The teaching is divided into portions, each of an antidote for some affliction. So you can look at how teaching is developed, like one-pointedness, As an antidote to certain kinds of mental afflictions. Overall, in any case, one-pointedness is a basic skill of meditation practice. And like Courage falls in between timidity and rashness.

[01:19]

One-pointedness falls in between distraction and dullness. Now, we could just teach one-pointedness. But we teach it as an in-between distraction and dullness because that makes it more of a remedy for various problems. Yeah. Okay, so one pointedness is simply to be able to keep the mind on some object. And this skill produces well-being.

[02:21]

In many ways, but in any case, let's just say it does. Okay. Now... I don't know if I'm going into too much detail, but I think it would be useful for us to understand some of these things more thoroughly. Because it's not just the ability to learn to bring your mind back to an object and then let it rest on it. And that's also a kind of acceptance to bring your mind back to whatever your situation is and let your mind rest in the situation. And usually when we try to bring our mind back to rest in a situation, it leaves, it gets distracted.

[03:58]

Now there's gross distraction and subtle distraction. Now, Buddhism likes to make these kind of distinctions, but they're actually useful. Gross distraction would be like if your spouse has left you. This would be a terrible distraction. Or you have general jealousy or anxiety about something. So you find it quite difficult to bring your mind back to your immediate situation. In fact, you don't like your immediate situation at all. So this is a sometimes common problem. Okay. Now, you know, at the airport and the train stations, one of the things I like, which I haven't seen anywhere but Germany, but probably it's elsewhere in Europe.

[05:19]

is the meeting point. We don't have treffpunkts in America. I've always been charmed by a treffpunkt. It has a little dot and little arrows going toward it, right? It always strikes me as a kind of one-pointedness. So if, say, you're having some kind of problem that's distracting you, so this teaching of that we are distracted from one-pointedness, which is also a teaching then to have an antidote where you create a point which absorbs the distraction.

[06:33]

Okay, say your practice is to stay with your breathing. You're following your breath or counting it or touching it, massaging it. Or you're working with some phrase. Like, just now is enough. But your spouse has left you, so it's very hard to concentrate. So you see if you can generate a state of mind or a plan which absorbs your distraction. You create a meeting point or a treffpunkt.

[07:34]

And if it will absorb the distraction, the plan is probably a good one. In other words, this is an experience of a valid cognition. In other words, that decision or plan which absorbs distraction, we could also call a valid cognition. If it doesn't absorb distraction, it is probably not a valid cognition, not a good plan. Now, I got an emergency call early this morning saying from a woman who's the wife of a friend of mine.

[08:45]

And she said, she left a message, call any time during the 24th. So she sounded so desperate, I called her early this morning after Zazen. And as I suspected, she's... in a real terrible situation with her husband. So she said, please, can you do something that will help me calm my mind? I've never been in such a state before. And she has two children and her husband One child was just trampled, but is going to live by a horse.

[09:56]

Functuring the child's liver and collapsing a lung. So she's in a terrible state and wanted to go to Creston. So I told her just this. I said, she asked me, what could I do? And I said, if you can create some feeling or goal or aim or plan that will hold your mind... This can not only... If you can discover that point, it can absorb your distraction. But it can also... lead to another point that's a solution.

[11:10]

And when you create this treffpunkt where your problem meets, You can often pull it into your main practice concentration, your breath or your koan. Yes. Now this may seem a little mechanical or something to you, but it's a way of using the structure of the mind to work with your mind. And to develop a state of mind that feels like you're doing something that's right. In other words, in Buddhism, there's nothing outside us that can tell us that we're doing the right thing.

[12:32]

You have to make this decision Feel it as a valid cognition for yourself. Now the whole subject of what's a valid cognition in Buddhism is an important... but I'm only mentioning a part of it. This is all part of the general Buddhist view that you have to find the truth for yourself. As I've been saying often, it's not the truth that sets you free, It's the ability to discover the truth for yourself that sets you free.

[13:50]

So now this may not be the right decision, but if it feels right, it's good enough. Maybe your spouse tells you, if you hadn't taken that plan, I would have come back to you. So it might be wrong, but still you have to trust your own sense of what's a valid cognition. And if it leads to where you didn't want to go, So there's a certain complexity here of looking at what's a valid cognition of a way-seeking mind and what is what we want or don't want. Now some more religious believing people

[15:03]

Say this is fate or what God intended. Yeah, I mean, I was talking to a woman the other day at this funeral. Here in Germany, and she was an American. And she's quite religious. And she was sent here as an exchange student where she met her husband. And she feels that God sent her here as an exchange student. Now, I wouldn't think that. But it's related to this trusting something deeper than what you want or don't want. Do you understand? She wanted to go to France, but she got sent to Germany.

[16:29]

Of course, she'd gone to France. She probably would have had a French husband now. But she's got a German husband. Yeah. But... What she wanted, she's now trusting what happened rather than what she wanted. Now, to trust way-seeking mind is to trust a level of mind deeper than what we want or don't want. But for us, we don't say that this level deeper than what we want or don't want is some activity of God.

[17:38]

But it's the activity of our way-seeking mind that we learn how to generate or develop. And it's developed in simple things like the failure to develop one-pointedness. Because the effort to develop one-pointedness shows us how to deal with distraction. And to trust a way of being that's not caught in the back and forth of likes and dislikes, or want and don't want. Okay.

[19:01]

Maybe I should finish this about distraction and dullness. Sukhriyashi used to really go in some detail through sutras for us or through practices, even though it was kind of like lists sometimes. But later it gave me permission to study it on my own. Somehow just having heard his voice list a number of things was a kind of initiation to study it. So I don't want to spend too much time on this, so I'll just make it simple. So there's gross distraction, like I just mentioned, you feel a longing or emotional pain.

