Lost Coin Class Notes:  9/16/08

Retreat:  Come to the retreat with the intent of maintaining ?beginners mind?

Think of the beginning of your life.  Your history doesn?t start there.  In your earliest memories, you don?t relate to that person you were then as ?me?.  It is hard to say when one relates to ?you? as ?you?.  We often think of a place as a beginning?e.g.  the beginning of a career, the beginning of a marriage.  The weight of time does stuff?we don?t see the world anew.  The experience of time makes our perception of the world ?sludgy?.

So what does it take?  Every minute is the beginning.  We have a choice to continue mechanically or not.  Oft times, we think that continuing mechanically is better because it seems easier.  The reality is that it is better if we have a sense of beginners mind over and over again.?  Expert?s mind has few possibilities.  Beginner?s mind, many?

At the retreat, get to beginners mind.  Being in the desert will help?to start anew.

Then we need to be curious:  if everything is new, how would I do things? (rather than allow our history to fulfill us)

Some people and traditions use drugs to take away one?s history temporarily.  Our method is through teaching and sitting.  By forgetting the self  and our story, we can return over and over again to beginners mind.

Throughout our lives we get caught in the illusion.  We see our lives as a story , but at the time of death we won?t see it that way.  In our teens, we are often not so tied to the story.  In our 30?s and 40?s we are caught up in the story again in creating more of the story.  By our 50? and 60?s we are starting to get out of our story again?at the very least, it starts to become transparent.

What we are engaged in is to forget the self/story by becoming more flexible and adaptable so that the story doesn?t trap us.  The more flexible we can become, the more equanimity we will experience.

The Lost Coin is the ?self??the realized self.  It is just your mind and it encompasses everything.  The story we buy into covers all that up.  We have to be able to see inside.  We are everything that mind becomes.  That is the real self.  That is the lost coin.

The retreat will not be done in a tough traditional style.  It is voluntary, you will have adequate time for sleeping and eating, and you need to stay focused on what you came to do.  There will come a time in the retreat where you will need to overcome yourself (your fears, boredom, anger, anxiety) and also any resistance you feel toward or from other human beings.  Concentrate on coming back to beginners mind.  You are just passing through this life, it is not story, so you might as well just have a good time.

One of the strengths of Buddhism is that it is a philosophy that emphasizes the transience of life.

Historically, as religions developed, if there was thunder or a storm, it was time to sacrifice a sheep.  If there was a flood, sacrifice a child.  A heavy flood, several kids would be sacrificed and soo it went.  The greater the sacrifice, the more the gods were appeased.  However, people started to question truth.  Now we believe God is not doing it when bad things happen.  Very few of us believe in a personal punishing God.  Our alliance in Lost Coin is to connect with science.  An alignment to science is religion.  Einstine?s religion: utter endlessness, beginning-less-ness.  We are evolving in a  compelling unknown endless universe and need to realize that you are the whole thing and that you will remain unconscious unless you make an effort to be conscious.

Buddhist ceremony:  is to enhance life, for your development and pleasure.  To embody these things Beginners Mind?you forget your story and can be receptive.  Look at each moment as new.  Very few of you are on a monastic path or would respond to that kind of teaching.  Doing things the Lost Coin way we can get to the same end but in a different way?and/or take that way too.  As a group, you can then relax into just being fellow human beings, just a fellow traveler.

Individuals in the group discussed what they wanted or suggested paths of development for the group:  more reading, sore intense retreats, koan study, silence, different tracks for the different life paths, day long local sitting retreats.  The tings we are learning about being and practicing with and in daily life places us way ahead of what we might get in a more traditional system.  Daniel stressed the importance of all of us doing the same thing.  If you want to intensify your practice, you can do it simply:  pay attention, be open, sit longer.  You will get more out of it because we are all volunteers.

In the retreat, it would be important to define Lost Coin.  D. has no interest in maintaining Japanese male-oriented traditions.  More of the Rinzi (koan/teachers, artists, warriors) rather than Soto (sitting/priestly) tradition. Because of the way you are learning, we can have these kids of discussions.  When we do things that we don?t want to do there is resentment.  If we go into things with our eyes open and take responsibility for what you are doing, there is greater benefit to self and others.

This is a historical time.  D. and other western teachers are really the first generation of bringing Buddhism to the United States and the rest of the world.  It is an evolving structure when looking 500 years in the future.  What is dharma:  initially culturally Japanese and Chinese and now becoming culturally American.
