So this kind of, and what this case is illustrating, is we develop our practice in this kind of conversation in doksan and so forth. You know, it can be simple things, like someone said to me, if there's no interpretive root, what is analysis? So that's quite a good question. Because we want to rub against these teachings in our functioning. And I see it in conversations that occur around here sometimes. Sometimes it's a little too zenny and sometimes it makes sense. So I said yesterday that the... Okay.

[01:15]

Again, let me start where I started. I'm trying to take the experience I've had practicing with a lot of people in the West. And the fact that it's a lot of people is important because It's really given me a feeling of what works for us and what doesn't work for us. It's not isolated cases, you know. And I've, you know, spent a lot of time immersed in the tradition, and I'm trying to find a way to represent the practice to us in ways that both reflect what our actual practice is and help us proceed on the way the best I can.

[02:20]

So let me look at the epiphany-type or enlightenment-type experience. Now it can occur just by accident or something, but usually behind it there's some contrast. Some contrast is perceived, or felt, or some... And maybe there's a spark that ignites this contrast. And for a moment your, let's just try to make it simple, your habit body drops off, or the causal sheaths, you could say, causal sheaths, you know, your habit body, your karmic body, your personal history body, your mental image of your body of body and reality.

[03:31]

We could say those are three causal sheaths that define all of our experience for us. And they're really like sheaths. And at some point, something happens that these break open. And there's a moment in which you don't see, you see through your usual habits of seeing, and you feel the world very directly. Okay, that's a kind of simple phenomenological description of an enlightenment experience. Now, one of the important characteristics of it is this experience of when it happens that there's this opening, there's a reversion, a turning around in the seat of the self or in the way you experience yourself.

[04:50]

That turning around, in my opinion, is more important than seeing, than the feeling of, as traditionally said, kind of conceptless, immutable mind or something, original mind. Because the turning around in the seat of one's being, that is unique to this kind of experience. But, In that kind of experience, everything disappears. Or for a moment, there's a gap. And then you reform. So this conversation between Shui Liu and Dung Shan replicates this. In other words, are you getting rid of the grit, or are you getting rid of the rice?

[05:55]

Well, from a practical point of view, you're getting rid of the grit. But you're also getting rid of the rice, if you value the grit. So from the point of view of realization, the grit and the rice are equal. So as soon as you know the grit and the rice are equal, you have to say, both are gone. And as soon as you say both are gone, you're replicating phenomenologically or symbolically the experience of enlightenment. Do you see what I mean? This kind of thinking is behind these conversations. And it's the same with if anything is seen, it's the same as sentient beings. And what he means is that to see a Buddha is like in the Dhamma Sutra, there's no Buddha to be seen. As soon as you see something in the usual interpretive route, you're seeing it in terms of the relative or the imaginary or sentience, not Buddha.

[07:09]

Now, I guess what I'm trying to say here, your guess is as good as mine, is that while the enlightenment experience is the organizing dynamic of Zen practice. The same functions occur through samadhi and prajna. In other words, we can have a very wide interpretation of enlightenment.

[08:20]

It can be, and I think it's legitimately so, that your first decision, your intuition to practice, is an enlightenment experience. And if you act on it, you're maturing that turn. Yes, the life I have, I need something, there's some gap, oh, I'll try to practice. then many small things are hardly noticed. As I said, David Shedrick brings this up in his book, many small things that happen to somebody would be hardly noticed if you didn't practice. But if you practice, particularly sometimes when you look back, you can see at that point, that little experience, whatever it is, sometimes quite little, seems little, trivial, your life turned on that experience. Okay, now why do I say... I'm sorry this isn't going to be as clear as I would like it to be.

[09:39]

But that's all right. You can clarify it for me in your own practice. Okay, now samadhi... is often associated with concentration. But it's more specifically a signless state of mind. Now as we've talked at some length in the past about signless minds, signless minds may have thought or other mental activity as part of them, but they function as signless minds. In other words, all somatic states or signless states of mind are not just blank pieces of paper. In other words, there may be words on the paper, but it's the piece of paper that's functioning, not the words.

[10:46]

So if one practices, now I'm talking about let's make some with no enlightenment, and you practice and you more and more through your zazen and stuff, mindfulness practice and so forth, begin to have a sense of signless states of mind or various kinds of samadhi, momentarily or momentarily. that take you over sometimes. Sashin is one way in which we are more likely to create a situation where this happens. Or we create a situation where this is more likely to happen. And very commonly people speak to me and sometimes beginners, that two or three periods or twenty minutes of one period, they were suddenly taken over by emptiness, or by no thoughts, or by a state of mind that reduced everything else to blips.

[12:03]

Well, this is a samadhi. Now prajna, wisdom, translated as wisdom, in the sense I'm using it, in the practice sense, is, we could define as conceptless knowing, or, yeah, analysis, we could say, is observation and analysis based on samadhi. Now, if I'm speaking to you and you're thinking about what I'm saying, and you're thinking, oh, I know what he's talking about, I've had this experience, this is an interpretive route. But if you listen to what I'm saying and feel the connection with your, with experiences, it may be the same.

