Lost Coin Class Notes Notes for March 3, 2008

Daniel encourages us all to sit on Thursdays.  Some of you come to the Zen Center, where it's really American Zen.  In Lost Coin, we combine Zen with the Fourth Way.  Some things don't get taken care of.  For instance, in a monastery you have duties: awakening people, making fires, cooking, and gardening.  Daniel wants us to enjoy daily life, but also get appropriate training.

In the story of the lost coin, you are the lost coin.  If you are a student of Daniel's, or becoming one, he wants you to have a physical practice of martial arts (Tai Chi, Aikido, Kendo), or dance, tennis (with a coach), or climbing.  Something with an element of physicality and attention.    Ask Daniel which style he thinks you need.  He would prefer a fighting style.  He would also like you to pursue an art like painting or playing an instrument.  This will be done over a period of years.  If you're going to stay with Daniel, he'd like you to turn out well.  Take advantage of Daniel's proximity now.

Daniel wants to blend two ideas:   The first, in the 12th Century, Eihei Dogan determined to realize himself.  He was a teacher in Japan, then went to China to teach.  He felt he wanted to learn more.  It was a dangerous trip with unfriendly, hostile conditions.  He found a teacher named Ju Ching (sp) who made him a "room-entering student."  He sat 16 hours a day, with a day off every 14th day.  The teacher would slap people with his slipper, and yell, "Drop off body and mind!"  (Forget you are a body or that you have a brain.  Hold perfectly still.  Become completely one with your own mind.)  He yelled at the guy sitting next to Dogan.  Dogan offered him incense, and Ju Ching asked him, "What are you doing?"

He answered, "Dropped off body and mind."

Ju Ching said, "Body and mind dropped off."

Dogan said, "Don't approve of me too quickly."

Ju Ching said, "I'm not approving of you too quickly."

His assistant says, "Why is it, with all these students, this Japanese student comes here?"

Ju Ching says, "He has suffered may blows."

When he talks, it's like a song.  Just listen to it and it will guide you.  It's hypnotic.

Compare all this with a second idea, the Fourth Way concept of mechanicalness.  Driving to work and not knowing how you got there.  Asleep, unconscious, it happens all by itself.  The Fourth Way method is to see how mechanical we are.  See it until it starts to recede.  Body and mind drops off - no patterns there.  Complete negation of conditioning.

Assume everything is mechanical.  Why don't relationships work out?  In the Fourth Way, the Law of Seven says that, given a certain amount of time, you will revert to the mechanical.

   1. You can become conscious.

   2. You can sit and de-condition yourself.

In daily life, you're entranced.  Martial arts and the arts bring up all your mechanicalness.

There are two ways to practice: monastic or tantric (living a regular life, in it but not of it.)  With  tantric, you can live the life of a person in the 21st Century rather than in a monastery.

We then sat with the ideas of mechanicalness and body and mind falling off.  Afterwards, people talked about sensations of the heart beating too loudly, or felt their shoulders tense up, or a feeling of falling away, or freedom, or relation and effort.

Being and Knowing.  Where you choose to be, and with whom, shapes who you are.  Whether you hang out in bars or in libraries.  None of your mechanical patterns is worse than any others; they're all eating up your life.

Think of the selves as two people.  Your true self = "I" and the critical mechanical self = "Daniel."  This helps you build an "I."

Life is good on any level.  We serve the purpose of nature; we're as good as any tree, bird, or rock.  We serve the "absolute," we live, procreate, love, cry, and die.  That's successful.  Or kill yourself at 24 years old with a needle.  We don't like that we have judgments.  Life is precious.  We could spend it all complete mechanically - angry, afraid, bitter, sad.  If you want to do something, you must make an effort.  It's worth it.  Daniel says, at this age he feels good.  But he's not done.  The spirit, consciousness, and love - those you create.  Otherwise they're just words.  He'll tell us "How."  Take advantage of it.

HOMEWORK: Drop off body and mind.  Remember yourself during the day without thought, but attentive.  Create a still space with thought outside.  For example, when you kiss someone, or you're going to eat, you know how to do it.  You don't have to describe it move by move.
