Nice to be back with all of you. So I would like to request a particular, maybe a new form for all of you for that I just do it for this particular event, at least. And that is that when we finish and we do our closing chant, all of you stay seated so I could leave. And then I'll be outside in the courtyard if you want to talk to me. And that's not because I want extra respect, you know, and all that. But it's just practical, because I was told that I should do something like that. So by making it a formal form, which we understand instead of our forms, I thought it'd be easier to accomplish. Is that okay with you guys? And then I'll make someone else happy, if I can pull that off. Thank you. So... There was a question yesterday about the interplay of having a goal in practice and having goalless practice.

[01:05]

No goal. And how do you harmonize or how do you work these two together? And there's a wonderful Buddhist saying that kind of addresses this issue from one perspective. And this is that in practice, to go from A to B, the fastest way to go from A to B is to be fully at A. To be fully at A, to be fully present where you are, and to let go of all the ways we don't accept the present moment, or we struggle or are in conflict with the present moment, begins to change things. Because one thing it changes, the conflict we have, and the struggle we have, and the desires we have, and the ideas we have, it should be different. All kinds of things begin to shift. And even though the rhetoric is, I'm going to be fully present here, a lot of things get shed. And in that shedding, there's an unfolding that begins. There's change that happens.

[02:06]

And we can't stop change. Change is built into our human life. And the teachings on impermanence, the emphasis on impermanence in Buddhism, is not a teaching that says that everything is impermanent and therefore random. But things arise because of causes and conditions. And we can have a role... in the conditions that we put in play. And certain conditions will move the ship in a different direction. So if you are filled with struggle and resistance and self-loathing and practice, that sends the ship in one direction. If you practice being fully at A with some deep unconditional acceptance of the moment, that sends the ship in a different direction. And you might not care which direction it goes, because you've learned just to be in the present moment, but in fact you can't help but contribute conditions that move things in different directions.

[03:09]

So in the early Buddhist tradition, which is the topic of today, there is an unfolding that's described, an unfolding towards liberation, to what this early tradition calls liberation. And that progress along the path to liberation is described as occurring in the presence of certain conditions and as a natural unfolding that is not there because of we will it, we cause it, or we've created it. The idea of cause, creation, and willing spiritual practice for the growth seems to be absent in this early tradition. What seems emphasized is that we have certain conditions in place And with those conditions, certain things can unfold. And that unfolding, that I'm calling progress along the path to practice, is illustrated or described by the Buddha by a variety of similes.

[04:11]

And one simile is a simile of a farmer growing a plant. A farmer puts the seed in the ground, and then over time nourishes the seed in the plant, waters it, fertilizes it, keeps... weeds away or something. And over time, the plant grows. But the farmer did not cause the plant to grow. The farmers provided the supporting conditions for it. And with those supporting conditions, the plant can grow. So in the same way, we nourish and nurture the growth of our Dharma plant in us. And we can't cause it, but we can create the conditions that support it. and can let it grow in optimal ways. That's one simile the Buddha used. Another one that he used is that of, in many kind of places, the description of water, the rain coming down on a mountainside. And if it rains enough, the water begins to pool together and form little streamlets, and they start flowing down the mountainside.

[05:25]

And those streamlets find each other and become streams. And those streams find each other and become creeklets. And those creeklets find each other and they form creeks. The creeks find each other and form rivers. And eventually they come down and they form the big Ganges rivers in India. And eventually they flow into the ocean. It's a natural process that water will flow downhill unless obstacles block the path of progress. And So in this example, the spiritual growth, the way that it unfolds, is described as natural as water flowing downhill. This is the direction it'll go. It's very different than the... I don't know how much it's talked about anymore now, but there was a time long ago, decades ago, when there was the image of the mountain for spiritual path, but it was all about going up the mountain to the top. It was a lot of work to go up the mountain. And here the image is going down the mountain.

