the actual body. I mean the body which was not the mind body. Uh-huh. Yeah. Because the mind takes over the body and then you don't have the actual body. Yeah. So really what you're talking about is, the way I'm understanding it is that you're talking about listening to, opening to that taser of the actual body. Yes, okay. The teisho, I see, or the actual body is teaching you. Yeah. No, that's right. That's what happens in zazen. You begin to let the body teach you. It's true. Okay. Yeah. You were talking about iconography and the kanon figure. The actual body is... that being the expression of the actual body or the mind-body? You seem to be making a distinction.

[01:09]

Yeah, I would make, I would, not always, but we could in the way we're speaking in this seminar, we could make a distinction between the body-mind and the mind-body. And the... I don't know, but certainly the iconography of this chakra and all that, that's the body-mind, or the subtle body, or something like that. I mean, you know, we're trying to take English words and put them to this, you know, and I don't want to use... Other terms, I don't even know other terms. I'm just trying to find words that work for us, terms that work for us. And whether the blossom would be... I'd have to think about whether that would be a useful distinction. But you've got the idea anyway. Yeah? To take the example that you were giving before with the garbage and...

[02:17]

I don't like this. So this is now a phenomenon that will touch the mind, not the body. Yeah. It touches consciousness. It touches consciousness. So how do we remain on the pleasant and unpleasant aspect of the experience and not go into like a dislike when we have such an interaction which speaks to the mind and not the body? The more you are stabilized in... You know, essence of mind sounds like a big deal, but I'm just going to use it fairly freely. The more you're stabilized in essence of mind or the body-mind, you're not so subject to the associations that come through consciousness.

[03:26]

So, if you practice, for instance, the typical, if we get into the next when we get into the next foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of your emotions and so forth. Then let's take anger. If you're angry and you just say to yourself, oh, now I'm angry. If you observe the anger, where are you observing that anger from? Okay. The angry mind has a hard time observing anger. So if you're able to say, oh, look at me, I'm angry. Now I'm more angry. Now I'm less angry. That process of... Okay, you... You have a habit. You get the habit or you've been told to say to yourself... Oh, to just observe your anger.

[04:30]

So you say to yourself, look, now I'm angry, now I'm more angry, now I'm less angry. Okay, you know that. Strangely, saying those words begins to create a mind of detachment. The words themselves, and where does that come from? It actually, I would say, draws up the body-mind, essence of mind, which isn't caught in thinking and not thinking. So then if I tried to draw it again, Now, draw it like a Zazen person, right? This is a person doing Zazen. If the body-mind is like this, and it's not, it knows pleasant and unpleasant, but it's not stuck in likes and dislikes, then the mind of emotions and preferences and so forth, this can be observed, but not caught in it.

[05:45]

So the more you are stabilized in your body, the more you're not disturbed by emotions. You see them, you have emotions, but it's a little like I used the image of octopus ink. Your mind is very clear, and you get upset, and octopus ink spreads through your mind, producing your own sticky black stuff. But it's possible the more you have this sense of essence of mind, the octopus ink doesn't quite get that. This part of the mind doesn't get disturbed. So the practice of mindfulness is to generate a clarity of mind within afflicted mind. And that's generated just by the simple practice of saying, oh, now I'm angry, now I'm less angry. And the more you get used to that, you begin to... The octopus ink, or the anger, or the mood, is drawn into the mind that's observing.

[07:03]

The mind that's observing becomes more powerful. And that mind that's observing is rooted in the body. It's not rooted in consciousness. It's not rooted in likes and dislikes. It's rooted in a freedom from preferences. That's why it can observe. Yeah. Can you explain how this takes place in terms of the drawing in? I can see the observing, but I'm unclear about the drawing in. Well, it's like you have two liquids, right? And one of them has... is more absorbent or something than the other. And so that the moods and emotions more and more kind of disperse. They don't sting. First you feel they don't sting as much. You find you're not as caught in them as much. And then finally you have them but you can decide whether to react to them or not react to them and so forth. That's when you're more stabilized in this path of the four foundations of mindfulness.

[08:07]

Because the stabilized observing mind is more permeable or there's more space in it? Yeah, that's right. And it's not so involved in boundaries and it's not caught in likes and dislikes. It's not caught in preferences. And so then in that case, the black ink, it's maybe... I think I'm overstretching the metaphor. But the black ink then moves through the space which is created around the observing consciousness. Yeah, and you're just kind of a grey mind instead of a black mind. But it doesn't get caught in the observing mind. Yeah. But this kind of... You know, I'm trying to use words to describe something that is an experience, like knowing something with your cheekbones. It's very hard to talk about, but... If you practice it, this is what happens. Yes? Is it because you're always attached to the outcome, which causes likes and dislikes? That's one, yeah. Yeah, sure. Yes?

[09:10]

I don't know if I can say that, but I'm wondering about, it seems to me to be possible to be completely completely detached from likes and dislikes, and yet still be operating in a thoroughly afflicted sense, in the sense that you simply confuse... Well, maybe it's not... It seems a common affliction, I think, is to confuse... a personal like and dislike is sort of the way it is in the world. In other words, so your personal likes and dislikes become actually pleasant and unpleasant in a different sense. Yeah, I understand.

[10:11]

I think, well, it's better when we can say, well, this is only as we do. I know this person is fine, but he's not the kind of person I like or something. And then we're not saying the person's like that, we're referring to it's some kind of preference we have. It's much harder to work with when you think the world is the... when you project on the world your likes and dislikes, for sure. So, I guess the way to pursue that question is now... When you spoke earlier about there is an order to these things, so if you were to concentrate your practice on delights and dislikes, pleasant, unpleasant foundation, perhaps before the bodily foundation, that might give rise to this kind of affliction, whereas because of the… Yes, I think so. If you don't really establish the first foundation of mindfulness, then you really never see the distinction between likes and dislikes and pleasant and unpleasant.

