This is the first day of this September, 2024, two day sacheen. And for this first day, we'll be reading from the book mindfulness in plain English, and it's by Bonte guna rotana, Ratana. Little bit of information about this bante gunaratana, which, by the way, bante is just kind of an honorific title, such as Roshi, for instance. So bante henapola gunaratana was ordained at the age of 12 as a Buddhist monk in Malan dinaya, Sri Lanka. And then in 1947 at age 20, he was given higher ordination in khandi. That's K, a, n, d, y, and that's also in Sri Lanka. Subsequently, he traveled to India for five years of missionary work for the MaHA Bodhi society, where he actually was serving the untouchables in India, Sanchi, Delhi and Bombay. And then later, he spent 10 years as a missionary in Malaysia, and then at the invitation of the Sasana savaka society, he came to the United States in 1968 and he served as the General Secretary of the Buddhist Vihara Society of Washington, DC. And then in 1980 he was appointed President of the society. And during his years at the fahara, from 68 to 88 he taught courses in Buddhism, conducted meditation retreats and lectured wild widely throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Africa and Asia. So traveled quite a bit. I can't imagine he's traveling anymore now that he's in the ripe old age of 95 perhaps 96 I read from him last year, and I think I wrote down 95 and as far as I know, he's still with us. And then, in addition, from 73 to 88 venerable guna Ratana served as Buddhist chaplain at American University. So we can see he has quite a bit of karma with this country. And in fact, yeah, he also pursued his scholarly interest by earning a PhD in philosophy from American University. And he has taught courses on Buddhism at American University, Georgetown University and the University of Maryland. And then finally, since 1982 Bonte guno rotana has been president of the Baha Bhavana society, and that's a monastery and retreat center located in the woods of West Virginia, which he co founded with Matthew flickstein. And he resides at the at this monastery, where he ordains and trains monks and nuns and offers retreats to the general public.
All right, and so if this does sound familiar, as I mentioned, I read from him last year, and we're going to more or less pick up from from where I left off.
So I'll be reading this is chapter 10, dealing with problems which inevitably are bound to come up, especially in sashin You're going to run into problems in your meditation. Everybody does. Problems come in all shapes and sizes, and the only thing you can be absolutely certain about is that you will have some the main trick in dealing with obstacles is to adopt the right attitude. Difficulties are an integral part of your practice. They aren't something to be avoided. They are to be used. This is, again, this is the right attitude. Problems are going to come up. It's all grist for the mill. This is something that we have so many ideas, don't we, when we come to practice? I know I did just wanting to attain enlightenment and thinking, Well, I knew there was going to be hard work to be done, but I had no idea all the so called problems in the mind that I was going to encounter.
They provide in. Valuable opportunities for learning. The reason we are all stuck in life's mud is that we ceaselessly run from our problems and after our desires. So there you go, aversion and desire. Meditation provides us with a laboratory situation in which we can examine this syndrome and devise strategies for dealing with it. All right? I like that analogy a laboratory situation. It might sound cold or scientific, but really, really, that's what we're doing when we're whatever practice we may have. And by the way, I think this is my fifth or sixth, two days of shame that I've led, and I've never met so many people which watch such a wide variety of Zen practices. It's great. It's just this constant surprise at practice, people are on
so take that positivity or my excitement about it. Take it with a grain of salt. But it is, it is just kind of interesting. That was one of my surprises. Being in private instruction is
just the the the different practices that one have, and yet, and yet, we're all working we're all struggling with the same kind of problems. They're just various degrees. But yeah, we're all heading in the same direction. We're all working towards realizing our true nature, whether we're aware of it consciously or not. Some people might not be here for that reason, but nevertheless, that's what we're what that's what we're here doing. We're uncovering, uncovering into our true nature.