[20:33]

And I just gave you one way to focus and bring together this emotional pain. And another more subtle level of distraction is when we're able to concentrate on our breath or our koan. And yet there's underneath a level of distraction going on, some kind of other voice. And the way to work with that is to have a sense of when your state of mind is nourishing and when it's not. Now, the other side of one point of distraction, the other side of it, is dullness.

[21:52]

And dullness is like, well, obvious sleepiness. You're just, you know, sleepy and not very clear. Medium dullness would be, there's three categories. Medium dullness is like, and I'll use a car again, an automobile or driving as an example. Because driving is an experience most of us have where attention is required. So medium dullness would be like when you don't feel comfortable driving above 130. Or maybe even a hundred.

[22:55]

In other words, you feel quite clear, you're not sleepy or anything, but you don't feel comfortable above a certain speed. I know when I drive, sometimes I feel that way. When I start feeling... uncomfortable driving above 100, I pull off and take a nap. So that's a kind of, it looks like clarity, but it's actually a kind of dullness. Now, a more subtle dullness is like coffee zazen. You may have a big cup of coffee before you do zazen.

[23:56]

And you may feel very clear. But it's the clarity of standing in a line of trees and looking at a field. When really you're in a forest. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha. I mean, you know how these farmers' fields have a line of trees sometimes across it? You're standing there and you see the trees and you see the field and it's very clear and you can drive at 160. It's fine for driving, but not very good for zazen. There's no subtlety in your mind. If you hadn't had the... cup of coffee you might be sleepy, but you might find that line of trees is actually the edge of a forest.

[25:12]

And when your mind is really clear, you find yourself both in a forest and in a field. And there's wide, bright, sunny spaces between the trees. And you can see the ants in the bark of the tree. And maybe even hear them. So that kind of mind is the mind of one-pointedness. So it's useful to notice when you're practicing, when your mind is that clear and open to subtlety, And it rests in that clarity. That's one pointedness. Now, when it's more dull, or distracted, then you can apply antidotes to this.

[26:27]

For instance, if you don't recognize the dullness which looks like clarity, You may think you're really concentrated. You can drive the car very well, etc. And you can sit Zazen without falling asleep. But actually it's a kind of dullness. And this is harder to notice because it feels clear. But it's a shallow clearness. So what we're trying to do, and in a sashin, why we push ourselves into a kind of area where we don't have enough sleep, is in the midst of sashin, which makes us feel tired and

[27:35]

and a lot of distracted thoughts, etc. It's the very territory where one has to bring real clarity into focus. Because in Sashin you can really feel when it's true clarity and when it's just kind of dullness. A deceptive clarity. That's probably enough for today, but what I really wanted to talk about was emotional pain.

[28:52]

But I needed to give you this background to proceed. So I will come to it tomorrow, but let me just introduce it a little bit if I can. We can understand that the mind has structure. And we can participate in that structure. And we can clarify our mind. And we can experience great clarity. But this does not deal with our emotional pain. And in fact, a great deal of our life is emotional pain.

[29:54]

In fact, when you look at it, human life is the coloring of emotions. And the word hell in English means a concealed hall. And a concealed hall, a secret hall. And it also means a color that covers. An emotion is a coloring that often covers our mind. Now, early Buddhism is characterized as being trying to develop a pure life that frees you from suffering. When Sukhiroshi says something so simple as when you're suffering, you're a suffering Buddha.

[31:11]

This is a shift to Mahayana. Where Whatever state you're in, Buddha is there. So Sukhriyoshi would say, you're always showing what kind of Buddha you are. So this, anyway... is more the Mahayana feeling, we're not trying to free ourselves from suffering, but find the suffering Buddha within us.

[32:12]

The suffering Buddha within us. Now, while the concept of hell has been used in Buddhism to engage less sophisticated people in practice. It's used in adept practice. It's understood that hell is a hidden place in our heart. And this is the realm of emotional pain and emotional pain that extends to our larger society and our friends.

[33:13]

Now, the clarity of mind can be understood through analysis and practice. But what characterizes emotions is that it cannot be understood by analysis. Our emotional life we can only immerse ourselves in. It's like here we are in this wonderful... And in our Sunday morning meeting that we customarily have after Sashin, I want to discuss, of course, how our Zen practice in Europe should develop. And how the Dharma Sangha practice should go forward.

[34:56]

And also whether we should continue to practice here at the House Distilla sometimes. Anyway, we have this wonderful park here. And even though it's quite small and in the middle of a village, And the railroad tracks and so forth. Still, there's some awesome quality about it. Like our emotional life, This mystery of this world we live in can't be analyzed fully or understood fully. Here again are the leaves falling.

[35:56]

And many other years when the ponds haven't been so disturbed, there have been migrating birds. And the ponds are beginning to ice over. And speaking to us about the much colder... winds and weather to the north. So it's not just, you know, walking in nature is not just a palliative. It means something that makes you feel better. But it resonates with our deep emotional nature.

[36:57]

The tapestry of our emotions, which in the end we can only trust and immerse ourselves in. and the maturing of the mind to do this outside of analysis, this maturing of the mind that accepts and lives our emotional tapestry. And it says yes to life. Because even in this hell within, sometimes hell realm within our heart, there is a Buddha there too.

[38:27]

Now this kind of maturing of our mind outside of analysis and which I wanted to talk about. I'll have to wait. Because there is the suffering of our physical body. But for most of us there's the greater suffering of emotional pain. Which can be, I think we may know, bad enough that physical pain is actually a nice distraction. So how to have the openness of this accepting mind?

[39:47]

This deep acceptance and immersion in our life. deeper and deeper immersion and steadiness in our life. Which is also the practice of Sashin. So that's enough. If I follow the schedule. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[40:32]

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