[06:27]

And it's not a lot of work, provided that the obstacles are removed. So then you might want to consider if there's a natural flow of practice that can happen kind of on its own, what is your role? What are the conditions you have to have in place? And one of those is to let go of the obstacles. As if there's something, an innate capacity to some kind of unfolding... that is there inside of you, provided that you get out of the way. The third simile that the Buddha used, a very interesting one, is that of a chicken sitting on her eggs. And as long as she's sitting on the eggs, incubating the eggs, keeping them warm, then the Buddha said, even if she does not want the eggs to hatch, they will hatch. And And the simile is explained in the text that if you put together, put in place, certain supportive conditions, even if you don't want to be liberated, you will.

[07:35]

Isn't that nice? So, you know, you don't have to worry too much about wanting it or not wanting to be liberated. You just, you know, sit on your eggs. Or whatever that is, you know, in practice. So... So this idea that a progress along a path is a natural unfolding is repeated many ways. And here's something that's repeated more in the details of stages along the path. And here the word natural is used in English. And it's a translation of the word dhammata, or in Sanskrit, dharmata. Some people say it's dharmaness. with the nature of the Dharma. But nature is often, in certain situations, is seen as... Dharma, sometimes in certain situations, is translated as nature, and dharmata as natural. So, for a virtuous person, one whose behavior is virtuous, no volition need be exerted.

[08:45]

Let non-regret arise in me. It is natural... that non-regret arises in a virtuous person whose behavior is virtuous. Do you get that? This is true in ancient India. The Buddha didn't understand Americans yet. A fair number of Americans can feel regret for no good reason at all. But he assumed that people would have reasons for feeling regret. So if you're virtuous, there's no need to feel regret about your behavior. And then he goes on to say, for one who is without regret, it is natural for joy to arise. It is natural for someone who is joyful for their body to become tranquil.

[09:46]

It is natural for one who is tranquil in body to feel happiness. It is natural that the mind of one feeling happiness is concentrated. It is natural that who is concentrated knows and sees things as they are. It is natural that one who knows and sees things as they are becomes disenchanted and dispassionate. I used to call that fading away. It is natural that one who is disenchanted and dispassionate realizes liberation. So it's kind of remarkable that this word, the natural, it says, each of these phrases, I didn't read it, it says, a person needs to have no volition, no motivation, no intention, no desire for the next stage, but one flows into the next. I think for many of us it seems maybe incomprehensible that it should be this easy. But here this is presented in this kind of quite beautiful way.

[10:50]

And I think it's worth some consideration and thought about how this might actually work and why it was presented this way. The natural process has to begin by something. And it says it doesn't require intention or volition. The originating condition for this natural process is being virtuous, having ethical integrity. that's put in such an important role for this process to unfold. And one argument for this is that... Two things. One is that to be unvirtuous is doing the kind of things that puts obstacles in the flowing of the water. It involves some kind of attachment, clinging, contraction, constriction, that makes it impossible for the water to flow downhill. The other reason is that... which is given here, is that with virtue, there can arise non-regret and joy.

[11:53]

And this was one of the things that mystified me when I first went to Southeast Asia to practice there, was that it became clear that some of the teachings there was that one of the reasons to be virtuous is so you can have joy. And I thought, what? I'd grown up with the idea that, you know, You don't want to be too good because you're kind of goody-goody or something. It somehow was not very cool. And so I was kind of surprised when they talked about the joy that can come from being virtuous. Elsewhere, the Buddha describes the same process, the same flow of the river downhill, same natural process. But there the originating condition, the must-be condition that starts it all, is something called confirmed confidence in the Buddha, Dharma, and the Sangha.

[12:53]

And confirmed confidence, kind of the faith or confidence, comes from something I talked about yesterday, how in your own experience, you have seen the presence of greed, hate, and delusion, presence of unwholesome mind states, and you've seen them go away in the mind without them. There's something so important in this early tradition about seeing the absence of unwholesome mind states that teaches someone about what it's like to be a Buddha, teaches them what it's like to be free. And so then you see it for yourself, you know it for yourself. Well, that's what it's about. Then the Buddha, Dharamanda Sangha, can be much more inspiring. And I think it's not just simply the absence of greed, hate, and delusion because you watched a good TV program or read a good book and you forgot about your greed. I think there's a qualitatively different way in which it really drops away sometimes. Maybe temporarily, it really drops away.

