Good evening. Good evening. I'm not going to read from all of these books, but I'm going to show you a few things. I read a selection or two, but mostly I wanted to just show you the book, one of the books. Mostly everybody knows me. Mark Lancaster. I'm a priest here at San Francisco Zen Center. And I've been practicing here, I just realized, 21 or 22 years now. So it's been a while, you know, it's been a while. And it took me about 18 years to realize this was kind of the joy of my life. I spent maybe 15 of those years trying to escape, trying to figure ways back out, you know, but I was kind of a goner from the first day. I think it was pretty clear to people, but it just took me a long time to realize it. Thank you, Michael, for going through those 15 years, waiting for me to make a decision, which you already, I think, knew about.

[01:07]

You had the grace and patience to let me find it on my own, which is a very important part of our practice. You have to do it on your own. So this practice period, we have 12 instructors. a new thing that we haven't done before. And Jordan approached me maybe three weeks ago, four weeks ago, and said, you know, we'd like you to be one of the instructors. And the theme is bodhisattva way or path. We can do something about bodhisattvas. Can you come up with a theme, something you would like to talk about? And so immediately I started thinking of some things, you know, the paramitas, There are things that immediately come to mind when you hear bodhisattva path. And then Jordan said, well, you know, actually, a lot of the topics have been taken. You should have been at the meeting. We usually joke when I do something wrong. He says, did you get the memo about the robe you were supposed to sew?

[02:09]

So he said, the Paramitas are gone and Shantideva is gone, so a lot of things were gone. And he said, but, you know, there should be something. There's a lot out there. So, you know, think about what would you like to teach or what was important to you? Or just what would you like to teach? So, you know, I thought about it. And the topic I chose, and it's, of course, that Jamie Howell and I were co-instructors, co-teachers together, is the Brahma-Vaharas or the Divine Abidings. or immeasurable foundations or immeasurable activities. And that's what I eventually settled upon. So I'll, of course, talk about that tonight. And I realize this might be a two-night talk, you know, in the sense that how I got and why I think this is an important topic is going to be a good portion of tonight's talk with you. But I will hopefully touch on the Brahma-Viharas themselves and unpack them a bit.

[03:12]

The course itself is six weeks, so we're doing now a Brahma Vahara each week. Vahara's is five weeks, so we're doing a Brahma Vahara each week for two hours. And an important part of the training, I feel, is the actual physical exercise of absorption, which is the Brahma Vahara training, which is a different training, perhaps, than we often use at Zen Center. So I explain what that difference is. And I was thinking... And then I'll leave it to Jamie to synthesize everything with Zen on Saturday. I'll give him the harder job. So I'm going to unpack the Bramal Vaharas and this training in, this is the book we are using, The Foreign Measurables by D. Alan Wallace. And I had read this book many years ago, and I give it to people, particularly people I find that are very self-critical. This is a very useful book. It deals with ease and joy in your practice. opening the chest the heart up to a different maybe sensibility and it's based on shamatha practice and jhanic practice which we don't talk about for many reasons in zen training we fold in shamatha which is tranquility and ease joyfulness perhaps and vipassana which is insight together in our zen training and again jamie will tell you how that works

[04:38]

but I'm going to unpack a bit the the reasons that I felt this was a useful topic and why I thought I would want to teach on it and teach about it so so first I thought well you know what is this Bodhisattva Yana you know Bodhisattva Kart or Mahayana that we that we care so much about this is our heart training you know the paramitas the the actual sustaining of an activity, a functioning quality. And as Zenki Hartman has said, you know, the first stage is the arising or creating or evoking the thought of bodhicitta. And bodhisattva would be an awakening being, sometimes awakened being, but maybe I like better saying awakening activity without hindrance expressing itself like a pulsation. when it becomes activated correctly.

