There's ten chapters in the book. Chapter nine is on wisdom. Chapter ten is a short chapter on dedication and merit. And we're going to do chapter nine next week, and I guess we won't do chapter ten, or maybe we'll do nine and ten next week, just touch on ten a little bit so we can feel like we did the whole book, which is an amazing feat that we are going through all this, I'm surprised. But before we talk about meditation, and Shantideva's really unusual and interesting view of what meditation is and all that he says about it, we review our last, the last paramita we were working on, which is joyous effort, or zeal, or energy. And just very briefly, joyous energy is where we finally begin to have a strong enough sense

[01:18]

of what bodhicitta is all about. With our patience not dissipating it, with our aspiration raising it up, at this point, with the introduction of joyous effort, we're now working on extending this, developing it further. It's not as shaky as it was in the beginning, and it's stable, so we can now work on developing it further with joyous energy. Basically, joyous energy is, or joyous effort is that feeling that we have of really being interested in and wanting to promote and develop positive states, and really wanting to let go of negative states, that we get positive energy just from this desire. It propels us forward. So in order to do that, we must be pretty much oriented in the direction of bodhicitta,

[02:19]

and we don't have much struggle or resistance, we're really oriented in that direction, and this is what gives us joy and pleasure. And this is a funny thing, you know, that this happens that way, that the good news is that the practice gives us a lot of pleasure, the bad news is that things that were destructive and unwholesome, that previously gave us pleasure, no longer do much for us. So your life changes to a great extent. Those distractions that you may have indulged in, in the past, no longer appear fun anymore. Not that they're worse than something else, it's just that they don't have that same allure that they did before, because what's really alluring, what's really exciting, what's really interesting is to develop the bodhicitta further, and to turn the mind toward developing positive states. How am I doing? Okay? Good. So, this is joyous energy, and the opposite of joyous energy is laziness, and there are

[03:32]

three kinds of laziness. This was interesting and important, and I want to just go over this again. There are three kinds of laziness. One is the usual laziness that we know about and think about, which is, you know, being sleepy, you don't want to do anything, you're just going to lay around, that kind of laziness. That's the one we know about. But the second kind of laziness was a little bit surprising. That's the kind of laziness that might look like joyous effort, because it's full of energy, and that's the laziness that has to do with having lots of energy to do what's not good for us. In other words, having lots of energy to run around and avoid ourselves and avoid the practice and all that. That's the kind of laziness, according to Shantideva, it's another form of laziness. And the third form of laziness, which I think is the most powerful of all, the one that I was asking us particularly to look at this week, is called discouragement. You know, I can't do this, or what am I doing this for, or I don't want to do this, or all

[04:39]

the versions of ways that we get discouraged about our practice. And I think this is a really big one for us, because it takes a lot of energy for us to believe that we can do this, because it's not really part of our culture that much. I think maybe it's different for younger people, maybe not, I don't know, but in the sense that there's more of a culture now of spiritual practice than there was twenty years ago, and maybe it'll be different twenty years from now or fifty years from now. But even if there is a tremendous cultural reinforcement for spiritual practice, still we get discouraged. I mean, Shantideva is writing this in India, right, in the 7th century, in a Buddhist country, in the middle of a huge Buddhist establishment, so even then they got discouraged with all the advantages that they had spiritually. So discouragement is a perennial kind of laziness that we really have to deal with. So that's the kernel of what we were talking about last time.

[05:45]

And we were all to spend the week studying this, and the interesting thing about these three kinds of laziness and looking at them and seeing that the opposite of them is joyous energy and that there is such a thing as joyous energy and that there is such an idea that we can work on it, examine it and try to extend it, that alone, that idea in our minds alone I think is very powerful, because then when we experience discouragement, when we experience laziness, when we experience delight in distraction, we can then notice what that is and see it all of a sudden in a different light and work with it differently. So I think that's already a lot, just to know that. So the question is, what did we do with that over the week that we had between the last class and this one, and what have been our experiences, what were our difficulties, what were our triumphs, what were our defeats, and so on. And for those of you who either weren't here last week or didn't do the homework, I know

[06:50]

there are a few people who maybe don't know how this works, we're going to have three minutes, one person talks, I'm ringing the bell, three minutes the other person talks, and if you did not do this work, then you can just talk on your reaction to what you've heard from this little review, or maybe you're working on one of the other part of meetings and you can report on that one, instead of on energy. So everybody gets a partner, somebody next to them, find somebody, and of course the failures are just as important as the so-called successes, because they tell us more quite often. Sometimes the successes are accidental and the failures are more informative, so, yeah, Dick? One of the things I learned from my partner, was that lots of times when he's consciously thinking about energy, he notes the relationship between energy and inspiration, and when he's inspired in terms of what he's doing at that time, that in turn feeds the energy, which

[07:54]

in turn feeds it back to the inspiration, and that's kind of a nice connection. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, somebody else, they saw another hand, yeah. My partner was talking about sort of embodying this pramantara, practicing it during the week, and that it showed up as a kind of, well to me it seemed like it showed up as a trusting of instinct and a taking of initiative that came up a couple of times. So, you know, there's this, we have a desire, or not really a desire, it could be a desire or an inspiration, you know, a volition to do something, and then immediately all, you know, different considerations come up as to whether or not it's appropriate, or is it not appropriate, and so she acted on a couple of those volitions, and it seems to have turned out really well.

[08:55]

So it's effort, but joyful effort, done joyfully with joyful results. So just sort of going for it without debating, freeing up the energy to just do something, yeah. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. My partner had a clear waking up experience from running, and in contrast to that, she'd been very fatigued, and felt very unsuccessful in her work, she was just quite tired for the day before, and maybe the day before that, and she was out of touch with the energy that could have come to her aid, and she was mainly discouraged. She went running, and by the time she was finished with running, the clarity was back, and her resources were renewed, and she was very aware of it, that she had energy, and it sounded pretty good. Yeah, that's interesting, because like then, you see a relationship between physical energy and mental discouragement.

