I love the taste of truth and love. As you know, our study period, our fall study period is coming up very soon. Starts at the end of this month. And so I want to talk, I want to encourage you to

[01:01]

participate in our study period. In Buddhist practice, it's very traditional to have some kind of ongo, or called ongo usually, or intensified period of training once or twice a year. It's In the old days, in India, people, wandering ascetics and monks and people, in the warm weather, people would wander. It was very easy to do in India, to wander. But during the monsoon season, people would come together and not wander around.

[02:13]

And when they came together, they would practice together. And it became a very convenient time to have a training session. So that's kind of like how the Ongo came into being. And Buddhists, you know, started monastic practice. Before the Buddhists, there were very little monastic practice in India. They were just wandering monks, types, monk types. And the Buddhists actually started a monastic tradition of not wandering so much, or wandering, a combination of wandering, and coming together to practice. And those practice sessions were usually for about three months, 90 days is traditional.

[03:16]

And my feeling is that, if I remember correctly, lay people would also join the Angos, the 90 day training periods and at that time they would become monks or nuns or whatever and then they would go back into lay life and that's still traditional in those countries you become a monk for a certain period of time when you're in monastic life and then you go out of monastic life and become a lay person again and then you can do that off and on. Of course, our practice is quite different, but we still have, in our monastic practice, we have 90-day training periods at Tassajara, and in Zen Buddhism, we always have that kind of practice.

[04:27]

There are other kinds of Buddhism that don't have that kind of practice. Shin Buddhism, Nichiren, Japanese-type Buddhism, and more devotional types of Buddhism don't have the training periods. But Zen is more traditional, kind of mixture of Mahayana and Hinayana practice. And the monastic practice is more the Hinayana side of our practice. and the everyday practice is more the Mahayana side of our practice. So we have these two sides and we pay attention to both of them. So in our lay practice, we make an effort to intensify our practice in some way that's

[05:32]

possible for us as people who are working in the world and practicing. So it's necessary to accommodate our training to our life, to the realities of our life. So over a period of years we've tried to develop what we call a study period. It's not really an ongoing strictly speaking, and it's not a training period, but we call it a study period. A period where we put some emphasis, you know, direct our attention to our practice for a short period of time. And this short period of time is six weeks. We've tried it various ways. We tried a month, and we tried a longer period, I think.

[06:39]

I can't remember that. Two months, something. We tried three. Did we? I don't remember that. Anyway, the six weeks seems to work the best. A month is a little bit short. And six weeks, you feel that you can really get into it. And we've done it in various ways. One way is to prescribe a schedule that everyone adheres to, as far as zazen goes. But that limits the participation to very few people who have that kind of time. And so usually what we do is ask everyone to find, to work out a Zazen schedule that they can actually meet and stick to.

[07:39]

That's a little more than what you do in a convenient way. So, you know, it makes It leaves it up to us, you know, to our own decision to define the way we participate as far as Zazen schedule goes. And each one of us tries to sit as much Zazen as we can during that time. And so that's a big effort. It doesn't mean that you overextend yourself. The study period for us is a way of finding out how we can actually practice in our life and how to make practice work for us.

[08:49]

So if you overextend yourself, that's not right practice. Right practice is knowing how to do it just enough. If you do it too little, then your effort's not so good. And if you do it too much, you overextend yourself. So the point is to find out what's the right balance for your life so that your whole life can work and revolve around zazen, around the emptiness of zazen. So each one of us has to find be very sincere with ourselves and very careful. And in doing that, we start to refine our life. So that's one factor.