[11:13]

So you can be thoroughly deluded, you may think that you have it. But you know, I'm having an interesting experience now. If we were all in Sashim, we'd be much more rooted, just because we're doing Sashim, in kind of physical stillness. We're not doing Sashim. And we're all, to some extent, involved primarily in our thinking world. Okay, so I'm having a hard time speaking about this because I can't feel my words resonate in your bodies as easily as I can if this were a sashin. I know I could speak about this, because I have, more easily in a sashin than I can now. There's some topics you can almost only talk about in sashin. But I can look out at the trees behind Wayne, our garden, and I don't have to like them.

[12:16]

I don't have to dislike them. I don't have to find them pleasant or unpleasant. I can just be neutral. And I can say I like them, but I can just be neutral. And the more I can be neutral, appreciative knowing begins to... There's a knowing that as pleasant and unpleasant arise from interest. You don't find out something's hot or cold unless you're interested. In other words, you don't find out interest leads you into the world and you find, ooh, that's not so nice, that's okay, right? But that interest is, we can call, appreciative knowing. You're ready to appreciate things. So strangely, appreciative knowing, which is also the root of compassion, arises from being able to establish a mind that's not in preferences.

[13:16]

And this is also non-attachment and so forth. So I can look at something, not be attached to liking it or disliking it, not finding it. I guess I might notice it's pleasant or not. But really, I'm neither pleasant nor unpleasant. I'm neither, especially, I'm neither like nor dislike. So it's quite good... It may sound a little cold or distant, you know, to something like that, because some people want to be very emotional and heartfelt and so forth. But Zen would emphasize more establishing a place where it's not neutral. It's more neither like nor dislike. And out of that arises a kind of sense of connectedness, appreciative knowing, And so forth. Now this then becomes the basis for really practicing the third foundation of mindfulness.

[14:22]

This mind which neither likes nor dislikes. And again, to go back, I think you need an entry. How do you notice it? I think the first thing is to notice the pendulum quality of mind. It swings between likes and dislikes. Just take an inventory of how often when you see something, you have to decide whether you like it or dislike it. And I can remember when I was younger, I'd drive along the street and, you know, And I would look at a house and say, oh, I like that house. Oh, I don't like that house. Oh, I like this building. I like that garden. I don't like that. And after a while, I'd be like, just from constantly liking this or disliking that. And some other way of knowing things arises when you begin to free yourself from this like-dislike pendulum.

[15:26]

Okay. Okay. Now, this practice of mindfulness requires mindfulness. In other words, it requires mindfulness to notice a distinction between like and dislike and pleasant and unpleasant. We're always going to have pleasant and unpleasant. Now, again, Sophia, let's use the baby as an example. Sophia really doesn't have particularly likes and dislikes. And she, even from, particularly in the beginning, she had barely consciousness. She had awareness, knowing. But definitely some things were pleasant and unpleasant. And I'm, and so far she's not in realms of likes and dislikes. She's still pleasant or unpleasant or neutral.

[16:29]

And, you know, I have to sort of watch, can we allow her neutral space, or do we always have to give her attention? Because it's fun to give her attention. But I'd also like her to know kind of territory which she doesn't have to get attention, et cetera. Okay. Now... What I'd like us to do, I'd like us to count one to five. You're one. Two. Three. Four. Five. One. Remember your number. Two. One. Three. Say a number. Pick a four. You're four. Five. One. Two. Three. I'm cooking dinner.

[17:32]

Oh. Four. Five. Six. Seven. I'm helping cooking dinner. Yeah, just a couple. Four. Five. One. Two. Three. Four. Okay. Seven. So I'd like us, after our break, to break up into small groups. One. Five groups. And... And I'd like to make sure, hopefully, that Dan, before you start cooking, you can make sure that there's somebody who's... You don't have a group where all new people are. And so let's have a half-hour break, and then I think some can be outside and some can be here and so forth. And we can go, and you can go until 6 or stop between 6 and 6.30. Before we disperse, can I see the groups clustered in this room?

[18:34]

And then we can kind of... They're unevenly numbered all... Yeah, why don't we do it after... People may... I won't see them and they'll become... You'll become... Oh, okay, sure. We'll just disperse and meet in separate groups. Okay. And I do this because I like to have you speak with each other and not just speak with me and get to know each other and so forth. And maybe the topic can be, whatever you like, of course, whatever we've been talking about, but maybe something like, when do you have experiences of neither like nor dislike? When have you had experiences of, which seem to be little stops where you can turn in yourself or turn in the world? Okay. Thank you very much. Who started us?

[19:42]

You have the same time as that one? None of us. Oh, my clock has wandered forward in my travels. I'm about five minutes ahead of you. How are you this morning? Good enough? Well, I would like at least one person from each group to share with us something about the discussion you had. Details or at least the feeling of it. One of the things we talked about was we joked about we'd have to report back.

[20:48]

Yeah, yeah. And I remembered last year certainly something I didn't want to do. But you have the courage to stand up. I have the courage to stand up. I have no idea what I'm going to say. But I wanted to tell you that yesterday I looked up the roots of welcome. And the come part is it comes from desired guest. And Let's see, what's it mean? Something like that. It means pretty much just what you said anyway. Yes, go ahead. I hope other people in the group may either add or change anything that I say. This will probably be incomplete. We talked somewhat about like and dislike and starting from a specific instance and how it seems to come from firstly something that might be considered pleasant or unpleasant or at least

[22:01]

there's some kind of a physical basis from which it arises. So if you can see that before it blooms, so to speak, then you can move on. Then you're not caught by it. We talked about checking in with the with the body we talked about ourselves and our lives and our reactions to things and how we felt that we had made some in some cases maybe arduous long-term awakening, but I think we've all felt that we're better able now to deal with things and to practice our lives.