[09:58]

Yeah. So like I know, that I can tell, like if I have certain thoughts occur to me, I usually, I'm familiar with it enough to know now that certain thoughts, I might not feel tired, but if I have certain kinds of thoughts, I'll say, oh, I must be tired, you know, because that's usually the way I think. When I'm tired or ill, I'm getting ill, I'll have certain kinds of patterns of thinking that otherwise I wouldn't have, and so then I act accordingly before I'm too tired or I get ill. Yeah, so that's interesting, to begin to notice those connections. I mean, it's obvious, right, but to just begin to note it and manage it, yeah. Yes? My partner described joyous effort just in the conversation, in that there was some reluctance to get involved, but then when she did, she was all there, and I appreciated just seeing joyous effort as being that, in a way that simple, in a way just that immediate.

[11:02]

Yeah, my partner, I'll just report on that, Janet can go next. My partner, I thought, had some really interesting, important points. One, she brought up one thing that we talked about last time that's such an important element of joyous effort, which is taking a rest, remember? Remember that? So she said that she took a rest, and that was really important for her to sustain her effort, and then also she said that she had a personal issue that was in her heart that was holding her back, and then when that issue broke up and the ice broke a little bit around that, she felt an upwelling of energy. So that happens too, we have something that we don't know about that's holding back our energy, and then all of a sudden we clarify that, or it becomes clearer, and then our energy can be released. So she had that experience, and that was really interesting too, to see how that happens.

[12:07]

And I think we do come to those times in our practice where we just approach a time when for some reason there's a block in our ability to go forward, and then we really have to apply all of our patience, and our energy, and all the different paramitas that we've been looking at, and just stay with it, and then it loosens up, and there's openness, and then energy comes forward, and we can feel immediately the difference. So that was a nice report, I thought. You just said it. Well, probably there's some little different twist on it though. My partner talked about how quickly energy can change in a flash. You can have a high level of energy, or it can be gone. And observing what it is that causes that to happen, in some cases having certain obligations, or other people dependent make one have the energy to come through in those situations. Or in others, it can just go down instantly, because of some kind of a block or discouraging

[13:09]

something. And that can be complicated. Yeah, right, and you never know. When you were talking, I was thinking to myself, I think that I have made, in my practice, an exhaustive study of energy and fatigue over a number of years, particularly having little children. We were in the monastery, and we had little children, and we'd get up for Zazen, which was very early, like maybe, I don't remember what time it was, maybe like ten minutes to four, or something like that, every day. And not necessarily sleeping at night, because the children cry, and you have to go to them, and so on. So I really got into fatigue, and I found that it wasn't necessarily like you got enough sleep, therefore you had energy. It wasn't always like that. You never knew. There's many factors. Sometimes there are times when you don't get much sleep and you have plenty of energy, and other times when you get lots of sleep and you don't have much energy.

[14:11]

So it's not so simple. And you can be very, very tired and not take a rest, but just change your attitude, right? And all of a sudden you have energy, and vice versa. So it's something that one can make a great study of, and one never has the thing figured out, like, oh yeah, now I know how it works, because it's always different. So any other? This is a lot of really good stuff, isn't it? Interesting. Yeah. My partner has no trouble bringing joyous energy to the jobs that he likes. He's trying to figure out how to bring joyous energy to the jobs that he didn't like, like doing dishes, cleaning the toilet, stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he just had a very beautiful way of putting it, that it's his attitude that, you know, just needs to change, because all his jobs are really the same in a way. Yeah, yeah. And then he could clean out that toilet and feel just fine. Yeah. Right, right. We're all, everything is just another form of taking care of, you know, ourself, right,

[15:15]

and working with sentient beings. I mean, that's all that there is to do, right? Everything else is, I mean, it's just different forms of that. So why would one be necessarily better than the other? Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. So now let's talk a little bit about meditation. And I'm going to talk slowly. Susanna, can you hear what I'm saying? And also, it'll be good for me too. So, Dhyana Paramita, the Paramita of meditation. So again, in our systematic, I mean, it isn't really systematic, but this thing is set up as if it were systematic.

[16:16]

So in our systematic approach here to Bodhicitta, we've now sustained it and extended it somewhat. And it's almost like at this point we can see what it would be like to really fully develop the Bodhicitta. And now we come to understand that until we have a true insight into the nature of the because the disturbing conceptions arise as a result of a mistaken idea about the self. So we realize that we really have to have deep insight into that. It's not really going to be enough in the end to just sort of go along in the way that we're going, little by little, doing good, so to speak, without this insight.

[17:21]

So now we're kind of like creeping up on that. We see now, we've accumulated enough positive force here to begin to see that that's really the next step. So you can see it takes a while, you know, to get to that place where we see that that is the next step. And having this insight, personal insight into these things, is not really possible without a very concentrated mind. Because the insight that we're talking about is not an intellectual insight. It's a sudden, sort of experiential turning, deep inner turning. And things like this don't happen without a really concentrated mind. If our mind is distracted, there's no way that we're going to see our life, see through our life. So now we develop meditation so that we can really focus the mind, really concentrate the mind.

[18:22]

So Shantideva begins his chapter like this. Let's see. This is a really long chapter. It's the longest one in the book. It has something like 190 verses in it. And I read them all. Which I thought was a major accomplishment. I'm very proud of myself. Having developed enthusiasm in this way, you know, enthusiasm being another word for joyous effort. Having developed joyous effort in this way, I should place my mind in concentration. For the person whose mind is distracted dwells between the fangs of disturbing conceptions. Then he says, a few stanzas later, Having understood that disturbing conceptions are completely overcome by superior insight endowed with calm abiding.