So yes, meditation provides us with a laboratory situation in which we can examine this syndrome and devise strategies for dealing with it. The various snags and hassles that arise during meditation are grist for the mill. They are the material with which we work. There is no pleasure without some degree of pain. There is no pain without some amount of pleasure. Life is composed of joys and miseries. They go hand in hand. Meditation is no exception. You will experience good times and bad times, ecstasies and fear. So don't be surprised when you hit some experience that feels like a brick wall. Don't think you are special. All seasoned meditators have had their own brick walls. They come up again and again. Just suspect them and be ready to cope. Your ability to cope with trouble depends upon your attitude. If you can learn to regard these hassles as opportunities, as chances to develop in your practice, you'll make progress. Your ability to deal with some issue that arises in meditation will carry over into the rest of your life and allow you to smooth out big issues that really bother you. Alright, the word I like to use is alchemy. So we through our meditation, through our zazen, these hindrances, these obstacles, these problems we'll call hindrances, do arise, and by facing them head on. And how do we face them head on? We face them by just putting all our devoted attention to the counting of the breath, or the falling of breath, or working on a koan, put all our attention on that. And what will occur with these hindrances is they are there. They're there in the mind, whatever they may be. But as so long as we don't try to push them away, and so long as we don't try to grasp at them, they have a life of their own and but if we just stick with the practice, then they will pass. Everything passes, and as a result of that, and this, you know, this applies inside and outside session when we're doing our meditation, when we're facing the wall, what inevitably happens might not be overnight, but what inevitably happens is through our daily life, in our daily life, when we're moving around, when we're dealing with people, difficult people, there's this alchemy that has occurred through our practice by facing our fears, by facing our anger, our depression. By, by looking at it, seeing it, not doing anything with it, by, by working through that. Then that comes out in again, that's this word I like to use alchemy. It just there's this kind of miraculous alchemy that occurs. And then conflicts are not such a problem anymore. We can deal with them more skillfully. We're not so thrown off by someone who's yelling at us, or or, or any given Association. You get into a car accident or, yeah, it's just, it's not, you know, you can deal with it more skillfully. You
I'll read
that sentence again. Your ability to deal with some issue that arises in meditation will carry over into the rest of your life and allow you to smooth out big issues that really bother you if you try to avoid each piece of nastiness that arises in meditation, you are reinforcing the habit that has already made life seem so unbearable at times, it is essential to learn to confront the less pleasant aspects of existence. Our job as meditative meditators is to learn to be patient with ourselves, to see ourselves in an unbiased way, complete with all our sor sorrows and inadequacies, we have to learn to be kind to ourselves. In the long run, avoiding unpleasantness is a very unkind thing to do to her yourself. Paradoxically, kindness entails confronting unpleasantness when it arises. Yeah, this, this, this kindness or compassion can be such a it's not some kind of soft, warm, fuzzy kind of feeling. Of course, we all experience those but, but it's that's not what compassion necessarily is completely. That's not the whole thing. Sometimes compassion does involve being firm, being strict, any any parent knows this or tries to live up to this. You know, the the give or take of of of guiding your your your children. I'm not expressing this too well because I can't speak as an experience as a parent. I don't have kids, but I've often heard, you know that's like, How To what extent do we do we need to be tough, and what to what extent do we not?
But again, going back to this kindness, paradoxically, kindness entails confronting unpleasantness when it arises, and it does arrive, no doubt it will, if you're doing a practice unpleasantness and these obstacles will arise, which we'll be covering shortly. It's inevitable. One popular human strategy for dealing with difficulty is auto suggestion. When something nasty pops up, you convince yourself it is not there, or you convince yourself it is pleasant rather than unpleasant. The Buddha's tactic is quite the reverse, rather than hide it or disguise it. The Buddha's teachings urges you to examine it to death. Buddhism advises you not to implant feelings that you don't really have, or avoid feelings that you do have. If you are miserable, you are miserable. That is the reality, that is what is happening. So confront that. Look at square in the eye without flinching when you are having a bad time. Examine that experience, observe it mindfully, study the phenomenon and learn its mechanics, alright? So we don't do that in Zen practice. For us, when the unpleasantness, unpleasantness arises, whatever the phenomenon may be, we don't do anything with it. What we do is just put our full attention back on our practice, and then that obstacle will have a beginning, a middle and an end, and the sooner we just put our attention devotedly, is the word that keeps coming to mind. As soon as we devote ourselves, more attention to it, the sooner it will pass.
