Certainly one of the greenest I've ever seen here. I can't remember. I'm not here in the summer usually, but I can't remember it being this green. Maybe tomorrow we can use a couple of tables or something, Dan. This way, unless we need them for eating. Do we have something? Do we need them for eating? This is a little high. I need to be a little high so I can see you, but not this high. Well, of course, we have some kind of topic this evening in this seminar. And Let's start out with just the idea of the bodhisattva, the idea of bodhisattva practice.

[01:08]

And I know quite a few of you are at least somewhat new to practice. Some of you may be completely new. And so I need to find some way to speak that includes new people. And also, if you're not used to the way I talk or speak about Buddhism, maybe it's the same as being new. So I have to... You know, I want to speak about the practice so it's useful to you. At the same time, of course, more and more as I get older, I should be somewhat... accomplished at this stuff. I've been doing it a long time. And I do find myself more interested on how one, how a developed practice affects your practice.

[02:16]

That will probably be something that will come up while we're here these days together. So, you know, I'm going to also use words which will be new to a few of you, like bodhisattva, and I'll try to make clear as we go along what such a word means as a human being, because we're talking about human beings, we're talking about you and me and each of us, and why do we call a certain way of being a human being a bodhisattva. someone has the suchness of enlightenment or something. But the first, you know, the traditional and classic bodhisattva practice are the six paramitas. And the first paramita is generosity.

[03:24]

Now, I think all of us would like to be generous and we like other people to be generous. That's not something unusual. But if we say that this kind of person who is a bodhisattva is called this funny word because they are somehow have the quality, the suchness of enlightenment So does it start from such a simple thing as generosity? Well, actually, I think it does. But why is that so? And of course, if you read the little blurb that Olaf wrote and got me to edit, this has something to do with the whole of our society.

[04:28]

And yet can so much rest on the six parameters or this first one, generosity. Now if you, let's just say that one definition of a bodhisattva is what they're generous with and what they're generous with is their state of mind. So the first paramita is not about the practice of generosity only, or fundamentally even, it's about a mind of generosity. So what would be a mind of generosity? Well, of course, it has to include the practice of generosity. It's a gate.

[05:33]

The practice of generosity is certainly, obviously, it could be an opening to the mind of generosity. Okay, now, if we again imagine that we're all beginners here, what is a mind, any kind of mind, or mind of generosity? I think when I first started to practice, this would have rubbed me the wrong way. Because when I first started to practice, I was interested in And finding out how things actually exist and how things actually exist for me was something more like naturalness, what naturally is present. And the idea of what could exist or what could be present would have put me off a bit, put me off a lot. I mean, it might have been enough to stop me from practicing because I was interested in getting free of ideas of control, controlling myself, etc., being controlled by others, etc.,

[06:46]

And that was the sense of a gate being... gate of... a gate and into practice, you know, because, you know, I'm using the word gate because if I have an idea like, yeah, I'd like to know how things actually exist, I'd like to understand, see how things actually exist, know how things actually exist. If you have this as a feeling, an attitude, an intention, it becomes a gate. It's like there's a kind of invisible architecture here, invisible structure among people and the way you see the world. I mean, I look at the tree. If I ask, how does this tree actually exist? It's not the same as just seeing the tree. There's some kind of... But if I ask how things actually exist, then am I already not being quite natural?

[07:55]

Because it's different to just look at a tree, look at the world, and to ask a question of the world. But I didn't see that then. I didn't see that to ask a question of the world was to also wonder what could be, not only what is. So one of the things I'll be trying to work with this evening is what could be and what is this evening and during this seminar. And of course during the seminar I'd like to get to know each of you better and have, even though we're meeting like this, to have a feeling of spending time with each of you individually. Okay, so let's take this traditional idea of practice, the mind of generosity, into our sort of thinking, wondering about how things actually exist or what is bodhisattva practice and so forth.

[09:20]

Now, I also remember one of my first... conscious senses of generosity. Because, of course, you know, I, like most people, I hope everybody, I assume everybody, my mother tried to get me to share a candy bar with my brothers, my friends, and all like that. So you grow up, you teach a child in the beginning to be generous, try to be generous, not hang on to your toys and all that stuff. But that just, you know, that seemed like a good thing to do, but those kind of attitudes stay with you as basic human behavior. But something I'm extremely attached to are my books. I have lived much of my life in books as well as in the world. I never asked myself how the books actually exist, but I suppose I

[10:25]

I ask that question now as well. And I know that when I, you know, because I've always had a lot of books from the time I was a kid. My aunts gave them to me and all that stuff. And I went to the library a lot, several times a week. And... so people would want to borrow my books. And when they'd borrow my books, they'd come back with the corners turned over and things like that. I was taught not to do that. And it always annoyed me a lot. Sorry to tell you such a dumb story, but it really used to annoy me. And I kind of resented loaning my books out to people. But I noticed that I didn't like resenting it. I didn't like the state of mind I had when I kind of didn't want to loan the books because, you know, these were nice people.

[11:29]

You know, why couldn't I loan them the books? So just in this, I remember I had to decide that, yeah, and then when I didn't like the state of mind I had when I loaned the books... And I didn't like the state of mind I had when I did loan them and I expected them to come back damaged or dirty or something. Coffee spilled on them. Or I expected them to not come back at all. So I didn't like any of those states of mind. I mean, I really didn't like it. I mean, you know, I was smart enough or... or practical enough, is that I didn't like such a state of mind. And at some point, I made a conscious decision that the books were less important than my state of mind. And so I began, I kind of wound my way toward giving the books away when I loaned them.