[19:27]

Calm abiding here is the term for meditation. So insight and meditation. Having understood that disturbing conceptions are completely overcome only with the development of superior insight endowed with calm abiding. First of all, I should search for calm abiding. This is achieved through the genuine joy of those unattached to worldly life. So chapter 9, wisdom, is the insight part. Chapter 8, meditation, is the calm abiding part. Making the mind concentrated so that the insight can appear. Now this last line, this is achieved through the genuine joy of those unattached to worldly life. Is sort of the cue line for about the next 100 verses. In which he goes on and on in the most delightful way. Explaining the disadvantages of worldly life and how it is that it's a big lose.

[20:33]

And we should definitely let go of it and seek the solitude of the forest. So that we can meditate and let go of all of our distractions. And some of it is outrageous from our point of view. And I'll read some of it in a minute. Because it is so outrageous. But this, you know, you have to, the way that the Shantideva's context. And also the context for the Tibetans. Is very different from ours. In that, the concept is, one spends a lot of, just like we're going through, just the way we've seen so far. You spend a lot of time developing positive karma, so to speak. Through developing positive actions and letting go of negative actions. And you're building up, you're really changing your life, you know, in intimate ways. Then, once you have enough of that under your belt, which may take many, many years, right?

[21:35]

Then you literally go off into a cave. Or you go away from people. And you meditate. In the early Buddhist texts, meditation was always something that was done in a solitary way. Or perhaps with a few other people in the vicinity. But basically it was solitary practice done at the root of a tree. You know, there's chapters, there's sutras that talk about what kind of a tree. And watch out for snakes and all this stuff. The roots shouldn't be too big and lumpy and everything. So this is the concept. So, this is a daunting, and this might be, you might do this for years, you know. So this is a daunting prospect. And of course, one of the things that you're going to suffer from, if you do this, is like, you know, what am I doing here? Where's all the girls or boys that I used to go out with? And I want to go to the movies and all this stuff. So he spends a lot of time reminding you that, you know, the movies are bad. And I'll read you some of the parts about how bad members of the opposite sex are.

[22:42]

It's really quite incredible. And not only that, but people in general are to be avoided. And that's quite funny, because of course, this whole thing is about developing the bodhicitta, which gives you a universal love for all creatures. But the thing is that, it isn't that people per se, there's something wrong with them. The problem is, as he says here, somewhere, most people are childish. And so even though, which I think is true, don't you? I've always been impressed by the Mahayana Sutras that say, that the job of the bodhisattvas is to mature beings. That's the word that it's used, is to mature beings. Now I never noticed that, you know, for many years. But after a while, I mean, I'm coming around to the, I think I'm sort of like, through my practicing, I think I'm like going beyond Buddhism or something.

[23:45]

Because to me it's all disappearing, right, in front of my eyes. It's not much to it, actually. What's disappearing? Buddhism, and the practice. To me there's not much to it, other than simply being a mature person in the world. And when you're younger you think, oh, there's plenty of mature people. But the older you get, the more you realize that there are very few people who are simply grown-ups. It's rare, actually. Grown-ups are fairly rare. You know, to be a reasonable, unselfish, not completely twisted-up person, is actually fairly rare. One looks at oneself and knows that the moments in which oneself is behaving in such a way are rare. So he's saying that this is the way it is, actually. That most people are childish, and they'll just suck you into all their trips, and get you confused, and so you really don't want to. He says, one moment they are friends, and the next instant they become enemies.

[24:48]

Since they become angry, even in joyful situations, it is difficult to please ordinary people. Right, I mean, like, you know, you can't ever satisfy them. They're always going to get angry with you, no matter what you do. They are angry when something of benefit is said. Right? You tell them something really good, and they get angry. And they also turn me away from what is beneficial. If I do not listen to what they say, they become angry, and hence proceed to lower realms. They are envious of superiors. Right? Competitive with equals. Arrogant toward inferiors. I mean, this is just describing the average person, right? Yeah. Arrogant toward inferiors. Conceited when praised. And if anything at all unpleasant is said, they become angry. Never is any benefit derived from the childish. So this is all psychiness up to, you know, don't, just go walk away from everybody.

[25:53]

Because you're not going to get any good out of hanging around with human beings. I should flee away from childish people. When they are encountered, though, I should please them by being happy. But not by becoming greatly familiar. I should behave well merely out of courtesy. So anyway, he goes on in this vein for quite a while. Convincing us that what we need to do is, you know, get out of town, and go to the foot of the tree, and meditate, and really not think that we're missing anything by not associating with these creatures who really are not going to do us any good whatsoever. And although we don't, they're not our enemies, we don't hate them, we're very nice to them, but we're careful not to get tangled up in them. Well, let me, let me play it out a little bit more. And then I'll talk about, this is, remember I'm saying that, what I'm saying is that this is the context, this is the different way of doing things than our way, I think.

[26:57]

But there's a point, I think, to it as well, for us. Then he goes on here quite a bit. Now this is a text written for a monastic community of monks, males. So he's talking about all the troubles of associating with women. But if you're a woman, you could turn it around and say the same thing about men. For the sake of women, many requests are first of all made through go-betweens. All forms of evil and even notoriety are not avoided for their sake. But these very bodies of theirs, that I greatly enjoy in the sexual embrace, are nothing other than skeletons. They are not autonomous and are identity-less. Rather than being so desirous and completely obsessed, why do I not go to the state beyond sorrow instead?