[13:56]

So the feeling of being cleansed inside, being really kind of, oh, that's what it's like not to have it. Not that it's put on, not that it has a vacation, but that it's really somehow, something's really dropped, something's really... been let go of, or something's really, some momentum of the mind has been stilled or quieted. So with this confirmed confidence, by seeing the effects of practice in our own minds, this then gives rise to another description of the natural process of how things unfold in practice. And it's this way. When a person has this kind of confidence, confirmed confidence in the Buddhadharma Sangha, because of seeing what's possible with their mind, this gives rise to gladness. When one is glad, joy is born.

[14:59]

In one who is joyous, the body becomes tranquil. One whose body becomes tranquil feels happiness. In one who feels happiness, the mind becomes concentrated. This little kind of five-step process is repeated many times in the early suttas, and there's no pronouns connected to it, except it says one, but all the verbs, all the activities are passive or intransitive, meaning that there's not anything anyone is doing. It's not like, now you get glad, and once you're glad, make yourself joyful. And once you're joyful, make yourself tranquil. Like all this doing you have to do. The way the language is presented, it's a natural process, one leading to the other. Gladness, joy, tranquility, happiness, and concentration.

[16:05]

One of the common conditions for the beginning of this process of gladness to concentration is abandoning the hindrances. So these are five particular unwholesome states of mind which in this early tradition are said to really plague meditators and be a hindrance to their own wisdom operating. They're the forces of distraction. And these are sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness, anxiety, and doubt. And people can be plagued by this and keep them from being present, but it can be such a wonderful relief to have these finally, after days in a sashin, and no longer kind of plagued by doubts, thoughts spinning and spinning around, no longer caught up in sensual desire and fantasies. It all settles away. And finally, it feels like you have your mind back.

[17:06]

Someone else was in charge. until then, these hindrances, and go, oh, now I'm settled and I'm here. And that can feel really good. It seems that the encouragement in this early tradition is allow yourself to feel the goodness of that. Feel glad, feel delighted that your mind is finally settled and calm and no longer caught up in the hindrances. And part of the reason to feel that gladness is that gladness itself is the condition as the gladness grows and is felt and savored and developed, that that gladness is a condition for joy. The reason to feel the joy and really make time to feel it, and not to ignore it and push aside or let go of it, but really let it have its due and its time in us, then that gives rise to tranquility, deeper calm. And the reason to let the tranquility have its time and really make space for it that allows a shift, an unfolding to happiness, sukha.

[18:09]

And that is the condition for concentration. And so in this early tradition, you see that concentration, which many people are trying to do when they meditate, get concentrated. But here the idea is you don't get concentrated until the supporting conditions are there. And one of the supporting conditions is to be happy. which for some people is a little paradox because they want to get concentrated so they can be happy. They have their struggles in their lives and they're trying to overcome them. If they get concentrated, that'll be the solution. But here, this early tradition, the idea is you have to be happy first. And part of the reason for this is that tranquility and happiness allows the mind to rest, to be at home, to be settled, not spinning and agitated. And so to help the mind settle in a very satisfying, deep way, So I'll take a pause here. And what do you think of this? Any questions or do you want to bring up around this idea of a natural process that's just sitting inside of you waiting for you to remove the obstacles?

[19:17]

I'm really curious about... I mean, clearly this is what's framed in certain aspects of early Buddhism. Right. I'm really curious about what role... Where's virya in this? Where's energy or diligence or effort? Especially because it appears in so many of our most famous lists. Yes. Yes, there has to be lots of effort. And it's the effort to remove the obstacles to the water flowing. And so the effort to be virtuous, you know. I remember once... I think the last time in my life where I wanted to punch someone out was in the zendo in Japan. And the monk next to me had it out for me. He really didn't like me. And he was also my senior in the monastery by two days. And so he always wanted me to know that.