[23:15]

Sounds just about right to me. It felt very good, by the way. One of the things we talked about was sort of having an experience in this environment when you first start sitting, there's a lot of like and dislike about experience and how you continue to practice. you can, you know, part of what happens is you get more to where you experience just pleasure or displeasure, but we don't so much place the feeling of life, but just like a whole practice, and that's kind of a model for what we can carry into other experiences. Yeah, I think it's true that when you... sit, when it starts just being pleasant or unpleasant, it's much easier to sit without being disturbed.

[24:19]

Yeah. Someone else? Yes. Our group talked about, gave different examples to start with, likes and dislikes. One person said, that he or she found himself sometimes sitting at the table in one conversation. He or she found himself. He or she found itself. Sorry, I couldn't resist. I was just checking. Seeing if I was alert. Anyway, this person was in one conversation and wanting to be in a conversation that was going on at a different part of the table.

[25:27]

As this person noticed that, And he or she felt that, could feel being silly, that was silly to feel like that. And then found that he or she tried to be in this conversation more with the person that they were with. Yeah. So it was a good example to notice. Mm-hmm. And then another person said, listening to you, they felt distracted by thinking about pleasant and unpleasant likes and dislikes. So that was distracting. And maybe that person might ask you a question. Another person said that they were... aware of sensations coming from the body, that are arising from the body, that pleasant sensations

[26:43]

pleasant and unpleasant was more like a sensation coming from the body, and that as they felt them, they could just let them go through and not attach to them. Whereas likes or dislikes, there was no sense of body. It was totally up in the consciousness or in the mind. To notice things like that is essential to proceed in practice. And the next person just added to that saying that they noticed pleasing leads to like. and is attracted to like, and while it has unpleasant sensations, let it disavow. So that was what Alan was talking about. Yeah. And then we talked, someone wrote about appreciative knowing, and how does that keep one from falling into indifference? Can't appreciate it.

[27:53]

Can't you fall into indifference? You know, not the... I understand. Then we ended up talking about fear and suffering. Oh, yeah, big topics. All right. Someone else? That's all. Charles, let's go back to your question.

[29:01]

Could you ask it again? Can you speak a little more on dissolving mental construction? Is that about dissolving my likes and dislikes regarding, as I observed, mental construction, or what else is it beyond that? Hmm. Well, if you can dissolve your likes and dislikes, good luck. Nothing wrong with that. But as a sense of a process, as part of teaching, part of these four foundations of mindfulness. You're not so much trying to... dissolve your likes and dislikes as you're trying to get free of the activity of likes and dislikes.

[30:06]

But sometimes we like the next normal. We like and dislike things. But that's different than a mind controlled by, dominated by likes and dislikes or in a constant pattern of liking and disliking. So what you want to do is get free of the pattern where a mind mostly mind characterized by liking and disliking. Okay. If you have a particular... Then from the point of view of likes and dislikes just like any other mental formation... the simple knowing, really knowing that it's impermanent, tends to dissolve it. And... But in particular, would one... I think if one had some kind of persistent like and dislike, you know, about something...

[31:17]

you wouldn't necessarily try to dissolve it. I mean, I know someone, for instance, who lives in Germany, and there's a particular tree-lined street they like, and it's a little bit slightly longer to get home that way, and they take this tree-lined street. Well, that's a like. It's okay. I mean, you don't have to dissolve that. You just drive through it. But I think if you saw a pattern of likes and dislikes or some kind of, you know, that seemed rooted in sort of being neurotic or something like that, then you would want to kind of see if you could get free of the compulsive or neurotic aspects of some kind of attachment or desire or likes and dislikes that seem unrealistic. My question draws in from when you introduced or began the topic.

[32:28]

You said when you see somebody, one of the things that they are is a mental construct. And I guess I was asking which piece of that mental construct that's appearing to you dissolves. And what you said was that Just simply acknowledging that it's impermanent. Well, it's a little bit like, you know, waves in the ocean. You know, the waves tend to go back into the ocean. And the shape of a wave is a calling for the ocean, like calling mind, Kuan Yin, etc. The ocean calls the wave back. The very splash of the wave is because it wants to go back into the shape of it. So the mind is a lot like that, but it's not like that until it's stabilized and you don't identify with thought formations as you.

[33:35]

So the more, and the process of making your mind more water-like, ocean-like, or something like that, part of it is noticing repetitively, in a mantra-like way, noticing impermanence. And just the noticing, it's strange, but a wisdom view like impermanence. So that when you see a... that all objects of mental formations are characterized by being impermanent mental formations. Right? Just the view that they're impermanent tends to make them more impermanent. You know? So, does that sort of answer your question? Yeah. Yes? What about a mental formation that doesn't feel impermanent? Like what? It's really solid. It's a concern you have. You forget about it.

[34:39]

Maybe that's the impermanent part. But then it comes back again. Gee, it never went away. It was there all along. I just didn't notice it. Sometimes things don't feel impermanent. So to label it as impermanent is not an experience sometimes. Even though I know in the big group, like five years from now, I probably won't. It's optimistic. Or pessimistic. I don't know. Is part of the impermanence the fact you don't think about it all the time? No. I think of the Chinese word for love. One of the Chinese words for love means how you watch your children knowing they'll go away. You watch with a feeling of love that's constantly freeing them. So it's an attachment which is freeing. Yeah.

[35:44]

And, you know, lots of things are built into us. They may not be conscious, but they're built into us. And... So you... If you... Yuan Wu again says, don't set anything up. Okay, when this keeps coming back that seems permanent, it's something you're setting up for various reasons. So the challenge of practice is, can you be free of that? I mean, I think of Chuan Tzu when his wife died. Someone came to visit him. Chuan Tzu was one of the famous Taoists. when he came to visit him, he was sitting out in the backyard with a metal bowl banging it. His friend said, here, your wife just died. Just sitting out in the backyard banging a metal bowl. And he said, well, she had a good life and now she's gone and now I'm banging on the metal bowl or something like that.