The result is freedom. The. This point is essential, but it is one of the least understood aspects of Buddhist philosophy. Those who have studied Buddhism superficially are quick to conclude that it is pessimistic, always harping on unpleasant things like suffering, always urging us to confront the uncomfortable realities of pain, death and illness. Buddhist thinkers do not regard themselves as pessimists. Pessimists quite the opposite. Opposite. Actually, pain exists in the universe. Some measure of it is unavoidable. Learning to deal with it is not pessimism, but a very pragmatic form of optimism. How would you deal with the death of your spouse? How would you feel if you lost your mother tomorrow, or your sister or your closest friend? Suppose you lost your job, your savings and the use of your legs all on the same day? Could you face the prospect of spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair? How are you going to cope with the pain of terminal cancer if you contract it, and how will you deal with your own death when that approaches, you may escape most of these misfortunes, but you won't escape all of them. Most of us lose friends and relatives at some time during our lives. All of us get sick now and then, and all of us will die someday. You can suffer through these things like that, or you can face them openly. The choice is yours. So we can just take a small example. Say, sickness. No, we all get sick occasionally, or more frequently, and what one will notice say, Well, I can only talk from my own personal experience. So when I used to get sick, say, in my early 20s, before practice, I used to be a pretty cranky person, and I'd kind of shut everybody out. I don't want to talk. I'm fine. I'm fine. Just leave me alone. Yeah, just pushing everything away. That was one of my many, many talents as a young person, before practice. But then you notice, as time goes on through the practice, when you do get sick, you're not so worked up. You're not You're not so stuck in your own self analysis and self beating up on or being cranky, or you're just sick. You're just sick. You ride with it. You're in pain.
Ah,
and that's it. You're just feeling the pain. You're just but you're not putting anything on top of it, you're not pushing people away, you're not being cranky. You're just you're just feeling the pain
we often use the word, you know, suffering on top of suffering. So of course, we're going to suffer. We have a human body that's a natural thing, especially when we're ill. We can really feel it. But the suffering on top of the suffering is all of the the the the wheels turning in our heads about, why am I sick again? Why do I have to be sick now? Why can't I go to work? Or why can't I do this? Why can't I do it? That's the suffering on top of the suffering where the suffering itself is. You're just experiencing the pain. But
uh, pain is inevitable. Suffering is not so. There it is. It's kind of phrased in a different way. You know, suffering on top of suffering, pain is inevitable. Suffering is not pain and suffering are two different animals, if any of these tragedies, tragedies strike you in your present state of mind, you will suffer the habit patterns that presently control your mind will lock you into that suffering, and there will be no escape. Bit of time spent in learning alternatives to those habit patterns is time well invested. Most human beings spend all their energies devising ways to increase their pleasure and decrease their pain. Buddhism does not advise that you cease this activity altogether. Money and security are fine. Pain should be avoided whenever possible. No one, nobody is telling you to give away every possession or seek out needless pain, but Buddhism does advise you to invest time and energy in learning to deal with unpleasantness, because some pain is unavoidable. When you see a truck bearing down on you, by all means, jump out of the way. I. But spend some time in meditation too. Learning to deal with discomfort is the only way you'll be ready to handle the truck you didn't see. Problems will arise in your practice. Some of some of them will be physical, some will be emotional, and some will be attitudinal. All of them can be confronted, and each has its own specific response. All of them are opportunities to free yourself.
