Lost Coin Class Notes
Salt Lake City
Tuesday, July 19, 2011



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DS:
	Next week when I’m not here, sit for an hour, then discuss.

	SItting is intended to get you through a door, where you can see another world, in a non-dualistic way.  You sometimes go through at once, but usually gradually.

	The walls that keep you from seeing infinity, your true nature, are the same walls that keep you from doing what you want to do in life. 

	I also want to talk about what it means to do a modern Zen practice.  Being rooted in your current culture and time is what makes it a modern Zen practice.

	So, I wanted to take greed, anger and ignorance and look at them in the modern way.  In the 8th century, when we talked about greed, anger, and ignorance, folks were starving, they thought that the world was flat, that the sun revolved around the earth.

	Greed: Back then everyone thought that poverty was good for you, but what they didn’t realize is that it was really only good for the folks that told you so.

	Greed is always being discontented, always missing something, not appreciating your life, always restless, wanting things to be different.

	We frequently want our partners to be different, our friends, our house, our day.

	Greed is thirst.

	Anger: Anger is something that more people feel than they think that they do. They call it by different names.  As I define it, anger is blame.  Anger is when you feel that something is someone else’s fault.  Whatever it is, someone else did it.

	In modern practice, you would not look at anger as a sin, but you would look at it and see why (you are angry).

	Ignorance: The classic thing about ignorance is not seeing the true nature of things.  Ignorance is not being realized, that you are not separate from everything, but that you are everything.  You are everything, not alone, completely connected.

	Ignorance goes further.  All the reasons that you think that you are not getting what you want are emotions: fear, blame, anger, self-doubt, being a victim.  Instead of looking at all of the rationales, in a modern practice we use these three things to *see* what the underlying reason is.

	The three things are something that we’re trying to turn into something else.  With greed, to look at and accept what we have in our life.  With anger, to accept responsibility.  With ignorance, clarity (about the nature of the world), clarity about what you do and why.

	Everyone discuss how one of these affects you.  Talk in real terms.

	Try to see what the next “wall” is for you.


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Student:
	Where would you guide me personally in those three aspects?

DS:
	This is not the sort of thing I like to shoot in the dark at.  I know that you feel trapped by your work.  Ask yourself: How am I creating this? What am I taking as an absolute?  What in the “code” are you taking for granted?  What are my underlying assumptions? Do I *have* to work?

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Student:
	I like to ask about your prior response.  Would that be in anger?

DS:
	Blame.  He’s not looking at what’s causing it, not being really courageous.


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Student:
	I have this quote on my refrigerator: “Figure out what you hope for, and live within that hope.”
	My life feels politically correct...living inside my hope.  but I don’t feel that I actively pursued this.  I wasn’t consciously saying we wanted to save a kid, but that’s the feedback we’re getting.  But what we’ve got is what we’ve hoped for.

DS:
	This didn’t really sneak up on you, you just didn’t think it out.  You’re thinking that it has to be conscious, a plan.


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DS:
	All of these things (looking at yourself) should be pleasurable to do. Growing should be pleasurable.  Look at it as doing it out of sense of exploration.