I wanted to start out by seeing if we had any questions left over, either from the readings or from the discussion last week. Can I borrow the tape? Is the tape ready, Ross, to be borrowed? Well, I didn't check with Bob Zepernick on that. I just see the note in his box. I'm sorry, the community porch. What we've done so far is talk about how Buddhism got started. And then we talked about, sort of, well, first talked about the historical times in which the Buddha lived and began his teaching.

[01:02]

And then the next class was on the problem. that he noticed about life. That there was this suffering and there wasn't a lot that we could do about it. That no matter who you were, life was impermanent and you were going to get old and die. So that was the problem and that was class two where we talked about his first sermon. And the Four Noble Truths, the Three Marks of Existence, which is suffering and permanence and emptiness. I'm a cheery subject. In the last class we talked about, since Buddha had described the problem for us, how did he see the way out? What was the solution that he devoted his life to? And some books talk about this discussion of

[02:04]

the solution as a prescription. And we talk about the system that he devised as consisting of three parts, morality, concentration or meditation, and wisdom. And last week we talked about morality and interestingly enough there was a lot of discussion about morality and especially it seemed to me, discussion about morality that's enforced from the outside in. And we tried to talk a little bit about the other side of Buddhism, which is morality that emerges from our practice quite naturally. And we talked a little bit about concentration, which is one of our ways of practicing together, our meditation practice. It wasn't that Buddha was the first one to think up meditation, but it was the coupling of meditation with morality and wisdom that was different.

[03:20]

So tonight we're going to talk a little bit about wisdom, and I put some questions out, so maybe to get you thinking or not thinking about what wisdom was. or is to you, and how it differed from being smart, or from knowing something in particular. And how you recognized it in people that you knew, and how you knew when you experienced wisdom, what was it about that? And I just wondered if anybody had any thoughts about that, about wisdom, and had any experience with anyone who was wise, My feeling about wisdom is it's a combination of up here and down here, kind of interrelated. Whereas I think of intelligence as maybe IQ or inherent or basic intelligence or ability to reason with things.

[04:31]

And then I think of knowledge as being acquired through reading or lectures or the learning process. So I see those as distinctly three different things. So, how do you think people get this combination of up here and down here? I mean, does anybody have an idea about what she means, what she says is a combination of up here and down here? Did I get the right body parts? Sort of in the right... Intuitive. Uh-huh. Anybody have any ideas about that? Because I think wisdom is something that we actually think about a lot and strive for a lot in our lives. A very familiar topic. Sometimes I think wisdom can be like a child could have wisdom. Although I tend to think of more wisdom as being someone who's lived a long time and has maybe gone through and buffeted around a lot by life, but is able to somehow sit steady in it.

[05:35]

Not necessarily through Buddhist practice, It's alright. So, some kind of upright, steady position, despite being buffeted about, has something to do with it? Or, but not in a flexible way, like, just somehow being able to, you know, life, life is, Just getting through.

[06:47]

But something more than just getting through, doing it with some kind of composure, maybe. Yeah, composure. Yeah. Well, I put on the first page of the handout a more classical definition, at least from the Buddhist dictionaries, about wisdom. So maybe you could just take a look at that. and see how it fits into everyday notions, because it refers to something that... I forget your name. Donna? Yes. Donna? Yeah, that you said, which was distinguishing wisdom from knowledge, and yet they say that some wisdom can be based on mental development or acquisition of something. I think Greg makes a good point, though, because when you're a child, you don't have these... well, maybe you do, but I think you have less of these perverted views or the upside-down views.

[08:06]

And then, as you go along, you socialize and you kind of learn to see things in a way that they aren't. Rather than seeing things as they are, we're seeing things... along with all of our projections and then perhaps through our experience we come back to seeing things as they are. But also knowing what they are, which the child doesn't. Right. So, I think that you've hit on one of Buddhism's sort of key definition of wisdom, key definitions is about recognizing things as they are, existing, with life and a knowledge of these three marks of existence, that life is suffering, there's nothing that abides, there's emptiness, and it's impermanent. So there's something of understanding that in one's approach to life that is wisdom.

[09:15]

See, and if we see life with and experience life with that kind of in our bones. That's life as it is. If we recognize those qualities about our life and about everything we encounter, that's a kind of wisdom. There's some other very specific. Well, I think just looking at this first page, wisdom can be based on mental development. It's that knowledge which one has acquired through mental development, in this or that way, which has reached the stage of full concentration. So there's link. There's no wisdom without concentration, and it's pretty hard to have concentration without the wisdom. a bunch of words. Yeah, it's hard to relate to. I think what Andrea says makes more sense. That mental development is something that you've gone through, some experiences that you've gone through.

[10:24]

In other words, it would say then that an infant can't have wisdom because there hasn't been mental development yet. That's what it meant to me. I don't know if anybody else had some ideas. It seemed to me like they were differentiating of it, but in fact it was something separate from that. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Maybe, Ron, do you understand what he's asking? Do you want to repeat it? Well, he talks about thinking and knowledge here, and then there's the various versions of knowledge. And unless I misread it, it looked to me like there was a listing here of different ways of, or different aspects of knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is... Which part do you think specifically refers to knowledge and not wisdom? Well, the whole first area, to me, there's understanding knowledge and wisdom.

[11:31]

It goes on and it talks about knowledge based on thinking, knowledge based on learning, and knowledge based on mental development. And then down in here in the section on Vipassana, it talks about a whole different thing. Maybe I missed the point, but thank you. I think in that second paragraph, they're further defining knowledge, ways that you can acquire knowledge, but I don't think that's the definition of wisdom. I think, to me, what they're saying is you know, pana or prajna, understanding, knowledge, wisdom, insight, comprises a very wide field. And then, specific Buddhist knowledge or wisdom, however, is part of the Eightfold Path. And then it goes, i.e., intuitive knowledge, which brings about the four stages of holiness and the realization of nirvana or nirvana. So that to me is more of a core, and then they're going into sort of detail as they do.