[28:00]

Well, that's not the good part. Oh, yeah. Yes. So now we're supposed to really see this clearly. There's only one place to get into it, and that is... Where do you think? No, the cemetery. You have to go to the cemetery and observe the stages of decay of these bodies. In the first place, I made efforts to lift her veil. And when it was raised, she bashfully looked down. A beautiful thing, you know. You can picture this, right? Previously, whether anyone looked or not, her face was covered with a cloth. So, in other words, how exciting it was to lift that cloth up and see her face, when we never saw how wonderful that was.

[29:02]

But now, why do I run away upon directly beholding this face that disturbs the mind as it is being revealed to me by vultures? You get the picture? Yeah. Oh, Jesus. So he's seeing, you know, like before, lifting the veil was so exciting to see the face. Now, not only is the veil lifted, but you get to see the inside of the face as well. Not too pretty. So why was I so excited about this? And now I'm seeing the thing revealed to me. Oh, dear. Previously, I completely protected her body when others cast their eyes upon it. Why, miser, do you not protect it now while it is being devoured by these birds? So, then he goes on, you know, anyway, that's enough of that.

[30:04]

The point is that this is a systematic argument here. First of all, don't mess around with ordinary people. They're not going to do you any good. Now you're going to have problems that you're missing. The members of the opposite sex will remember what this body really is. It's just a bag of skin. It's not very attractive. It's only because of our ideas that we impute onto it that we call it attractive. But actually, if you really look at what the body is, like go to the cemetery or, you know, do an autopsy on a body, and you see it's not that pretty. There's all these organs in there. They're not really good-looking. They don't smell that good. He goes on quite a bit about the smell of the human body and how it isn't that… basically the body is unclean and so on and so on and so on. This is all… Now, Shantideva knows that what he's saying here is not the last word on the body. It's actually just as valid to say that the body is beautiful as it is to say that it's atrociously ugly and unclean. Both those things are equally true.

[31:06]

Both are simply ideas in our mind. But the point is, at this time, as we're going off to meditate, it's a good idea for us to remember this side, because it's very beneficial to remember this side. Otherwise, we're going to run screaming out of the forest looking for, you know, a girlfriend or boyfriend. So he goes on like that. Anyway, you know, clearly, Zen approach is quite different from this in that we're not… For us, meditation practice is not an austerity practice. It's not about leaving human society and going off. We, in our practice, we generally meditate together. In fact, there are some Zen schools that have a tradition of solitary mountain retreats, but our tradition doesn't even have that really. You know, the main road of Japanese Soto Zen that we've inherited really has no tradition that I'm aware of

[32:08]

except maybe an odd corner of it here or there, of solitary retreats. We sit together and our most intensive retreats are done together. Meetings with the teacher on a regular basis are part of our meditation practice. And there's a sense in which we share, you know, we lend each other the energy for sitting. You know, your sitting enriches mine, my sitting enriches yours, and so on. And that's part of what we do together in our meditation practice. And also our meditation practice is not seen as something so separate from the rest of our life. Here, it's a question of step by step building up to the place where you do meditation and then going off to meditate. For us, we start with meditation and the back and forth between meditation and non-meditation is a constant thing. And even we don't even understand meditation as separate from non-meditation. Even if you study the deep Zen texts that talk about the meaning of meditation,

[33:10]

they always bring up that real meditation is not different from non-meditation. So it's a completely different take on it. However, on the other hand, on the other hand, so this is not our text in that regard. However, on the other hand, it is important because still, even though we're sitting together, when you really come down to it, each one of us is completely alone in our meditation practice. And in our meditation practice, we actually also have to give up associations with others. We have to give up sexuality. We have to give up, you know, he goes on and on talking about wealth. All these things we have to completely give up in our meditation practice. So, in the time, you know, I remember I used to do sometimes do the

[34:13]

family practice days with Wendy. And when we did it together, I think that they do them differently now, but in the days when we did it together, I would always talk about that every person, as a family person, with children and busy life and job, that person also has a monk inside of them. And that maybe for one period of zazen, they're really a monk. So, when we do a period of zazen, we're really renunciates, you know. During that period of zazen, we actually give up. That's what it means to not follow our thoughts, right? It means to give up, to let go of sexuality, of any desire for fame or gain, of human controversy. We actually have to give it up and be completely alone and completely absorbed in our being at the time of doing zazen. The difference is that for us, when we get up, we enter back into the human world,

[35:14]

whereas for these practitioners, for many years they left it, you know, and did meditation in that way. You know, meditation is rather unusual in Tibetan Buddhism. It's not the usual. Most Tibetan Buddhists don't practice meditation and most actually have never done meditation. I remember when Taratoglu came here and lectured on the process of meditation in Tibetan Buddhism. He went through the whole process, which I'm going to go through with you in a minute. I'm going to give you a short version of it. It's an interesting teaching that the Tibetans have about the full development of meditation. And he went through that with us and we took notes and we studied it. And I'll never forget, afterward, somebody asked him, Rinpoche, how long would it take to develop this meditation, to go through all these stages? And he didn't really quite know how to answer. And he said, so there's nine stages, right? He said, I once knew someone who had developed his shamatha practice

[36:21]

up to stage five or six out of the nine. He lived in a cave by himself for seventeen years. And after seventeen years, he had much practice before that. After seventeen years, he had developed up to the fifth stage. Now, to us, of course, we were all shocked and amazed by this. We said, what? Are you kidding? We were all ready to go home and pack up our tent. Who's going to even want to start this? But to him, you see, that wasn't a problem. It was nothing to even worry about because, first of all, it was clear to him that the practice was a multiple-lifetime proposition. He had faith in this. So it was no surprise that you might have to practice for numerous lifetimes before you'd even start to meditate. And he probably didn't meditate himself very much. He never really tried to develop the stages of meditation. So most Tibetan Buddhists recite texts