[36:51]

But clearly the banging on the metal bowl was some kind of grief. But you do something. There's something that happens. But, you know, it's... So you can't just, you don't want to just brush everything off by controlling your state of mind. So if you have something that's bothering you, you could actually love it like a child. Yes. Yeah. And you have to be patient with it. But even if it keeps coming back, you still know it's impermanent. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Could this, knowing that it's impermanent, could that be a wish to make it impermanent? Because that's, yeah, but this is not counterproductive. What I feel is, you know, I feel anger, you know, because of a particular situation arose many years ago. So I, now I can't apply that, you know, that it's impermanent, but

[37:57]

Actually, I wish that this feeling is impermanent, so I actually want to make it go away. And this is not helpful. So there's a slight difference between knowing it is impermanent or wishing that it's leaving. It's very slight. Well, yeah, I mean, what you said is right. But you also wish it were impermanent. But if you put too much energy into wishing it's impermanent, it's counterproductive. So acceptance is a more powerful dynamic than wishing. So you have to just accept it. But you still can accept it knowing it's impermanent. You know, I think coming back to... Here's the Buddha. He went out and had some food.

[38:59]

washes his... cleans his bowl, washes his feet, and he sits upright, establishes his posture, and mindfully fixes his mind. And what does this tell you? He's not always... He has to intentionally mindfully fix his mind. He's not just in a permanent Buddhist state all the time. He himself has to make this decision. And practice is like that. You can have disastrous things happen to you or very bad things happen. They're totally in your face. And yet, you know, if you're practicing, you have to stop. Like me, I have to stop and give a lecture. I have to do something else. So I have to be able to, if I have something like that, I have to be able to, okay, that's all that. I'm not getting rid of it. It's not going away. Put it over here and I establish my mind in whatever situation I'm in. Yes. Oh, you're just waving, hitting mosquitoes.

[40:02]

Mind if I wave back? Anybody else want to wave? Wave with a thought. I'm not that high up here. Yeah, go ahead. Some things occur to me. One is that it's possible to say, oh, this isn't permanent, and it could be a rationalization or not. wanting to, let's say, confirm whatever the experience is in the body. So I would think that maybe there's, as far as establishing the mind, it must have something to do with intention. And the other thing is that maybe that's where pause comes in, another place that pause comes in, to allow something, a kind of completion. So one can then go on and be clear, at least at that moment, which is awful, isn't it? Yeah, well, I mean, you go around saying everything's groovy, that doesn't help, you know, or everything is impermanent or something like that.

[41:10]

Obviously impermanent means there's an opportunity for things to change. Whether you take that opportunity or you participate in it, that's something else. And... Coming back to... What is your name? Sarah. Just simple things. The basic teaching of Buddhism is that everything changes. Absolutely everything. The name of the basic teaching of Buddhism is Dharma. The word Dharma means to hold. What holds, what stays in place. So, what stays in place when everything's changing? Yes, but there's an experience of things holding. And there's an experience of things appearing and disappearing.

[42:12]

the place from which you see things appearing and disappearing can be stabilized. And that's, we could call background mind or essence of mind or something like that. So one of the things you're doing in the four foundations, in the third foundation of mindfulness, is you're observing, becoming more and more familiar with a background mind or essence of mind. And eventually, I mean, I think one of the goals of practice should be, if you're adept, practice in a thorough way, is to really see if you can have a mind of suchness or a mind that's continuous throughout night and day without disturbance. And it can be stable through anger, through sex, through whatever. You can discover it. And you'll find some things, there's always finally one or two last things that you can't quite and your mind is different after you're really angry or something.

[43:21]

But eventually you can come to a point where there's a stable mind throughout and in the midst of every situation. That's an important step in practice. But it doesn't occur unless you know it's possible and you notice its possibility and you enhance its possibility. And you've spoken about coming back, awareness of breath as a Yes, it's probably the all in all, the most overall beneficial practice. I would say mindfulness is the overall most beneficial practice, but the most transformative practice is to bring attention to your breath continuously. Yes? I'm just curious about what kind of world What would happen after that when you've stabilized your mind? Is there more? Oh, is something good happen after that, you mean?

[44:25]

I'll let you find out. Or do you need some sort of big chocolate horse at the other end? It's all my work. That's all I get. Yeah. Well, it's a good question actually. Active meditation as a practice, brings you into the world as the world is, you have to transform to be there. But it's extremely familiar. You're not in new territory. You're in the best of very familiar territory, if that makes any sense.

[45:26]

But it's accompanied by degrees of satisfaction that you didn't know existed. If that makes sense. But then we could talk about absorptive meditation. That's a more explorative meditation. No, it's just different. But they're closely related. It's very difficult to develop absorptive meditation unless you establish the stability of active meditation, in the way I'm speaking today. Yes? The absorptive can be part of the active, that's being in the world, of this world? Absorptive meditation establishes, deepens the ability to be in the world in an absorptive and stable way. The great later Chinese Zen masters, and he was the compiler, more or less author of the Blue Cliff Records. And he talks about active meditation.

[46:34]

And I think what we can think of bodhisattva practice as active meditation. And it's not that you are, you're a bodhisattva or someone is a bodhisattva and they then enter the weeds. Entering the weeds is a metaphor for entering greed, hate, delusion, jobs, attachment, confusion, compromises required of us in our daily life, and so forth. The Buddha position is somebody who maintains a state of mind, always free of that, and in a way, is he or she And his dreams, yeah. Okay. Maybe we can think of the bodhisattvas more daring because they're willing to endanger their state of mind, mode of mind.