[12:40]

So I found if I had a feeling that I gave the book to somebody, I felt better. I mean, I kind of missed the book, but it was still better than being upset about what happened. And with kids, the books do come back pretty bad. So anyway. So I developed the habit of giving my books away in my mind. Somebody wanted to borrow a book? I had the feeling, okay, I'll give it to you. If it came back, I felt I had received a gift. So I kind of noticed a number of things. Well, I noticed that, you know, that I felt better when I had this attitude. And so actually I was already controlling my state of mind. I was already noticing that a generous state of mind was preferable to a clinging state of mind.

[13:49]

I never thought of it as bodhisattva practice or anything. I just, you know, sure, every one of us has had such very common experiences. And I hope they're common experiences, because what I'm trying to look at here is that we actually do have, not as developed an idea of states or modes of mind as in meditation practice, but we do have a sense. We like some state of minds better than others, and we do perform actions that in effect generate one state of mind rather than another state of mind. I also not only came to the point that the book... Several things emerged from that, not too clearly, but one is that the book was less important than my state of mind.

[14:53]

Even though the book often had a lot to do with my state of mind, I liked reading it and so forth. But the book, the physical object, was less important than my state of mind. Also, the other person was more important than the book. So that also was something I, after a while, would clearly say to myself, whatever this person does to the book, this person is far more wonderful and extraordinary than the book. Here, damage my book. You know, you wonderful person. So that was a kind of recognition, you know, And also in noticing that the book, the physical object wasn't important, what I was also noticing is that the relationship was important. The relationship to the book and my relationship to the person was more important than the physical object.

[15:56]

So that was also basically a not yet developed insight into emptiness. the book isn't real but the relationships are real or karmically karmically active the book isn't karmically active until you relate to it now I can look back on this and notice these things and I can also recognize it in effect in a sort of a in some kind of embryonic way, I was already involved in a kind of fundaments of bodhisattva practice. But now what made... Okay, but again, this is fairly common that we all have such experiences. What turns it into bodhisattva practice?

[16:59]

Well, I'd have to say it's meditation, wisdom practice, mindfulness practice, and so forth. Now, in what way does something we all share, a recognition that some states of mind feel better than others, and we can do certain actions or have certain attitudes that affect our states of mind. Okay. Okay. Now, usually, once you notice that, you're actually engaged in the mindology, as I would say, not the psychology of Buddhism, but the mindology of Buddhism. You're already involved in noticing your state of mind and influencing your state of mind. But we have hundreds of states of mind, thousands actually, little states, micro states of mind all the time, macro states of mind that get us upset and last for weeks sometimes. more serious states of mind, compulsive or depressed, and so forth. But in the mix of compulsive and depressed states of mind and macro states of mind and micro states of mind, I'm noticing little changes or attitudes get lost.

[18:11]

So one of the things that Buddhist practice does once you start It gives you a platform to observe all this, to observe how things actually exist, and to observe all these micro, macro, and detrimental, afflicted states of mind, joyful states of mind. It takes quite a while to notice that joyful states of mind are also afflicted states of mind unless they're non-referential joy. Remember me. When the joy comes from some reason, it's also an afflicted state of mind. But when you have joy for no reason, that's not an afflicted state of mind. So all of this can be observed by anyone who stops and looks at what's happening to them when they do a simple thing like change how they loan a book to another person.

[19:14]

Okay, but let's sort it out into what are the most fundamental states of mind that begin to kind of collect and gather what are the most wholesome states of mind, fundamental states of mind, which collect and gather other states of mind into some kind of feeling of integration and coherence in how we live. Well, Buddhism developed, I think, for sure out of meditation practice. Perhaps another route were actually psychedelics or some sort of way back before Buddhism. But they both became yogic practice and psychedelics or some kind of mind-altering substances, even coffee or tea, become a way of noticing that you can affect your states of mind.

[20:22]

Well, Buddhism is a teaching that committed itself to yogic practice, meditation practice, as a way to participate in your states of mind so that we can know something about how things actually exist. So I am convinced that the basic insights... I don't think one has to practice meditation in order to practice Buddhism. But I do think that Buddhism arose through the practice of meditation. And if you want the practice of meditation, if you want Buddhism to recreate Buddhism in a fundamental sense for yourself and not just accept it as a teaching from outside yourself, it's almost pretty sure you have to practice meditation or some kind of mindfulness, meditative mindfulness practice.

[21:30]

Okay, so the source... of Buddhism, I would say, is meditation practice. And so we can take that source and put it into our life right now. And I hope that we can... Dan, I know, gave some kind of little introduction and information about the place and things. And I don't expect those of you who aren't familiar with meditation to meditate our two periods in the morning and one period in the evening, and we'll have some sitting during the seminar itself. But I would like you, if you really don't want to, it's okay, but I would like you to at least come to the first period in the morning. It's only 30 minutes long, is that right? No, the second one is 30 minutes. I meant come to the second period in the morning. The first period. If you come to the second period, it'll be the first period.