[20:21]

And he would poke me, and he would do all kinds of things in the zendo. He was a bully, kind of. And one day, I was just like, I'm going to sitting there, you know, sitting, minding my own business, and I was like, I'm going to punch this guy out. And I had to use a lot of virya not to do it. So sometimes, you know, to do this training in virtue, it takes a lot of effort sometimes because you have such strong tendencies in other directions. And so there's a series of practices, and I'll describe that next. The series of practices that Buddha most closely connected to the path of practice. And there's five sets of practices that he taught, and those five could all require a lot of effort to do, but they're all efforts in getting the obstacles out of the way. Okay, so you might say that if we were to use the metaphor of water flowing downstream, the effort is not to get to the ocean, but rather to get the sticks out of the creeplets, so the water can flow.

[21:30]

Yes, the boulders out. Can you talk about the difference between joy, gladness, happiness, and tranquility and concentration? Tranquility and concentration. Each of these refer to something different. Gladness, Pamoja in Pali, is more like a certain kind of delight or gladness that comes kind of from an evaluation, an understanding of something. You understand, oh, I have no regrets. This is good. Or I understand the hindrances aren't there. This is really good. I was struggling for days, and now they're not there. This is really great. So it does require some reflection to recognize. Oh, this is great. Delight from reflection. The joy, and the Pali word is pity, doesn't come from any kind of evaluation, but rather is born from the inside as an aspect of concentration.

[22:32]

And you can think of it as an aspect of a mind that's fully absorbed in what it's doing. Just like reading a really good book might feel really satisfying and joyful just because of the way you're doing, the way you're absorbed, the way you're completely involved in the book. But the joy is a little bit more of a mental thrill. The mind is kind of engaged and excited and really kind of rapturously involved with what you're doing. So focusing on your breath, the mind is kind of really pulled into it. The happiness is when the mental excitement of joy quiets down. And then it becomes more physical, but more sublime, a deep satisfaction that is much more peaceful and happy rather than joyful. Joyful is more energetic.

[23:33]

It's a happiness of sukha. Happiness of sukha. And tranquility is a deep state of satisfying stillness and peace, of relaxation that spreads out throughout the body. And concentration is a mind that's unified and focused and fully present for whatever it's focused on, whatever it's there for. Does that make sense? Yes? I've been drawn to, in our chants, phrases that are very succinct and helpful. If the least doubt arises, simply say to yourself not to, or Dogen saying something like, you know, just let go of pride. And in those aluses, there's a sense of more of a suddenness and not just sort of different qualities that follow one after another based upon conditions that apply.

[24:58]

Right. I don't know what to say. Yes, I think there are many statements that can be made that can be very impactful and kind of shift a person to a new perspective or shift them by helping them let go of something they're holding on to. I think it would be very helpful to do that. And certainly I think in this early tradition there are times when the Buddha said things that were very succinct and the stories that were told that provided a shift and the people listened to them. I think that it's gradual until it's sudden.

[26:10]

In this early tradition, the emphasis was that the path is a gradual path of change and growth. But it culminates in a sudden instantaneous experience. The final step is usually considered to be sudden. But the conditions have to be in place properly for that to happen. Yes? So you were saying earlier how to start the sort of gradual process, you have to be happy. Oh, no, this part here, it's, no, happiness is actually well long in the process. Happiness comes up. Yeah, so you have to do things like, there's a variety of things it talks about. It talks about, there are kind of conditions for this movement towards the happiness. Being virtuous, abandoning the hindrances, abandoning other unwholesome states of mind. They mention inspiration sometimes. So being really inspired by something can really pull you into this flow.

[27:20]

So if you're against a sheen like you're talking about earlier or whatever is it sort of is getting out beyond the hindrances sort of like an egg scenario where even if you're not trying to or wanting to abandon the hindrances if you just set up the right conditions they'll fall away or do you have to be putting out effort the entire time and if you're not then you're basically just wasting your time. How much can that person actually consume? Yeah, it's hard to give a definitive answer for that because it's so different for individuals. Some individuals find that it's very helpful to not do anything in the mind, just sit there fully with their posture and be with their breath and not try to do anything. and then just shed. Every time there's a doing, just shed it. Let go of any doing you're doing. And in that process, it seems a hindrance to just fall away. Other people I know who kind of don't do anything in Zazen, and I've known people here at Zen Center who didn't really do anything except daydream and think for years.