[47:42]

So we can see, if I say active meditation, we also then probably at least should know that what most meditation is, I would call absorbent meditation. And there's absorbent meditation, I'm just trying to find words again in contrast to active meditation. There's absorbent meditation, which is an effect in the service of establishing active meditation. And then there's absorbent meditation, which is an entirely different territory. An active meditation. Meditation, you're not talking about action. No, I'm talking about sitting still and beginning to explore the infinite worlds that we are. Yes? In mind witnessing, perception, things that... It's a state, and it's some sort of letting go, or it doesn't occur anymore.

[49:00]

And then that's not an active effort. And isn't that what I'm doing? It seems to be a process of dropping. And then I'm just going to just proceed. But I don't understand. I'm bringing that back. Say that last part. I don't understand. Most of the time, yes. It seems that I can't do anything.

[50:07]

to be in that state. That brings back the density of separation. I'm solid again, there's no other job. I need to let go of some things that did not do. And I don't understand that action that happens perchance I'll see if I can say something that relates to what you said. There's In a seminar like this, there's several things going on.

[51:15]

One would be that there's a basic communication that practice is possible. That's probably as important as anything else we're doing. And then there's an exploration of terms, language, attitudes, feelings that help one practice. There are certain words we're using, there are certain feelings that are present here, there are certain attitudes, there's a certain rhythm that actually become part of the vocabulary of practice. How you utilize that vocabulary is going to be up to you. Another thing is that there's particular teachings going on here, like today, yesterday, starting out with the first of the six paramitas and now doing the four foundations of mindfulness in a way that we're speaking about the establishment of the mind of generosity.

[52:19]

So we have the feeling that practice is possible, maybe some kind of belief, faith, it's possible. We're beginning to have some of the attitudes and feelings and vocabulary and so forth, that's necessary to begin to notice yourself, notice what you're doing and that's part of what you just said. Then there's how the teaching fits into that and begins to make it more coherent or move more smoothly or more quickly. The most important thing of those three is that practice is possible. If you know that, The rest will probably happen. Realized practice is possible. The second most important, which is you begin to have a feeling for the attitudes, feelings, words that allow you to experience your own practice, experience yourself.

[53:26]

The teaching only can come in after you've really got the first two. you really developed a kind of way to notice yourself. And one of the things I notice is when somebody comes to me and they talk to me about, say, endoxan, talk to me about their practice or what's happening to them, and often people present it with a lot of befuddlement. You know, what's going on? I don't know what this is, and I'm stuck, and blah, blah, blah. But what I notice is that they notice. Some people don't notice what's happening to them. A person who notices probably can practice. So, I mean, they might have a big problem, but they notice what the problem is. They begin to see around it. Then that person can practice. A person who doesn't have a big problem but doesn't notice, they can't practice. Am I making sense here? Okay. So...

[54:31]

But we have to be careful that we don't get caught in non-doing is not doing. Because letting go is a kind of activity. Letting go is a kind of doing. But you have to stop doing, which is a kind of doing, to have this experience. To take something apart is also an action. So if you get stuck in kind of the words of what's happening, like how do I, you know, is this still a kind of action or not, but in fact it is a kind of action and all the actions, all actions, mental actions are accompanied by a physical experience. Okay, so again this is one of the, I say it every seminar, all one of the yogic truisms is all mental phenomena has a physical component.

[55:32]

All sentient physical phenomena has a mental component. That means every state of mind has a physical component. Every gradation of mind has a physical component. So there's a physical experience of stillness. There's a physical experience of letting go. There's a physical experience of non-doing. So you can also establish that physical experience and enter a mind of non-doing. I don't know if this approached anything you want to do. But the ability to do that, for instance, the ability to use this vocabulary of attitudes, pace, wisdom phrases, and so forth, is much enhanced by the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness. Am I making sense?

[56:39]

I wonder. Okay. We're supposed to stop at 12.30, is that right? Is that the idea? Okay. Something else? Or are we doing whatever? Yuck. It's a kind of doing, sure. Putting your suitcases down is a kind of doing. But you feel different after you put your suitcases down. Yes. Yes. Everything is changing, so everything is a kind of doing. Or a happening, or event, or movement, or something. It doesn't quite matter who's doing what. It's just happening. Yeah, things are happening, something happens.

[57:40]

Yeah. Sometimes I forget to observe, I forget to practice. Really? I forget to observe. Give me your hand a minute. And other times, I just plain run out of energy, and I don't know if you could just say something about how we should approach practice, with what sort of intensity. Sometimes the harder I try to practice, the less the practice works for me. That's right. That's true for everyone, I think. Everyone could have gotten the same little slap, not just you. Me too. Yeah, even in Zazen itself, Zazen itself is best a kind of rhythm of making an effort and not doing anything.

[58:50]

And often you become more concentrated when you don't do anything than when you're making an effort. But the not doing anything is in contrast to doing something, so... You can't separate the doing nothing from the doing something because the doing nothing is in a contrast to doing something, so they're actually a similar kind of activity. Does that make my making sense? So if you always are trying to make an effort, practice doesn't work. You have to kind of make an effort and then not do anything. Sometimes you find yourself in a quite concentrated state. But likewise in practice in general, you want to just accept, trust. More basic is accept and trust. And you make some effort. What's theirs? What's theirs? Can you hear me? Yes. Yeah, okay. And you want to practice in a way that, in a sense, it doesn't require energy.

[60:05]

I think the most, I mean, I don't know quite why I just said that, but I did. The main thing is to hold an intention, but not do an intention. You know, it's a little bit like your phrase, Sarah, from Ekin, Roshi and Dogen, the teisho of the the teisho of the actual body. So you're letting, by intention, you're trying to open yourself to the teisho of the actual world. But you're not trying to do the intention. From the point of doing, attention is what you do. That attention may have intention in it, but attention, I can give you attention. but I have an intention to practice but I don't try to do it. That's just present.