[22:36]

Okay. Your first period. All right. So you come to the second period. I'd like you to come to the second period of meditation, if you can, and sit any way you want to sit with your butterfly posture, with your legs up in the air, flapping. It's okay. But if you're here in this place which is dedicated, committed to the practice of meditation, I'd like you to have some experience of that and have a nice sendo, actually, for the practice of meditation. Okay. So, again, all of us notice that our attitudes affect our states of mind, that we have states of mind, and now you may notice that you yourself, in various ways, thought about generosity.

[23:57]

Perhaps you didn't think about the mind of generosity, A mind from which generous actions arise without intending to be generous. It's a little different. But perhaps you've noticed sometimes you have a mind of generosity in the sense that you're open to things without a sense of barriers or something like that. The mind of generosity is a way of being intimate with yourself and with the world. If you're not generous, it cuts off this sense of intimacy. So to a sense of intimacy with yourself and others, and they're closely related, we need to discover this mind of generosity. Okay. Now, how, if you discover this, or if you feel this, and you have some idea again about states of mind and so forth, What's the platform, the scaffolding, the framework, the structure for this to develop?

[25:04]

What's the fuel, too, that makes it work? Well, again, I would say it's meditation and mindfulness. Okay. Now, what aspect of meditation am I speaking about right now? I'm primarily speaking about the First thing one learns in meditation is still sitting, the ability to sit still. And probably the, you know, the desks of one-room schoolhouses, which kept a whole class of people sitting still, were actually probably a form of meditation. Kids, I mean, I always rebelled against it when I was a kid and thought that Summer Hill, what was it called? Summer Hill. Summer Hill. I've been acquainted with schools like that and they were sometimes summer hell. But I thought that kind of school was the real thing, you know. But actually probably learning to sit still, learning to be somewhat not physically restless, to encounter your physical restlessness, to encounter your mental distraction is necessary.

[26:20]

So we sit still. And what do you learn when you sit still? You learn, in effect, one-pointedness. You learn the ability, you come into the ability, which is not possible when you're physically restless or mentally distracted. But as you begin to... it's quite a discovery, actually, to cut through mental distraction, physical restlessness. Quite a discovery. It's a kind of stepping into a clearing. You sit, mostly you think about this and that, and you keep your physical restlessness under control. But when it drains out of your body, and the kind of restlessness of the mind drains out of the mind. It's quite an extraordinary shift in life.

[27:33]

But that allows one-pointedness. And again, this would have annoyed me when I first started to practice. Somebody started talking to me about one-pointedness. And I certainly didn't make any effort to practice one-pointedness. I mean, I did in effect, because I counted my breath, you know, to ten and stuff like that, and found I rarely got past one. Sometimes I got to three. But, you know, I'd also decided to bring different values into my meditation practice, so I didn't care about whether I only counted to one or three. Three seemed as nice as ten. But I certainly didn't try to develop for a long time. In fact, I would say that at some point I noticed I'd realized a considerable degree of one-pointedness already, and that's when I started to practice it. I started to practice it when I'd already developed it, but I didn't know I was developing it. But one-pointedness is the simple ability to put your mind somewhere and leave it there.

[28:46]

On the person? On the wall? On the sunset? On the leaf? The stone? Okay. Well, it's interesting. When you do that... You know, I'm just trying to... What I'm speaking about here, I suppose, is the importance of thoroughness in practice. And as I find I've been emphasizing the last few months, and Paul Rosenblum sitting right here would have noticed this because he joined me in Austria for a seminar with some Austrian psychotherapists and a seminar with the practitioners in the Vienna area. helped me teach the seminar, actually, because I had to go away one of the days.

[29:48]

I've been emphasizing thoroughness in practice. And I would say now that if you take one practice and really are thorough in it, it will open up. I mean, I know it will open up. If you're really thorough and careful, to the whole of Buddhism. You don't need to read a single thing about Buddhism. You don't have to know a single thing about Buddhism. Later, it helps to start knowing things about Buddhism. You refine your experiences and open up your experiences, see directions that you wouldn't have thought of. But initially, to simply do one practice thoroughly is, I think, the secret of adept practice. So today we, you know, today we're looking at generosity and the first parmita and so forth.

[30:54]

This evening now. So if you do notice that, let's talk about practicing something thoroughly. If you do notice that you've come into or discovered one-pointedness, No, those of you who are new to sitting, you're not going to be one-pointed yet. But if you know what one-pointedness is, if you know about it, it's already present in your distraction. Just as space is present between the words of a book, you know, or between my words speaking now, in the middle of my words speaking now. Freedom from distraction is present in the middle of distraction. Just because you're distracted, you don't notice it. So you don't have to really be an adept to practice one-pointedness. It helps right from the very beginning to even know about the possibility of one-pointedness. Okay?

[31:57]

And when... Again, so now I'm trying to show you what I feel, at least, is the fabric, texture of practice, which is, if you practice one-pointedness, you find, actually, you're practicing the five skandhas. I'm not going to explain right now to those of you who don't know what the five skandhas are what they are, but that is one of the things I harp on in a non-angelic way the most. Wayne is disapproving. Because in effect, when you can be one-pointed, when you can just look at a stone and your mind rests on the stone, in effect you've got rid of distraction and restlessness. And if you're rid of distraction and restlessness, you're rid of or free from or you're involved in the form skandha or perception-only skandha.