[09:53]

And then the other factors are that there are certain things that we all do in study period. We come to the one-day sitting at the beginning, and we do the seven-day Sashin at the end. And we come to Saturday morning schedule. And in November, usually we don't have a Sashin in November during study period because of the seven-day Sashin at the end and the one-day sitting, which is just at the end of October, which is almost November. But this time we're having a kind of experimental day, and I kind of thought this up one time. It occurred to me that if we did the morning schedule, as we do usually on Saturday, and then have a study period in the afternoon, study and discussion period in the afternoon,

[10:57]

and then have a recreation period. And the reason for that is when we do something in practice, our practice is usually on the austere side, and we don't say anything, and we usually sit zazen, and we have a work period or something. But in this kind of sangha, we need to have something, we need to mix up our practices a little more, and to make room for study as a part of the day, and not just something on the side, and play, some kind of play, as part of our practice. So, I don't know what kind of play we'll have, but something, we'll think of something. some way of including that in some social time other than zazen.

[12:08]

Zazen is wonderful social time, but it's not the same as being able to talk to somebody or interact with somebody in a different way. It's a kind of mixture day of all of our activities. And then, of course, there's the class, one evening a week. We have a six-week class that goes along with the study period. And the particular class that we have this time is called Bringing the Dharmas into View. I don't want to call it Abhidhamma, although it is Abhidhamma. Abhidhamma is a very ancient teaching in Buddhism where all of the dharmas, that is, all of the states of mind and states of consciousness are analyzed and synthesized.

[13:12]

One side is to study the analysis of the mind and mental states as well as form, and the other side is to see how they all fit together. And it's quite a long study. It's a lifetime study. And that Abhidhamma study is, the Theravadins practice that, they use it, and other schools of Buddhism do, mostly the Theravada school these days. But it's important for us to understand what dharmas are. In the Heart Sutra every day we say all dharmas are empty in their own being and people don't even know what they're talking about. What does that mean? So we should know what the dharmas are that are empty in their own being. And it looks, it's a kind of academic study, but it's very interesting when you penetrate it.

[14:19]

Because it's talking about our mind, our consciousness, and our mental states, as well as physical states. But mostly it concentrates on the mental states and consciousness, types of consciousness. It's called psychology. It's a little different than Western psychology. It's Buddhist psychology. And it has to do with moral and immoral and indifferent states of mind. And one of the things that I think it would be quite interesting for us to do is each person who participates in the study period takes one dharma to meditate on. You know, it could be sloth or torpor.

[15:24]

balance of mind, pliancy of mind, or quite a long list. There's 82 dharmas in the Theravadan Abhidhamma, 82 states of mind that you can play with, you can study, and how they go together. I think it's good. We haven't done this before, but I've thought about it for a long time, to have some way, something for us, each person, to think about in their daily life as a meditation subject. And that's traditional in Buddhism, to have a certain one dharma, or one particular thing that you use as a meditation subject.

[16:33]

You see the long lists if you read various texts of meditation subjects like the 37 limbs of enlightenment or something like that. And it looks very impossible to use that as a meditation subject but traditionally you only use one. You pick out one or your teacher gives you one of those to meditate on. And you use that as a meditation subject, and you just hold that in front of you. But you don't use all of them. If you used all of them, you'd get very confused. So you just pick out one, and you use that in your life. And you see how everything that you do relates to that one subject. I think for, especially for our lay practice, that I think that can work very well.

[17:36]

Because we get kind of lost, you know. We come to the zendo, and we know what to do. Because this is what you do. This is the form of zen. But when you leave the zendo, you don't know what to do. Unless you have a very, very good sense of practice. Pretty hard to know. what to do. But if you have a meditation subject, it helps you to focus. It gives you something to focus on. It's not a mantra, but it's a meditation subject. And everything that you do can relate to that. And you see how it comes up in your life over and over again. Everyone doesn't have the time or space to participate in study period ideally, the way it's set up.

[18:50]

But if you really want to do it, there's a way to do it. And it's not depended on everyone doing exactly the same thing. What it depends on is everyone making the effort that they can make. So for one person, a great deal of participation is pretty easy. And for someone else, a little bit of participation is not so easy. But to make the effort to do it for the person who can't do it so much, is equal to the effort of the person who can participate easily. And if you have that kind of sincere effort, that's the main thing. The sincere effort to do what you can, to participate the best way you can.