[28:30]

They were just kind of like drifting and wandering around. So one person did nothing and it seemed to really help them to settle. Another person did nothing, and it just kind of allowed them to kind of continue drifting off in thought. And so it depends on the individual. But I think that the basic idea of trying to be fully present with your experience, with your posture and your breath, is an alternative to the mind drifting off into thought. And you have to have thought in order to get involved in the hindrances. And so as you stop feeding the thinking, the feeding begins, and the momentum of thinking quiets down, the feeding of thinking quiets down. And so thought begins to quiet and get stiller. And as thoughts come stiller, some of the stronger thoughts that are like the hindrances begin to quiet down as well. And so one might not be trying to abandon the hindrances, but they get abandoned as when you stay, show up.

[29:34]

keeping present does that make sense and then uh with that as we you know i think that uh when the hindrances are no longer there you're really present and your mind's not drifting off anymore just feels like it's here it's settled and happy the birds are singing you hear the creek and and you feel your breathing just and you're completely content with this experience uh there can be a certain kind of feeling of well-being of satisfaction of rightness to that that can give birth to a certain kind of joy. Make sense? Do I go on, or? Yes, please. My name's Steve. Oh, yes, thank you. I find that I get a little bit stuck thinking about going back to today's earlier question sort of about effort, and when you talk about sort of effort as being a necessary part of this path of volition not being necessary.

[30:38]

And I'm wondering if what separates those two is actually like a physical, bodily experience, and that's how we know what effort is versus volition. But sometimes I think that volition is what gets us started as being an effort. And so I guess I'm not... I'm using synonymously, volition and intention. I don't think this text is saying, have no intention. But it's just saying, if you have no intention, if you have those conditions, certain things will unfold anyway. But if you're not virtuous, you have to have some intention to become virtuous. If you are caught up in their hindrances, there's some intention to somehow deal with those and overcome them. And there's a variety of ways. You know, if you want to go to B, but they tell you the fastest way to B is to be fully at A, the intention is to be at A. What happens is people, as you get, the mind gets quieter and stiller, we tend to let, it feels right to let go, or the mind does it on its own.

[31:56]

that it lets go of what's coarser, what's higher energy kind of activity. So at some point in the stilling process of the mind, we get to the layer where intentionality is working. And that becomes necessary to let go of, because at that point, it's the hindrance to go quieter. But if you're already really agitated, the intention can actually help you get partway. Make sense? It's like sandpaper. You use coarse sandpapers first. Then you have to kind of use finer and finer sandpaper. And so intention is kind of like a middle-grade sandpaper. It's good up to the middle or so, and then you have to let go of it. Okay, so I want to tell you about the five... So in this ancient text, where the Buddha was talking about... the practices that lead to liberation. He talked about a lot of practices, a lot of things you can do. And some of them just had to do with living a wise life, a good life.

[33:00]

But when he sat down to describe a path to liberation, he tended to do it through a set of five different practices. Seemingly like you do this practice, then this one, then this one, this one. It's kind of very linear. And it's an interesting list of practices. So I want to describe these to you, the model of practice. The first is to abstain from unethical behavior. So it's a practice of abstaining. You need a lot of effort sometimes to do that because sometimes the forces of being unethical is quite strong in some people. The second is abstaining from attachments to sin subjects. So the world of our senses around us, not getting attached to it. So someone serves a wonderful dessert, you know, you don't let yourself get attached to the dessert.

[34:01]

Take it or leave it, you're fine. It'd be nice if you could have it, but you're not attached to it. And the practice is called safeguarding oneself at the sense doors. So one pays attention to all the inputs at each of the senses, is mindful of what the inputs are, and careful that no matter what they are, we don't start to latch onto them. So the practice is abstaining. The third is to be mindful and clearly comprehensive in all our daily activities. When we stand, when we walk, when we work, when we go to the bathroom, to really be present for the experience that we're doing, and clearly know what you're doing, what it's about, what's happening, the context. Just really be present for all your experience, as opposed to having your mind, you know, do something different. One of the great places I trained to do this was in the kitchen here at Tasahara, was chopping vegetables, carrots, in particular for my teachers. I did not want to be chopping vegetables.