[12:32]

They're kind of obsessed sometimes, in my view, about all the different ways that it can be acquired. Is that reasonably satisfactory? It's still confusing. I think you have to sort through this and find what strikes you as useful. That's my take. Did you have something to say, Ron? What's confusing? Well, the whole idea of wisdom, to me, seems to... Maybe it's the way I view it, but knowledge, to me, is something that's... I relate to wisdom is that it's not something just out of my experience. In fact, I think it's entirely possible, in the case of a child, to know something that's very much truth, and yet the child has never experienced it. And I don't know quite how that's possible, but I know that it occurs.

[13:33]

Anyone that's worked with children and been around children a long time knows that it I'm not quite sure, what did you mean by children? Well, I think one example, which is one that I know from my own children, I've talked to other teachers who have worked a lot with children and experienced this. Children seem to have a basic sensitivity for the necessity for nature, the balance of nature. And it's not... I've talked to a number of children, small children, but they have a very strong sense that when one destroys parts of nature that something's out of balance, that something's wrong in their sense.

[14:36]

And that to me is a... they couldn't possibly know all the scientific implications of that and all the things that we might see of that, yet there's something basic that they are able to key into that tells them that. And I've had the same experience when I'm sitting, and I imagine others have too. You've seen something that you know is true, and it's something that surfaces as being a real core truth, but you haven't experienced it yourself. It comes from someplace else, from something else. And that's where I was trying to get out of this. I mean, that to me was what wisdom was, and that's why I was asking the question, because it doesn't come out of here to me. I think that wisdom, in the way that we're using the word here, is a broader scope. It includes what you're talking about, but it's also more. So you're talking about one aspect of it, which is really critical, and you can't do without it.

[15:37]

But in the way that we're talking about it here, it also means more, I think, awareness of what's going on and how things balance out, some experience, and some knowledge, in the traditional way that we call knowledge. And it all sort of mushes together, you know, calling it wisdom. But it has to involve that element you're talking about. I think that for me the key is that while a child may have this awareness, he's still fairly destructive of his environment. in many ways. So combining that intuitive sense with the calming, the concentration practice and the morality, from there the intuition really becomes something that one can live out and not be subject to the whims of temper, greed, hate and delusion. So, I think I agree with Ron that it's bigger, I think there's more. Grace, I want to get it straight. This is your writing on the right.

[16:40]

Is it wisdom? Wisdom. Because as I read the first line, it's the word panna that's being defined. We're given four synonyms, which are used sometimes. So you've singled out the third. Uh-huh. Am I right? Is that your writing? Yes. Yes, Your Honor, you're right. I feel like I'm being put on the stand. Go ahead. All this is talking about paññā, not wisdom. Right, that's the closest we can come in one word, and that's the word we chose to use for this class to describe prajñā, paññā, the sort of the third aspect of Buddhist practice, is wisdom. Right, but I mean in some sense the advantage of paññā is it's... It's bigger. I mean, it seems to me in what you quoted before, Grace, I mean, the key word is, it's on the fourth item, is insight.

[17:54]

So blah, [...] but the specific Buddhist knowledge is insight. And then it goes on about that. Well, that may be key to you. Let me read something else that was actually in Ron's under Bhavana. May you develop mental concentration, oh monks, for whoso is mentally concentrated, see things according to reality. Now, I think what we're trying to get at from wisdom is seeing things according to reality, and it takes the concentration, not just the intuitive side. And just as when a lighted lamp is brought into a dark chamber, the lamplight will destroy the darkness and produce and spread the light. Just so will insight, once arisen, destroy the darkness of ignorance and produce the light of knowledge. So it's a little more than just insight. That's why I put in a lot more stuff. But that's a part of it. So, I mean, so, and also it's from this first passage on pana, it seems like then the knowledges are a condition of the insight arising.

[19:02]

So that's how I'm reading it. I'm not sure where we are now. Well, in the same pana, the passage, that based on thinking, well, with regard to the condition of its arising, I guess that means the arising of insight, and then they distinguish the three kinds of knowledge, so I guess that's the condition of its arising, these different knowledges. Yeah, and when I looked up Panna, it referred us to Vipassana. And I thought, Vipassana, which means, V means special, and Passana means seeing. So it's not, in a sense, what is meant by Vipassana is not the kind of native seeing of the child, but that special seeing that comes with the practice that is designed to help one see reality.

[20:05]

So it refines and clears the way because it clears the way for the native insight to arise. The practice does. So looking at Vipassana, we have another view of wisdom. and described not as a result of intellectual understanding, as Donna was saying, but as one through direct meditative observation of one's own bodily and mental processes. Discernment of the corporeal, of the mental, contemplation, their pairwise occurrence and their interdependence. So, through the concentration part of the practice and through our ability to keep practicing morality in our lives arises a kind of wisdom that doesn't allow us to do harm, to act out.

[21:08]

We spontaneously, when we see things as they are, and we see this dependent origination, when we see the way we're all tied together, we behave in a way that's wise. begins to, this is when they talk about the liberation that occurs. You're looking at me as if I've gone off the deep end. Go off the deep end. Go ahead. You'll throw me a rope. Good. Anybody have any questions about that notion? That the wisdom that arises really is a kind of transformative process by which things are really incorporated on the inside and changes the way we behave and perform. So, that helps to put the notion of morality in a different light, because it shows how, when we look at wisdom in that way, we see how the precepts emerge from our practice and become part of our way of being in the world, when we see the way we're all connected.