[05:39]

So awakening being bodhisattva. Bodhicitta is, you know, many ways to describe it, but citta is mind essence or consciousness. The Tibetans call it the fundamental primordial mind itself, the heart of compassion as it expresses itself and opens and expresses itself through all sentient and insentient life. So I thought, hmm... This is what I'm going to, we say, to arouse this thought of awakening or arouse this mind for the benefit of all sentient and insentient life is maybe our vow, our task. And then, you know, as Shakti Deva says, first comes the evoking, which is the contacting, which we're always in contact with, by the way. You know, we feel it continually, even if we become quite jaded with or our lives are very difficult, we feel that heart of, I use the word compassion.

[06:41]

As Shakyamuni said, you know, I looked into my heart and realized I desired my own happiness or happiness just like every sentient creature in all ten directions. And this desire for happiness in its core state it causes us sometimes great confusion. But a Buddha, actually, this is the essence of Buddha mind, actually, this search or this evocation or this relationship to happiness. It's just bigger. It just continues to expand out. And this became critical in why I think I chose the Brahma Vaharas. The Dalai Lama was asked, he said, you know, do you give up the self? Does a Buddha not have a self? What goes on? And the Dalai Lama said, oh, that's a big mistake. Of course a Buddha has a self. A Buddha doesn't give up a self. A Buddha becomes informed about what that is and extends it. It gets bigger. You don't shrink it and kill it. You actually learn about it and you become wise about what the self is.

[07:46]

So it's actually a different activity. So sometimes, you know, self-suppression, some people fall in, I think, to that era of killing thought or suppressing or i'm going to kill the self you know i have to have this blank wall you have nothing to work with this weight inks and you know when that ceases you'll be dead there's no vitality so so this becomes the core you know and so it's pretty good so how do we evoke this to be a bodhisattva to express this bodhisattva nature what's the problem here you know it's fundamental you know why is it so difficult what's what's going on what ways would help us or me to sustain this fundamental expression so I thought you know what's different about this era from this 2,563 odd years ago when Shakyamuni lived what's different about our time that we work in and in particular this place the United States of America

[08:57]

This is where we practice. You know, we're Americans. So how does this function? How do we arouse this mind in practice? And what seems to go haywire? So I thought, you know, we're living in this interesting time of ceaseless stimulation, you know, of sense desire, of images, of achievement. failure were bomb bombarded ceaselessly by activity and it's it's incredible sometimes you know it's incredible to walk down the street to be alive you know in this time and so different from being an Indian 2,563 years ago living in a forest glade perhaps and practicing where you would have endless hours of quiet a kind of slowness a different ease, perhaps, in your practice.

[09:59]

I thought, this is something that's useful. How do you capture in this place, in this time, some ease? And are there any other things that are hindrances to us as Americans? And Susan, was it Sharon Salzberg? Sharon Salzberg? Sharon Salzberg was in a meeting with the Dalai Lama and said, you know, she talked about the American penchant for self-criticism. for an anger directed at the self. And this was astonishing to the Dalai Lama, who said, you know, this kind of self-dislike was a feature that he found absent in the Tibetan psychology, that there was a fundamental kind of happiness, in fact, or ease with the self. And it was kind of a wonder to him. And then in a series of dialogues, he said, well, listen, do these people that really seem to hate themselves and don't like, don't they want to be happy? And he was really concerned, and then people talked for a while, and then they convinced him that actually even these people that dislike themselves actually had a desire to be happy, although it became very distorted, what they had to go through.

[11:11]

And then he said, well, then my thesis is sound, that this compassion is fundamental, this desire is fundamental, this spark is fundamental in all sentient life, and we have something to work with again. We have some grounding to work with. So I thought, hmm, what is this, again, this place of compassion and ease that sometimes becomes very opaque for us? So I thought more about that. What was a useful training, and where else did I notice it in Buddha's life? Where does it come up in the or talks of Shakyamuni or in the Pali Canon, some approach to meditation, to arousing this mind. And it pops up over and over from various places. Most notably, in Shakyamuni's life, you know, he... It's a really noisy night, I just... I just...