[61:18]

One of the goals of practice, along with the goal of a stabilized imperturbable mind, or nearly imperturbable mind, is a kind of continuous energy. And these are closely related. A kind of stabilized mind and a continuous energy. But they come apart and they come back together, etc. Being alive is a kind of energy. So when I spoke a little while ago about background mind, I could have also said something like background energy or something like that. One of the things the... I haven't been able to... I haven't felt that I've been able to make effectively clear...

[62:20]

or give you an experiential sense of this mind which arises from the body itself, which is the presence of the body itself, which I called stuff plus. I think you get the idea that there's a difference between your knuckle and the palm of your hands. I think maybe the practice of it is a little bit like a visualization. I mean, it's in the same kind of practice category in that it's a kind of act of imagination. In other words, you know that a... You have some experience of, perhaps, And you also know that there is a kind of still mind or body mind or background mind or presence to the body, to the present, to everything.

[63:29]

And you, in a way, settle yourself in the imagination of that. But it's not entirely imaginative. You have an experience of it too. But you might not have an experience of it continuously, but you can have an imagination of it continuously. So, but if you have an imagination of it continuously, like Kuan Yin or whatever, something like that, you hold it. One of the secrets of practice is the pause. Another secret of practice is holding. Holding a teaching in front of you, but letting the world talk through it, you don't try to do it. Okay? So you hold something like this sense of a basic presence or energy or something. I think it's actually quite similar to the presence of a baby. We all love babies. It's amazing to have a baby again. I've got a baby who's 39 and a baby who's 23, but this is a different kind of baby I've got now, only four months old.

[64:36]

I talked to her on the phone again this morning. She always gets, she says, gets very concentrated when she talks on the phone, smiles. It's kind of charming. At least maybe I'm trying to, maybe Marie Louise is trying to charm me, but that's what the baby seems to do. Anyway, I think it's very similar to the presence a baby has and the presence and the baby itself having a knowing which is not yet consciousness and not yet memory-forming consciousness. The baby clearly knows things and acts in the world, kind of acts in the world, responds to things, but it's not conscious, it's not memory-forming consciousness yet. So in a way this fundamental mind of the body itself, I'd say something like that, which can be enhanced.

[65:42]

It's present, we all, we wouldn't be alive if it wasn't the case, but it can be, for some reason we can make it, I could say more conscious, but that's true in the sense we know about it, but we can be more fully aware and in the presence of it, or be the presence of it, something like that. Would you say that that holding is also like taking refuge in it? Sure. Taking refuge is a kind of form of holding. This moment right now, I mean, when does past and future exist? When did this moment just become past? That's a knife edge, right? It's thinner than a knife edge, what's past and what's future. But we have an experience of duration. That experience of duration is a dharma. It's going back to what you were saying about continuity, the continuity of this body that we feel in this body-mind as opposed to... Yes.

[66:53]

If your experience of continuity is in the body, it's far more responsive to the world as it is. than if you're experiencing continuities in the mind. Well, they both may be made up, because this is just... But one is made up in a way that's much more responsive to how things actually exist, and the other is made up in a way that's less responsive. That's how I would respond. We're trying to find words for something that you know. Anyway, I do my best. Either kind of continuity is a concept. Everything is artificial. Everything is artifice. Everything is made. Because it's impermanent, it's made.

[67:54]

So we're always in the construction business. And whether you know you're in the construction business or not, that's the difference between the practitioner and the non-practitioner. What are you thinking, Wayne? I'm thinking about the shin-shin-men. Set up what you like against what you dislike. It's the disease of the mind. So I'm wondering, is it the setting up or the blocking and deciding? Well, I mean, there's not much difference between setting up and liking and disliking. But we're also trying to set up something to practice, which dissolves ideally setting up and not setting up or something like that. But this is, you know... Let me try to say something here. What I'm calling...

[68:55]

I've got a lot of paper here. What I'm calling a kind of fundamental mind, which I'm relating actually... I'll tell you this because I think it's true, and it's my experience, but I don't know if I can make it your experience, but it might become your experience, that there's a basic relationship between background mind, the mind that can observe myself seeing you, and this basic body-mind presence. And we can also talk about this as a subtle body. And when you have some experience of the Sambhogakaya body, which can also be understood as the surfacing of the experience of non-dreaming deep sleep, into which is blissful non-dreaming deep sleep surfaces in our life.

[70:02]

So it's like something more fundamental is surfacing here. And that's blissful. And when you start feeling bliss for no reason, you're feeling the subtle body or the subtle mind. And the real establishment of the mind of the third foundation of mindfulness, which can observe mental formations, is only really possible when it's rooted here. That's why the first foundation of mindfulness comes before the third foundation of mindfulness. And likes and dislikes close that off. the activity of likes and dislikes, which brings in karmic formations. Karmic formations flow into your body and mind through likes and dislikes and actually cut you off from the subtle body, the subtle mind.

[71:09]

Cut you off from the experience of your body through chakras, through aware energy, through energy, through a stabilized, pure mind. I don't have the word pure mind because it's a little like we have to purify our mind. That's one approach. That's not the Zen approach. I mean, in effect we purify our mind in Zen. We don't take that as a goal exactly, but rather we take the goal of seeing in the midst of the mind at all times that it's simultaneously pure. Getting harder and harder for you to see. Hold it this way. Yeah. Let's see. Oh, there we are. If I wouldn't lean on it, probably better. That's it. So... Oh, it's up to you.

[72:15]

But that's an important dynamic to see. It's the second foundation of mindfulness. It's the development of the second foundation of mindfulness which opens up the subtle body or presence and which... frees you from a constant flow of karmic formations into your activity, into your body, into your mind. Dr. Joshi, how does all this actually function in terms of bodhisattva practice? Surely it's possible, even necessary, to practice bodhisattva practice long before all of this situation takes place.