[35:04]

And I would stand up there on the cutting table with my body turned towards the door and kind of chopping with one hand. And I would turn around and place myself right square, me and the carrots, and chop, just me and my carrots. My mind would go off, my body would turn towards the door, and I'd just come back, come back. And just, when I'm chopping the carrots, just chop the carrots. And I had to, it took a while for me to overcome the kind of thoughts and ideas and impatience that I had around these poor carrots. And eventually the carrots and me became friends, and I learned to be present for the carrots. So this idea of your daily activities, be mindful and present for it, and clear comprehension. The next practice is contentment. Be content with what you have. Be content with the room you have, the clothes you have, the food you have. Be content with your circumstances, within reason.

[36:07]

But contentment is a very important thing, because discontent is not the condition that supports this natural unfolding. And the fifth one is abandoning the hindrances. So three of these, at least, have to do with abstaining or abandoning things. They have to do with letting go. They have to do with getting the boulders out of the creek so the water can flow by itself. You can't expect to let the water flow down the mountainside if the boulders, the dam is there blocking it. And so certain behaviors, unethical behavior, attachment, and the hindrances act as barriers to this natural flow, this beautiful innate capacity we have to flow in this direction that's going on. I would like to think that contentment is also a kind of letting go. We let go of discontentment.

[37:09]

Rather than making ourselves content, it's mostly a matter of letting go of discontentment, and then we can I think maybe naturally feel content more easily. The one that doesn't have to do with letting go is mindfulness and clear comprehension in daily life. I think that the abandoning practices are about taking away the obstacles, the boulders, and mindfulness and clear comprehension is about making the channels more wider and bigger. So there's more space for the water to flow. each of these practices, or these five, are done, especially the abandoning practices, abstaining, letting go, abandoning. They're not only about what you let go of, but it's also about what you gain. And you regain things as well as we abandon things.

[38:11]

It's not just about having less, it's also about having more of something. So, There's two sets. These practices can be divided into two sets. The practices of abandoning or letting go of things. And the practices of mindfulness. Clear comprehension of what you're doing. Which of these two categories of practices do you think give birth to joy? Letting go or being mindful? Yes? Both? It's a good answer, but it's not the answer in these old texts. Yes? Letting go. That's the answer. So, the letting go of these things give birth to joy, or to bliss, it says, happiness.

[39:12]

So, abstaining from unethical behavior brings the happiness of blamelessness. And when I was a teenager, I didn't have any idea that blamelessness counted for anything. But here they're talking about a certain kind of happiness that knows that you can go into, the Buddha said, you can go into any assembly and no one will blame you. And that's a certain kind of happiness. Abstaining from attachments to sense objects brings a different kind of happiness, which some translators translate as undefiled happiness, pure happiness. Just the fact that you're not attached, caught up. And then, and abandoning the hindrances, it says, brings gladness and delight. Isn't that nice? So it's not, abandoning and letting go is not only about what you let go of, and you get to live a better miserable life because you've let go of so much. The point of letting go is so that you have more joy, more happiness.

[40:15]

Happiness and joy in this early tradition is kind of the means or the vehicle or the food or the fuel which nourishes and supports this natural flow that this early tradition seems to emphasize. So you would avail yourself of that joy. You would be ready to recognize it, appreciate it, and let it be there. And this is something that seems to have been a characteristic of this early Buddhist tradition. Here's a king, Vasenadi, at the time of the Buddha, was talking to the Buddha about coming across the Buddhist monastics, and this is his comment to what he said. Here, among your monastics, I see monastics smiling and cheerful, sincerely joyful, plainly delighted, their faculties fresh, living at ease, unruffled, subsisting on what others give,

[41:18]

abiding with mine free as a wild deer's. So anyway, the king thought they were all pretty happy people. So this idea of happiness as being part of the path, not only was in what was taught by the Buddha, but seems also to have been, if the king is accurate, to have been characteristic of the early Buddhist communities. So in this description of these five practices, one leads to the other, and the last one is abandoning hindrances. Then it goes on and says the same thing I quoted before, that with the abandoning of the hindrances, there's gladness. When one is glad, joy is born. When one is joyful, the body becomes tranquil. When the body becomes tranquil, one becomes happy. For one who is happy, one gets concentrated. Again, there's no doing here. This language is no doing at all.