[37:22]

and do ceremonies and study and give teachings and memorize texts and do debate and so on and so forth. So it didn't seem like a problem to him. But from our perspective, it was a whole different thing. So anyway, the chapter goes on in this vein. And most of it is a very complicated and amusing argument trying to talk us out of all the things that would distract us from going into the forest. But then he finally gets around, after about 120 stanzas, he finally gets around to the main point, which is that we are to do... And this is the famous thing about this particular text. This text is famous for proposing a particular kind of meditation called Self for Others, which is considered to be one of the most powerful ways

[38:23]

of really developing, fully developing the bodhicitta. And it's basically a meditation in which you actually consider other people as I. So when you think I and you say I, you're not referring to this one. You're referring to everyone else. And when you say them, you're referring to this. This is a kind of mental yoga that you do systematically over a period of time and you actually reverse. And there's lots of discussion in the text about things like there's a person who objects and says, what about this and what about that? And then Shantideva always answers. But basically, the basic argument is things like if we take care of ourselves, then it does take care of others. Thinking that we should avoid pain for ourselves

[39:24]

and not be concerned about whether others suffer pain at all is illogical. For example, why would we, I can't remember how it goes exactly, but something like why would we do something now to prevent pain later when the person later hasn't even arrived? Why would we prevent others from having pain? It's just as logical to prevent others from having pain as to try to prevent pain for ourselves later on when there is no later on. It doesn't exist. So why not help others? He says, if you step on a thorn, this is a very famous passage of Shantideva that I often quote, if you step on a thorn, it's a thorn about your foot. Why does it care? Well, you say, it cares because it's part of the same body.

[40:25]

Well, in the same way, other beings are part of our same body. We're part of the same interconnection. Why not treat other beings as if they were our foot when they're in pain? He says, through this meditation you actually get to the place where you feel other people's pain. He says, in any case, this is the real situation. There's no choice. Feeling pain is a necessary message in the body. We want to feel pain so that we can take care of it. It's the same with other sentient beings. And he said, besides, if you attain enlightenment for the benefit of others and relieve their pain, think of the joy what's that little drop in the bucket of your suffering compared to the joy for all sentient beings and you yourself at the time when this is realized. So anyway, many, many arguments

[41:26]

like this on and on. But, the thing is that this meditation on exchanging self for others comes at the end of the development of concentration. Because it's one thing to go through these arguments. It's helpful. Shantideva I think is valuable what the Paramitas are and why it's important to develop them. This is intellectual thought. It's a thought. But it's not a small thing to have such thoughts and to train our minds in this way. So Shantideva is very important for this. But to really do this meditation on exchanging self and others in a deep way from the soul and from the heart, you have to have concentration. So now, there are nine stages. So, there are nine stages of concentration. Nine stages of development

[42:26]

to full concentration. It's called the nine stages, the five obstacles and the eight antidotes. There are nine stages of meditation. There are five obstacles to the development all the way through the nine stages. And there are eight antidotes to correct those five obstacles. You got that? How am I doing? You got that? Good. There are nine stages of meditation. Five obstacles toward realizing those nine stages. And there are eight antidotes meaning eight kinds of medicine to solve the five antidotes. Okay? I mean the five obstacles. Okay. So now the nine stages in a certain way are not so important or so interesting because they're just giving, basically what it amounts to is getting from the place where

[43:28]

on the lowest stage or the beginning stage where you sit down and begin to look at the object of meditation but you can't really concentrate on it too much at all. Get from there to the place where you're able to sit in meditation, have a constant connection to what you're using it and do this effortlessly. That's the ninth stage. So then there's everything in between. So I'll just go through it quickly because like I say, they're just little names for basically everything in between. I mean I could say everything in between and that's the other seven stages but here's the names that they give to it. First stage is called placing the mind. So there's the mind and there's an object of meditation. In our way of practicing meditation the object of meditation is posture and breathing mostly although in individual interview you may be given another object of meditation

[44:29]

or you may choose another object yourself. If you do that, it's very good to check it out with a teacher simply because if you make a commitment with someone to work with that object the object becomes more real to you. Otherwise you're always sort of thinking this is just baloney, I'm just making this up. But if you have an agreement with somebody else then the feeling is yeah this has been validated by someone I'm working on this together and not only that I'm going to report to the person how I'm doing. So this is serious. Now there's a whole tradition of this in Buddhism. You would think, what's the big deal? Why don't you just do it yourself? I mean we're Americans, right? And the reason why is because meditation is not like running a steel mill where you put the steel in and you put it through the roller and it comes out in the other end. It's a piece of steel. It doesn't matter what you think of it. It makes no difference. You like it, you don't like it.

[45:30]

It doesn't matter. It's going to come out steel. It's different in meditation. It completely affects the process. That's why the Tibetan Buddhists are very smart. They have a whole series of empowerments. Ceremonies. If you want to do this practice you don't just do it. You have to go through a ceremony and receive it in a particular way and say certain things and get empowered to do it. And we also have empowerments in our practice too of various kinds. And this is one version of an empowerment. It makes a difference when you have that relationship. And even though the person on the other end of that might not know what they're talking about although they have to know enough what they're talking about for you to have confidence in them. But if they didn't know what they were talking about and you had confidence in them that would be sufficient. Because you could get like somebody who can't even speak any languages grunt and stuff like that and if you had confidence you would say, ah, that grunt meant this. And then you go away and you probably become enlightened using that person or

[46:32]

we're just sitting beyond objects. But to say that and then just practice like that in the beginning would be folly because it's not what would happen, right? What would happen is the mind would wander and you'd sit there. So in the beginning we take an object of meditation to fix our mind and then eventually we let go of the object. So I have to say that. That's a commercial. Anyway, so you place the mind on the object but in this first stage it's called placing the mind. That means that you place the mind on the object but it hardly stays there for more than a minute before you start thinking of something else. And that's about it. That's the first stage. The second stage is called continual placement. And that's where basically what that means is you extend that a little bit. See at first you don't even have a feeling for the object. It's very foreign. It's not at all what you feel like you're grasping.