[33:04]

Sightings. You're rather free of the associative, the fourth skandha, and so forth. So just by practicing one-pointedness, you're practicing, already practicing, the five skandhas. Now, when you later understand what the five skandhas is, and not only what the list is, the five, but the dynamic of how they work, well, this really opens up the world, in a way, and how we exist in a way that simply one-pointedness would not. One-pointedness, which in a way rests on still sitting, allows you to begin to have the platform for observing how we exist, how we actually exist, how things actually exist.

[34:12]

Okay. Now, what can we do to deepen one-pointedness? What can we do to create a structure, a foundation, under, in a sense, one-pointedness? Because one-pointedness is if I just rest my mind to Dan or Randy. Well, that's okay. But it's a kind of... thin thing. It's just, I can take my mind and for a while rest it on something and through practice be more and more free of mental restlessness and physical distraction or vice versa. So what, how can we deepen this skill, this resource of one-pointedness? it would be, I think, most fundamentally the first foundation of mindfulness.

[35:32]

Okay, so what I'm speaking about here now as bodhisattva practice, we've got bodhisattva practice. When we take the mind of generosity, first paramita, bodhisattva practice is traditionally the paramitas. The first paramita is generosity. Generosity is not just generousness, but the mind of generosity. How do we bring into... How do we stabilize? How do we even know what the mind of generosity is? And do we want to control or influence ourselves this much? And if we do want to conceive that actually we are already intuitively or practically functioning through something called the mind of generosity, we just haven't stabilized it. We can't necessarily establish it, generate it. You know, it says the Diamond Sutra starts out with the Buddha goes out begging and gets his meal and he comes back and he has lunch, eats his lunch and he cleans his bowl and then he washes his feet

[36:54]

And then he sits, taking an upright posture, and establishes his mind in mindfulness, in calm abiding. Establishes his mind in mindfulness. So this is real clear. He establishes his mind, he establishes his sitting, and he establishes his mind just as clearly as he washes out his bowls. and cleans out his bowls and washes his feet. So you have a kind of like a magnifying glass there or focal point. Here's his ordinary life. He's doing, you know, earning his living by begging. It's a hard thing. I've tried begging. It's easier to have a grocery store job. He's earning his living, he eats his meal, he cleans his bowls, washes his feet, establishes a sitting posture, his mind.

[38:02]

So you have the world of eating and taking care of your body, etc., comes down to this mind that he establishes, and it opens up into the sutra. It also means that because it comes through this, the sutra arises through his meditation practice, you have to practice meditation to understand the sutra. You have to come into that mind that the Buddha or Bodhisattva, you know, an adept has, because of course the Buddha didn't write the Diamond Sutra, there's a whole bunch of people, you know, probably one person wrote the Diamond Sutra, but put it together from a lot of sources. So that person... You know, it, the Buddha or that person, the author, the authors, the tradition that produces something like a diamond sutra, it arises through the practice of meditation and to understand what then is written requires you then and asks you then to meditate.

[39:09]

So, again, you discover that you can establish a state of mind. You discover through practice and after a while that it requires some kind of platform to sit still. Sitting still is a real direct entry, a surprisingly direct entry. From that arises gradually and clearly one-pointedness. And now, again, I've brought in this other teaching, the first of the four, Foundation of Mindfulness, being mindfulness of the body, or bodyfulness of the body, or, traditionally said, to know the body in the body. Now, I think that So I want to speak about the four foundations of mindfulness, and anybody who practices Buddhism much knows the four foundations of mindfulness.

[40:34]

Some people have even taught the four foundations of mindfulness. But my experience is that from the way Zen understands it, the dynamic of the four foundations of mindfulness is not very well understood. And in fact, the general popularity now of the foundations of mindfulness. The general popularity of mindfulness practice is everyone. I mean, from when psychotherapists resisted in the 60s, I mean, Buddhism and the idea of Buddhism and et cetera, to now I think there's hardly a psychotherapist alive who would not recommend mindfulness or something. So the commonality, familiarity of mindfulness actually probably hides the real practice of mindfulness from you. So I would like to, because I've been decided about a month ago, six weeks ago, something like that, to go into these basic things like mindfulness and try to make it clear

[41:50]

from the point of view of Zen practice. And I've done that now in Europe. I think I should do that here as well. So as part of our Bodhisattva practice, I want to speak about the first paramita and the first foundation of mindfulness as a way of really getting a feeling for what it could mean to be this kind of person called a bodhisattva, which is a kind of person like you already, but which you can clarify. So I think that's enough for this evening. So I like the sound of this bell. I'll pretend we sit for a long time. We'll only sit for half a minute. And I'll ring the bell three times to start and once to end.

[42:55]

And you can sit any way that you want. You can stay in exactly this position you are now. Freeze. Thank you very much for joining us.

[45:02]

And I've known Jane since she was a puppy. I found her beseeching me in the Santa Fe dog pound. And she now has become an old lady and sleeps noisily. She likes being in front of our lady, I think, which is a bodhisattva of compassion. Oh, I expect at the end of the seminar, men and women alike will look like this. Or be asleep. Thank you very much. Dan's more realistic than I am. Gross, but I suppose the altar and the cushions kind of make that happen. Was anyone here, who's here now, not here last night?