[13:10]

Now this is more prajna, or a non-interpretive knowing. And ideally I should give lectures which do not lend themselves to interpretive thinking. But some of you have such strong habits of interpretive thinking you immediately, you've got, you've divided my lecture up into seven topics and three are on this shelf and two are on this shelf and one you don't know where the heck to put it, you know. They're used to throw it away. This is useful for school, but it's not useful for his end practice. Now, for those of you, let me give a very brief Zazen practice, Zazen instruction.

[14:41]

In Zazen, there's an assumption within Zen practice, Chinese Zen practice, that mind settles of itself. In other words, mind has some quality, like water. Water tends to settle, mind tends to settle. So our zazen practice and sashin practice is designed to create a situation where there's sufficient in-placeness, physically and mentally, that mind has a chance to settle. And as I said several times now, then you notice what doesn't settle. And I think for most of us, what we notice that doesn't settle is we think it's thoughts, but thoughts actually settle as well. Thoughts dissolve.

[15:43]

Thoughts stop in their tracks. Thoughts sink, but they don't if you identify it with them. So thoughts are not the problem. The identification of the thoughts is the problem. So what you can notice is that you identify with your thoughts. And that doesn't sink. That doesn't settle. Okay, so analysis suggests you have to find some way in which to stop identifying with thoughts. Now this is very basic practice. We've talked about it in various ways. The idea is if you can stop identifying with thoughts, identifying with thoughts, then thought formations themselves will also sink or settle.

[16:50]

Now when the contents of mind, it's a little bit like the contents of mind are tied together by a lot of ropes and buoys. And those ropes and buoys are your identification with it. And if you cut the ropes and, I don't know what you do with the buoys, dynamite them or something like that, get rid of the buoys, the thoughts start to sink. When the thoughts start to sink, you begin to have a clarity of mind. Now it's very interesting and strange, in a way, that meditation practice will, you'll begin to see that you have more perceptual clarity and more mental clarity. What do I mean by clarity? I mean simply clarity. I mean sometimes on a very nice day, not much water in the air, there's very little water in the air around here anyway, the mountains

[17:58]

the stone ridge, the snow ridges, are so precise, etched on the sky. Well, you begin to feel through meditation practice that thoughts and things have that kind of precision in your mind. You see them with tremendous clarity and each thing has its own independence. And perceptually, too. you begin to be struck more and more by the vividness of things, the outlines of things, and the colors and fields of things. Both the outline and the field, free of the outline, both become more vivid. Usually when we look at a tree, for instance, you see the word tree. You see just enough visual information, to say, oh, that's a tree, and there's a tree, and it's a tree there, and you walk by it every day, but you seldom enter into the power of the tree. Because we're so quick to take the visual information, turn it into a word, then we say, oh, there's some... I mean, maybe you could describe... If this is your first time here, you could probably describe the Zenda to somebody, maybe.

[19:16]

I kept the lights off most of the time. I don't know what it really looked like, but... But you could probably not describe any of the trees. Unless you're Tim, whose job is to describe trees and things. But each tree has its own presence, individuality and power, and it's a, you know, it can get inside you. But that kind of clarity in which not only are things more precise and clear, but they're more precise and clear free of the concepts that we associate with them. It's almost like the tree could be a tree in some monster movie which turns into hands and grabs you or something. But, in other words, the tree doesn't have... You know, it's quite... It's like I said...

[20:17]

slate floor in your face. The tree sort of is all over you. Okay, so is this some kind of mysterious thing that happens? Yeah, I mean, because you're practicing zazen or have some epiphany-type experience or signless mind-type experience? Well, yeah, I suppose, but I think if we looked at it more carefully, we could say it's because you've developed a dharmic habit of stopping and you know the field of mind, your, what can I say, your energy, your sense of location is in the field of mind, not in the contents of mind. Now, through Dharma practice, we begin to rest in the field of mind, not the objects of mind, and we tend to see each thing in its absolute independence as well as its interdependence.

[21:33]

When you have that as a habit, then everything looks clearer. Everything is just clearer. It's not that you're perceiving more clearly, it's that the way you perceive produces the experience of clarity. So again, this kind of clarity, which you may start noticing, you may not, I don't know, I'm not in charge of your experience. But you may notice, and I think you can take it, that for some reason it is the result of your finding or experiencing signless states of mind. Because a signless state of mind is to know the field of mind, not the content of mind.

[22:40]

And signless states of mind arise from what? They arise from enlightenment experiences and they arise from samadhi. So samadhi and enlightenment experiences perform the same function in our practice. So in effect, my experience is, is that people who practice enough to begin to have samadhi or signless states of mind, take precedence over contents, have the same openness to practice as people who had enlightenment experiences. Now the difference is that there isn't this sense of reversion. The word reversion is quite interesting because it also means to, like if some land is reverted to its rightful owner, like in Poland, people are trying to get their land back, in East Germany, et cetera, and they inherit the family estate, which has been lost.