Problem, one physical pain. Nobody likes pain, yet everybody has some at one time or another. It is one of life's most common experiences, and it is bound to arise in your meditation in one form or another. Handling pain is a two stage process. First, get rid of the pain, if possible, or at least get rid of it much as possible. All right, for that, for us as practitioners here in sasheen, it's the posture, yeah, which I won't go into too much, because looking around the Zendo this morning, I think pretty much everyone's postures is the right on track. One, of course, the key things is to have the hips higher than the knees. That helps keep the back straight. You want. Of course, you don't want too high, because then if you're too high, then you're putting a lot of stress on your knees. But, but then if you're if your hips are too low. If you're not high enough, if you don't have enough cushion underneath your your butt, then you're just going to create strain in the back. So posture is a big part of this physical pain. You're still going to feel some, no doubt, because the rounds can be long, and if you're especially if you're inflexible, but really, you know, posture can come along, can go a long way into minimizing the pain. Then if some pain lingers, use it as an object of meditation. I
Okay, he's just talking a little bit about posture, which, oh, what the hell I'll cover it. Then there are certain pains that are specific to the seated posture. If you never spend much time sitting cross legged on the floor, there will be an adjustment period. So as I just talked about, making sure some people do, there is some traditions where they actually sit on the floor without a cushion. But that's not our way. Our way is to have that cushion underneath to get that height. If the pain is in the leg or knees, check your pants. If they are tight or made of thick material. That could be the problem. Try to change it. Check your cushion too. It should be about three inches in height when compressed. If the pain is around your waist, try loosening your belt. This is kind of a helpful thing, like, just make sure the the Yeah, just make sure your belly. You want your belly to just breathe naturally, you know, expand as much as, as much as it does without making a thing out of it. We're never we really get away from technique, but just breathe naturally. So if you notice it's a little tight down there with the whatever your you have with your robe there, just make sure it's loose. You want to be able to breathe fully and naturally. If you experience pain in your lower back. Your posture is probably at fault, possibly slouching will never be comfortable, so straighten up. Don't be tight or rigid, but do keep your spine erect. So this spine being erect, as I mentioned with the belly, you want to have that pelvic tilt in the hips, so, you know, you're following the curvature of the spine. So you do have that natural curve down in the lower back. And if you have a night enough height underneath your cushion, then everything should just line up naturally. You know, those you know, the spine lines up and your back is just naturally straight. One of the tricks that I often do is just roll my shoulder forward and back one at a time, and that kind of helps straighten. Straighten the back I'm.
All right
now the other side of pain, which is after you have made all of these various adjustments with your posture. You may, may, you may find you will have some lingering pain. If that is the case, try step two, make the pain your object of meditation. Okay, so we do something a little differently, but you will discover that there are two things present. The first is the simple sensation, pain itself. Second is your resistance to that sensation, resistance reaction is partly mental and partly physical. The physical part consists of tensing the muscles in and around the painful area, relax those muscles, take them one by one, and relax each one of them very thoroughly. Well. You're just basically, you know, putting your attention on the practice, and just kind of, yeah, if your body is all aligned, and, like I said, your hips are high enough, I think the key is just to relax into the practice. If you notice your tense, then just kind of, take a breath, and this, this being able to relax is, is kind of the more the I've just come to realize how helpful it can be to have the body relax. I'm not talking about falling asleep, but to have the upper body as relaxed as possible. Yes, tuck that chin in. Make sure your head is nice and straight. But so much of this tension that occurs in the upper body can occur because we're grasping on our practice restraining I want to get through. But yeah, that just naturally comes year after year that we we learn to relax more, but it's, it's good to keep that in mind. Have the upper body relaxed as much as you can, as much as possible. I just as you are tensing physically, you are also tensing psychologically. You are clamping down mentally on the sensation of pain, trying to screen it off and reject it from consciousness. The rejecting is a wordless, I don't like this feeling or go away attitude. It is very subtle, but it is there, and you can find it if you really look located and relax that too. Okay. Again, going back to what we do as a practice is, if you're feeling some pain, just put your attention again. It just go really goes back to not focusing your attention on the pain that's not going to help. It's focusing your attention on, say, the counting of the breath, the more you can put attention to it, the more the pain will just fall into The background and not be a problem anymore. You
i In the beginning, you can expect to succeed with small pains and be defeated by big ones. Like most of our skills, it grows with practice. The more you practice, the more pain you can handle. Please understand fully. There is no masochism being advocated here. Self mortification is not the point. This is an exercise in awareness, not in self torture. If the pain becomes excruciating, go ahead and move so that's that sharp pain we often talk about, you know, if you're experiencing any sharp pain, then get into a different posture, because that's not going to work.
Problem, two legs go into sleep. It is very common for beginners to have their legs fall asleep or go numb during meditation. They are simply not accustomed to the cross legged posture. Some people get very anxious about this. They feel they must get up and move around. Well, we don't have that problem here, as we mentioned in our announcements at the start, it's. Not a problem. Just uncurl your legs, get feeling back into it, and then you can do keening. A few are completely convinced that they will get gangrene from lack of circulation. Numbness in the leg is nothing to worry about. It is caused by nerve pinch, not by lack of circulation. You can't damage the tissues of your legs by sitting. So relax when your legs fall asleep in meditation, just mindfully observe the phenomenon. Examine what it feels like. It may be sort of uncomfortable, but it is not painful unless you tense up. Just stay calm and watch it. It does not matter if your legs go numb and stay that way for the whole period after you have meditated for some time, that numbness will gradually disappear. Your body simply adjusts to daily practice. Then you can sit for very long sessions with no numbness whatsoever. If you do notice that your leg falls asleep frequently, you might want to swish your position on on your cushion. What we recommend is sitting on the front third of the cushion. If you're too far back, then you might cut off some circulation there. The other thing that I've done that helps with numbness is just kind of slightly adjusting the height underneath my cushion. My legs might be falling asleep because I'm sitting a little too low, so get some height underneath that.
