and he came home and he's... Elephant. Yeah, elephant shit, yeah. Okay. So that's a guy. See, he was from a noble family, but he got lost for a while. He had to shovel elephant shit to get back home. That's what sometimes you have to do. But you're already in the family. You just don't believe it. So you may have to do things which may take you a long time. You may have to go through stages to walk up various stages to get back to what you already are. That's okay. I don't mind. It's fun, actually, to do that stuff. But be careful, don't get stuck on the stages because you're going on a stepladder up to meet yourself. So it would be really unfortunate if you're actually returning home to where you already are and you got stuck halfway there.

[63:23]

That's the danger of stepwise practice. So again, if you want to not get stuck halfway back to where you already are, one way to avoid that is don't start in the first place. Just stay where you are and don't get on any trips. But if you want to go on a trip, OK, we'll send a buddy with you to remind you as you're walking along that you're really not going anywhere. You're just shoveling shit to convince yourself of your inheritance. Yes, you were first, even though she had a hand raised. this would be what you could say settling into yourself and coming into an ordinary person like us.

[64:27]

This would just be settling into yourself and being yourself. But settling down into the slums or whatever would be actually just settling down into yourself and accepting yourself. Yeah, yeah. But it's not really the slums, it's just that you may call them slums. But actually, it's settling to yourself. But again, that's also patience to settle into yourself. That's also enthusiasm that you would joyously be willing to do the wholesome thing of taking care of your life. And then samadhi is that you can stay with that. that even though things are changing all the time, you can relocate yourself in your practice and realize that you're never flipped off yourself, you're never disturbed, no matter what happens. including when you realize you're never disturbed and you feel the happiness of never being disturbed and always being at peace, that you even let go of that.

[65:34]

You're so at peace, you don't have to hold on to it anymore. Letting itself just be fine. Just let go of this... And then you're set for the big work, final work, which is Wisdom. You got your nice base now. You're tranquil. You're present. You're undisturbed. You're energetic. And now you're ready to die. You're happy. You're stable. You're courageous. You're patient. You're generous. You're ethical. So now you can die. Now is a good time to die. When you got all that going, what better time to die?

[66:38]

You can die anyway. Why don't you die? This would be a good time. Okay? Then you're set to die. Which is wisdom. In other words, die of your, you know, your self-clinging, your belief in inherent existence. Die of everything. Marissa? Yeah. If it is a signless path, where do the stages fit into all that? Because the stages are full of markings. Yes. It's that if you're walking, a signless path would not be that there weren't any signs, because that would be a signed path. It would be like, okay, you've got a path with all these signs, you come in with this, what do you call it, a... bulldozer you go get all those signs out of here so then we'll be like that's what it would look like then it would just be no signs around right that's that's to be a sign so one of the characteristics of a signless path is that you can walk a signless path through a field of signs you know like just tons of signs all over the place a signless path through that

[67:58]

And not attribute any special whatever to the signs. It's not like think, oh, well, these signs are real. These signs are it. They just go, well, these signs are solid. Yeah, this is a sign. This sign says this. This sign says that. In other words, you don't get disoriented by all the signs. You don't say, you get to come and say, this sign says, Marissa is a total whatever. And you don't go, oh, my God, I'm just going to get depressed. Or you don't get all totally inflated and stop paying attention. You say, oh, there's a sign that says Marissa's such and such, or Jordan's such and such. These are just signs. That's all they are. Are the signs true that they speak true? Meaning that these stages, the idea of stages... They're just signs. Everything's just a sign. The mundane world, the world of phenomena, are just signs. Like happiness, sadness, faith, lack of faith, diligence, samadhi. They're just all these things, you know, these created things that are coming up.

[69:06]

Okay? Should you believe it? Like, I mean, say you got to the first stage, and that's like a sign, like, oh, I'm at the full stage, is that... If you believe in the first stage, you're stuck in the first stage. So you should... Noticing that you're believing in it is already start... You're believing is sort of cut through by noticing that. Yes, that's right. So taking any stage, settling down in any stage is... problem so case 11 of the blue cliff of the Book of Serenity is talking about the Zen sicknesses okay so it talks about these actually it says two I think Yunman's Zen sicknesses it talks about these different kinds of Zen sickness which are actually four kinds actually there's six kinds or whatever there's several kinds of enlightenment that are discussed in there

[70:09]

But they're called sicknesses because each of these enlightenments, if you would settle into any of them, would immediately become sicknesses. And then there's many stages below them. These are quite advanced stages. There's all these stages here. Any of these stages you get stuck in will turn sickness. Ordinary people who don't even practice meditation, if they're not stuck in their low state, they're healthy. But as it turns out, a lot of people in their low state are stuck in their low state. However, they're not as sick as somebody who's stuck in a high state. Because when you're stuck in a high state, who's going to help you? And it's so wonderful that you're going to be stuck there like, you know, it's like it could be long-term stuckness. And you get a whole hundreds of people to come and worship you for being stuck in that state.

[71:11]

They don't worship you for being stuck. They worship you for getting into that state. I mean, they go, wow, look at that. Wow. Wow. Look at that. You're sitting there stuck. You're totally ill, you know, spiritually. You can't, and also all these people watching you, you don't dare leave now. They'll get discouraged, you know, and they'll stop paying you, whatever, you know. So the higher you go, the more dangerous it is to get stuck. Case 11. Is there something more besides that? Oh, yes. At the end of the Heroic March Sutra, the Surangama Sutra, they have 40 kinds of this Zen sickness. Ages. It is contagious. It is definitely contagious.

[72:14]

If you give it away, it's not nearly as contagious as if you get stuck. If you get stuck, then people copy you getting stuck. So then they get into stages and then they get stuck. So you're spreading the stuckness. It's a contagious disease. Being stuck is a contagious disease. Hmm? That's why you should be careful, because not only does it hurt you, but it hurts your friends, too. Anyway, like I said the other day, fame is the final frailty of the wise. And these enlightenments are the final sicknesses that the wise people get into. And all the stages leaving up also get stuck. Some people get stuck here. Some people get stuck here. Any place you camp out and hold on. And the better it is, the worse it is if you hold it. So you should be able to spot these different kinds of attainments so you know to watch out not to hold on to them.

[73:27]

But that's why it's nice not to even get involved in the first place and just be a total schnook and not develop at all. Because then you're not going to have such anything stuff to get into. Right. That's it. But unfortunately, if you get really good at that, that's the highest state. Yeah, not really. Like I told people, in the Vajrayana development system, the highest stage is called flop dog. And many people thought that was a Tibetan word. Just regular flop dog, that's the highest stage. What's the matter with you? I gotta go on my side. Okay, well, let's stop. Okay. So, happy trails to you until we meet again.

[74:36]

Happy trails to you. Don't smile until then. Happy trails to you till we meet Thank you.

[74:56]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_88.91