Good morning. This is the last lecture of this year. We're going to be on a break starting next week until New Year's. So in some way, I feel like, well, so what? You know, it's just, we just wait two weeks and then we continue. It's just a kind of arbitrary, somewhat arbitrary, kind of division. But, you know, it's, we think of things in terms of years and weeks and months and, you know, there's a relationship to the sun and the seasons and so forth. So, in that sense, this is the end of the year, the last lecture. And it just strikes me as interesting that if you come to lectures often, come to Saturday lectures often throughout the year, that this is a kind of a practice in itself, just coming to Saturday lectures.

[01:18]

If you think about all the different people that have come here over this last year and mostly Mel, but plenty of other people as well, and different personalities and different ways of expressing themselves, different ways of understanding. In that sense, we've been through a lot in a year, if you think about all that's been expressed on Saturdays over the last year. And I like to think of it that it's not so much like a sermon, like going to church on Sundays and hearing a sermon where the preacher kind of tells you how it is. But it's more that people have been expressing how, or trying to articulate what our life is about.

[02:21]

And each person tries to do it in the best way that they can according to their personality and so forth. So you can kind of see it like a quilt. So anyway, this is the last piece for this year and then we begin again next year. What I want to talk about this morning, I want to raise a question. When we give lectures and teachers speak, Mel often says, thoughts just bubble up. During zazen, during meditation, thoughts just bubble up. Thoughts and emotions just bubble up. And you just acknowledge that they bubble up. Acknowledges are coming up in return to your posture and to your, for most of us it's to our breathing, but it might be some other method that you use.

[03:31]

So thoughts and emotions just bubble up, you acknowledge them, but you don't get totally wrapped up in the drama of them and come back to the present moment. And the image that the school of meditation uses are classic images. If you say, you can acknowledge your thoughts and emotions, but don't invite them into tea. You say that over and over again. So you can meet them at the door. You know they're there. You don't have to be mean to them. You can be friendly with them, but you just don't invite them in, sit down, start chatting and get out the teapot and all the rest of it. But what I'd like to look at is, what causes these thoughts to bubble up, these emotions to bubble up, and do they just bubble up?

[04:38]

I mean, this phrase, thoughts and emotions just bubble up, is kind of It doesn't describe so much what actually happens, it just comes up. And there's a reason for that, and the reason for expressing it like that is that the kind of practice that we do is not so much an analytical practice. There are other schools of Buddhism which do pursue a more analytical approach, but our style is not to sort of analyze and dissect each part. It's more to just be present with whatever comes up. But being present can involve, or has to involve, really being aware of what is around us, what we're in the midst of.

[05:39]

Not necessarily in an analytical way, but more experiencing, more a sense of experiencing directly, a sense of familiarity, or a sense of intimacy with what's going on what we're in the midst of and what we are right now. So it might be helpful to inquire, well, do thoughts just bubble up or how does that happen? The traditional Buddhist way of answering that question, in the broadest form, you could just say karma. You could say, karma, past actions have created the present situation, and those past actions might have been the last moment, or they might have been last year, or they may have been 8,000 years ago, you don't know.

[06:44]

But generally, what's happening now is a result of something which happened previously. So you could say, well, thoughts just bubble up because it's a karmic chain, which is true. And in other schools of Buddhism, the earlier schools of Buddhism, Theravada school of Buddhism, there are elaborate analytical descriptions of the thought process in minute detail, which also are another way to explain it. But since I'm not so familiar with that, I'm not going to pursue that today. And also, in terms of Buddhist doctrines, you can take dependent origination, chain of cause and effects in our life, and you can see where the arising of thoughts and emotions fit in this chain of events in our life, processes in our life.

[08:06]

I'll come back to that in a little while. But what I'd like to do is just more look at it from a very simplistic, observational kind of point of view. What we actually notice in meditation and in our life, without some kind of doctrine, no doctrine for now, just looking at it straight on, what do we see? And the next question is, why is it important anyway? Why not just say, well, thoughts and emotions just arise, and the important thing is coming back to the present, not so much going into all the understanding of how they arise. But I think it is important, as I said, to know what we're in the midst of. Because, well the main reason I think is that so much of our thinking and so much of our emotions involve suffering, they involve being unhappy, they involve desire, they involve being unsatisfied.

[09:28]

If you think about how much of your thought is involved with trying to make something better or something that you're not satisfied with, or how much of your emotions are concerned with You know, you just sort of don't quite feel right about something, or you're a little bit off balance, or you wish things were a little bit different. So much of our thinking and our emotions are connected with being dissatisfied. And we're so used to that, that we just take it for granted. I mean, don't even think about it that much. But I'd say that the taste, the flavor of a large part of our thinking and our emotions are dissatisfaction. It's not all completely dreary or bleak or depressing. There's a lot of life in that and there's a lot of vitality in that. but nevertheless this constant, incessant sort of dissatisfaction and longing for something better that we all experience.

