[Music]
 Well, now we've been discussing in two sessions the ways in which thought can conceal truth.
 And so now we have to come to the other aspect of the problem, which is how to get unbamboozled.
 And I often say that in a way this is the wrong question, because it reminds me of the famous tale about the American tourist in England
 who wanted to find a way to obscure a little village called Upper Tudnam.
 And he asked a local yokel the way, and the man scratched his head and said,
 "Well, sir, I do know the way, but if I were you, I wouldn't start from here."
 And the problem, therefore, of what to do is in a way the wrong question.
 Because as I pointed out yesterday, you have to begin with the assumption that you can't do anything.
 You can't change yourself.
 Because the whole idea involves a sort of skitsy situation where there's I who's going to change me.
 And this is where the genius of Krishnamurti comes up, where he won't give anyone a method.
 And actually he gets you into the meditation process by pretending not to.
 He's a real tricky character.
 A very, very great guru, except that nobody really knows what to do with him.
 Because whenever you suggest that there might be something that you could do to bring your mind to tranquility
 or your heart to the knowledge of the ultimate reality, he says simply, "Well, why do you want to?"
 Find out why you want to.
 And then he gives you a koan.
 And in a way, this gets you meditating naturally, instead of it being a kind of artificial process.
 You get so bugged by this questioning that you are involved in the koan process right away.
 And he's very insistent about this.
 But my own view is very generous.
 I think that all ways of meditation can be followed.
 And because even if some of them are folly, to quote Blake again, "The fool who persists in his folly will become wise."
 All is required that you keep at it.
 So I want to talk this morning about the various central methods of meditation.
 And we'll begin, why not, with the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali.
 Where the first, he says, "Now yoga is explained."
 This is the first verse.
 And the commentators point out that the word "now" means that this is a discourse following other discourses.
 Something has gone before. Certain things you have to have mastered before you try yoga.
 And this is in line with the Hindu view of life, that life is divided into ashramas, or stages.
 That you start out with the stage called brahmacharya, which is the studentship.
 And then you become a grihastha, which is householder.
 And only after you fulfill the life of the householder do you take up yoga.
 And this is of course also in line with Jung's views.
 That spiritual awakening belongs properly to the second half of life.
 But you mustn't take that literally.
 The stages of life can be lived simultaneously.
 And they don't necessarily follow each other in chronological order.
 And today the predominance of interest in yoga in the West is among young people.
 And these are the people who are now the new sannyasins, the wandering monks, the dropouts.
 After all a sannyasin is a dropout. Only a high class dropout.
 But he has, in India of course, fulfilled his social debts.
 He has raised a family, established his work, and put his oldest son in charge of the business.
 But we are in an entirely different situation.
 Because many of our oldest sons despise the business that we as adults were involved in.
 Because they see through the hollowness of a way of life that has so hopelessly confused symbol with reality.
 So I guess in our circumstances yoga is important for everyone.
 Now the next verse of the Yoga Sutra says, "Yogas citta vritti nirodha."
 And this is a complicated thing to translate.
 It says yoga is the cessation of turnings of the mind.
 Vritti means to turn, to be turbulent.
 When you talk about a chakravartin, as a great ruler, a great king, it means one who turns the wheel.
 Vartin is the same as vritti.
 And a vartin is one who turns, a vritti is a turning, a wave, like a wave rolls over and splashes.
 Citta means approximately consciousness.
 It refers to the basic awareness that we have, whether it is strictly conscious or subconscious.
 Citta means something like, let's suppose we make the mind analogous to a mirror, a reflecting mirror.
 The mirror itself would correspond to what is meant in Sanskrit by citta.
 You see, we are not aware of the color of the lens of our eye.
 And so we just name that color transparent.
 If it had a color, we wouldn't know it.
 And so we don't.
 But you can't really altogether ignore the background of vision, because it's very important, even though you never see it.
 It's basic to all that you see, just as the diaphragm in the speaker of the radio is basic to all that you hear on the radio.
 But so in the same way, there is something basic to all our sensations, and that is citta.
 So now there are two schools of thought. One who say that yoga, the citta-vrtti-nirodha, the cessation of the turnings in the citta, is the elimination of all sense experience and all thought and all feeling whatsoever from consciousness.
 And when one speaks then of the goal of yoga as being samadhi, and particularly what is called asampragnata samadhi, which means samadhi without a seed in it, or nirvikalpa samadhi.
 Nirvikalpa is a moot word.
 Some people think that that means this total elimination of all contents from consciousness.
 It's like when you get into a sensory deprivation chamber, and you learn to relax the muscles of your tongue and the muscles of your eyes, and you really go blank.
 But I think that is a false interpretation.
 It's a very interesting experience to go through, and I recommend it if you want to make a little adventure.
 I was just in a sensory deprivation chamber a day or two ago. It was fascinating.
 But, you know, it's real quiet. It's just nice as nice can be, and I recommend that everyone install one in the New York apartment.
 But nirvikalpa means strictly without concept. Vikalpa means a concept.
 Having an idea, and that's a symbolic thing. It doesn't mean having no sensation.
 And they make a great point of this in the instruction about practicing meditation in Zen.