Problem three odd sensations people experience all manner of varied phenomena and meditation. Some people get itches. Others feel tingling, deep relaxation, a feeling of lightness or a floating sensation. You may feel yourself growing or shrinking or rising up in the air. Beginners often get quite excited over such sensations. Don't worry, you're not likely to levitate anytime soon. Oh, that's interesting. So I mean, this is more forgot to mention, although it was in his bio. So this what we're talking about here is Vipassana meditation. But I find what bante guna Ratana talks about very much applies to a Zen practice. So what I've actually done a lot of times throughout the reading is just replace the word mindfulness with say zazen or Zen meditation. And so this phenomenon, however, with people feeling quite light or floating sensation, my experience that, I mean, that's not my own experience in my early years of practice, or what I've heard from others as well. So it might be some particular thing because of their practices, different that they might be experiencing that more than say we would, where we experience different kind of phenomenon, what we call we still use that Word, the Japanese word makyo. But in any event, whatever it is, the slightness or itching or tingling, of course, the first thing is to recognize that it's makyo and that it's going to pass. But it's the recognizing of it, not freaking out, but just recognizing it and just again, return to the practice and it will pass. Yeah, as relaxation sets in, the nervous system simply begins to pass sensory signals more efficiently, large amounts of previously blocked sensory data can pour through, giving them rise to all kinds of unique sensations. I conversations, yeah? So large amounts of previously blocked sensory data can pour through, giving rise to all kinds of unique sensations. This. This happens in the early years of practice, you know this, yeah, what we call makyo. You know, through the practice, we are opening. We're prying open, the mind prying, naturally, just the mind starts to open and things bubble up. And so I think for most people, it's fair to say that this occurs in the first couple years of practice, and then basically passes. Some people I know are still afflicted with makyo sometimes, but for the most part, it's the first couple of years that we might experience some strange phenomenon in the body. And then it passes i.
It does not signify anything in particular. It is just sensation. So simply employ the normal technique, watch it come up and watch it pass away. Don't get involved. Drowsiness, problem four, drowsiness, it is quite common to experience drowsiness during meditation, you become very calm and relaxed. That is exactly what is supposed to happen. Well, for us, it's not so much calm and relaxed, definitely relax, but alert. Become more alert, because our practice is a concentration practice, and so yes, of course, we're going to feel drowsy, but through our devotion To the practice, we just become more alert,
the inquisitive awareness is the direct opposite of drowsiness, and it will evaporate it. If it does not, then you should suspect the physical cause of your sleepiness. If, for instance, you have just eaten a large meal that could be the cause. It is best to eat lightly if you are about to meditate or wait an hour after a big meal, and don't overlook the obvious either. If you have been out hauling bricks all day, you're naturally going to be tired. You
Yeah, so this drowsiness doesn't say much about drowsiness, so let me just talk a little more about that drowsiness, especially in sistren, especially in the first day of the sheen, is inevitable. So again, when we feeling drowsiness, it's just putting more more attention to the practice, not trying to push away the drowsiness, not clinging to the drowsiness, but just kind of just getting back to it, getting back to putting our full attention, and inevitably, it will dissipate. Got a quote from this, William James, I think he was a theologian from the 19th century, and this is about exertion. It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. Beyond the very extremity of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own sources of strength never taxed at all, because we never pushed through the obstruction. So pushing through this obstruction of of drowsiness, Zazen is a cure for that, you know, to just just return over and over and over again. And the drowsiness gets less and less as time goes on. And it might, actually might be superficial as well. There's, there are a number of times, especially with the late night sitting. We'll call yaza. This is the sitting that we can do after the formal rounds are over. And even though one might feel drowsy and sleepy, sleepy instead of just going right to bed, sometimes we just know, we just know we're exhausted. We need to get some sleep, and then maybe get up early in the morning to sit extra. But other times, we can push through that drowsiness if we just persevere. I
problem five, inability to concentrate in overactive jumping attention is something that everybody experiences from time to time. It is generally handled, handled by the techniques presented in the chapter on distractions. You should also be informed, however, that there are certain external factors that contribute to this phenomenon, and these are best handled by simple adjustments in your schedule. Mental images are powerful entities. They can remain in the mind for long periods. All of the storytelling arts are direct. The manipulations of such material and at the right if the writer has done her job well, the characters and images presented will have a powerful and lingering effect on the mind.