[10:36]

And that's really the fundamental basis of Buddhist practice is that life is invariably subject to suffering. And how do we deal with that? So maybe to understand the nature of the arising of our thoughts and our emotions, and give us some insight into that suffering, a little bit more insight into that process of suffering that we go through. Not in a doctrinal sense, necessarily, and not necessarily in an analytical sense, but to actually see it happening. And, you know, the ideal way we can best do that is through zazen, meditation.

[11:38]

I like to use two words, meditation and zazen, sort of side by side, because I like them both. Meditation is a more sort of technical sounding word. Actually, Zazen probably describes what we do better. Zazen means just to sit thoroughly, complete sitting, wholehearted sitting. But meditation is the English word, so it's kind of nice to use a word that's part of our culture and background. So I'll just go back and forth. So anyway, in Zazen, is a chance for us to notice more carefully what we are. Because we have been willing to slow down a little bit and focus our attention on just being rather than on trying to do something in particular.

[12:56]

And I think the core of meditation and the way we practice it is to sit without an agenda, no agenda. It can't be absolutely without an agenda, most of it. But to keep our agenda as subtle as possible maybe. especially in relation to our everyday life, where we constantly have an agenda, and we have to. We have to have certain goals, certain things that we're trying to accomplish, that we want to make happen. But in Zazen, it's a chance for us to sit down with a minimal agenda. Maybe our main agenda is just to be attentive. And that's it. So during this period of sitting down without an agenda and just being present, what do we notice?

[14:06]

What's going on? What I'd like to focus on is the aspect of what we notice that has to do with feelings. And by feelings, I don't mean feelings in the way that we usually talk about feelings. There's two uses of the word feelings. One is the English usage. in this language that we use, we talk about our feelings. We say, you hurt my feelings, or how do you feel about so-and-so? What we really mean is more emotions, attitude. The feelings I'm talking about are the Buddhist usage of the word feelings, which is just pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

[15:13]

So, feelings just in the sense of good, bad, neutral, or pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. And this is the second skanda, form, feelings, perceptions, so forth and so on. And emotions, which in English we call feelings, would be more the fourth skanda, which are formations, mental formations. So now I just want to talk about the second skanda, the second heap, the second part of our personality, a heap, one of the five heaps that makes up who we think we are, which is feelings. And in this sense, feelings is just a good feeling, a bad feeling, or a pleasant feeling, an unpleasant feeling, or a neutral feeling. And since the neutral feeling is something that I have a hard time understanding,

[16:20]

it seems like all my feelings are usually pleasant or unpleasant in some subtle way. So I'd like to put the neutral feelings just on the shelf and come back to that some other time and just look at pleasant feelings and unpleasant feelings as they come up and how do they affect us. And this inquiry into how feelings affect us is one of the four foundations of mindfulness, basic fundamental Buddhist practice of awareness. And I think most of you are familiar with it, so I won't start from scratch to explain it. But I would just like to read to you the, just very short, it's about one paragraph, the description of the mindfulness of feelings in Buddhism. This is from the Satipatthana Sutra.

[17:23]

This is called the contemplation of feelings. First of all, there's the contemplation of the body. The next step is contemplation, or not necessarily next, but chapter two, the contemplation of feelings. And how monks, does a monk dwell practicing feeling contemplation on feelings? When experiencing a pleasant feeling, the monk knows, I experience a pleasant feeling. When experiencing a painful feeling, he or she knows, I experience a painful feeling. When experiencing a neutral feeling, she knows, I experience a neutral feeling. when experiencing a pleasant worldly feeling, and worldly in the sense is they're dividing it up between lay life and monk's life. So a worldly feeling is a feeling that you're concerned with, that you got a dent in your car.

[18:32]

An unworldly feeling is a concern that you get angry too often and it's creating some misery for you. So it's more of an inner investigation kind of feeling. When experiencing a pleasant worldly feeling, she knows, I experience a pleasant worldly feeling. When experiencing a pleasant unworldly feeling, he knows, I experience a pleasant unworldly feeling. When experiencing a painful worldly feeling, he knows, I experience a painful worldly feeling. And when experiencing a painful unworldly feeling, she knows, I experience a painful unworldly feeling. And when experiencing a neutral feelings, so forth and so on. Thus, she dwells practicing feeling contemplation on feelings internally or externally, which means in your mind or your body, or both internally and externally.