[22:32]

when we see things as they really are, then we naturally follow precepts. But it's the important part about the way the precepts are connected is that if we know of the precepts beforehand, before we've, you know, it's all happening at once and yet there's kind of a sequence, we can calm down our lives by acting in this moral way which enables our concentration and our meditation practice to deepen, which then, you know, is connected to the arising of the wisdom, which then helps the morality become part of us. So, the three pieces really work very well together. I found something else that went into yet more detail on wisdom, but I think it helps to sort of get up close to it and see all the different parts and then to step back again. There are 18 adverse ideas and views that are overcome through wisdom.

[23:39]

And I'm going to name just a few. It dispels the idea of permanence, the idea of happiness, the idea of self, lust, greed, origination, grasping, karma accumulation, the idea of lastingness, the conditions, delight, adherence, grasping and adherence to the ideas of substance, adherence to delusion, attachment, thoughtlessness, and it dispels entanglement and clinging. So one of the ways that I look at this arising of wisdom is like getting your windshield cleaned. Sometimes we can look at what I think Andrea was saying about our projections on the world. When we look at situations, we don't see things as they are, but there's a lot of clutter on the inside of the windshield. I mean, it's one thing when you recognize there's some spots on the outside, but it's another when you're looking through a filter. And I liked this detailed explanation of wisdom, because it talked about the kind of clutter that wisdom arising would dispel.

[24:51]

And for me, that gives us a way to have a clearer view of what's going on. So in a sense, while we talk about wisdom as intuitive, as something that combines, as Donna was saying, head and heart or intuition, and as Greg was saying, as something that's composed, there's another way that we see wisdom as a kind of clarity that comes from moving everything out of the way. So that wisdom has to do with taking away, burning off, dispelling some delusions that get in the way of clear seeing. Any thoughts? And I really wonder who you folks have met in your life, who seems wise to you, and how you knew, and what that was like.

[25:56]

Does anybody have any personal story to tell about that? I knew a guy named Tom Wishart, and he was 79, and he used to wash dishes at this restaurant we worked at. And he was from Scotland, and he's heavy broke, you know. So me and my friend, we're both 19, got to talking to him a lot. He seemed really wise, but I don't know, it was not in a Buddhist way. I didn't know what Buddhism was at the time, but he just seemed like a guy who had lived a lot in his life. And it's somehow that washing dishes at 79 years old was enough for him. He was an artist. He would paint at home and come and wash dishes at night, stay up till two in the morning, finish cleaning the kitchen, then go home, wash dishes. He'd been a private detective in his life. He'd owned restaurants. He'd, you know, I don't know, just a very... Settled.

[26:57]

Somehow settled in his life, which was very hard, a hard life, you know. He was this old guy. He'd be 95 now, I think. But he wasn't complaining either. He wasn't complaining at all. He was totally alive to it. He was totally... Present. And in fact, he would get really annoyed at us hanging around because he had his job to do. It was just really something. I have one particular man that comes to mind for me. When I was first learning to ride horses and care for horses, Actually, he wasn't that old, but he just looked so old because he was so weatherbeaten. And I was having difficulty with the mayor, who every time I would walk up to her, she would turn her rear end to me as if she were going to kick me. She never did. But she knew enough that she'd had enough experience that she knew if she turned her rear end as I approached her or anybody approached her, they would move away and they would catch her and they wouldn't run her and so on and so on.

[28:00]

And I remember this one particular time that struck me. He was kind of showing me what I needed to do to catch her, and I started to move forward, and he said, get yourself together. And it was just, you know, a jolt for me. I mean, I already had been a Zen student. I don't remember where I was at at the time with my practice, but it was, it was collect yourself. Really collect yourself before you make a move. And it was such a simple message that it just sort of penetrated right there. And he didn't really have any formal education or anything like that, but I think it was his experience of being around animals and having to deal with animals who are so honest and directed their communication, and that helped him develop his wisdom.

[29:06]

That sounds like insight. Maybe, maybe. To me it was, not only did he recognize where the animal was at, but he was able to in some way communicate to me what my practice needed to be. So that's why it felt like wisdom. He not only had insight about how to do it, but he could communicate it, he could teach. Grace, when you were mentioning your horses, it occurred to me the other day when I was out running my dogs, out where I saw you one day, how wise they are. Now, perhaps not in a, of course not in a human way, but they're just what they are, without a lot of concepts and conditioning, and all of the garbage that I sometimes feel, you know, a burden with. And they're just so, just what they are. And to me, that's wisdom too. I wish I were a dog sometimes. Well, that's the koan.

[30:09]

Dogs have Buddha nature. Yeah, really. I envy them a lot of the time. It's pretty simple. Short life. Short and sweet. So provided they get a good owner. I don't know if you could say that in terms of whether It's actually not contrived. Maybe there are different kinds of wisdom. We haven't gotten into that. There are stupid animals and smart animals. Yeah, is that wisdom? Because it arises so spontaneously without any mental development. But they have a different life, so maybe it is. We'd have to consult You know, our forefathers on that one, maybe.

[31:09]

I guess this is... I didn't write it. The Buddha's Ancient Path. There's a section on wisdom. I think it's the second page of the handout. Which, to me, is very important and I think why I ask the question, who have you met in your life who's wise? Because in that paragraph we have those brackets. Buddhism also advocates the search for truth, but it is no mere speculative reasoning, a theoretical structure, a mere acquiring and storing of knowledge. The Buddha emphasizes the practical aspect of his teaching, the application of knowledge to life, looking into life and not merely at it. And that's one of the things I think that, to me, is very special about the practice. is if I can't use it, I'm not interested. Just my approach to life is very pragmatic.