If if you have been to the best movie of the year, the meditation that falls is going to be full of those images. If you are halfway through the scariest horror novel you ever read, your meditation is going to be full of monsters. So switch the order of events. Do your meditation first, then read or go to the movies. All right, this obviously does not apply to sashin, but I'll go on. Another influential factor is your own emotional state. If there is some rural conflict in your life, that agitation will carry over into meditation. Try to resolve your immediate daily conflicts about before meditation, when you can your your life will run more smoothly and you won't be pondering uselessly in your practice. But don't use this advice as a way to avoid meditation. Sometimes you can't resolve every issue before you sit. Just go ahead and sit anyway. Use your meditation to let go of all the egocentric attitudes that keep you trapped within your own limited viewpoint, your problems will resolve much more easily thereafter. And then there are those days when it seems that the mind will never rest, but you can't locate any apparent cause. Remember the cyclic alternation we spoke of earlier. Meditation goes in cycles. You have good days and you have bad days again. And again, just repeat. The key is just never giving up. Just commit yourself to it. You have good days and you have bad days. And in terms of these good days and bad days, it's the same thing. If we cling to those good days. It's gonna it all comes down to clean good days are bad days, if we if we have, like this major mental obstruction, so long as we don't cling to it, then it will go away. It's the same thing when our we feel that our practice is going really well, going smoothly. As soon as you cling to that, then you're not doing the practice. It's just getting you're just getting in the way. Your egocentrism is getting in the way. Above all, don't get frustrated over the non stop chatter of your mind, that babble is just one more thing to be mindful of.
Above all, don't get frustrated over the non stop chatter of your mind. Thoughts are thoughts. Just let them be. You're going to keep coming.
Thoughts are not our enemies.
They're just thoughts. But what happens is we get these thoughts, especially some really persistent ones, and what we have a tendency to do is cling to those thoughts, and then the frustration comes in we're trying to that's the frustration can occur if we're trying to stop the thoughts or push away the thoughts or cling again, it's just clinging to the thoughts. No, no, no, no. Just let the thoughts be. And how do you let them be? Is you just put your attention to the practice. Problem six, boredom. It is difficult to imagine anything more inherently boring than sitting still for an hour with nothing to do but feel the air going in and out of your nose. You are going to run into boredom repeatedly in your meditation, everybody does. Boredom is a mental state and should be treated as such. So whenever that occurs to me, it's that awareness of the boredom as soon as I feel bore. It, oh, I'm not into my practice. It's kind of like it's a signal if you're boring, Zazen is never boring. It's our state of mind that's boring, that we get bored. So the Boren occurs because we're not applying ourselves. So again, the Boren can just be kind of a a a signal that we're not really practicing, that we're not really putting our attention to the practice without the judgment, you know. So if you do find yourself it's it's the same thing as having a makios. It's just recognizing. So as soon as you recognize that you're bored, oh, okay, apply myself to the practice. The same thing with makyo. Apply myself to the practice. You recognize it for what it is, and you just return to the practice. And it doesn't become such a huge problem. It's the same thing with time. You know, thinking about time, when I find myself reflecting, not reflecting, when I find Jesus, this round is pretty long, like, when is it going to end? That's again. It's that boredom. Oh, that's there. It is. There's that signal. All right, okay, get, get back into it. Do?