[19:38]

He dwells contemplating origination factors and feelings, or he dwells contemplating dissolution factors, in feelings, or she dwells contemplating both origination and dissolution factors in feelings, or his mindfulness that there are feelings is established in him to the extent necessary for knowledge and mindfulness. Independent, she dwells, clinging to nothing in the world. Thus indeed monks, a monk dwells practicing feeling contemplation on feelings. So, carrying this mindfulness or this awareness of feelings into starting with meditation practice, what I've noticed and what's really interesting to me is that It seems to me that for a large part of my thoughts and emotions that there is a preceding feeling.

[20:47]

That this bubbling up of thoughts and emotions is preceded by a feeling. And a feeling in the sense of pleasure or displeasure. Most often displeasure in my case. So, and this process happens so quickly, it's so instantaneous, that I don't even notice it, usually. That's really interesting to me, that something is happening so quickly, and is so powerful, and yet, I don't notice it, I don't know what happens. And I do it every moment of the day. It's quite amazing. So, as an example, a sequence might be, and let's just take Zazen practice because it's kind of a very sort of simple way of looking at it.

[21:52]

You're sitting, you're looking at the wall, and then it starts, you know, it's just not It starts to be boring. You might not even identify it as boring, but somehow you're missing stimulation. You're used to the stimulation that you get in your ordinary life. You know, all the different things that we do that are stimulating. And here you're just sitting looking at this wall and you just do not feel stimulated, which is reasonable. So, there's this instantaneous kind of, you just feel bad. It's like, I don't know how you would describe it. If you start to label it, it kind of gets away from the point. So let's not label it or color it, but just say, there's a sensation of something unpleasant. So the next step is, from the way that our psychology works is to somehow do something about that unpleasant feeling, because we don't like it, it's unpleasant.

[23:06]

And it's a natural reaction to kind of avert from that unpleasant feeling and do something to bring us pleasure. Well, the obvious thing would be if you're feeling unstimulated by looking at this white wall, well, you come up with a thought, some kind of thought or fantasy that will be more stimulating. And bang, we're off into the fantasy or the thought that's more stimulating. And then we can deal with that drama of a thought or whatever emotion that we want to come up with. And that's what we notice, hopefully. We notice that, oh, now I'm thinking about so-and-so, or now I'm feeling so-and-so. What I'm suggesting is that before that happens there's an instant of some kind of displeasure, a kind of primal displeasure, primal dissatisfaction, primal discomfort that we miss because we're so quick to jump in with a drama to give us something to kind of work with.

[24:14]

It just feels too scary, or maybe we're feeling a little lost, to just be with that feeling of discomfort without naming it or embellishing it or analyzing it or creating a drama to counteract it. And the interesting thing is how quickly it all happens. which is one of the virtues of zazen, that it gives us a chance by slowing down to begin to see that thing which happens very quickly. It's like, if you want to look into a tide pool, if you walk quickly past a tide pool, you won't see too much. You'll just say, well, yeah, there's a tide pool there. Kind of interesting. And you don't see much. If you stop, and you just gaze into the tide pool for a while, gradually you begin to see more and more, just by virtue of just paying attention and slowing down.

[25:25]

So in the same way, in zazen, we can slow down and see that process in a more careful way, and see that happen. And if we see that happening, in my experience, what happens is that the drama of the thoughts and the drama of the emotions become a little transparent. It's like a kind of a game. It could be that they are just kind of a a magnificent embellishment of just some primal feeling of being dissatisfied or uncomfortable. Or sometimes that we feel good, and because we feel good, or maybe our body feels very good as we're sitting, our body feels very good, and maybe we're feeling sort of content, and then we realize that, and then we want more of it.

[26:40]

So then we want to do something to continue it, which is another kind of dissatisfaction of being afraid that we're going to lose something which is pleasurable. So this process is very subtle, extremely subtle. And in our American urban life, which is so aggressive and so fast, it's not so easy to see it. And our habit plays a big role in this because this process happens so instantaneously and so pervasively that it becomes a habit. And our practice, Zazen-based practice, but extending out into our daily life, gives us some opportunity to break through that habit, to let go of that habit, bit by bit.

[27:55]

Another interesting part of this process, it looks to me, is that these thoughts and emotions that come up are actually, what I think I would call them is like chocolate-covered desires. They're actually desires. I think in Buddhism we call them thought coverings. These little kernels of desire that we cover up with thoughts and we cover up with emotions. Where that primal desire comes from, I don't know. We could probably come up with a good Buddhist answer, but I don't want to do that. In my own observation, I don't know where that comes from. And again, I don't know if it matters.