[32:12]

So if it's not good for anything, who needs it? And I find over and over again how this practice emerges in my life and I wonder how other people get by without it. I was at the supermarket and I was at the express line And I was okay, actually being quite legitimate, I only had a few items. But no one else was at the express line, and so the cashier offered to the woman who was behind me to come on in to the express line, even though she had more than 10 items. She was behind me, I didn't mind. And she looked at him and she said, no, I won't do it, because there's nobody behind me now. By the time I get into line and you start ringing me out, someone's going to come with 10 items or less and they're really going to get angry at me for being here.

[33:13]

And I looked at her and I was just stunned. How did she know all this and how did she avoid karma in her life in such a clear way? I virtually followed her out to her car to see if there was any sign of where she'd gotten this great wisdom. Did that seem like wisdom to you? Well, I'll tell you what my next experience of not having wisdom was like and then you could see the difference in our approach. Now she, and you know what happened? She went to the next line, he rang her up, it wasn't a long wait, and somebody, if she had, because I was watching, somebody came behind her, and I don't know whether they would have been friendly or not, but she spared herself that aggravation. And I don't know if it was the same day or the next day, I went to see a patient at Herrick Hospital, and they were doing all this construction, and there wasn't a clear entrance, And so I decided, God, I'm going to find my way in.

[34:17]

There must be a way in. So I found an elevator. I kind of snuck around and found this elevator. It didn't look legitimate. And you had to have a card to get in. But I don't know what I did. I pushed a button and the thing opened. So I got in. And the door closed. And there I was. And I had an appointment on the third or the fourth floor. And there I was in this elevator that wouldn't go anywhere. And I thought about that lady, and I knew she wouldn't find herself in this elevator. And how, you know, our approach to life determines so much of the outcome of the experiences. So that's why it was wisdom to me, because I've had experience too of people yelling at me in line. It didn't stop me from, and I've had experience of things not turning out exactly the way I wanted them to, but didn't stop me from getting in that elevator. And I was sure that I was going to be totally humiliated by having to press the alarm.

[35:18]

And then, you know, I was going to see a patient in the psych ward, you know, so it was like I was in worse shape than this psychologist who finds herself locked in the elevator or this patient who is at least walking around the ward. But fortunately, I don't know what happened or what I did, but I pushed some button again and the door opened and I got out and said, Now, see, that's experience, because I won't do that again with an elevator. But I'll probably do it again in some other way. You know, I haven't gotten that wisdom yet. But isn't that related to the interdependence of the whole thing? We talked about it in the precepts, about the waiting at the corner at four o'clock in the morning for the light to change, even though there's nobody crossing. That's right. Yes, it is. That's the feeling. There's a sticky line there between being a fanatic and feeling like I'm being good here. All my books are in the library on time and I cross the street.

[36:21]

But this other feeling that you're preserving or connecting. That's right. You're keeping your place in the order of things. So that's what she did. That's right. That's the way I saw it. That she saw how she was connected to other people, and how she might make somebody else feel bad, and how I was going to come back on her. That was the way I took. Here's just a little side point, which is, I guess, maybe a little diverting, and maybe we shouldn't follow it, but a feeling of, if you feel that interconnection so strongly, and are observant of it so much, Sometimes I experience it as eventually not having any boundaries and not being wise in knowing how to balance that. Because it feels like if I'm eating a piece of bread and somebody is not eating a piece of bread and really needs it, it's almost like I can't eat the piece of bread.

[37:22]

So it doesn't feel very wise the way I'm thinking about it. Well, you need to remember where you are. I mean, are you hungry? If you're hungry and you're eating a piece of bread, that's pretty good. So when he talks about applying it in a practical way, we can't forget that practical, you know, being present in life aspect. I've got a small question. speculative. Hopefully. Yes. But is that true of Tibet and these others? I mean, maybe there's a great sort of Talmudic... Ask Grant. What do you think, Grant? I'm just curious, because this is about Buddhism, not about Zen Buddhism.

[38:23]

On the whole, Zen Buddhism seems to turn its back on all of that. But this is about Buddhism, not Zen Buddhism, and I'm wondering if it's true. running by heart, all these arcane things. I was wondering whether we have been given a Zen Buddhist line or a Buddhist line. What Grace has presented here is more the Buddhist line and not so much the Zen Buddhist line. I do both though, I get to put in some Zen stuff too, but this stuff that we're on right now is... So you were saying, in general, none of the branches are particularly good?

[39:58]

This is Theravadan. Yeah, it is. It is Theravadan. And I think that, I wouldn't say that none of it has, you know, Talmudic-type influences in it. Because I think that we all, you know, all of the branches go off in the deep end. As soon as you bring some ritual in and, you know, put idols up and statues and so on, I think that you're bringing that element in. That's my thought. But I think that the core idea of it, the very core of it, in even Tibetan, is this. At the bottom of that page talks about, I think, what Donna mentioned when she saw her dog, you know, thinking about the wisdom. But just, it's an emphasis about how we may be enlightened or with our practice may shift. We might derive instructions from natures, from trees, from flowers, from stones, from rivers.

[40:58]

This is not just through the head practice. No amount of talk and discussion. will lead us to deliverance. What is needed is right instruction and right understanding and we can derive it from all these different things. That a leaf falling, flow of water, forest fire, blowing out of a lamp has struck a chord in people and realizing the impermanent nature of things, they gain deliverance. So, this is a little bit about why we practice the way we practice in heightening our awareness together, you know, in doing our vows together. You never know. You know, with one sound of the bell, that may be the one thing, is our awareness is opening. Grace, that's the quality that I was talking about. It's very, very well there, and I think it's also the one that children are easily able to tap into somehow. Yeah, that's true, that they'll have the spontaneous wonderment, except it doesn't stay for them.