[12:25]

Talk about the era we live in. It's like I expect a fire engine to drive through here at some moment. Shakyamuni's life is kind of an example of, you know, his own inquiry becomes an example. And some of the aspects of his training are aspects that I became interested in as I kind of made this inquiry. A notable one is, you know, his exertions from the age historically, although this is through the Chronicles of the Pali Canon, and it's not absolute history of 29 until about 36, he wandered practicing various mind techniques or training techniques. The first set of them were jhanic in nature with two foremost teachers in India, and he acquired very quickly these jhanic or absorption or dhyana practices, dhyana being the name for Zen.

[13:27]

Zen comes from that word, and it means to be absorbed, no subject and object, but deep absorption in something. So having acquired these, Shakyamuni said, you know, this is pretty good. I feel some ease and actually some... a sense of joy or sukha, the opposite of dukkha. This is pretty good, but it's incomplete. I haven't resolved this core issue. Something is incomplete. I come back to this human state, and there's the same confusion, the same trap of sickness, old age, and death, of obsessive regard, of attachment that leads me astray. So then he begins an ascetic phase and literally starves himself into almost insensibility. And one day, he's bathing in the Narajana River, the river where he had been doing his ascetic practices. And he's so weak, he nearly drowns.

[14:29]

He slumps back. He's literally a skeleton. And a young girl, a sujata, is coming by with her herd, I think it was cattle, and sees this fellow and thinks, wow, he's really in bad shape. You know, but there seems to be something about this odd skeletal man. I think I'll help him, and she helps him to the bank, and she gives him a bowl of rice, rice water, rice milk, and he feels restored. You know, he has some vigor again. And then he sits and he spreads grass, crusilla, soft, fragrant grass, and he sits. And he has this... He evokes a place in his own life as a young boy, maybe eight, nine, ten, in his father's fields where he sat under a tree in a state where his mind had some pleasure, some ease, some joy, and then some balance, and he had some different relationship to things, some insight, or the possibility he felt of some insight, something unusual he evokes, he remembers.

[15:43]

And he says, this is the middle path. This is the way between ceaseless and pointless exertion or annihilation and clinging to absolute substantialism or life. This place, this pathway, or this pathing, I need to go back there. I need to explore this path. I thought, what is that path? This was a fundamental connection that Shakyamuni makes. And again, on his Enlightenment night, he talks about his mind becoming easy, balanced, joyful, still, content, and then turning inwards in a totally different way, the way he hadn't experienced before, and gaining fundamental insight into his actual situation. Not insight, actually experienced his situation as it was. I thought, that might be a clue.

[16:45]

That might be a clue. And what is it? What is it a clue of? What is it a clue of that could be useful, I'm thinking in my practice, and maybe to share with people? So, where would I read more about this? And hence, I came upon the Brahma Paharas, these immeasurable dwelling places which are a very old training. It comes out of several Pali sutras where the metta or loving kindness, and we chant the metta sutra here, is expressed. And it becomes a part of a very ancient training, most often or best explicated by Buddhagosa, a saint who wrote a book called The Path of... of purification of the Sudhimaga, which was a compilation of the learning up until the approximately ninth century of this mind-body training.

[17:53]

So I thought, oh, hmm. Now this book is 985 pages long, but it also contains one section called the Brahma-viharas, or the dwelling, these divine abiding places. So I read more about that, and I thought, This is very interesting. And then I remembered B. Allen Wallace, and he deconstructs Buddhaghosa. He's actually using Buddhaghosa's text. And something appealed to me in the approach I thought could be useful, and that I would like to share it with people. So I decided I would talk about the Brahma Vaharas. So without further ado, I'll first tell you what they are before we run out of time. So they're practices. They're mind-body practices of first extending loving-kindness or metta in a certain pattern, in a certain way.