[19:55]

The main thing about our practice, you know, is spirit. how to bring out your true spirit. And if you can practice in such a way that practice brings that out, your effort and your sincerity bring that out, then that's the main thing. What I'm interested in is that the study period should be for all of us and not for a limited group of people. Those people who can participate the most create the space for the other people to participate. So we shouldn't compare our practice to someone else's practice. It's very important to not compare.

[21:03]

What you can do is what you can do, and what this person can do, this person can do. And we should help each other to practice. So for six weeks, we intensify our effort and help each other to practice. to really focus. And one way to do it is to look at the factors of your life. And when you make a choice about what you're doing, to say, well, I don't need to go to the movies so often. I can go to bed early and get up for Zazen or something like that during this period. In other words, you sacrifice some of your pleasures in order to intensify your practice.

[22:09]

I think that's a wonderful thing to do. And of course, you also have your family and various people that you relate to. And if you go to bed early, your wife or husband will say, Gee, you know, you're leaving me all alone. If you get up in the morning, they'll say, where are you going? And you have to take that into account. It's very important how we relate to the people around us. So part of our practice is how we relate to the people around us and next to us and how we take them into account when we do something. And if we're careful with them, then they'll be more willing to help us. So the point is,

[23:30]

how you balance all of the factors, the important factors of your life with participation in zazen and this side of our practice. And if you can learn to do that in this intensive way, then it becomes easier in your daily life during the rest of the year. So that's the kind of training period it is for us. And how to intensify this side of our practice and balance it still with the other side of our practice. And bring it together. Do you have some questions?

[24:40]

Could you mention the optional Zazen periods in the evening and in the morning? Oh, yes. We're thinking about having a Zazen period on Sunday night and a Zazen period possibly at 7.15 in the morning. At one time, a lot of people, a number of people expressed interest in having a later morning Zazen period. So if people are interested, we might have a 7.15 morning period and a Sunday evening period, which would be optional. That's also, that brings to mind what we would like people to do, as far as zazen goes, is to sit every day. And if you can't sit at the zendo, you sit at home, you know, so that at least your practice is going on every day.

[26:00]

Sitting zazen is going on every day. When you sign up for the study period, everybody writes out a schedule. This is my commitment. And they turn that in. And so you see what it is that you plan to do, and that becomes your commitment to yourself. And you can say, well, I'll sit three mornings a week or something like that, or three afternoons or whatever it is. And then the other times you sit at home and you make that commitment to yourself to sit every day. Even though You're not sitting in a zendo.

[27:03]

It's very much a part of our practicing together. And everyone will have some exception, you know. And we have to make room for exceptions. But as much as possible, we try to do what we can to fulfill our practices is to the best that we can. Aren't there any questions going on in your mind, Bill? I have two things. First is to mention that on a radius that The second is a question that came up for me three study periods ago that I'd like to ask about.

[28:21]

In that study period, I sat every period, both two in the morning and one in the evening, and it's about the fourth week I was talking with you about it, and I said something about it was getting very difficult to do that after saying I've gotten up every morning. And you said, this is after I've been practicing for six years, and you said that it's hard to get used to getting up in the morning. I'm still not used to it. When you choose a dharma to meditate on, should you choose one that you think you have some understanding of or should you choose one you think you have no understanding of?

[29:27]

Either way. But what I would like to do is for you and I to choose it together. so that I would have some relationship with you with that. And Monday morning, we always have a talk. And the talks will be one member will give a talk on some dharma or maybe the dharma that they're working with. or some combination, and then have a discussion. That's also part of the study period, but I know that a lot of people who don't come in the morning can't come in the morning, so that Monday morning is optional.

[30:29]

We don't have such a thing in the afternoon, Is there a class period also associated with that? No, the class is Wednesday night. One night a week for six weeks. Every Wednesday night. Starting 26th. I'm going to Tassajara Wednesday and I'm coming back on the 25th. And the class will be on the 26th. You can come to the class even though you're not in the study period. And you can sit all the sessions even though you're not in the study period. I don't know so much about Buddhist history, and actually I have some curiosity about it.