[42:00]

I mean, we all can have that. And I think it's this development of ourselves through concentration and morality that brings it into our bones. We have flashes of it throughout our life, I think. Some of what I'm getting is that it seems to be just a knowing of right action. Some of it. Like, you were talking about the lady in the store, and then the elevator, and I was thinking about that party that was lost in Colorado out in the snow, and how they did everything against the rules, but that's what saved them. You know, and they've come under a lot of criticism for it, but that was what was necessary to do. Yeah, so, you might direct it to Ron, so it's about right action? Wisdom is like knowing the right action to take.

[43:06]

you're going and deserting in on that, and leaving the intellectual kind of behind? Well, I wouldn't leave it behind. I think it's feeling the whole situation. I agree with what you're saying. I'll just put a little different words. I would think that wisdom is feeling the situation, seeing the situation as it is, and responding appropriately, which could be different in every situation. Yeah, not blindly following rules. Well, and there's something, in fact, I think that speaks to what you bring up in this, I think it's maybe the next page, I'm not sure.

[44:46]

I'm sorry, yeah. From Suzuki Roshi's Leaving in Nothing. And I highlighted it, it's sort of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 lines down. If you're always prepared for accepting everything we see as something appearing from nothing, knowing that there is some reason why a phenomenal existence of such and such form and color appears, then at that moment you will have perfect composure. So... I don't understand. I mean, when you go into the elevator in Herrick Hospital, now, why don't you say as the door closes, you go, well, this is perfect, you know, this is... Because I had an appointment. Right. So it seems to me, when we really get down to examples, things get a little bit tricky, because if you're always prepared for accepting everything. If you're hung up on right action.

[45:49]

But remember, we're not talking about this in an abstract. We're talking about it as it applies to our life. And I had a responsibility to help this person who was waiting for me on the fourth floor. And I was on my way there. This is a very practical application of my knowledge. And I was finding the most direct route in. But I didn't. I found my way, what was coloring my view. See, I wasn't relying on nothing. I was bringing my baggage, which is how can I make an adventure. a small acting out experience. Act out against the hospital and the construction company and foil them. That was where I was gaining some baggage. That was where I was coming from. I wasn't taking, you know, accepting nothing. I wasn't acting from nothing, because if I was acting from nothing, I would have walked around the block and entered the building from the front door, which is what I did. Yeah, but see, what my therapist is getting at, I think, and also what the securitist is getting at, is when you... Okay, so you made a kind of a mistake.

[46:49]

You found yourself in a And then you couldn't get out. You looked like you couldn't get out. You were late for an appointment at that moment. Then, how did you feel? Well, then I felt really foolish and accepted my complete defeat and found the right button to get out. But that doesn't... But we're less likely to pull down a whole series of events on ourselves if we maintain our composure. But I had certainly, I know I brought baggage to choose that route. It was very clear to me, once I was in the elevator, how I had gotten there. But to me, the hard question is, when all these events are coming down, you have no control over it. How do you maintain your composure? Well, I was able to. Life happens. That's right. Can you keep returning to it? I had blown it. And I had to return to my composure in that elevator or I was going to be really fried.

[47:53]

This is going one step further. You said the practical application to life. But suppose your composure is that you may miss this appointment. I mean, this guilt and this whole thing about that was the most important thing. It seems to be putting a ceiling on real composure. If death could happen at that moment, then there you are. Right. No, when I say, when I accept a defeat and that I would miss this appointment or that I would be totally humiliated, I think that's the only point that I found my composure. Because I accepted the fact that this appointment might be blown, that I could be the laughing stock of the hospital. I no longer care about that. And lose my hospital privileges. I mean, what could be the worst that would come up? And probably I wouldn't lose my license, but you know, I mean, I'm sitting in there hallucinating all the things that could happen. But I had to let go of that and say, well, all that can happen and find my composure yet again. That this, that's right, it could be my death in this elevator. And there was a small dip in the elevator. Yeah, hopefully. Just a little more foolishness down the drain, hopefully.

[48:58]

Goody, goody. Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of good points are being made tonight. For me, I think that, I get this whole thing, And what I'm kind of finding disturbing or questioning is that there seems to be a sense of we're going to know what to do, and though I live my life

[50:11]

didn't make it, I think they were totally expressing their frustration and they died or whatever place they happened to fall into. And it wasn't, from the way I think about it, the people who survived Constitution and against all practical research. way he completely blossomed. So I think we have to be really careful about where we're going with our practice and that as much as we want to have everything taken care of along the way, to always realize that moment after moment, it's a new life and

[51:46]

Yeah, do you want to say something? Yeah, I think that it's interesting to see how we attach to a positive outcome as if that indicates that there was something wise, you know, and we have that tendency to do that, that if the outcome was good, well, we must have done the right thing. Critical part. Yes, they broke all the rules. They did it by expressing themselves. And they knew they were doing correct in doing that. When they were interviewed, there was no doubt in their minds that they had done the right thing. And everybody was slinging the mud at them for not going by the book. And that's in fact what saved them. Yeah. But I know that that's what you were saying, and I also hear what Ross is saying. And it's really important because We have such a strong tendency to want to survive, and control everything, that we'll often translate our wisdom as a way of keeping us safe, or controlling things around us, and attach to that, and look to use our practice in that way.