[47:36]

It's like, what is this? I can't get into it at all. And for somebody, for example, somebody who is not that interested in meditation doesn't have an aspiration and an attitude. If you tell them to sit down and follow the breath they can't get it at all. They say, what? It doesn't make any sense. I can't look breath. I can't even see it. You don't necessarily have any relationship to the object of meditation. So now in this second stage you begin to develop some relationship where you actually come back to the object and extend it a little bit. There's now some relationship here. So anybody who sits down regardless will probably be in the first stage. But then maybe some people are uninterested and won't get up and see that. Other people will extend it a little bit and get into the second stage, continual placement. The third stage is called replacement. That's when you have some commitment now to keep coming back. When the mind wanders you keep coming back. Because it could happen that

[48:38]

you look at the object, you look at it again and then that's the end of that. You're thinking about something entirely. And it never occurs to you to come back to the object. You don't care, it's uninteresting and so on. This time you are interested in the object. You get the idea that what you want to do here is come back to the object and you do. You come back to the object repeatedly. That's called replacement, the third one. The fourth one is called close placement. In this one you're coming back more and more frequently. You're usually with the object. You're going to go off a little bit but you come back pretty quickly and you have the sense that most of the time even though a lot of the time you're distracted, most of the time you feel like you're in contact with the object. Like most of the period I'm sitting there and I'm aware of my breath the whole period. I might not be always perfectly aware and sometimes I lose it but pretty much I'm in the ballpark. So that's close placement, the fourth stage. The fifth stage is called controlled mind. Now this time we're really in contact

[49:40]

with the meditation object basically the whole time. We don't really have much of a problem with the mind wandering at this stage. Seventeen years, right? The guy sat in a cage, he was in this stage. Now other things come up as a problem. Now the two faults of meditation now begin to assert themselves. One is called mental sinking and its opposite is called mental excitement. These are the two faults of meditation. Now there's gross mental sinking and excitement and there's very subtle mental sinking and excitement. In these next stages from here on these things begin to assert themselves and are in close contact with the object and now we're constantly working on them until the ninth stage and it's getting more and more subtle. Now this is important, this is actually very useful for us as zazen practitioners

[50:40]

because when you get to the place where you're able to stay with the object you may have, then what you have to do basically is be able to hold the object in the proper clarity and tension. And this is hard to do because when you're with the object and this is the problem with experienced practitioners in Zen. Experienced practitioners in Zen do get to the place where they can mostly hold the object in view or at least for a great deal of the time. But then there's the problem of holding it without sufficient clarity and tension. And what happens then is there's a sinking, there's a kind of dullness. And this is a great disease in Zen practice, a dull mind. You can sit there and be very good and not distracted too much but the mind becomes dull and we lose energy. Do you mean physically or interpersonally?

[51:42]

All of those. All of those. All of those. Although it mostly has to do with not so much physically less than the other. More to do with interpersonally, just in the clarity of our living, period. In the clarity of our living we lose energy and also in the clarity of our meditation. So we're sitting there in a kind of a little bit like a trance a little bit. Fairly concentrated in a way but not with the proper amount of tension, brightness, freshness. Yeah, good, freshness. And then this gets us into the obstacles because these are obstacles and then we apply antidotes and the antidote is one that we know very well from having studied it as one of the paramitas. You apply it in meditation, it's called discriminative awareness. Remember that one? So you look, you have to have the ability to look and see, aha, I'm sinking. I'm not holding the object with enough tension. So let me brighten it up and apply a little bit more tension here

[52:45]

so that I brighten it up and I'm not sinking anymore. And then you run into the opposite problem which is now I'm getting all excited here. I'm getting, I don't know, I'm getting, I'm distracting myself and I'm getting too excited because I've applied too many tricks and too many, too much aspiration so I have to back off. So that's in number five, controlled mind, now this becomes the issue. We'll work on that. In number six, pacified mind where it's further developed our ability because we have to develop the skill, you see, first of all, a big problem is if you look at your meditation it's almost impossible to look at it with accuracy with discriminative awareness and not judge yourself, see? Once you judge yourself you're not practicing discriminative awareness anymore. You're just judging yourself and making yourself crazy like, oh, I never could do this or meditation's no good or I'm no good or it's impossible or it's too hard or I don't want to do this or what am I doing this for? Yeah, you get discouraged, right.

[53:48]

So, yeah, right. So once that kind of judgment comes in then you have to just forget it because discriminative awareness is not working. Just go back to your breath. Go back to square one. So in this stage, though, you have this ability. By the sixth stage, pacified mind you actually have the ability now to, you've really got this discriminative awareness down and you can actually look at your meditation and see, aha, it's this, it's that, apply this, apply that. So the seventh one is called complete pacification. This is developed further. The eighth one is called single-pointedness where we have the object held at the right, just the right balance and we have absolutely single-pointed on the object. Very powerful state of meditation. And then the tenth, the ninth one, the last one is called placing the mind on the object with equanimity. And this means simply the same as the previous one except now we do it absolutely effortlessly. There's no more effort.