[46:10]

Okay. Now, I don't want to just talk at you. I want to talk with you. So, does anyone have something you'd like to bring up from last evening? You mentioned about washing the bowl and eating, washing the bowl, and posture. Is the path then one of a sequence? Is there a pattern to all that we do? Well, I don't think that the sequence that Buddha, in the introduction to the Diamond Sutra, goes through, is representative of a path.

[47:20]

He could have washed his feet before he, you know, had his lunch or whatever, you know. But one of the things that I think you may have picked up on, one of the things I'm speaking about, is the way practice works. Developing practice is a path. It's not a path automatically. It's a path through your intention to make it a path. And... Yeah, so I'll come back to that. Thank you. Yeah. You spoke about generating a mind... Someone thinks I'm thirsty. Huge glass of water. Yeah, go ahead. And distinguish that from the feeling of just being generous. Yeah. And I'd like you to describe a little bit more about the differences and about how we bring about that generating quality in our practice.

[48:24]

Mm-hmm. Well, I think we have to notice our states of mind. I think we notice our moods. and you know, like if you're angry, you maybe better not call somebody on the phone until you're less angry. I mean, we know things like that. But the sense of a state of mind that can be stabilized

[49:24]

generated and stabilized, I think it takes some getting used to. And I think if we want to have a one thing to notice or to think about is the initial the initial... response of a state of mind. So if you're... And again, if you notice... I have to find my way to work my way into these things. If you... recognize that the state of mind is there before you respond.

[50:29]

I think you have to think of it that way. State of mind is there... I mean, a state of mind can arise from a perception. You hear the bird outside. It may generate a certain state of mind. But also, then that state of mind is there prior to the next sound you hear. So the sense of a state of mind is it's actually, although it may arise from perception, it's prior to most perceptions. Am I speaking, making some sense? Okay. Now what I always say is it's good to think of it because we need... You can't act, you can't have mental acts... our mental acts are not random. And if you have mental, and if you have a picture of what's happening, it allows our mental acts to have some more, some ground.

[51:31]

Okay. So one thing that's useful is to think of a state of mind as a liquid. So if you have a state of, a mind of generosity, it's a certain kind of liquid or certain kind of condition. Okay? Now, how do you... Just as if you're annoyed at someone, say, or you get a letter or something that annoys you, it generates an annoyed state of mind or a irritated state of mind or something like that. So you can... make that work in your favor. Don't just wait for a lousy letter to arrive, you know, or a good letter to arrive. But rather, and I think one of the simple things to do is to work with the word welcome and the word yes. So, and you can begin to see if your first reaction to things is yes or is your first reaction to things no.

[52:40]

That'll tell you a lot about yourself, about your habits. And if your first reaction to things tends to be, blah, or often no, occasionally yes, and depends on the condition, then you don't have a stabilized state of mind. If your first reaction, say, is always yes, no matter what the conditions, then you've probably generated what I would call a mind of generosity. Because if you can say yes to whatever appears, that's an aspect of generosity. So, but that you can actually kind of practice with. This practice is... Yeah, I think it is based on enlightenment, based on original enlightenment, initial enlightenment, and so forth. And the pedagogy, I mean, I have to speak about this because you think, well, where does enlightenment fit in here?

[53:44]

It's something, so I have to imagine what you're thinking about. And the pedagogy of Zen, using the word pedagogy in a positive sense, is sudden enlightenment. But the practice of Zen is based on original enlightenment. Okay. So it's not just a simple craft that anyone can do. Yes, it is a craft that anyone can do, but it's more likely the craft of practice will touch you, will allow you to function, allow you to take it up, if it touches your original enlightenment or some kind of enlightenment experience or turning around experience.

[54:55]

I never quite expressed it that way. So now to take on the craft of practice would be to simply develop the habit of saying yes or welcome all the time. You just kind of like Pavlovian train yourself to whatever comes up, you get the habit of saying yes. The next moment you can say no. But your initial response is yes. Then if it's impractical, you know, you say no, you know. That's a, you know, these are really small things. They make a big difference. And they have to be, yeah. I was reminded, I mean, I think, you know, this is something that occurs to me occasionally.

[56:00]

When I was in high school, you know, maybe a, I think a senior in high school, I, maybe the previous year, sometime in there, I developed the habit of thinking how lucky I was. I was healthy, you know, it was a nice day, and, you know, I'd go off to school or whatever. I'd think, geez, I'm not in the hospital, and... you know, and, you know, I had enough to eat. So I, and it surprisingly worked. I felt really kind of quite happy all the time. Then one day it occurred to me, this is a weird kind of happiness based on that I'm not in the hospital. What about all those people in the hospital? And the whole thing collapsed. And I was not happy again for a long time. Now, This is kind of strange. I mean, it's strange that you can generate happiness in such a way, and it's also strange that you suddenly see the thinness of it, and it falls apart.