[53:10]

I was wondering too, like we're talking about having, me having wisdom, or they having wisdom, and I'm wondering, this is a question, I mean, like, we're saying, we're doing this thing, or like this, rather than there just being wisdom, like... Yeah, it's hard to say it. Say you're aligned, you sound aligned with wisdom. Yeah, it was emerging. It was wisdom emerging in my actions. Yeah, it's like, the wisdom has something to do with it, I mean, it has just as much to do with it as we have to do. Yeah. Yeah. What Ross says reminds me that when I think about people who I know who are wise, the person who comes first to mind is my grandmother, who I spent a lot of time with when I was a child. And the quality of wisdom that she has doesn't have anything to do so much with Buddhism in these specific ways, except that there's really a feeling of letting

[54:15]

Wisdom has a lot to do for me. When something that somebody does strikes me as wise, a lot of times it has that flavor of having let go, of non-attachment. And it's kind of elusive. Yeah. I think that's what I was going to say. It's more an absence of something. It's sort of clearing some stuff out of the way, in a sense. And maybe, as Andrea's saying, it emerges. You know, it's what is, and when we clear away some of the other delusions, there is wisdom there. When we let go and give up of enforcing our ideas, as Mike was saying, there's wisdom. Well, it's always there. It's always. Yeah, but we can't, it's obscured in some way when we're muddying the waters. I liked, in the next little article, from the Path of Compassion, Joanna Macy writes a little bit about shoulds and oughts, and I think what you brought up, Lois, about eating a piece of bread and how we actually live it out in the world,

[55:40]

But just the part that I highlighted was near the bottom of the page. Wisdom and morality are seen as inseparable as two hands washing each other. To quote an early sutra, just not one then the other, they are simultaneous. So that we find our way of living in a moral way as the wisdom that is, we allow to emerge. And then the next page, from the outset, there is a deep moral thrust to the Dharma, rooted in the radical relativity of all phenomena. It's the interrelatedness, it's the interdependence, it's the no and also the no-self that helps us to recognize our connectedness and therefore to take care of everything. It is precisely because there is no self that needs to be defended, enhanced, improved, or even made more moral that the realization of that truth releases us into action that is free from the burdens of selfhood.

[56:46]

Not confined to the prison cell of the ego, we are liberated into those wider dimensions of life that are our true home. So this is not a burden that we nobly assume I am going out to save the world. That's very tedious. Each act becomes a way of affirming and knowing afresh the reality. So this is again about the spontaneous arising. So I was about to be finished with talking about wisdom, but I wanted to bring something up about the three-sub morality, meditation, and wisdom that I think is really important.

[57:50]

And that was something we talked about last week. which is sort of the shadow side or sort of the dynamic in morality of repression versus this spontaneous arising quality. And so that each of the three categories, morality has this sort of repression versus this spontaneous arising through wisdom or morality. Meditation has this quality of zoning out Is it something we can use our meditation to zone out and to not feel things so that we can just get through and that's a particular problem as I understand it. Joko Beck talks about it a lot and presents students that they use their concentration instead of as a way to be present as a way to not feel pain. Or the other Another pole of it could be this attachment that concentration or meditation is something special.

[58:56]

And I think in wisdom, there's this polarity of nihilism versus attachment to accomplishment. And I'm going to see if I have a little more to explain that. Basically, when we get to the point that nothing matters anymore, that's when we've gone too far with wisdom. You know, that we just were so in line, this could happen or that could happen and it doesn't matter. And that's kind of one of the poles of wisdom that, you know, we have to be careful with. You just become like a punk rocker. Yeah, what difference does it make? Right. If everything's arising then, it's like without effort and without right view, you know, we just see everything as arising as it is and sort of don't involve ourself in some way, there's that side of it. Like fatalism? Yeah. Or nihilism? Yeah, nihilism. Yeah, I would.

[59:59]

Yeah, I mean, somebody might agree with that. I'm sure I had some more of a quote on this. Oh, here it is. This is from the show Bogenzo, Dogen's work. It's seen that knowledge of emptiness is knowledge of conditionality. It's the absence of independence or own being is not apart from the conditional. This is pretty complicated. Let's see if I can get to the core of it. According to Buddhist philosophy, clinging is a prime source of delusion. Whether that clinging be to profane or sacred things, therefore realization of relativity or non-absoluteness of all things is the core of freedom and enlightenment. However, it is because of relativity or conditionality that all things are empty. It is equally true that by the very same conditionality they do not exist dependently. The tendency to misinterpret emptiness nihilistically, whether by intellectual misunderstanding or by mistaking concentration states for insight, is well known

[61:08]

and often mentioned in Buddhist texts, especially texts of Zen schools. So it's when we really get off in the deep end of emptiness without seeing the way things fit together that that's sort of a danger that arises in our practice. So I just thought I would mention those things. Any other questions before we go on to the Eightfold Path? Okay, um, now you have a complete listing. With all, with the extra page I gave you that I left out in the first of the 8-fold path. And, um, again, um, the 8-fold path, somebody needed the missing page? Oh, more people. More people. A couple more. Okay. Now it will make sense.

[62:11]

Remember that if we see the Buddha as a doctor, he described, you know, he gave the diagnosis. I mean, the patient's going to get old and die, but how does he live his life with some meaning? And then he gave the prescription. And the prescription is, this is how we live our life, and this is how we bloom, and this is how we exist within this suffering. And that's the Eightfold Path. So here's the prescription now that you know that the disease is fatal. I think when I look at them sometimes, I mean, we look at the first two, Right View and Right Purpose in the Wisdom, which we've just been talking about, it's hard to tell the difference. I don't know if anybody else has this trouble, but it all starts looking like you just have to have your head on straight to me. And so I found something interesting. Where did I find this? I can't remember. But that gave me a better description for me.