[54:49]

We don't have to think about it. We don't have to apply discriminative awareness. Like they say in baseball, you're locked in. You see the ball really well. Whatever happens, you swing it and you always hit it. It's amazing. You get in a groove like that. So that's what this one is. So those are the nine stages of Samatha meditation. You want to know where you're at with this? Where I'm at? Well, I'm at one, I'm at eight, I'm at three, I'm at, you know, it's different. Did you get to the point of placing your mind on an object with equanimity for a long time? Sometimes, yeah. Not for my whole lifetime, but yeah, sometimes. If you do a long sitting you really can concentrate. I think that in this system here what they're really talking about is somebody who spends 25 years with doing nothing else but this and maybe develops it to where they sit down, they stay this way for several days maybe. You know, but that doesn't really,

[55:49]

that's not, our way is not to do that because we only sit for seven days and then we get up. And we're talking about, you know, that's what Sandokai and Honkyo Zama are all about, right? They're about the relationship between all this that we're talking about and the relative. So for us, it's not a question of developing a continuous state like this, rather it's a question of interfacing between all these stages and our life all the time. Having clarity and energy on the cushion and off the cushion. So it's a little bit different kind of situation. When you refer to the object, placing the mind on the object, what is the object you're talking about? Well, as I said in the beginning, the object we use is breath and posture. Yeah, and that's, people have different, and there's many things we could say about how exactly, where and how they use breath and posture as the object.

[56:50]

And that's something we work on in individual instruction. In Zen, usually the public instruction is fairly broad. And then of course, as we know in other schools, they use a koan as an object. We could also use other things as an object too. Okay, now the obstacles, I've already alluded to the obstacles. The first one we're very familiar with, laziness, in the form of discouragement, is the first obstacle. The second obstacle is forgetfulness, which is the opposite. You know how we have to remember to bring the mind back, but when we forget to bring the mind back, that's an obstacle. The third one is mental sinking and mental excitement. That's the third obstacle. And this one is very insidious because like I say, we may think that we're sitting there concentrating. We may think, wow, I'm doing really good. And actually we're involved in mental sinking and we don't know it. The fourth one is called non-application.

[57:53]

And this means, when it's time to notice, we either, we may notice, in other words, that there's mental sinking or there's distraction or whatever, but we don't do anything about it. So we don't apply some way of correcting that. Is mental sinking when the mind becomes dull? Yeah, either subtly or in a gross way. I mean, when we're falling asleep, we're pretty sure that that's mental sinking, but we may not appear to be sleepy at all. And there may be this loss of energy. So the fourth one is non-application and the fifth one is over-application where this is not, usually not much of a problem in Zen. And the reason why it's not much of a problem in Zen is because we give so little instruction in how to meditate that people don't have any idea about different ways to meditate and so they don't go around tinkering with their meditation too much, which is done on purpose in Zen.

[58:56]

It's purposely done that way. You know, one could be, one could present meditation as this exciting and dynamic course where there are many steps and many stages and many things to do all the time, in which case, and it is presented that way sometimes, in which case you would be likely to have over-application. You'd be fooling around with your meditation so much that you'd never be able to concentrate because you're constantly thinking about your meditation. How am I doing now? How am I doing now? And so you'd have what's called over-application. But in Zen, to avoid that, we tell you virtually nothing. Just sit there, you know. And I think Zen is criticized for this and I think there's a point to that criticism. Although, in Zen, you have to basically find it out for yourself. I mean, I don't, I myself, personally, don't like to teach that way and I'm usually a little heretical, to tell you the truth, in terms of doctrinaire Soto Zen or how's your,

[59:56]

what are you doing in Zazen? Do a little of this, do a little of that because I think we should have a little bit more intelligence about our meditation practice. And I've just seen too many years go by and too many people wasting too much time sitting on their cushion to want to just go along like that. Although, the other side of it is there's something very powerful about zero instruction and absolutely discovering it by accident on your own. Because when that happens, you forget it, you know. So that's important. So there's a point to the way that it's done in Zen. So anyway, what I'm saying is over-application is usually not a problem but they list it as a fifth obstacle. The eight opponents or antidotes to the five obstacles are the following. The antidote to laziness is the first four. These first four factors to laziness.

[60:57]

The first one is faith. The guy I described earlier who sits down on a cushion and says, breath, big deal, you know, sits there, can't find the breath, is uninterested and gets up and goes in front of the television, obviously that person has no faith in it otherwise, you know, they would be working a little harder. So you have to have faith in the process. Second one is aspiration. In your meditation practice it has to be important to you. You have to want to do it. You have to say to yourself, I really want this. This is important to me. This is what I want to spend time on. This is what I want to do. You have to give rise to that thought. If you just do it because you have nothing else to do, you're not going to get very far. The fourth one, and the third one, is joyous effort. Suppleness. Suppleness, the fourth one I mean.

[61:59]

The fourth one is suppleness. Suppleness literally means suppleness of the body. Your body has to be somewhat supple. And also of the mind. The mind can't be frozen and rigid. And frozen and rigid, freezingness and rigidity are very common things. We know people, right? And we ourselves see in our own minds kind of rigidity and frozenness that comes on us. To have a mind that isn't like that, that's flexible, helps with our laziness. And all those four, faith, aspiration, effort, joyous effort and suppleness are the antidote to laziness. The antidote to forgetfulness is mindfulness, right? That's the second, I mean the fifth, fifth of the eight obstacles. The sixth one, the fifth one is mindfulness. That was a joke, right Walter?

[63:02]

We were just trying to see if we were all working. Okay, and the sixth one, the antidote to mental excitement and mental sinking is discriminative awareness, right? The ability to notice them is the antidote. And the seventh, the antidote, now catch this, the antidote to non-application is what do you think? Application. And what do you think the antidote to over-application is? Non-application. So non-application is both an antidote and an obstacle depending on the situation. And that's very instructive, isn't it? Because that's generally true in practice. Exactly something that is a good quality and a positive thing becomes a negative thing depending on the situation. There are no absolutes, right?