[42:20]

The assumption here is that this is a natural unfolding. Then it goes on to discuss the jhanas. Anybody not know what the jhanas are? So the jhanas are four states of deep concentration where the mind gets fully absorbed. or unified or collected here. So these states of concentration. And in Sanskrit, it's dhyana, and it's the origin of the word zen. Zen originally meant concentration. These states of deep concentration. And so it's... this natural process continues as people get into these deep states of concentration. And many people try to get into these states of concentration as an activity that we do.

[43:26]

But here in the ancient tradition, it seems that the way that the Pali is written, the ancient language is written, it's more described as a natural process that seems to just flow one after the other. Because it's not obvious in some of the English translations, but in the Pali, the original language, it goes through this process, gladness, joy, tranquility, happiness, and concentration. Being concentrated, then, having entered, one abides in the first jhana, in the first level of these absorptions. It doesn't say anything about now that everything's prepared, the ground, you've gotten yourself tranquil and concentrated. Now you do the jhana. Do X, Y, and Z to get into the jhana. This is what you have to do. It just doesn't say anything about that.

[44:28]

It just says having entered. How did that person enter? How did that happen? It doesn't say. My interpretation is that it doesn't have to say how you do it because it's not a how you do. It's rather a consequence of the conditions being right that you've created and you've settled into. And when the conditions are all right, then this is the direction that the mind can go. And then it describes a successive emptying or letting go of these different states that leads to deeper and deeper layers of concentration and absorption. So in the first jhana, there's a degree of thinking and examining your experience that's present. With the stilling of that thinking and examination, there arises joy and happiness of the second jhana.

[45:34]

With the stilling of the joy and happiness, with the fading away of the joy, fading away of the joy, Then one experiences the happiness of the third jhana. With letting go of the happiness of the third jhana, one settles into the fourth jhana. However, the language here has no verbs that say, you do this. You do the movement from one jhana to the other. Each of these are nouns. With letting go is a noun here, the Pali word. with the letting go. It doesn't say you let go. And there can be an experience of a natural settling, quieting, not letting go so much, but not involved in the activity. To hold on, to be involved in anything at all, takes mental effort, takes mental energy. And as the mind gets stiller, the natural tendency is to let go of any effort which is extra.

[46:38]

And we realize slowly over time, the extra effort sits there. Thinking and evaluation is effort. You let go of that. There's energy and joy. The mind knows at some point to relax. It'll do it on its own. And then happiness takes effort, a certain kind of effort, more sublime than joy. But the mind knows at some point to let go and go deeper. So the movement between these jhanas is not described in terms of what we do, that we move, we're responsible for it, they occur because of conditions. I think this is a phenomenal description of what the mind, all this, of what the mind is capable of for. I don't know what you think of this, but that anyone would have this experience to describe this, the capacity of the mind, that the mind has this potential, innate potential, to unfold, to move, towards this phenomenal good state that we don't have to be so responsible for.

[47:43]

We don't have to will, we don't have to create, we don't have to do. We're just doing the supporting conditions for it. Now, interestingly enough, because of how much happiness was an important part of these earlier stages, the happiness of blamelessness, of not being attached, the gladness of not having the hindrances, there is some practice, some instructions for what we do in each of the jhanas, each of these stages of absorption. And here is what we're supposed to do. In the second jhana, the practice is to suffuse, fill, soak, and pervade this very body with joy. So you have a job to do. So you're not just sitting there completely passively. And once the joy begins to arise, then the job, this joy of the second jhana, then your job is to get it to pervade your body, fill your body, get it completely radiated.