[63:15]

First you must see clearly what is wrong for right view. First you must see clearly what is wrong. And for right purpose is next you must decide that you want to be cured. So that kind of helps me understand the differentiation there. The third thing, which is, I guess, right conduct, or at least the way he has it described is, you must act and you must speak as to aim at being cured. So that's kind of three and four together. And the fifth one, which is livelihood, your livelihood must not conflict with your therapy. The way you live your life ought not to conflict with the way you're trying to be cured of this problem or to live your life through this prescription. Can you read the one with the right speech and right action?

[64:19]

Uh-huh. He gives right action first. You must act and speak so as to aim at being cured. And your livelihood must not conflict with your therapy. And then, for right effort, your therapy must go forward at the staying speed. That is, the critical velocity that can be sustained. Practice. Yeah. It's got to have this kind of momentum that keeps you involved and moving in some way, growing. What about if it goes too fast? Well, we should bring that up in discussion. You can always stick your feet out, you know, drag your legs. You must think about it incessantly in terms of right awareness or mindfulness. And you must learn how to contemplate with deep mind. So I thought that that was a little bit helpful to me in clarifying how they differed from one another.

[65:22]

I don't know what you think of that. I don't know if anybody's been complaining that it's been going too fast. I don't know. That zealous feeling. Uh-huh. I get a little over, you know, ecstatic about it. Uh-huh, and attached? And attached and, you know, are here morning, noon, and night and, you know, caring your parents if they're not here or something like that. I think Mel talked about it in the, you know, about the relation to priesthood and Jukai, you know. when the honeymoon is over and you're there with the slug and the mud. Yes, yes. Yeah, so in Six Verses, a therapy must go forward at the staying speed, that is, the critical velocity that can be sustained. For each person. Yeah, whatever is the right, so that you can stay with it and not get spun off.

[66:26]

Are we talking about the Eightfold Path now? Yes. Maybe it's the way that this particular author, I know you said Theravadin, but it made me uncomfortable. People of learning wisdom in the ways of Buddhism apply the Eightfold Path as a system of self-improvement. There's something that really gets me about that. It's a little too... Yeah, it sounds pretty preachy. Yeah. Preachy and kind of accepting something outside of yourself rather than... It's on page 130? Uh-huh. Follow the recipe. It's kind of a... Yeah, yeah. I hear you. And then on the next page on 131, um... From the religious standpoint, right views can be interpreted as right faith since adopting right views requires people who have no understanding of theory or knowledge of basic Buddhist teachings to accept on faith their teacher's words and believe them wholeheartedly.

[67:35]

But, don't hold any head above your own, too, right? Right. Throughout this book, this Basic Buddhist Concepts, he talks about that there are different ways that people enter the stateful path, that some people have had some awakening, and they're ready to practice in the way you described, and other people want some relief from their suffering, and that they may enter the path through faith, even though they don't quite know how it works, they have some sense, maybe it's that insight that they're born with, oh, there's something over here, and it's attracting me, and I don't know why, But I have faith in this person and what they're telling me. And it's an entryway into the path. In fact, he goes... I don't know if I have it on this, but I think I wrote it. One of the last pages on 137, I think I just wrote, Faith, Meditation and Wisdom is his sequence.

[68:38]

That some people enter... He kind of equates morality with faith. Some people enter the practice by just practicing the precepts and doing, you know, following the prescription to do good and that brings them, you know, a little deeper in. So he sees that as kind of a developmental sequence that the faith can bring them into the practice and the meditation and then through the meditation then they begin to have it as their own and the arising of wisdom is something that they recognize. But I agree with you that It sounds kind of preachy, but I use this particular version of the Eightfold Path because it was kind of compact, and yet there was a little more than just a basic description. But also, another way of understanding it is that the Eightfold Path is used by millions of people over two and a half thousand years, and so it had, in a way,

[69:44]

You know, it can be used in that kind of way. I mean, it's sort of like the simplest and most gross way of looking at it would be like that. And for some people, that's a good way to start. And then you can go deeper as you're able to or as you want to. But, you know, also there's a certain, you know, it's offering a framework to millions and millions of people that they can actually work with. And it sort of tends to go down to the lower denominator. So, on mindfulness, sort of a term which I'm not familiar with. From what I get here... Where were you on Saturday? What was that? Did you give a talk on mindfulness? Good, good. Just the right guy to ask. So good, just get the tape. What it sounds like, they're saying, is to not add to what you see.

[70:55]

Actually, I'm just asking you for a clarification, so maybe my understanding of it may be incorrect. I'm unfamiliar with the term mindfulness. Mindfulness? Well, let me ask somebody else to say it, because we talked about it. We began to talk about it last week. But you, because you don't say anything. No, I have nothing to say. Yes, you do. Even if it's wrong, from what we talked about last week, we just mentioned mindfulness. What would it seem like to you? Just whatever comes out. No, the whole thing to me is just a way of being. Just being. What you are and what you're doing all the time.

[71:58]

As opposed to? Thinking about what you're going to be and thinking about what you're going to do and thinking about what you did. awareness. That's the best feeling. Awareness of what's going on around you and within you. And what's your name? Sherry. Sherry. And it has to do with what Sherry's saying, and it's not something that's There are two things for me that I do a lot that are different from mindfulness. And one of them is being the observer, kind of standing over and above what's going on or what I'm doing or thinking or feeling and looking down at it, being detached.