[29:13]

So the difficult thing is to, is it possible for us to be able to feel bad or feel good and just leave that alone? And just to feel bad or just to feel good without making something out of it? It's a very naked kind of practice, I mean it's really bare bones experience. And I think it's essential if we have any kind of self-awareness to be able to somehow work on doing that or to approach that dynamic.

[30:42]

You know, can we just feel bad and just hang out with that bad feeling? It doesn't mean that another time you couldn't analyze it, or discuss it, or do something else with it, which could be quite helpful. So I'm not saying that analysis, or therapy, or a conceptual approach wouldn't be helpful, because it could be. But what I'm suggesting is that also there's a place and a time for just feeling bad, or just feeling good, as it is. And then let go of that and then the next moment comes along. And in my experience it's the most difficult thing to do, extremely difficult to do that. But absolutely essential if we want to be able to live without depending on an agenda all the time.

[31:49]

So, I think that's all I'd like to say. You may not agree with what I've said. This is just something that I have observed. But you may see it in a different way, or you may see more. than what I've expressed or seen. So, or you may have a question, so please say something if you'd like. Susan? Well, I have had the experience of what you're talking about, and it was a different practice, but I think what you're describing is an end of the suffering from messing with and making a drama out of physical sensations. of objectifying something, stepping back from what I think is a big source of certainly suffering in my life, where I'm sitting there, there's a physical sensation, let's say tightness in my chest, if I really want to be accurate, well, let's see, it's a little tight right here, I'm a little tense going up my throat, and my instant thought about it is,

[33:24]

And I think that what the analysis and therapy and all of that is about is getting to the point where you can actually just be with what's there. And what happens when that occurs is it disappears. It actually disappears. I think that a lot of the analysis that we do, or certainly that I do, is unproductive and creates more suffering. But I think that the ultimate goal of of all that analysis, if it becomes necessary, it may not be, it may be just possible to be with what that discomfort is, is that something else comes along, you know, the next feeling comes up, the next thought comes up. Well, I'd say, my feeling is that the agenda is a, well, I don't want to get caught in the word agenda itself.

[34:48]

Having a, let's just say having devoting a large part of our consciousness to preconceived notions of how things should be, or what we want things to be like, is, I think, is a response to suffering, is a response to suffering, is a way of defending ourselves against feeling bad. If we feel vulnerable to suffering, if as children, if we suffered, if we had painful experiences, and we learn to some way that we could control our situation that would seem to lessen the suffering. And we all have our own versions of controlling the situation. They're amazingly diverse and creative. But we all have some way of controlling or trying to control our suffering. And that's what I would call an agenda.

[35:55]

that filters the way that we see the world, but it's a response to suffering. And then, of course, it creates more suffering, I think. It creates more suffering because it keeps us from actually being able to see what's happening around us, because we have a vested interest in seeing it in a particular way that will allow us to protect ourselves. I see running in myself, underneath the whole desire to practice this practice, the agenda of wanting to have direct experience.

[37:51]

And I think that in some way, But I'm not, I think that behind, perhaps what I want to do is look at what is this somehow its causes or its actual nature would be somehow manifested and would no longer have the power to be pleasant or unpleasant.

[39:06]

What do you mean by immobilized? down so you can see, so you can see more of what's there. But I think that when I say molex, I mean stocked in a sense, so that what's there is sharp in an instant. This is a speculation because I've never But it stopped in one sense, or maybe slowed down, but it also demands a very active kind of, I'd say, energy of attention. I think, perhaps, perhaps, I think it takes a lot, it obviously takes effort to have things are more visible.

[40:21]

It's sort of like a motivation behind the desire to get rid of motivation. Right, that's true. And I think, I accept that. I accept that we can't be, there is a kind of ideal in our school of practice, which is that there is, that we just sit. We just sit, nothing else. There's no purpose, we just sit. Maybe. But I accept the fact that we actually do have some desire to feel better. I accept that as kind of a premise. And possibly, very possibly, we can get to the point where that drops away. But most people don't practice at that point, maybe at some point they can achieve that, or not so much achieve it, but the desire falls away.

[41:37]

I'm sure that's what happens with somebody who's a master, quite an accomplished teacher. But, you know, I think it's okay to have, you know, you have some motivation, and it's okay. You don't have to be 100% pure, because you're certainly not. It's just, I think, the thing to be cautious of or aware of is that that doesn't become so potent that, you know, it's just one more gaining thing that we're doing, and that we're aware of that. as you are. Actually, what you're expressing is an awareness of that desire, and you see that as a kind of potential problem. But I think just to be aware of it is fine, and it doesn't fit our ideal, maybe, of what we'd like our experience to be, but that's okay. It's time. Thank you, and a happy new year.

[42:40]

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