Lost Coin Class Notes 10/11/08

Daniel reminded us to start class quietly to set the tone.  D. will greet new visitors or students he hasn't seen for awhile, but please don't join in.

Recap From Last Week - Knowledge & Being Some messages from Daniel during discussion:

Life is not delightful.  Maybe if it was in reverse where you start out old and grow younger, healthier, better looking, it might be delightful. However, the transient nature of life doesn't mean we should be unhappy.

Feeling "flat" means that perhaps we don't realize how bad life can be, because otherwise we'd be happy that we don't have it so bad.

Practice isn't to cultivate positivity.

Sitting is different kind of happiness.  You feel good because you're not hooked into normal ups & downs.

Sitting is a model for practice.  Being aware of mechanical patterns is a model too.

Cultural message is that everything bad that happens to us is our fault. But D. says we don't die because we're bad.  And dying isn't that bad.

What is our fault is what we believe.

D. says one thing that is helpful being old is that he notices the behavior of young people can be annoying.  Being young has it's own set of problems and being old has a different set of problems.  You can't solve all of these problems.  When you get older that problems are not worse, they're just different.

The historical Buddah's "Big Solve" was not through solving, but seeing how one-sided we see things.

If you have an ideal, it's probably a good idea to live it.  But it's just for you.  It is not a mission so your obituary looks better.  Only reason is for a level of being.  You do it because that's how you see it.  No one cares if your level of being gets higher.

says that group is maturing, which he likes.

Relationships: No such thing as having a loving relationship if you're not a loving person.

Answer is so simple.  Love is the factor.

If  2 people here have a relationship and love each other, they do fine. We've contrived 50 other remedies for relationships because we're not willing to look at if we really love, and look into what love really is.

All films & books deal w/ romantic chemical aspect of relationships rather than love.

If you want good friends, tolerate differences, have loving feelings towards them.

Start with liking people.  If it's manipulative or political it doesn't work.

Your being, level of consideration, kindness and love towards humans completely determine how your relationships will be.  Empathy.

Your level of being, not what you think or know, but who you are that will determine your experience.

State of being at work. At high level of being you can be effective in ways that cannot happen no matter how hard you try without that level of being.

When people from any religion rejects others from any other religion, those types have the same level of being.  Liberals that reject faiths that don't match theirs have same level of being as any other person who rejects other faiths.

Religious interpretation of practicing: Rodney Collin of Gurdjieff Foundation interprets New Testament sharing body of Christ as sharing is being with them (rather than sharing knowledge).

Foundation taught different things depending on level of being.  A level 5 could not understand the same things a level 7 could.

At certain levels of being you can't understand what a more evolved person can.

Point: Level of being determines fate, experience on this planet.

When you work on being you're doing something significant for yourself and others.

When someone hurts dogs, they have a lower level of being.  Doesn't mean that they're bad.

After practicing for awhile, you'll see the "Circle".  The way not to judge others will be seeing that they are mechanical, their actions are intentional.

Assignment: See where your being is.  See what level you actually function at.

Being functional on emotional, physical, & intellectual levels.

Enlightenment/Kensho is not a change in emotion.  It is a change in perception.  Some say that change in perception also changes emotion to be more compassionate. D's experience from decades of Zen practice is that emotional change doesn't always happen so he's training us to develop it from early in practice.

When you get up, how do you feel?  Who are you?  Being is who you are.

Reminder: Retreat at Kim's on Dec. 7th.