[73:08]

And the other thing which is different from mindfulness is just being in the grip of reality. Does that make sense at all? Let me throw back what I'm getting. You could taste something and say, oh God, this is horrible. But horrible is like something you put on it. And to be mindful about it would be to say, this has a bitter and a salty taste. Right. Okay. Great. But as long as you're aware that it isn't horrible, your feeling about it is horrible. Exactly. It is horrible. Exactly. Okay. Okay. We'll give you a second. Go ahead. On page 133, at the very bottom, the seventh step on the path, right mindfulness, means constant awareness of things that are happening now and careful recollection of things that have happened in the past.

[74:19]

And then it says they define four aspects of right mindfulness on the next page. The body is impure, perception is a source of suffering, the mind is impermanent, and that all things are without self. Remembering these things provides a powerful source of religious energy for practical application of faith. In everyday life, right mindfulness means being aware of what is happening at all times and avoiding carelessness or thoughtlessness. Craig, this business on the bottom, 1, 2, 3, and careful recollection of things that have happened in the past, that seems like an antithesis of what we're supposed to be doing, of being mindful right now. I think it's a... Careful recollection, I could go, you know, we all go nuts. recalling everything. Yeah, we could, we could, but it could also just mean your place, where you are and what you're, you know, letting the experience, letting your experience guide you, that may be another way of saying careful recollection.

[75:25]

I mean, to me, what do you think? it may affect her in some way. It will. Even if she doesn't exactly think about it. I won't try to sneak that 11th and 12th item under my breath or something. So experience, experiential. Yeah, yeah, it did. I let it, I really let that experience penetrate. So it's definitely with me. Stay out of those express lines unless you belong there. about the past, and in some sense it's rather hard to do that without being conscious of the fact that you're doing it at that time.

[76:38]

And I think it's an exercise that people don't actually do. And probably it's very helpful in some sense to try and get a sense of one's life. And it's almost an odd sort of meditation. Because there's a lot of sleepwalking going on. A lot of it, when people say, oh I'm thinking about the past, but they're associating it with the past. Caring. Yeah. Minding. I used to do an exercise on December 31st of trying to to see the whole of the past year as one big moment on a different scale, and to see things in perspective, just for a half an hour or an hour to try that.

[77:42]

I feel that's more in line with what I'm talking about. Yeah. I was just going to say, my impression of mindfulness is sort of like caught up in what was... first disturbing, but then kind of neat, where it said, basically it said, ah, one who, ah, knows when, when he's breathing out, he's breathing out, when he breathes in a long breath, knows he breathes in a long breath, when he breathes out a long breath, knows he breathes out a long breath, when he breathes in a short breath, knows he, and it was like, what I got out of that is, it's kind of like, doing it, and you haven't spun off into something else. When your legs are hurting you, you know your legs are hurting you, and it's like that bitter taste, that horrible taste you were talking about, Mike, when, you know, something, an experience is bad, say, and you know exactly how you feel, and so you're not escaping it, you're not

[79:05]

submerging it, and also you're not just lamenting, bemoaning, collecting a whole bunch of other things together with it, but just experiencing just it. That's a little bit different. I'm sorry, I interrupted you. Why don't you finish? All I meant to say is that mindfulness of body is one species of mindfulness. When you're walking, you know you're walking. When you're sitting, you're sitting. No matter what you're doing, you know you're doing it. That's mindfulness. That's how I look at it. Yeah, but it might be all the, it might be very messy. I mean it might be all the kind of ricochet type things that are going on in your mind all the time also. And awareness of all that is happening at the same time.

[80:07]

So you're walking and you're also thinking about this and you're thinking about that and your emotions are going this way and your attention is going that way and you are aware that that's happening. even as you're doing it. Well, there's something though that can happen like where you sort of go out of control. I think where, for example, you're careening from one experience to another without registering. It's sort of like... Just impulse. Well, in some way you're not... It is a hard distinction to make, but it feels less conscious. In other words, like sitting in Zazen, sometimes I might feel, say I'm harboring ill will, okay? And I might get off into this thing of like, oh, you know, being really angry. But I've also done that in a way in which it was like not out of control where I could

[81:10]

I can say I'm now. Yeah, that was a mindfulness. You knew what was happening even as you were caught up in it. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there is a distinct difference there. You know, it's almost like a consolation when you realize it's not out of control. It's happening, you're aware it's happening. Make sure everybody knows we're not having class next week. And we have classes after we skip a week. And I'd like to spend a little more time on the Eightfold Path. And I think now that you have the complete reading, you can make some more sense of it. And I'm serious about the question I asked about the part of the Eightfold Path that has particular significance in your life and how you practice with it. Because the next class will also be about, okay, we have this prescription now.

[82:13]

He's written out the prescription. How is it that we practice it in our lives? And how is it that Buddhism practices? I mean, how is it practiced? How is Buddhism practiced? So, you might be thinking of that in terms of how you struggle with the Eightfold Path in your own life. When we talk about next week, we'll continue talking a little bit about the Eightfold Path and then go into the ways that we practice Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and how that ties back into what it is we need to realize, how they're all connected up. So what we need to realize, how we actually do it, how that reinforces our wisdom, or allows it to emerge. And if there's any last questions, we can do that. Well, actually that's timely because next time Andrew and I will be back on the East Coast visiting relatives and friends.

[83:50]

Oh my God, are we going to have to do it ourselves? That's the bad news. The bad news in the bad news. Most people here, if they're going to be here on Saturday, are going to come to Buddha's birthday, but it so happens that Raul originally scheduled Zen Shabbat, which is a Jewish Shabbos ceremony, on Saturday, and it's at my house, so I'm terribly kind of glad to celebrate in Israel, not being here for the event.

[84:55]

But if anybody is interested, and I hate to make a conflictual situation, but I'm already in it, so if anybody is interested. Just in case you want to practice Shabbat, you have an opportunity. And in a Zen fashion, a combination.

[85:09]

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