[57:08]

You can't anymore... Okay. I remember Nakamura Sensei, a Japanese woman who lived in my family for, I don't know, 20 years or something, would say, occasionally, we humans are so weak, a cloudy day can depress us. And it's true, but that also means that we can work with our states of mind, work with whether it's a cloudy day or a nice day, etc., Every day is a good day is a saying in Zen that actually isn't a superficial thing to say. You may not find it a good day, but it's possible to find it a good day. Okay, let me just say here, what I'm trying to do, and what I tried to do last night,

[58:12]

is kind of weave a picture of practice in which a big part of the weave is your actual experience, whether you're familiar with practice or not. Because in a way, practice, much of practice is a rearrangement of what you already know, looking in a somewhat different way of what you already know. So I'm trying to speak about, and last night I did it, you know, most of my talk, most of the time I spoke last night was trying to weave together our familiar experiences into a possible pattern of practice. So a mind, if you do, did practice with, say, saying welcome or, um, Yes, on every arising of noticing, every time you notice something, you will tend to develop a mind of generosity.

[59:31]

In fact, that's what you'll be doing. A mind that's open to what's about to happen. or what's in the midst of happening. This is also closely related to, of course, acceptance. But again, we're working with words here because we have to have some target to bring our attention to. And the easiest target is words in a way taken out of the context of language words that are more hooked into your actions than part of a sentence structure. But since words do function in us and we gather, we've trained ourselves to gather mental energy into words, we can use that habit we have of language

[60:38]

to actually free us from the kind of consciousness and mentality that language creates. So when you use the word welcome, it's a more mantra-like use of the word, and it's not really so much. It has the meaning of language in it, but it's not within the syntax of language. So you really get in the habit of just saying on each step, if I look at you, I feel welcome. And you, I feel welcome. I mean, I've spoken about this quite often, and I'm always afraid I'm boring you, but it's to answer Paul's question,

[61:40]

It's not complicated. It's a fairly simple thing to do to begin the habit of generating a mind of generosity. At the same time, to really do it requires a certain craft of mindfulness in the sense that you're able to bring your attention to each thing. Most of us don't even, you know, our attention is all over the place. We're really involved with our thinking while we're looking. I mean, how often are you thinking and not listening to someone? They're speaking to you and you're thinking about what to say next and you're not listening. You're not even engaged, you know. Ideally, when you're speaking to somebody, there's no thoughts in your mind until they finish and then the necessary thoughts appear. If you can... Yeah, okay, something else.

[62:43]

Yes? I was just thinking yesterday about that expression, and originally it was Yeah, maybe so. Well, well arrived. Okay. I want to walk out of the room and feel that we've walked in. But feel welcome? Feel welcome. Will you fix up my room for me? When I need my room fixed up, will you do it? Yes. Yes. Yes. about generosity and saying yes to what comes. One of the teachers I had is a woman who does say yes to what comes.

[63:49]

And she does also have the reputation that she's unreliable because eventually she would have to put the no in there to believe it's yes. So how do you manage the wisdom Yeah, I understand. There are people who tend to not say yes in a... They say yes more, I'm not saying this woman does this, but they say yes because they need to attune themselves to others. And those people, I know several, are often fairly unreliable because they tend to say what you want to hear. That's not what I mean. I think the practice of saying yes or welcome doesn't make you unreliable.

[64:55]

I hope not. Yeah. Something else? I'm just saying, sort of internally. Yes, internally. You can say it out loud if you want. You sound like a steam engine. Yes, yes, yes. Anything else? Now I said something about we're using words. And if you use a different word, even out of the context of language, it's sort of different. Welcome is different than yes, and acceptance is different from both. And so you can use language to penetrate your activity. And it's a particular, fairly unique, in fact, I think, practice within Zen Buddhism to use language in this way to transform and probe your activity and states of mind and so forth.

[66:17]

You know, in the middle of March, Marie Louise and I had a baby at the Alamosa Hospital. And I've been watching her naturally, rather carefully. And, you know, I have two daughters who are grown up. And I watch them very carefully too, but it's interesting to me how I'm observing Sophia, her name is Sophia, somewhat differently. Pretty much, I mean, the same. I mean, I'm bringing a kind of the attentiveness, perhaps just mainly characteristic of a parent, but also influenced by practice and mindfulness. And so I'd like to, because it's perhaps a useful observation for what we're talking about, I'd like to share some of it with you.

[67:34]

And I've talked about the first couple. We left when she was six weeks old. I spoke a little bit about her up to then, but now she's four months old. And I just found out yesterday she had her shots and she seems to be okay and she can roll over and put her foot in her mouth and all that and things that doctors think they're nice that they can do. I can't do it, so I don't know what doctors would think of me. Anyway, so she clearly knows a lot. and has known a lot. And I would say she has a definite personality from birth. And she knows a lot. But if I died today, she would say when she was older, she never knew her father. And I know quite a lot of people who did lose a parent when they were young, a mother, a father.

[68:40]

And they don't have any, even up to a couple years, they virtually no memory of their parent. Okay, so Sophia knows a lot, but she's not creating memories or some kind of mental activity that we associate with knowing is not part of what she's doing. But there is some kind of memory, because she knows our smell, she knows our voice. If Marie-Louise puts her on the phone, as last night, she was fussing a lot. I spoke to her on the phone, she stopped fussing instantly, looked at the phone, licked the phone. Couldn't figure out what was going on, you know, because there I was talking. So she knows my voice, it's real clear. but something that we call normal consciousness of producing memory in the usual sense.