[18:57]

Although it can become more expansive, Buddhaghosa suggests that you do it in a very particular way. And he says, therefore, people and you should do it with particular people actually it shouldn't be somebody dead and it shouldn't be a vague quality it has to be very particular with somebody alive and it should be yourself first of all it's one person say this self what seems to be the separation self here where you have only your memories of this particularity and then secondarily you would extend it to somebody that you find great sympathy with being that you might admire or that you would have some positive regard for and third you would extend it to a neutral person a person that you had no liking or disliking for and last a hostile person so this would be the first Brahma Vahara and the exercise would be to start with yourself and I thought that's

[20:04]

Pretty wise, actually. You could probably see why. Buddhaghosa explicates it and says if you choose somebody you like, it's very dangerous to become overly excited and disenchanted and confused. A neutral person you could become bored with. And a hostile person is very, very hard to raise a feeling of good feeling for somebody that's wronged you. We did an exercise tonight, or we suggested some very complex Jamie and I exercises in our group. And one was to try these four models out and raise a loving-kindness thought and see which one you chose and then what the experience was. So I did mine with a person I have affinity for and a person I have hostility for. And I found it very interesting that I actually couldn't feel anything. When I imagined the hostile person, I brought the hostile person up. I couldn't feel anything lower than my chin. whole part of my body was quite dead it was opaque you know so something very neurological happens I think when we're wronged some change begins to happen at very fundamental and deep levels so some confusion or darkness you know ignorance by the way which is one of the 12-fold gates or conditions of existence as a vija which is not evil it's simply dark

[21:33]

some confusion about fundamental happiness some misunderstanding that creates obsession and whoa okay this is an interesting an interesting approach because it digs deeper than our discursive powerful minds which in our society are so charged up children are taught the age of two or three to begin to create maps for their whole lives to begin to structure themselves you know so i thought this this is a problem you know this is hard we aren't simple people living in a forest anymore it'd be quite easy we need strong medicine to evoke this place now this also happens to be so these four abidings buddha gosa taught parallel, and he meant it to the four jhanic states, up to equanimity, which is a contentment. But he doesn't quite use those words, and we don't really use jhanic training here.

[22:40]

But I thought, I'm kind of interested in this, so I'll explore it a little bit. So this loving kindness opens this area up in a very interesting way. Wallace combines it with shamatha, which is to find ease. The jainic formations are pretty simple. I guess a neurobiologist would be able to disentangle them pretty quickly. The first stage is to be quiet, to find some quiet place. And the second stage is to bring some attention. You need some access attention, it's called. And then you need some continuity with this attention. And then you try to find in your body some pleasure. Now this pleasure can be quite simple. Maybe we'll do this for a second. Before I knock you all out.

[23:43]

I think I see people falling asleep, so I'm worried. But let's try this. To look for this place here, this quiet place. So in this jhanic training, or in this training of the brahma-vaharas, or this other approach of absorption, it's to find some quiet place of some, you could even say, physical pleasure. P-I-T-I is the word piti, which is the arising of this pleasant quality. And you use this to break through sometimes hostile mindsets. This is parallel to loving kindness. So bodhisattva is actually acquiring a balanced mind this way. Between seeming subject and object, you're acquiring this skill. So in the jhanic states, the stages are to move from there to a broad kind of sukha, or joy, which is the sixth factor of enlightenment, fifth factor of enlightenment.

[24:47]

After ease, joy begins to arise. The mind now becomes steadier, in concentration, or samadhi, begins to arise quite naturally. Mind distraction begins to drop away. And then the sukkha actually becomes broader. It spreads now into a sense of contentment, but no longer physical in nature. It's finer than that. We call that upekka, or equanimity, becomes the fourth Brahma-vihara. So the Brahma-vihara is of extending love and kindness, which is goodwill to everything, and karuna or compassion which is to wish freedom from suffering from all sentient and insentient life and gladness or because sympathetic joy is again to go outside and wish well to these seeming external beings to feel joy in their triumph and then equanimity a balance between these four are the four stages of the brahma-vahara each one

[25:51]

a series of exercises that are done in a very physical way. Back to this simple exercise. So, wake up. I won't be too much longer. It's Wednesday night. So first, find a seat you're comfortable with. Spread your kusala grass beneath you. O budding Buddhas, spread some softness underneath you. Evoking joy, evoking ease, isn't sensible practice. By the way, Mara was considered the great deceiver, the betrayer, spreads doubt and anxiety just about this. You have no right to be happy. This is serious. This is life. you'll never get out of here.