[48:47]

Yes? Oh, you wouldn't. Because you're not in a jhana state. This is not what the cause and conditions are for. The practice then is to is to bring attention and respect and care to the grief. And if you do it well and thoroughly, really respecting and honoring the grief, there can be a kind of a certain feeling of, I don't know if satisfaction is the right, I don't know what the right English word is, a certain feeling of rightness. Given the fact that I feel this grief, it feels really right that I'm present for it. Maybe that's the best you can do. You're in harmony then with what's happening for you. And that ability to be in harmony with what's happening to you and really be present for that is also a supporting condition so that later you know how to be fully present for the joy.

[49:54]

That make sense? And if you want to talk more about this, we can afterwards. And then in the third jhana... One suffuses, fills, soaks, and pervades this very body with happiness. What a trip. I mean, this is what you get to do in practice. Just kind of like, just kind of, just really kind of get into it. Get into the joy, get into the happiness really, really thoroughly. The reason why this is taught this way is that as this joy or this happiness really begins to pervade a person, really fill a person, really kind of become strong and settled and mature, that creates the conditions for the system, the psychophysical system we have, to be ready to let go of it, to settle it and move beyond it.

[50:57]

But unless it's really mature and full, it's hard for this natural process to unfold. Does that make sense? So we get into the fourth jhana. And from the fourth jhana, this is the foundation in this path that Buddha describes, the platform from which one becomes awakened. And all I'll say right now is that the awakening itself, which is sudden, is also not described as something you do, but also described in language that it just seems to happen. So it seems like these things happen. Water flows downhill if you create the right conditions for it. And I think something like zazen, where you're trying to be fully present and somehow have the kind of unconditional acceptance of the moment, means that you're getting rid of the obstacles to that flow. Because the obstacles to the flow are all the ways we don't accept the present moment or not satisfy the present moment or want something different.

[52:02]

And so we're making space for these things. And this allows something to unfold and to change over time. And what I'll end with in a couple of minutes is that, so in this early Buddhist tradition, they seem to posit that there's an innate capacity for good, innate capacity of moving along towards a path of liberation that seems to be our potential, resides in our hearts or our minds. And what is that? Why should it be there? Do we have a name for it? What do we call it? Where did they get that idea? It seemed like this early tradition took a lot of things for granted. They didn't actually spend much time trying to put names on things like this. They just saw it was there and accepted it and described it that way and didn't try to make any kind of more grand statements about it. Some of the modern Theravadan teachers who teach in this tradition have experiences with this kind of unfolding as it moves along, feel a need to kind of interpret it or use it as an interpretation that there's something innately good in all of us.

[53:16]

And so some Theravadan teachers now have borrowed a term from the Mahayana. What do you think that term is? Buddha nature. That this is the Buddha nature, the potential that's in there in all of us. liberation that's operating and um so kind of uh to find this positive view of something that supports us guides us which is not uh our doing and part of the billions of this description that i described here it's for the most part describes a process of liberation that takes the self out of it it's very little emphasis on the self me myself and mine i'm the one who's doing things in fact too much emphasis on me, myself, and mine gets in the way. It's just more obstacles in the path. Whereas we go through the layers of the mind, it's one of the layers that's useful up to a certain point. And after a certain point, seeing anything at all through the reference of self is an obstacle to the deeper movements of the flow.

[54:24]

So Buddha nature is the alternative to self. So is that okay? I hope that was a lot to say, but I hope it was a little bit provocative and interesting. Lift hanger, because I didn't go into details around awakening, or why? I'm happy to talk out there if anybody wants to talk with me, but we have one minute left before we have to start our ritual, me marching out. So I want to thank you for your interest in your engagement. And I certainly hope it was useful for you, interesting for you. And if nothing else offered you an interesting perspective on what some people think resides in our hearts. And if you found that it was kind of a waste of your time or not interesting, I welcome you to leave everything you heard here in this room. Thank you all.

[55:28]

Pay our attention to the rest of the people.

[55:36]

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