Lost Coin notes 6/9/09
In Lost Coin Im giving you a certain kind of training which is different than learning.  With training, either you can or you cant.  If you train to be a dancer, when it comes time, you either give a performance or you dont.  Same with a fighter, you either win or you dont.  If you have a relationship its either good or it isnt.  With this training, youre either happy or youre not. There are so many ideas about how to get happy  you can think and think and think then youre dead.  You can learn happiness. It is much more important to me not what you say but that youre here. Training is about what is.  If it isnt yet, you keep practicing, then it is.  Its all about: Can you do this? For you to learn stock trading its similar to learning to paint.  What this offers you is an entire work of yourself that you can engage in. If you have been putzing around with your mind -- ideas, and knowing, and thinking that someday everything will be okay, first of all its not true, and secondly this is no way to live.
	In the movies, someone becomes a great writer by just writing all the time, or a boxer running around the streets of Philadelphia becomes a great boxer. We love this stuff. We admire people who achieve excellence in training. But when it comes to life, we dont necessarily do this. Most of you err on the side of being wussy. We dont want to do hard things, or to inconvenience ourselves. Its about effort, not about Schopenhauer.  In science things either work or they dont. This is how we train. Its also exactly what you need to train to be happy. 
	On vacation, one of the people that I loved listening to, was Karen O of the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. She totally loses herself when she performs.  There is nothing left of her. She has become one with the training, not with learning. Learn to hit the mark, learn to feel it in the dark.
	In a Carlos Castenada book, Don Juan says there are two areas: tonal and nagual. Tonal is everything you know, nagual is everything you dont. Carlos keeps putting all the props on the table to one side or another asking is this the tonal? Don Juan says the nagual isnt even on the table  it cant be known. Its not knowing, doing, will energy, or courage. That is where power is. When you train you make a bid for power.
	When we went around the circle and talked about happiness last week, you never reported happiness coming from figuring something out.  It just happened, The kind of creatures who are capable of entering the nagual are wild things, theyre not tame. They look to their spirit, not to what they figure out. Your mind will stop you at some point. Cultivate your spirit, it will allow you to do almost anything you want. It doesnt guarantee that youll become president, but youll get closer. But most of us dont want that; we just want to be alive and grow. Thats why I dont look to the old Zen teachers I respect. I am awed by them but wouldnt want to hang out with them.  Id rather hang out with Karen O. Come into contact with that wild, fierce, untamed part of you.
	In Atlantic Monthly, there was an article about a long-term study about what makes people happy.  People dont come to a conclusion that makes them happy, the common factors were good relationships, not overindulging, not smoking, and getting exercise. That was it.  
Why wont people believe this can make them happy? It sounds too simplistic. Sometimes we realize were happy after the fact. How could we create this? Notice and be more open to the things that make you happy. Like the more you think about a koan, the further you move away from it.  When youre sitting, you are doing what you can do to make yourself happy.  Its more courageous to be happy because youre not buying in to what you are told makes you happy. Be conscious of what impressions youre feeding yourself. Happiness is a process.  Just say to yourself Let go.  Dont think.  
When engaged in activities or manual labor just drop your story. Engage in what youre doing. Give it everything you have.  Like in music, you cant be with the groove that was 4 bars ago, only what it is now. A good musician is always there with the feel. Thats what a wild thing does. 
This is a story about the 6th Patriarch who became the first Zen teacher. He was a poor guy with a poor family, and they died and left him alone. He was completely busted up and one day a couple of monks walked by chanting some words. Upon hearing the words, because he was so empty and had no sense of self , he became enlightened. He wanted to know who teaches what you just saidt? He was told, in the north of China. So he decides to go up to meet the 5th Patriarch. At that time only 1 person held the Buddhist teaching and it all emanated from them. Ino knocks on the door and the teacher opens the door and says, What you you want?  Get out of here. And he said, Southern Monkeys have no Buddhist nature. The explanation for this, is that the north and South were different races and Ino was before the 5th Patriarch.  He  might as well have been short, black, gay, and illiterate. Ino says, In the darma there is no north or south. The 5th Patriarch invites him in. He knows this guy has had some kind of opening. He immediately shoves him into the kitchen and gets him chopping vegetables because thats the only way he can enter the monastery. Later the 5th needs a successor so asks everyone to write a poem. Everyone knows that the head monk is going to win but he needs to prove it. The head monk posts his poem and Ino asks what it says. Then he said, You write what I say, and he posts it on the wall. And its much deeper than the head monks. The 5th knows he has to transmit to Ino, but if he does theyll kill him. In the night the 5th Patriarch goes and gives him the bowl and the robes and tells him to run away and dont come back for 20 years. He said, You had a very quick opening; the rice had been sifted but not pounded. (When Genpo was just starting to transmit to me he said the same thing.)  Ino goes and lives under bridges and has lots of adventures and comes back at around 39 years old.  The 5th Patriarch is old and sick and he sees a flag flying in the wind. That means theres going to be a talk. Two monks are sitting there talking. One says the flag is moving and the other guy says, no, the wind is moving.  Ino says neither is moving, the mind is moving. Thats what were looking at. The mind can move in many ways. When the mind moves not too quick its a different existence. Thats what practice really is. It boils down to letting go. Or, in 4th Way, not being mechanical, doing what you always do.
(To finish the story out: In those days, one could retire and lead a life of contemplation, without any particular facility for Zen. A retired general hears about Ino running away, so he pursues him and catches him in the mountains. Ino sees him and stops and says, What do you want? He says Ive come for the robe and bowl. He thinks Ino has tricked the 5th  Patriarch. Ino turns to him and puts the articles down and says, Take them.  Theyre only symbols. The general leans down to pick up the bowl and sees that Ino is not the kind of man to steal He cant pick up the bowl out of panic. Whats going through his mind is that Ino is wrong and evil and he is right. Ino sees this, and says, Brother, at this moment, without thinking about right or wrong -- what is the truth? And the general has an opening experience and asks to be his student. Ino says they are both students. (For the full story, go to: http://sped2work.tripod.com/huineng.html)
What is wild? To kick off  our conditioning. 
Comment: I feel when I was young I was wilder but less secure. Now Im more secure but less wild. 
D: You can be wild now but in a more informed way. At this point in your life you dont need to be afraid of being too wild.  
Comment: I need a refresher about how to get rid of fear. 
D: First watch fear, dont try to get rid of it, see how big a role fear plays. Step 2 is when it comes up try letting it go, let it run off you like water off a ducks back.
Comment: In the writings of Maurice Nicholl, it almost says you have to separate yourself from those feelings, saying these feelings are not me.   
D: Nicholl can be very lucid but remember this too: Gurdjieff was more of a wild man. Nicholl was more earthbound. Gurdjieff was a drinker and the best part of drinking is it gives you a will to wish. Thats the good part of alcohol. His head was in such a different place. Its in the place where youre not earthbound, that your life is magical, like flying.  
Comment: Can we use both ways in our practice?  
D: There is a difference between use of critical intelligence and your mind moving mechanically.  Thats the part Im playing is describing the rationale for using critical intelligence to look at yourselves. The teacher has to be on the nagual, not the tonal side. The flying side cant be reached by understanding. You just have to do it.  The things you do in your life that are hard youll look back on as great times. The easy normal repetitive things youll forget.
Homework: this week remember to drop your story whenever you can. Dont think of practice and happiness as separate things. Generally, its an act of passion.  Thats how Im teaching.  Buddhism will really change in this country because half of the people in Japan and China were put into monasteries without choice. Here, its voluntary.