[69:43]

So really what's going on that she knows but wouldn't remember? I'm kind of trying to notice things like that. And as you... And at first she... She's shaping her... She senses things, okay? It takes a while for her, it's taken, took quite a while, some weeks, for her to begin to put her senses together in the sense that if there's a sound over here, she turns her head to it, or she follows something, okay? So at first she couldn't do that. She was hearing things and smelling things, obviously, but she couldn't put them together. So it's interesting to see her put them together. Now, I'm pointing this out because we've put together a certain way of perceiving and hearing, etc.

[70:47]

And what practice does in some ways is loosen that up, dismantle it a little bit, I don't think we go back to some kind of oceanic infant-like consciousness or anything like that. I don't think that's what practice is about. But I can observe her first putting her senses together, then she begins to put her senses together with consciousness and she can reach out and touch something and now very clearly she can take hold of something and put it in her mouth or whatever, but she can get information and if she wants to communicate to you, she can touch you at a particular place or hold on to you, etc. That's all taken quite a lot of time to develop. So the gradations of developing consciousness have been, you know, separated by days or weeks.

[71:51]

She still can't put sounds together, but she definitely talks. a kind of talking. I mean, she's been doing it since a couple months old. And she will spend, like in the morning, she likes to spend at least a continuous half hour cooing and talking and she makes noises, tries to imitate our noises and we try to imitate hers and so forth. She has a good time about it. And she belly laughs all the time. It's real funny to see her. Some things make her laugh. She seems to do it. We haven't taught her to laugh. She just laughs. Okay. So she's making, in response to us, some kind of consciousness.

[73:05]

And I like Castaneda's phrase that consciousness, the particularity of a consciousness is a foreign installation. So it's something, I mean, again, as I've said, a baby supposedly can say, hear and reproduce up to about a year old all the sounds of any language. And they can produce probably sounds of languages not yet been discovered. But after about a year old, they can only produce the sounds of languages they have heard. So even though I would like to give her as much freedom as possible from foreign installations, the only way she's going to create a consciousness is through primarily Marie Louise and myself, and of course all the sangha aunts and uncles she has, Carter around here and there.

[74:12]

Okay, so there's no way we cannot shape her consciousness through the interactions. She's very impatient. She's, I guess, what's called a back archer in the sense that she's always impatient with her body and it doesn't do as much as she wants. She wants to sit up, she wants to... Why can't this body do it? And so there's some kind of, I would say there's some kind of basic instinct, instinct, intention, basic intention to stay alive. I think some of us actually lose that. We don't have a deep basic intention to stay alive. I think the precepts are partly to make that, to reaffirm our intention to stay alive and to stay alive a certain way, in a way we feel good about.

[75:18]

So she seemed to have this basic intention to stay alive. She has a basic intention to act. She has a basic intention to imitate. And she has, I would say, interest. And I like the word interest because it means inter, between, and is. So it means what connects, actually. And she's extremely interested, interested, in what connects, what interacts. Now, if we relate to that one way, she ends up to be more like a Buddhist. If we emphasize the reality of the interactions rather than the object, she'll end up to be more... Her foreign installation will be more Buddhist than Judeo-Christian, perhaps. Okay, so we can also shape in a very similar way, I think, our consciousness through interest, through attention.

[76:54]

And she is, by bringing attention to what she does, by bringing attention to her arms, you can see her trying to get her attention in her arms. so that her arm does what she wants. And her arm just kind of goes around like this. It used to, now it doesn't. But she, you know, you can see, almost like she's trying to put a liquid of intention into her arm, and finally she can begin to do things. Now, we also, in the practice of mindfulness, and in the First Foundation, especially, We are bringing attention into our body in much the same way Sophia is bringing attention into her body. I'm not going to try to right now sort out the differences, but there's a lot of similarities.

[77:57]

Okay, now I'll come back to the path. There's four foundations of mindfulness. Mindfulness of the body is the first. Mindfulness of pleasure and displeasure, pleasant and unpleasant, is second. Mindfulness of the mind is third and mindfulness of phenomena is fourth. Now there's no way that you don't practice all four of those at the same time, etc. But if you practice them all at the same time, and you practice them all sort of equally, then as it occurs to you to do it, this is fine. It'll be fruitful. But it's not a path. It's a path when, although you practice the other four, all four, which is impossible not to practice all four, but you consistently emphasize the first.

[79:07]

until you've realized the first. And only when you've really realized the first can you really practice the second and understand the second. Now, this is not something... I think this emphasis on the sequential nature of a path and establishing accomplishment in one aspect of a path before you can go on to the next step, but actually before you can even really understand what the next step is about. When you don't, you see, if you practice, if you really establish yourself in the bodyfulness of the body, then you're bringing that to the second foundation of mindfulness. If you don't fully establish yourself in the bodyfulness of the body, then you're bringing ordinary consciousness to the second foundation of mindfulness. And that's okay, but it's not the same.

[80:09]

It's in a sequence for a reason. All right. So, since mindfulness is such a common idea now, and we have this wonderful, you know, which German doesn't have, this word mind... this wide sense of a word mind and able to say something like mindfulness, and I think it's quite a good, as far as I can tell, quite a good translation. Although it's a little hard to say bodyfulness of the body, because we're really not talking about the mind knowing the body, we're talking about the body knows the body. The body, to know the body through the body is actually what I think it's like. It's not quite the same as mindfulness. Okay. So the first foundation of mindfulness is to bring attention to the body.