[73:16]

Otherwise it would be what? Oh, no. I mean, if you look at bodhisattva practice as an aspiration, As an aspiration, there's two, I think, two important parts of aspiration. One, to have the aspiration, to know it's realizable, and to show it's realizable. Okay. If you have the aspiration, already it's a bodhisattva practice. If you convey, if I have... If all of us together today have the feeling together that practice is possible, this is the bodhisattva aspiration being communicated. So the generosity of the bodhisattva is the state of mind he offers people.

[74:25]

That's always almost the first thing they say, generosity. Well, you're not offering them much of a mind until you can practice the four foundations of mindfulness. But the aspiration you're offering them and the real knowing that it's possible is the other gift. So you're offering them your mind, practically speaking, or your presence, and you're also offering that mind understood through the aspiration for enlightenment or realization or the benefit of all beings or something like that. Through the practice. Yeah. And what you then find is it's clear if this happens more and more fully, the more your own practice is realized, of course. And a basic, long before any idea of bodhisattvas, though that's probably implicit in all the Buddhas in effect, is this fourth foundation of mindfulness.

[75:31]

This is the realization that this is a simple given for all serious practitioners. It's a simple given, and if you're in a monastic situation, this is what's expected. And until you've gotten some progress in this, the teacher doesn't give you much attention. Because this is the basic basis. Yeah. Just going backwards a bit, something simpler, but responding to the last question about this energy of your practice, for example, this morning I was sitting there trying to internally probe my body. I just found myself wanting to just sit. And so, I mean, I think part of what I'm asking and I'm asking is, you know, how do you negotiate that feeling of wanting to just let go of all this?

[76:44]

You mean you'd rather not be in the seminar, you'd rather be in the Zendo? I don't know. This is fine. It's ready-made for you. No, I was saying, when I was doing this morning, and I was trying to get in this practice of recovering my body, I found myself wanting, I mean, I just, that took a certain amount of energy, and I felt myself wanting to just settle into... As I said, you trust what appears. And you trust it even if it's wrong. So, I mean, up to a point, right? And as I say, you have to practice this in practical circumstances. I mean, but I used to, I don't like using automatic dialing phones.

[77:50]

You can have functions on an automatic dialing, but I prefer to remember the number. And when you call in Europe all the time, they get pretty long. So I just prefer it. But I used to practice with, I would dial the number that appeared. And even if I knew it was wrong, I'd go forward and pay for the call. But I wouldn't try it more than two or three times. And so I'd try variations, and I'd try to clear my mind and go back and say I had two numbers confused. But I bought on to it a second or third time. I'd say, okay, I'd better look it up. Nowadays it's so cheap, it's not so bad. But back in the 60s, it was pretty expensive. But you have to find little ways to... Just trust what appears. And I think if you... What I would feel, if this happened to me, I might go in and be in the Zen do and think, well, I've got this seminar, I should talk about the Third Foundation of Mindfulness.

[79:04]

I might bring that to my attention. And then something else happens. I just trust the... I might once bring myself back, but I just trust it. And sometimes it all winds around by the end of the period, the third foundation of mindfulness with a new way of looking at it appears. But I just trust what appears, so I just go. I always do that. So I just go with whatever appears. I only gently bring in the intention. And even if I'm sitting right now, I might be sitting right here and feel... oh, I don't know, I don't feel I'm really communicating, and I can't seem to make sense of this in a way I like, and I'd rather just be sitting, and I'm tired anyway, because, you know, I only, I worked till one o'clock last night, and I only got four hours sleep. I tried to sleep this morning, I thought I'd be better, but then I couldn't sleep once I heard the Han, so I got up, came to Zazen, shouldn't, you know, but then I'm still a little jet-lagged, and so forth, so, but anyway,

[80:09]

But if I feel that right now in the middle of this while I'm talking to you, I try to do zazen. I sort of try to know the physical feeling of zazen and particular kinds of zazen. I produce that physical feeling while I'm talking. So if I felt like I wanted to do zazen right now in the middle of talking, I would do zazen. I trust what appears. And you have to push these things a little bit, you have to be a little radical, in the sense you have to overdo trusting what appears. And then eventually you can back off till the way... You talked earlier about the stabilized mind and the way to enhance that experience is through the noticing. And following up on what you're talking about now, we then make a distinction between what we choose to notice and enhance and what we choose not to continue to put energy into.

[81:16]

And there's, for me, it's this tiny little point of when am I starting to do something or when am I allowing things to come forward and confirm my practice? How would you help us determine what is us monkeying in business that Well, it's a negotiation. It is a negotiation. And I think at some point you can stop negotiating. You try a little more this way and it's wrong. You try a little less this way. At some point it just begins to happen. And... I think the difficulty for me sometimes, and it happened yesterday morning for me in the second sitting, is that I noticed something, and then I noticed my attraction to continuing to notice that. And then I felt already something slipped.

[82:19]

That's just the name of the game. I mean, that's what happens, and you're just in the midst of that, you know. So you just notice that. Yeah, you notice that, and you notice that, and you notice that, but you don't think there's some big noticer. Then you're into God. You've got a theology. But speaking about energy again, you know, I used to, I mean, I really had to work with my energy in the first sesshins. Yeah. God, you get beaten down by sashims in the early days. And I used to somehow find, it always embarrasses me a little bit to tell this, but I used to find somehow that I would finally get to the point where maybe for the next few days I have one candy bar of energy left. And I don't know why candy bar, I'm not one who eats candy, I don't like sugar much, but that was the image of a candy bar of energy. And in my mind, I'd actually divide the candy bar up into crumbs.