[23:41]

And so reversion has a sense of you inherit your true estate. And there's some feeling like that. There's a turning around and you suddenly feel you're in the land where you were born. Really born. Or simultaneously born. So I guess what I'm saying is that the activity of samadhi and prajna, we can say that the function of samadhi is one-pointedness and the function of prajna is non-interfering observing consciousness. So my experience is that this is something that if you practice with understanding and intention, practice and enlightenment, small enlightenments and big practice,

[24:50]

small practice and big enlightenment, I don't know what, tend to work together. And do work together, not tend to work together. Now, partly I'm speaking about enlightenment in, I think, the somewhat delusionary way that D.T. Suzuki has given us and some other things, but I don't want to get into the topic that topic, and some other books have been written that overemphasize this. But the fact is that various kinds of enlightenment experiences, epiphanies, do happen to people. And also, but practice isn't limited to those experiences or the fruits that come from those experiences. Now I'd like to shift slightly This is the seventh day, isn't it?

[25:52]

Okay, so this is the last lecture. Can you put back the clocks, Rhonda? You have a lot of power. It's Sunday, isn't it? Sunday. It's the sixth day. Okay. Sukhiyoshi speaks about magnanimous mind. So I want to, this is the, this is, you'll see, magnanimous mind, kind mind, and joyful mind. And he speaks about them, he takes the terms from Dogen, but he really, it's his own teaching more than Dogen's. And they're related to the Four Unlimiteds, but this is a kind of Zen way of looking at the foreign limiteds as practice, as internal practice.

[27:02]

Foreign limiteds are foreign measureless. Magnanimous mind is, to characterize it, is that mind which can forgive that which cannot be forgiven. And it also means that mind which sees both sides of things and is experienced as a big mountain. If in your zazen you feel some great kind of boundless clarity that also feels solid, like it can't be moved, This is magnanimous mind. Now from the point of view of Zen again, we don't treat these things as just experiences. It's as more real or at least as real as intellectual mind or any other mind you want to speak about. So there's magnanimous mind.

[28:08]

And magnanimous mind, the importance of magnanimous mind is it's a mind that arises from signless states of mind. It's a mind that arises from samadhi. It's a mind that arises from enlightenment. Likewise, kind mind. But kind mind is... Okay, I look at you, right? Nice folks. People I know quite well. I have a lot of different emotions.

[29:11]

And in those emotions, there may be love, there may be criticism, there may be all kinds of things. But all of those things are expressed as kindness. Sukyoshi called it the volitional aspect of emptiness. But that kind of kind mind, which is also called tajju samadhi, ji-ju-ju samadhi and tajju-ju samadhi, and it means shared, ji-ju-ju samadhi means self, it's hard to translate these things, means self-joyous samadhi or self-joyous mind. Tadjuyu samadhi means shared joyous mind.

[30:20]

Now shared joyous mind arises from signless states of mind. It's not something that comes out of your culture or your history or your something. It arises from signless states of mind. And it can be called kind mind. We don't have, what do I say, shared joy mind or something. But when you've had this kind of experience where everything stopped and there was a gap and you saw yourself recreating or in samadhi you begin to feel how everything appears. We don't say everything exists, we say everything appears. That's a different language. I don't say you exist. I mean, I guess you exist. It's doubtful, actually. I've read the Diamond Sutra and I know it's doubtful.

[31:23]

But whatever we mean by existence is quite a complicated topic. But it is absolutely the case that you appear. You appear right now in my mind. So we emphasize in Buddhism that things appear. This is implicitly based on the prototype of enlightenment because things appear from emptiness. The word appearance implies enlightenment. So the more I see you as appearing in my mind and pointing to my mind as well as to you, then I'm functioning through enlightenment. And this is also a conceptless way. I'm not thinking about you. You just appear and my mind knows you. I'm not thinking about you to know you. Through appearing in my mind, my mind knows what appears in it.

[32:28]

It's something mysterious. And joyful mind is this self-joyous samadhi. Now, the importance of, in trying to make some sense of the talk I'm giving today, is these three functionings, self-joyous samadhi, the Buddha, the person, the witness, the witnessing function, the relationship to people, sangha, as kindness or shared joy mind, And phenomena, as understood in this big, inclusive mountain of clarity, and as Sukriya would say, this magnanimous mind that can accept everything, forgive everything, even that which cannot be forgiven, is the basis of intellect as prajna.

[33:34]

Because it sees both sides and all sides. So it's an interesting way to think of this Dharmakaya as the basis of intellect. Dharmakaya Mountain, etc. Now, enlightenment is not a state, it's a functioning, as is Samadhi Prajna. And what is the mode of functioning? The mode of functioning, in Sri Yukteswarji's teaching, is kind mind, joyous mind, magnanimous mind. It's through those minds that we generate a Buddha field and bring to fruition our own Buddha body. And those minds arise from samadhi prajna and epiphany or enlightenment experiences. So, although I have not made myself very clear, maybe this can rest in you, and maybe, as I said, you can clarify it in your own practice and help me.

[35:02]

Thank you. May our intention be as great in every being and place, with the true magnet of the countless way. To all that is said and done, The self-museal is created in the abode of God, which is the abode of God.

[36:03]

The abode of God is the abode of God. The abode of God is the abode of God. The abode of God is the abode of God. I don't know if anybody wants to speak to him.

[36:30]

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