[81:28]

Again, a little bit like Sophia, brings attention to her arm until her arm can do what she wants. But she's bringing attention to her arm to make her arm function in a certain way. We bring attention in practice to our arm just to have the arm full of awareness, almost as if you're pouring a liquid in, not so that the arm can do anything. rather so the arm can do nothing. In fact, when the arm keeps wanting to do something, you can't sit that thing very well. That's the restlessness of the body. So we're not putting awareness, attention into our arm in the same way. We want to somehow put attention in our arm so that if we put it down on a table, we could leave it there for 24 hours. That's not the same.

[82:30]

It's a different kind of attention. And that's one of the difficulties in sitting for long periods of time. It's very difficult It may hurt, you may not be used to it, but it's also quite difficult if you, as I often said, if you put your arm on, if you go to sleep, you can put your arm somewhere and it can stay there for some hours before you need to change your arm. If you're conscious, it's very difficult to put your arm on the dining room table and leave it there the whole morning, like it was dead or something, and you're eating it. It's hard to do. Why is it hard to do? What's different about the mind of sleeping that it can leave your arm alone? These are the kind of questions you, if we want to explore how we exist and what it is that is existing, that it's useful to ask. And you don't need Buddhism to ask these questions. But if you want to bring attention to your body, which is what the First Foundation of Mindfulness is about, you need some kind of target.

[83:47]

You need some opening to pour this attention into. And over the years, there are certain targets that have been developed that are most fruitful. One of them is simply activity. And that's the most common way mindfulness is understood. Because you can notice. It's something you can notice. So you can notice your activity. You're walking. You pick something up. Whatever it is. Um... And you can, so the practice of the first step in, one of the first steps in body of the body is to bring attention to the preciseness of each thing.

[84:54]

I mean, I just picked this up, for instance, I noticed this was upside down. These little things are supposed to be on the top. And if you put something down, you give your full attention to each aspect of it. So this is... something you really do until you can do it without effort, it's natural, becomes natural, to bring something like full attention, almost like there's a stop or a pause. to each thing you do. And I'd say another aspect of Buddhist practice or Dharma practice that's the craft of it is the pause. To have a feeling of a pause in the midst of each, you know, it's not a seamless continuity, there's a pause always.

[86:01]

I look at you, there's a little pause. I look at you and there's a little pause. And you feel that pause. And you feel that pause with your body. So what bringing attention to each thing with a little pause is, again, you're changing how continuity is established, how moment-to-moment continuity is established. So your activity is one. I think the first, probably the easiest and best thing to first start out with in this, if we, I think in the way I'm emphasizing thoroughness, if we spent the next year on the first foundation of mindfulness, you'd probably all be better practitioners than anything else I could do. And when I'm talking about thoroughness or realizing it, you really stay with this until it becomes something you can do, that you can bring attention to each thing you notice, and you notice things in their particularity.

[87:20]

Now, you know, maybe you don't like the idea of this, but this is... I'm not telling you something... I'm not talking about this because in the realm of whether we like it or not like it this is a craft that's been practiced through for millennia and it is it's inseparable the realization of it is inseparable from the sense of giving attention with a feeling of a pause to each thing And although we're not going to realize it fully, the ideal in ourselves is that we don't go ahead to something else until we can do that. And you're patient enough to wait. One year, two years, five years, a few months. And it's funny that if you do decide, I'm going to be patient enough until I realize, you'll realize it much quicker.

[88:34]

Because the depth of an intention that will wait until you do it is much deeper than the usual intention. Now, a second target is your breath. And then we're going to have the four elements. I think what's useful is your activity, your breath, the four elements, and parts of the body. Now a very important turn here is you're not, when you bring attention to your body, the body. You're not bringing attention to who, you're bringing attention to what. You're asking, what is it, not who is it?

[89:40]

If you go to a doctor, you don't say, who's wrong with my kidney? I mean, you might, but then you should go to a shaman or a psychiatrist or something. You ask, what's wrong with my kidney? The what-ness of your kidney is what you're concerned about. You might also want to be worried about the who-ness of your kidney, but right now we're talking about the what-ness, the willingness to look at yourself as a what. If you can't really emphasize that, you can't proceed in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. Now, these are simple things. But they should be clear that you're looking at what this is, not who this is. Now, if you... Let's see how we're doing here.

[90:48]

We start at 9.30, 10.30. Why don't we take a break now? Sure. Sure. So suppose you, in response to something, you feel strong emotion and you feel your heart. So you're talking in a way about bringing that mind of yes to observation of what's happening with your heart. Yes. And you're looking at ... you first observe the heart is up. The heart is beating. Not my heart is beating or something. Oh, heart is beating. That kind of feeling. Okay, it's quarter to 11. Why don't we come back, have a half hour break, come back about quarter after 11. Okay? Thank you very much. This is better, this height, I think.

[91:55]

I've got a little funny propped up in the air there. Where do you want me to look? I looked a little funny, too. That's probably true. That's it. By the way, we're pretty sure that you can put your foot in your mouth. Oh, you can... No, we tried it the other day. I'm regressing in my development. You really have to roll it around in your back first. Yeah, I can. Maybe I can. Maybe David, you're helping to tighten that foot.

[92:27]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_89.2