 They say quite definitely, don't shut your eyes, don't close your ears, but simply eliminate thought.
 If you cut out your sensation input entirely and have a blank mind, then you are no better than a log.
 In that case, logs and rocks would be Buddhas.
 The point then is, in other words, they have various poetic phrases in Zen to indicate the nature of samadhi.
 One is the moon in the water.
 You see, there's a verse which says, "All waters contain the moon."
 Not a mountain, but the clouds encircle it.
 So, "All waters contain the moon" means that whenever the moon rises, instantly it is in all waters.
 They didn't know, of course, in those days anything about the speed of light.
 But they felt that the moon comes into the water when the moon is in the sky in exactly the same way as when the hands are clapped, the sound issues without a moment's hesitation.
 And so another verse says, "The geese do not intend to cast their reflection. The water has no mind to receive their image."
 It's like that.
 And so the ideal of samadhi is for you to have a mind like that, what they call a mind of no hesitation.
 A mind which doesn't, as it were, stop to say whether this should or should not be reflected.
 And so they would go on to explain, the basic nature of your mind is like that from the beginning.
 That's what it is to have a mind.
 That's what the Zen master Banke would call the unborn mind, or the Buddha mind, in every one of us, that we all have as a natural gift.
 And so he says, when you hear a crow, you go, "Caw!" You know immediately it's a crow.
 I am a crow for the moment.
 And so in the same way, when Banke was once giving a talk, there was a Nichiren priest, and you know those Nichiren's are kind of Buddhist Jehovah's Witnesses.
 And this priest was heckling him in the back, and he said, "I don't understand anything you're saying."
 And Banke said, "Come closer, and I'll explain it to you."
 And this man began to weave his way through the crowd.
 Banke said, "Come closer still. Still closer. Come right here."
 And he came right up. Banke said, "You see? You understand me perfectly."
 [laughter]
 So, the feeling then is that the Nirvikalpa Samadhi is the state of just perfectly clear consciousness, which responds to everything going on, without labeling it, without categorizing it.
 And even to say "respond" isn't quite right, because that means as if consciousness was something that is pushed by life, and then reacts to it. Action and reaction.
 Like cause and effect. The crow "caws" and the ears vibrate. Cause and effect.
 That's not the Buddhist theory. The Buddhist theory is not cause and effect. It is called pratityasamutpada.
 And that means interdependent origination.
 In other words, when the wind blows, the trees move.
 This is not two events, but one.
 Wind blowing and trees waving are all the same process.
 And so the verse says, "The tree displays the bodily power of the wind."
 It manifests it. Because nobody would know there was any wind blowing unless the trees were waving.
 Nobody would know there was any light shining unless there was something reflecting it.
 They really go together, you see.
 So, the tree displays the bodily power of the wind. The water exhibits the spiritual nature of the moon.
 Because you see, when the water flows and ripples, it breaks the moon into thousands of pieces.
 So that is the spiritual power. The one becomes many.
 So then, what we are looking at then is a state of consciousness which is like that, which is one with the whole thing going on.
 And this is saying the same thing as Krishnamurti says when he tries to explain that there really is no feeler separate from our feelings and no thinker separate from our thoughts.
 There is simply a process going on.
 And so in the same way, Hueneng, the sixth patriarch, prefers not to use the image of the mirror for the mind, but he prefers the image of space.
 That's why when his rival for the patriarchate made up the poem which explained that the mind is a mirror and we must wipe it to keep off the dust,
 Hueneng countered this by saying there isn't any mirror, and so where on can the dust fall?
 So this is saying that you will never, never be able to discover a thinker other than thoughts, a feeler other than feelings, a sensor other than sensations.
 That's the meaning of the dialogue between Bodhidharma and Eka.
 When Eka said I haven't any peace of mind, please pacify my mind, and Bodhidharma said bring out your mind in front of me and I will pacify it.
 Eka said when I look for it I can't find it.
 Bodhidharma said there, it is pacified.
 So Eka, you know, was looking for his mind.
 It's like who are you? The question that the Maharshi Ramana always asked to anybody who said, Maharshi, where, who was I in my last incarnation?
 And he would always reply, who's asking the question?
 Which is the same as Krishnamurti's, why do you want to know?
 Because this throws the question back at the questioner.
 Who are you? Who has the problem?
 And you look and you look and you look and you can't find it.
 When you look for a human, the British philosopher really went through the same experience.
 Because when he tried to find out what was his consciousness, he couldn't find anything but sensations or images in his head.
 And so in the same way, when you want to find out what's behind your eyes,
 most people think that they have a blank space behind their eyes.
 Kind of a non-dark, non-light blind spot, which you can't ever see.
 But that's not the case.
 You know how the inside of your head is?
 Why, it's what you're looking at.
 That's how it feels inside your head.
 It's all this, that you see in front of you.
 Inside your head, it's all in these nerves back here, where the optical nerves are centered.
 And so, this is saying that our conscious relationship to the world is a transactional relationship,
 in which you can speak about the subjective standpoint and the objective standpoint.
 But that really, you've got one continuum in which these two standpoints are simply opposite ends of a diameter.