[64:03]

There are times when doing something is exactly what you need to do and other times when doing exactly that same thing is absolutely the last thing in the world that you want to do. So there are times when it's the thing to do to take a rest and other times when you should not rest. So it's not so easy between when is it this and when is it that. Well, you see how much work we have to do here and how wonderful that is because it's interesting. I mean, what is this all about? It's about living, right? As the person we are. I mean, it's not my job particularly to study Walter's process. I study my own process because that's the only one in my life. So isn't it interesting to have this thing that we're working on which is called our life and we're constantly working on it

[65:06]

and there's always new surprises and new angles to it and we actually get better at it. Imagine that, getting better at life. I mean, that's a fantastic thing to think about that. You know, nowhere does anyone ever tell you that you actually have to go ahead and breathe. It's no problem. What you have to do is learn how to earn a living and you have to learn how to balance your checkbook and you have to learn how to I don't know what, but nobody ever says you actually have to learn how to be a human being and you get more skillful at it and not any human being. You have to learn how to be only one particular human being that never existed before and will never exist again and you have to be that one human being. It's a wonderful thing and like I say, it's astonishing to think about it because when you think about it it's the most obvious thing in the world, right? I mean, what could be more obvious than that?

[66:07]

And yet, whoever, I mean, you know, how many television channels are there? You turn one on, you'll never hear about this. There's millions of them. Usually it'll be like a car chase or selling you an exercise machine here if you turn on the cable. Anyway, I think this is a marvelous thing, don't you? Anyway, I didn't even get into the most important part which is a little bit I talked about exchanging self and others, but I just want to read you this one passage because I thought this was just marvelous and this is page 97 of Dalai Lama's book. This is Dalai Lama talking about his own practice. I thought this was just beautiful. He's talking about,

[67:08]

he says this in the context of his discussion of developing bodhicitta and the practice of exchanging self for others. Now listen to this and I'll close with this now. I talk a little bit too much, but he says here, speaking of my own experience, I sometimes wonder why a lot of people like me. He's just finished saying that if you have good thoughts and you practice the way people will like you. So I sometimes wonder why a lot of people like me. When I think about it, I cannot find in myself any specially good quality except for one small thing. That is, the positive mind. In other words, the mind of bodhicitta which I try to explain to others and which I do my best to develop myself. Of course, this is the Dalai Lama, right? Of course, there are moments when I do get angry,

[68:09]

but in the depth of my heart I do not hold a grudge against anyone. I cannot pretend that I am really able to practice bodhicitta, but it does give me tremendous inspiration. Deep inside me, I realize how valuable and beneficial it is, any bodhicitta. That is all. And I try as much as possible to consider others to be more important than myself. I think that is why people take note of me and like me, because of my good heart. When people say that I have worked a lot for peace, I feel embarrassed. I feel like laughing. I think this being very sincere, it sounds like a humble pie or something, but I think it is really sincere. Don't you feel? I feel like laughing. I don't think I have done very much

[69:12]

for world peace. It is just that my practice is the peaceful path of kindness, love, compassion, and not harming others. This has become a part of me. The Dalai Lama has probably read this text that we are reading here 200 times, and he has taught from it and he has probably memorized it. This has become a part of me. It is not something for which I have specially volunteered. Indeed, he was scooped up and he didn't even ask to do it. I am simply a follower of the Buddha, and the Buddha taught that patience is the supreme means for transcending suffering. He said, if a monk harms others, he is not a monk. I am a Buddhist monk, so I try to practice accordingly. When people think

[70:14]

this practice is something I should do and call me a leader of world peace, I feel almost ashamed. Isn't that beautiful? I think that we are all making this commitment to do the practice means we are all monks. It means that we should be thinking of others and really be concerned for others and have a good heart. This is what we are all about. People like us. People will be kind to us if we are kind to others. It is really the truth. I think that especially the people who style themselves as monks and take the ordination ceremony in our tradition, they should engrave this on their brain. This is my whole purpose is to serve others. Because sometimes I feel that sometimes monks

[71:18]

tend to be focused on their own study and on the Dharma as if the Dharma was like this thing over there that we are all walking in. But it is not over there. It is here. That means that we have to be concerned for others. I think if we were only concerned for others to the best of our ability, it would make a tremendous difference and I am moved by that because I know that he really means that and I have seen him a number of times and this is really how he is. This is one of his favorite texts. He has given many times in the West teachings on this text. This is a record of one of those times. I am afraid that I took up all the time but I thought every day fairly intensively

[72:19]

to hear this thing about the stages of meditation. I think there is useful information in there. There are some points. Although it is not important to worry about nine stages and memorize all the obstacles, I think there are some key points in there that I wish that you would reflect on and apply to your sitting practice because I think we should always be working on our sitting practice. Not over application but how are we doing? How is our sitting practice doing? Are we sitting with as much brightness and awareness as we could be? Because what we do on the cushion spills over into our life and what we do in our life spills over into the cushion and we can really change our lives if we have powerful sitting practice and we can really deepen our sitting practice if we work on our lives. They really go together so think about it. Thank you. What are you doing? Oh, the homework. This is the homework. Look at your Zazen practice.

[73:20]

How is your Zazen practice? That's the homework. And how, next time, we'll talk to each other about how is our Zazen practice. No, I'm mostly talking about in a Zendo but some people certainly it's not, there's no way to talk about it I suppose without, you know, referring to other things that happen too. So let's make that our question. How is our Zazen practice? Okay? And let's chant now and again I'll invite everybody who wants to join myself with the members of the practice and the class.

[74:00]

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