[26:52]

Even if you figure it out, you'll be wrong. So Mara spreads this. Buddha's path is called away. We say we find the path, but actually pathing happens. As we evoke this function, something begins to change. So let's try this, pathing. or evoking this place, this ease. So first relax, as though you had no care in the world, that everything was just fine. So soften both your mudra, your posture. Come back to your breath, or breath body, Find your own breath as it is. Maybe feel now as the breath maybe softens, comes into your body, expanding or expanding your abdomen.

[28:11]

And let the kind of breath touch your body with a kind of softness. And as you breathe in and out, is there some place, perhaps here I find it, where there's some sense of pleasure, of lightness, some lightness? And then come back to your breath and sense your body and let your breath fill your body. And let this sense of lightness, if you've felt it, begin to expand or touch your body and breath. If your mind, you know, becomes discursive, come back to your breath.

[29:17]

Touch it again. Relax your shoulders as though you had an infinity of time just to be upright. Nothing to achieve anymore. Nothing to prove. Come back again. Breath. Let your breath now touch body and thought. Ideas as they arise and pass away. Soften your body and your shoulders. If you, again, feel this place of some ease, perhaps pleasure. And repeat as often as necessary. Repeat as often as necessary. So, these jhanic states or jhana states or absorption states,

[30:22]

access points or foundations to begin a true inquiry into things. Samadhi, as it's called, or concentration is the heart aspect. It builds slowly, as ease and a sense of this joy and contentment increase, some samadhi or concentration naturally begins to activate. So, our training, or one aspect I would propose of our training, is to actually pay attention to what's happening right there, at that moment, you know, when the mind sometimes, for me, hops over that, you know, begins kind of cascading of thoughts. So to come back is to abide again in this very simple place with a kind of complete faith and confidence in its origin.

[31:36]

So the Brahma-Vaharas, because they're immeasurable, are difficult to map out, wishing all sentient life eventually, we do that in all ten directions, is immeasurable beyond conception. And yet it begins to transform something quite in the way this sense of sukha does. There's a sense of lightness and energy. This energy or virya we think we have to apply, as we think we have to do the seven factors of enlightenment, but they're self-activating. Under certain conditions, they're natural. They actually are. natural state, they arise. We have to really work hard to prevent them from arising, actually. We really have to want to be confused or get confused and frightened. So one way out of that is this other place, this inconceivable place where you actually have some ease in the face of what seems to be overwhelming odds in your life at times.

[32:46]

When compassion is truly expressed, as Buddhaghosa says, it becomes pity or its near enemy when it's home-abiding, when it's mundane or caught in the sensual net of the world, and we don't see further than that. We see your pain and my pain, and we feel sorrow and pity for your situation, and yet we don't see the context of this situation. when we open to the bigger context, because we've entered by this gate of some ease and absorption, then true compassion or just being there totally with something begins to arise naturally. And this, you could say, then moves into the third practice mode of feeling gladness, this fundamental joy in this well-being of all sentient life. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we all woke up? We always think in minimalist terms, if you get enlightened, I'll lose.

[33:56]

It's just amazing. We're minimalists. We're always hungry. We're not going to have enough. We work on a poverty model. And the Buddha says, it's plenty to go around. So what if we both succeeded? Wouldn't that be a trip? How can we do that? So we need to change the model. at some very fundamental levels. So when I tested in my group, you know, I had an idea of the hostile person, and I could think my way through, but already it was over. Everything was closing down at some fairly physiological levels for me. Not so easy to make that change, you know. Keenfulness or mindfulness is the first factor of enlightenment, as Buddha says. All factors, all composite dharmas fit into feedfulness, like the footprints of other land animals into the footprint of a great elephant.