 You go with it, it goes with you, and vice versa.
 So this is the whole meaning of the Taoist idea that is called mutual arising.
 When Lao Tzu says that to be and not to be arise mutually,
 that difficult and easy suggest each other, high and low subtend each other, and so on.
 He's saying, he's describing this polar relationship.
 So, you don't get an encounter, in other words.
 You don't get a confrontation.
 You don't get a kind of a meeting from things that impinge on each other from entirely separate situations.
 You get the opposite sort of thing, where when a flower buds and the bud breaks,
 the petals expand. And it's true.
 You have the petals on the far left and you have the petals on the far right,
 but they arise together like that. See?
 That's how all life is happening.
 When you come into being, the universe comes into being.
 When you go out of being, the universe goes out of being.
 And that's true for everyone.
 Not only people, but all sentient beings whatsoever.
 So, without the being, the sentient being, there is no cosmos.
 All we are saying in talking about a cosmos that existed before any sentient beings existed,
 is we are simply describing what would have happened if there had been any sentient beings around.
 It's a kind of extrapolation.
 So, that relativity of the sentient being and the universe is basic to Buddhistic philosophy,
 and is saying then that one implies the other.
 Because this is the philosophy called "jiji-muge,"
 that between thing-event and thing-event there is no barrier.
 This is the philosophy of the mutual interdependence of all things and events.
 That the moment there is anything at all, it implies everything else.
 So, in the same way, you know, with laser beam photography,
 you can take a tiny fragment of a photographic negative,
 and by laser beam photography, you can restore the whole negative from which it was cut.
 Because the crystalline structure of any part of the negative
 is in an inseparable relationship with its whole area.
 So, you can imply it.
 You will get a picture which is around the area that you have taken out,
 very clearly definite, and as it moves away from it, the outlines will become a little vaguer.
 And you will be able to see everything that was there.
 It's fantastic.
 So, in the same way, every hair on your head,
 this is the real meaning of the saying that the hairs of your head are all numbered,
 that every hair on your head implies all galaxies,
 because it wouldn't exist without all galaxies,
 nor would all galaxies exist without the hair,
 or without the hair having existed.
 [laughter]
 It doesn't make any difference.
 So then,
 this state of complete unity of mind and nature,
 what's going on without the intervention,
 first of all, without the intervention of thought,
 is the state of meditation.
 It may be called jhana, it may be called samadhi,
 and you may make certain subtle differences between these two states, but forget it for the moment.
 Now, the way of arriving at this is, of course, there is no way,
 because that's the way your mind is working anyway,
 but you have to find that out.
 You have to find out that you don't need to accept yourself by trying to accept yourself.
 It doesn't mean anything to accept yourself, because who accepts what?
 But you don't know that at first.
 You think there is a who who has to accept what,
 and you can only do this by trying to do the impossible.
 This is the method of reductio ad absurdum.
 So, thought itself tells you that it can't go all the way.
 And then, when you understand that, thought naturally gives up,
 and you become quiet.
 Let it go.
 Let all the senses go,
 and eventually you find you're quiet,
 and you're centered, and still.
 But don't make an exercise of it.
 Dogen, the great Japanese Soto Zen master,
 always told his students,
 "Do not practice Zazen to attain Satori.
 Sit just to sit.
 This already practicing Zazen is being a Buddha.
 This is sitting like a Buddha.
 And if you do it with an ulterior motive, you're not doing it.
 There is nowhere to go.
 So, likewise, if you practice centering on the present,
 you can't do it with an objective, because you're off it.
 And so, in action,
 and you try to do what Goethe calls "self-remembering,"
 and you've always got your mind on the present,
 and you're fully aware of what you're doing all the time,
 see,
 then, eventually, you will discover
 that there is nothing else you can do.
 Because if you think about the past,
 that's happening now.
 Think about the future, that's happening now.
 There is nothing else but now.
 So, then, when you discover that,
 meditation becomes automatic.
 You're always in it.
 Only you have to be stupid,
 and exercise a little folly, in order to find it out.
 That is to try to be there.
 You see, that's putting legs on a snake,
 or a beard on a eunuch,
 or we could say, gilding the lily.
 And, but, somehow, to wake up, that has to happen.
 So, it's a most marvelous discovery, you see,
 when you've been working to try and center,
 to be present, to be alert and awake,
 and be just here,
 and you work at it, and work at it,
 and one day you go "doingg!"
 There is nowhere else to be.
 And then you get a very strange sensation.
 It seems that the now and you are all the same.
 And that it's like a stream,
 which is moving along and carrying you,
 but not going anywhere.
 It moves and doesn't move.
 It's like a,
 looking at a block, like a Rorschach block,
 and seeing the block running,
 but into the place where it is.
 Into the place where it is.
 Everything is moving into where it is.
 And this is the state called eternal now.
 This is the meaning of eternity.
 Eternity isn't static.
 So, this is the meaning of the Zen poem which says,
 "I walk over the bridge,
 and it's the bridge flow, not the water.
 I'm walking on foot, and yet riding on the back of an ox.
 I'm empty-handed, and yet a spade is in my hand."
 [silence]
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