If the breath seems an exceedingly dull thing to observe over and over, you may rest assured of one thing you have ceased to observe the process with Zazen. Zen is never boring. Look again. Don't assume that you know what breath is. Don't take it for granted that you have already seen everything there is to see. You are not observing its living reality when you are clearly mindful of the breath or of anything else. It is never boring. Zen looks at everything with the eyes of a child with a sense of wonder. Zazen sees every moment as if it were the first and the only moment in The universe. So look again. I
problem, seven fear states. Of fear sometimes arise during meditation for no discernible, discernible reason. It is a common phenomenon, and there can be a number of causes. You may be experiencing the effect of something repressed long ago. Remember, thoughts arise first in the unconscious, the emotional contents of a thought complex often leak through into your conscious awareness long before the thought itself surfaces. If you sit through the fear, the memory itself may bubble up to a point where you can endure it, or you may be dealing directly with the fear that we all fear, fear fear of the unknown. At some point in your meditation career, you will be struck with the seriousness of what you are actually doing. You are tearing down the wall of illusion you have always used to explain life to yourself and to shield yourself from the intense flame of reality. You are about to meet ultimate truth face to face. That is scary, but it has to be dealt with eventually, go ahead and dive right in.
A third possibility, the fear that you are feeling may be self generated. It may be arising out of unskillful concentration. You may have set an unconscious program, to, quote, examine what comes up. Thus, when a frightening fantasy arises, concentration locks onto it and the fantasy feeds on the energy of your attention and grows. All right, I don't quite get that, but the one word that just kept coming to mind when I was reading this passage is contrivance, contriving ourselves. And this can be a very unconscious thing that occurs. Yeah, until we well, let's just use an example. Say we're working on the koan mu. When work on the koan mu, you're just pouring your full attention on the koan. So sometimes people say, Well, you can question the koan, but that can actually be quite a at least for me personally, that was kind of, it just felt so contrived to me, always trying to question mu and, you know, Roshi just reassured me. Don't worry about if, if you're not, if the question is not there, that's, that's, that's okay, that's fine. Just absorb yourself so and out of that absorption of mu, that's when the question arises, and that's when things can really, really take a turn, and you're like, what is this all about? But it's not an intellectual thing. So that, and again, the intellectual thing is, I think what I'm trying to get at is this contrivance can be a very intellectual thing. It is an intellectual thing. So you don't have to think about this at all. Just absorb yourself into the counting of the breath, the inhalation and exhalations, and the question will arise from that, or the absorption, or you're just getting more concentrated.
Observe the fear exactly as it is, as it is. Don't cling to it, just watch it rising and growing. Okay? Then he says, study its effect. So we don't do that. So if fear comes up, I think our natural reaction is we just start to freak out. You know, it's, don't worry. It's not like the university is the universe is going to fall from underneath us, the fear arises, and again, with all of these problems, we're just expressing them in all these different problems. Our task as practitioners, again, is just getting back to our attention, getting back to the practice, and then the fear has the beginning, a middle and an end.
When you find yourself in the grip of horror fantasies, simply observe those mindfully. Watch the pictures as pictures. See memories as memories. Observe the emotional reactions that come along and know them for what they are. Stand aside from the process and don't get involved. There's this laboratory analogy again, stand aside from the process and don't get involved. Treat the whole dynamic as if you were a curious bystander. More important, don't fight the situation. Don't try to repress the memories or the feelings or the fantasies, just step out of the way and let the whole mess bubble up and flow past it can't hurt you. It is just memory. It is only fantasy. It is nothing but fear.
This next part is important. When you let fear run its course in the arena of conscious attention, it won't sink back into unconscious. It comes back. It won't come back to haunt you later, it will be gone for good. So that's this whole opening the mind, you know, things that one could never imagine. We've locked in there, and we've dealt with them through name, your poison, alcohol, or repressing or not acknowledging when they do come up, you just always remind yourself, always remember that the practice is working. It is working. You're just simply opening things up, and by not reacting to them, they will pass more quickly, and once you fully experience whatever the memory is, or the yeah, whatever the memory is, once you fully experience that and you haven't repressed it, and then this is one of the dangers of practice. One of the dangers of practice is that we use our practice to repress those memories, but the very nature of sashin and all of this sitting that we're doing that's not going to work, that. Eventually gonna disappear, and things will naturally. Things will open up, and then the fears, the anxieties, all of that stuff will start coming up into the mind you
All right? Well, this feels like this is a natural place to stop, and so we'll now stop and recite the four vows and a reminder to put your masks back on you.