[83:23]

And in my mind, I'd sort of give myself a crumb every hour or so. And I found somehow playing with the image and trying to use the image to find what energy was left or find second winds or third winds or fourth winds helped. And all of that was useful until another kind of energy kicked in, which was much like background mind or stabilized mind. It's kind of a stabilized energy that's pretty much always there. It's very closely related to stabilized mind, though sometimes they come apart and you pull them together. I understand, yeah. But I just wanted to add that to that thought. Yeah, I just... Trusting and accepting is more important than doing. In general, as a kind of rule, I think. Okay.

[84:25]

Anything else? You want me to say something to wind us up or down or around or over? Or shall we sit for a few minutes? Anybody have anything else they want to bring? You said trusting and accepting is more important than... Then doing something with a particular goal. Yes, Derek? A lot of times when I feel the place of the ready-made place. Everything is as it is, or should be, or something like that. That kind of feeling you mean? A feeling of where things are very perfect. Sometimes I end up feeling like this is too perfect.

[85:27]

And then I start to get paranoid. And I just wanted to ask you about like, the question of like how, I've tried to work with it for a while, or just kind of hold it. What, with like omens and stuff like that? And how that fits in with Buddhist practice. I know that like, some of the Bat Mamas and stuff, they do divinations and Sometimes things are very perfect in my life. Just opening books, just pages, and many different things like that happen. They seem to be happening more and more. But part of me feels like maybe there's something higher truth than that, or that I have trouble believing in it.

[86:30]

I'm not necessarily believing it, but I kind of like... Some things sometimes seem like maybe an exclamation point to stuff that's going on, or some kind of a... The way that things happen, they seem kind of like, you know, the marking at the end of a sentence, like it's a question of mark, an exclamation point, or a period. Do you know what I mean? I think so. But what do you mean by, what would be an omen that you would use? Just kind of like, say I was thinking about something, and at that moment a certain bird flew by, and then I looked that up, what that bird means in a book, and it specifically speaks very much to actually ways that I already relate to that certain situation.

[87:32]

But it might give me an insight a little farther into understanding it, So part of me functions very much in kind of maybe a non-linear way like that. Part of me also, I also have doubt and get paranoid about it, too. OK, so let me try to see if I can say something somewhere inside what you said. First of all, if there's a heresy in Buddhism, one of the heresies is to look for meaning in signs. Now, sometimes it's done a bit, but in general it's said you do not look for meaning in signs, like a bird flying by or something like that. Well, I read that in the diamonds issue. I think it's something that there are no signs. Yeah, well, that's a different sense of signs, but they're very specifically the habit of saying, oh, a rabbit crossed my path, it means this, or something else happened, or today the sun is shining and the rainbow appeared.

[88:40]

I mean, some people get into that, but in general, the overall stance of Buddhism is you don't look for meaning in signs. Okay. But if a meaning occurs to you in the sense of synchronicity, that's different. For example, if you want to follow up on something and you open a book and it's right what you want to find out, that's synchronicity, that's not signs. For example, if a bird flies by while you're in a certain state of mind and it makes you feel something, that's not a sign, that's what you feel. That's the distinction I've been working with. It's hard to... So I wouldn't look anything up, I'd just see how it makes you feel. And there's a kind of subtle language.

[89:54]

For example, If I notice that I'm particularly healthy, it almost certainly means I'm going to get sick. If I notice, boy, I haven't been sick for the longest time and I feel good and everything is... I've got tons of energy and I haven't, you know, I haven't been sick for most of a year, I now know... This is often a sign that somehow my body communicates to me that I'm about to get sick by noticing my health. However, which is something a little more subtle, the thought itself is a kind of hubris. Hubris, pride, goeth before a fall, which is the kind of root morality of Western culture.

[90:56]

So there's a kind of dynamic. It's also in Shantideva's... What's the title? Yeah. Thank you. He's my prompter. This funny way in which the warning thought is also the opening, is also the... the cause. So I've discovered now if I get to a point where I might notice that I'm healthy, if I refrain from noticing I'm healthy I don't get sick. I can't explain these things. This is a kind of very subtle, for me subtle, way in which we communicate with ourselves and we can and influence our own state of mind, and you just have to learn these various things.

[92:05]

But in general, it's better to learn them as your own vocabulary and not as something from outside you, from books, from other teachers, from teachings, from sutras. Better just to keep relating to it as your own experience. So if you notice that when you feel things are perfect, when everything seems to be quite good or everything's in place or as it should be, that that also seems to signal that it becomes too perfect and you get paranoid, then I would say that somehow when you begin to notice it's too perfect, there's something going on in you where a dynamic of another energy comes in, some perhaps self-destructive tendency or some other unwillingness to allow yourself to go to another place, that as soon as it feels good, something else comes in.

[93:14]

And the feeling good becomes the excuse for something else to come in. So then you have to be careful. You have to work with that. You have to work with what that energy is that's coming in, but you have to work with how you let it in. And you let it in, and it comes in when you most feel it's not there. So there's that kind of inner... Am I making sense? If there's that kind of inner... way in which our mental formations are closely tied to the world, to what happens to us, etc. And what's a strange thing that happens when you practice is your sensitivity and openness to these things and influence by these things gets greater when you practice than when you don't practice. But it also becomes more possible to understand them and free yourself from them.

[94:16]

But in a way you can get sicker through practice than before because your practice opens you up to more subtle ways. A good example, I don't know if it's a good example, an example of that is I noticed when I was first practicing that I would trip when my state of mind wasn't good. So I'd be walking along, and there would be almost a smooth sidewalk, but a slight bump, and if my mind wasn't in good shape, I would catch my foot on that little thing or something like that. So I took that as a kind of thing, and I also noticed as I practiced and my mind got better and better, I stumbled over much slighter mental problems. Ha, ha, ha, ha. A very mildly unwholesome mind would make me stumble.

[95:18]

It used to take a huge unwholesome mind to make me stumble. So then I said, okay, this is going to happen.

[95:23]

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