[31:33]

Did later Buddhism reject or modify the Abhidhamma? The Abhidhamma originated out of the sutras. After Buddha died, then the sutras, during the 400 years after his death, the sutras were written down. And the Abhidhammas took all of the main points of the citrus, like the meat, the structure, the main constituents of what Buddha was talking about and systematized it into a way of studying, called the Abhidharma. And it's what Buddha was talking about as far as consciousness and mental states and form goes.

[32:41]

that became a highly intellectual study. But there are also other forms of Buddhist study and practice that became more popular and more interesting for people. And the Abhidhamma just became one of those. And most schools of Buddhism don't study Abhidhamma. They study their own way. And just in the same way that most schools of Buddhism don't study Zen. Or, you know, don't study the Lotus Sutra. But for Zen practice, as I said, Zen practice is kind of a combination of Mahayana and Ineyana. And It's interesting for us to study Abhidhamma, to some extent.

[33:48]

You know, we don't want to be Abhidhammas, but we should know that part of Buddhism. We should understand something about that school of Buddhism. Because there's some basis in it for Zen. Kind of like the other side of Zen, very intellectual. Anyway, my intention is for us just to be able to know what the dharmas are and what it's about. You can go from there. That's why I don't want to call it an Abhidhamma class. This class is bringing the dharmas into view so we can see what the dharmas are and how it works, how that system works. And then you can study it more if you want to. You may want to. I think you'd probably enjoy that. But I don't have any intention of being an Abhidhamma student.

[34:52]

But doesn't mean I won't study it or shouldn't study it. We should know something about it. And all the terms are important. If you understand the basic terms used in the Abhidhamma, then whenever you study anything about Buddhism, you're always running across those terms and you know what they mean. A lot of times we study things in Buddhism and we come across these terms, but we just pass them by thinking we know what they mean, but we don't. So, just studying the terms and knowing what they mean, what is meant, rather, by these terms, is important. And then when you read your Buddhist literature, you understand it in a much more comprehensive way.

[35:58]

I noticed that when I study the dharmas, study that literature, it does something to my mind, it does something to my consciousness, which It's very powerful. It's very powerful. It's like recollecting all of the constituents of your consciousness. And it's very powerful. Just bringing that into view. Usually we think we know what those things are, but when you start really looking at them, it wakes you up in a certain way. We find how sleepy we are when it comes to really looking at our mental states and consciousness. So, what are the five skandhas?

[37:09]

Let's find out. Are there any other questions? Well, I really want to encourage us to participate.

[38:24]

Even if you don't participate exactly, strictly speaking, I still like to feel that the study period is for the whole Sangha and not just for a special group of people. And we should have the feeling that it's making practice easier for everyone. And if you have any questions, please talk to Anna Marie, who will be able to answer any and all of your questions, and quite willing. And she'll be the study period director. If you want to talk anything over with her, she'll be glad to do that.

[39:30]

And as I say, I'm going to be away for the rest of the month. And I hope that when I come back, I have this long list of names for the study period. But we also... As I said, you can come to the class or the sessions or one day sitting, whether or not you're in the study period. The thing about this study period is at the end is a seven-day sasheen, which is rohatsu sasheen, which commemorates Buddha's enlightenment. And that's a very important sasheen for us. Everyone in all the Zen practice places always have considered rohatsu sasheen as the most important sasheen of the year.

[40:38]

because it commemorates Buddha's enlightenment and comes at the end of the year. So our study period is a way of starting to pick up our life, starting to focus on our life and leave off the unnecessary things, you know, kind of pare our life down to a kind of essential way. And during those six weeks we let go of the unessential things and direct our life more and more to what's essential and end up with the seven day Sashin. So in a way it's a kind of process of directing us, helping us to get into Sashin. So when we finally enter Sashin, it's like the end of this study period and we're ready for the new year. ready to enter the new year.

[41:43]

And I think that we should think about it that way. You come out of Sashin. You prepare. It's a long preparation for Sashin. And then you enter Sashin and come out a whole new person, completely renewed. So please consider it carefully. Thank you.

[42:29]

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