[34:56]

It binds all things together and actually is your true security, this alive quality of being connected. Dhyana, or absorption, is connection. Sometimes we think, disconnected, we can save ourselves and work. We can prove it. We do it. If there's reincarnation, we do it for thousands of years. If I just disconnect, I'll be safe. But it's anguish, you know, it's anguish to attach to that aversion, just as it is with greed. It goes against our fundamental need for happiness and learning about what true happiness is. So the Brahma Vahara is their guideposts, you know, their stages. ways to begin to at one level rewire ourselves you know it's not a mind practice per se you know it's border between shamatha and vipassana it's right in the middle because it works in a different modality so it's powerful because it grounds us

[36:14]

just like Shakyamuni when he woke up. One of my favorite stories, one of my favorite images is the earth mudra Buddha, touching the earth. It evokes this place where Mara, Shakyamuni, returns to his simple humanity now, his simple ease in being a human being, and now uses this fundamental intelligence. to express this primordial mind, big mind, essence of mind. We have so many words for it. God. And he's unshakable about something. Mara says, say, you little pipsqueak, see this universe? You're never going to get your brain around it in a million years. You're totally deluded. You're going to die. You're all going to die. And Buddha says, touches the earth and says, the earth is my witness to this enlightenment.

[37:17]

It's a connection to our lives today, a different path, that we have the right to be here, absolutely the right to be on the earth, even if it doesn't make sense to us, even if people challenge us. We have the right to abide here, to wake up. to aspire to waking up. So his triumph is his simplicity, his deep connection. No longer tries to fight his way out and suppress. He uses his skills that he's acquired in a very creative fashion. a mundane level ease and joy become happiness and being frivolous and they cause suffering when we begin to kind of express it without attachment or without objects they become quite curious they become energizers natural energizers you know very interesting way to be and i'm not talking about superficial joy like isn't life a lark

[38:39]

that's not joy, that's kind of a near enemy of real joy, you know, either getting what you want or happiness or some sort of disconnection. Be really connected to experience true joy or true openness in this way. You know, we say, Avalokita hears the cries of the world just as they are Let's say he does anything or she doesn't. He hears exactly what's happening without ever turning away. Anyway, I encourage you to find this place, to soften and open to this place of some absorption, of some direct connection with things. with finding this ease that Shakyamuni talked about as a factor of enlightenment, of bringing appropriate energy, appropriate concentration, appropriate ethics, grounding, just the right amount to make this wonderful enlightenment pie, or let this pie express itself.

[39:57]

In a way, we just have to get out of the way. It's very interesting. And the more you do it, I think, more the natural functioning of bodhicitta and of the bodhisattva path happens you think you're doing it initially it seems like we're being mindful and we're doing it but it's actually expressing itself through us we we have a kind of confusion about our connection to things and it actually gets stronger the more you do it the more you invoke it with this direct contact And it doesn't stop them. Years ago, I read Trungpa's book, and he said, when you put your feet on the path, you won't lightly get off again. And I remember reading that in Humboldt County in 1976 and feeling a chill. I didn't know what it meant. I didn't have no idea who Trungpa was, but I thought, uh-oh, something about that's interesting.

[41:05]

When you turn to the Dharma, something begins to change immediately, even if you don't know it. Something begins to change. A true heart opens up. Something begins to express itself. So, the Brahma-vihara is a way of allowing this natural expression to come forward. enough don't do too much it's not so easy do too little not gonna work what's just right what's that place it's close to our hearts yeah that's enough it's a work night if you want to know more we've got three classes left still room in the art lounge On Mondays, you're welcome to talk with me.

[42:10]

We'll be renegade jhanic masters here. It's important, though. Buddha never used it for his own bliss. He used this vehicle to wake up. You know, he put it all together at the age of 36 and said, this great power of absorption is wonderful. He also used it at the end of his life. As he was dying, he entered jhanic states because they're comfortable. It's stabilizing the mind, but he connected it with a great desire to wake up because of this fundamental question of suffering. It drove him incessantly, and he put it together in a very unique way. So, you can do it. Thanks.

[43:02]

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