LOSTCOIN CLASS NOTES 2-5-08

The class began with some questions about life in the monastery for Daniel.

When the students in Monastary were sitting a monitor would walk around carrying a long staff.  He would hit you across the shoulders if you asked him to, with a bow, to help relieve the muscle tightness.  You could get hit even if you did not ask if the monitor thought you needed to wake up.  There is a  tradition that if the staff gets broken across of your body to keep the handle of the broken staff.  This happened to Karin, Daniel's wife, in 1981.

At times the student would have to awaken at 0330 to begin meditation in the dark, quiet, very cold room with only a wood burning stove for heat.  In the Monastary that Daniel trained in was the single most difficult one to train in, in the US and some of the Japanese monasteries.  He wanted to train in a monastery that was difficult.  He also wanted to get a comprehensive training of martial arts.  He went to a place to train in Martial Arts that was very difficult and where and a person even died during training with a heart attack.  His mind told him that you had to have a certain amount of seriousness and effort you could achieve what you want.  He wanted to put himself in a  situation of learning form that was serious and difficult.  Now he understands that longevity is the most important factor and no form can cause to learn it.

As a teacher you have to be able to push a student to cut through his stuckness.

Spiritual Path:  If you forget that you are traveling through the world, you attach importance on unimportant things.  When you are awake you can see really what it is all about and are more spiritually awake.  Ultimately all spiritual journeys lead to the same place.  Many religions lead to the same spiritual path.  The cross symbolizes:  the horizontal line represents eternity, and the vertical line represents now.

Daniel read from the book The Zen Teaching of Huang Po on the Transmission of Mind translated by John Blofeld.  This is from 858 AD.  "The Master said to me:  All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but One Mind, beside which nothing exists.  This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible.  It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance.  It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old.  It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measures, names, traces and comparisons.  It is that which you see before you-begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error.  It is like the boundless void which cannot be fathomed or measured.  The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is not distinction between the Buddha and sentient things, but that sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek externally for Buddha hood.  By their very seeking they lose it, for that is using the Buddha to seek for the Buddha and using mind to grasp Mind.  Even though they do their utmost for a full aeon, they will not be able to attain to it.  They do not know that, if they put a stop to conceptual thought and forget their anxiety, the Buddha will appear before them, for the Mind is the Buddha and the Buddha is all living beings.  It is not the less for being manifested in ordinary beings, nor is it greater for being manifested in the Buddhas."

One Mind is the realized one.  Sitting practice stops conceptual mind.

WHY DO WE READ THEN?  Words are not all the same, we must use words to communicate.

A monk was asked " what is the Supreme Ultimate thing?"   He replied, " east west north south".

Using words to go beyond words is more conscious.  Your internal efforts must be strong to take your practice seriously.

Newcomers:  Come and sit at Joans.  Read In Search of the Miraculous by Ospensky.

HOW CAN YOU  AMPLIFY YOUR PRACTICE WITHOUT A  MONASTARY BACKGROUND?   Danield said if he looks back the monastic background taught him to be disciplined and it was romantic.  You learn more from the teacher and do what he or she tells you to do like sit daily, his mind becomes  your mind.  You pick up their Mind almost by osmosis.  Daniel felt he could almost put himself in the body of his teacher to learn how he was.  Can only be from person to person.  You learn from a teacher.  Is a very personal and intimiate relationship.  The teacher holds (mythical aspect) the Dahrma Eye. the whole truth is body and mind.  That is what transmission is.  You are bowing to the Buddha, the teacher holds the power to transmit that power to you over time which empowers you.  This is beyond conception.  He could not explain how to to that.

DOESN'T A MONASTARY HAVE LESS DISTRACIONS THAN LIFE?   Daniel says there are boys and girls in the same room, there are power struggles going on alot.  Therefor there are distractions.  There is not enjoyment that is no distractions.  You have to develop a love for your practice.  When you come out of meditation you say this is the most important - now - seeing a snowflake.  You can always renew it often  you get it - it is always with you.  This is the closest to the true human heart- true love.  You may wander off at time but always come back.  Daniel was asked by a woman if it was really necessary to get up and meditate everyday at 0700 , he said asked her if she had ever been in love?  What would you do to get to be with that love?  It is the same thing with your practice.  One day Daniel came out of a 4th Way Meeting and he saw  shawdow of some trees from the moon and he was awake and he knew this was for him.  "This is for me, this is my life".  Some of us may be there and not recognize it.

If you do Koans you havae to push yourself through it.  When Daniel was a young man and studied Suffiism, Don Juan, Zen, etc, he always pictured a monastery.  He believed that , then he understood that it is a person to person training learning.  Not the structure or the desert.  The teaching is about intimacy with this world.  This lets down your barriers, the barriers are the reconstructed self.

WHAT MADE YOU GET INTO WANTING DIFFICIULT MYSTICAL SEARCH?    When Daniel was a young boy, his father would read to him Marx.  Daniel rebelled against his fathers political views.  Daniel was always afraid in his neighborhood.  He went to the post office with his mother and saw the most wanted posters.  He was 8 years old, and was afraid the people on the list would climb up the fire escape into his house.  He thought  "out of all of the people in the world, why was I me?"  There is something about the world that was ungraspable.  His father did educate Daniel in the European sense, Father was pro-spiritual and anti-religion.  His fathers immediate family died in Europe during WWII.

DID YOU HAVE MORE ACCESS TO THE TEACHER IN THE MONASTARY?  If you work for the monastery you get more attention.  If you want more access to Daniel yu can help him do what he wants to do.  Help him expand/develop this group and teachings.  Mizumi Roshi was the first to understand that it is all about the people.  Mizumi Roshi. one morning decided Daniels would be his successor.  He literally grabbed him by the heart.  He would repeat things all day, "so nice to see you, very nice to see you" and the last few years " I want you to be a monk" over and over.  Very deep committment.  He died and 2 years later Daniel was made a monk.  Daniel took his committment to be a monk when he was paralyzed with Guillian Barre.  As long as you want to awaken, love your practice and the spirit of your practice and you will do it.

Stop conceptual thought as often as you can throughout the day.

Daniel quit twice one for a short time and once for 2 years.  His teacher made him start overwith the most severe part of the training, and would not speak to him for 2 weeks.

Movie:  In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, written by a soft artistic, Frenchman.  He had to accept Roshi's heart,, even though his style was so different.

INTIMATE WITH THE WORLD, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?  Lets say you are looking out of a window, always there are thoughts about the world: fear, what is important, unimportant.  These thoughts are on the window.    When you take away the thoughts you see the world.  You see the world in a different way and you see you are the world.  It is being intimate with yourself, it touches you.

Peak Experience- Opening experience- thoughts open up enough, the last thing that leaves is the feeling of separation or twoness.  Then his hope is we will start to act like we are not two in the world but one.
