Lost Coin Class Notes Salt Lake City Tuesday, August 23, 2011 ================================================================== DS: I did my first public SF talk last night at a place called "Unity". One of things that will change is that my talks will be transcribed each week in SF, so you will have them word-for-word. What would you like to work on today? Let's get some ideas from you. ================================================================== Student: One of the things I was interested in was the "dark side" we talked about, how to deal with it, etc. DS: After I go off(line), sit for a while. When negative emotion comes up, stay with them. Be with them. Really experience them. That will have something do with the "dark side". ================================================================== Student: One of the things I was thinking about was really staying awake, keeping my mind blank, but really listening. DS: Your sitting should evolve that naturally. Someone else? ================================================================== Student: I have been reading "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind". I'm loving it and re-reading it a lot. I was wondering about the author. I'd like to learn more about him. DS: That I can solve in 5 seconds. There's an excellent book on his life called "Crooked Cucumber". I recommend it to any of you. It's about his life as a Zen teacher. If there was a teacher whose style I admired, it was his. He was a quiet teacher. His following grew about him naturally. "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" is the kind of book that you don't read cover to cover, but rather paragraph to paragraph. It's Suzuki at the top of his form. "Crooked Cucumber" was his nickname from when he was a child. Read it. It's very enjoyable. ================================================================== DS: The old way in Zen is seeing a side of us that we don't want to see, because it's not acceptable to us. In Buddhist tradition, we chant the Gatha of Atonement. Most of the greed, anger, ignorance is what we're talking about with the dark side. Those things create thoughts. We think those thoughts all the time. If you take away the mechanical greed, anger and ignorance, then you will be listening. All day long we worry, we're afraid, kinda like a song in your head that you sing over and over in your head and don't even notice it. The dark side is there all the time. We aren't conscious of it. Psychologists had people look at the unconscious. Take a half hour a day and give yourself permission to think those thought that are unacceptable to you. For Freud, it was sleeping with your mother. Some thoughts have do to with sex, some with violence, some have to do with negative thoughts toward others, some of your thoughts are that you are unhappy with your life and you don't want to act on it. So, let's take Student L Her thoughts could be that she's unhappy in her marriage, is sorry that she adopted, wants to sleep with her neighbor. You have a right to see those things that are in the dark. It could be "I don't want to work", "I don't want to be a father or mother". It doesn't hurt you to look at these things. Allow yourself to become conscious of what is negative but don't act on it. If your unconscious is filled with all these negative things, how can you be "here"? In a way, our whole practice is to be in the land of "here", but I don't like to say that because people think that they know where "here" is, but they don't know. ================================================================== Student: One thing that I was going to ask is that we expend a lot of energy keeping that out. DS: So, look at it. See what you're doing with the negative stuff. It really does hurt us. It come in the back door and comes out in subtle ways. ================================================================== Student: It seems like it take a lot of energy to keep that out. So when you sit, you're dropping that effort and it comes up. DS: But the negative thoughts can take energy, too, such as talking people down. Being negative takes energy. ================================================================== Student: Dropping it from you mind is just having a blank mind. I'm talking about that space and sometimes I just stop listening. DS: It's about being "here". We're going to be very disappointed if we die and have never been "here". When I was talking last night, there were about 50 smart people. One guy was talking about spiritual practice, and he was good, but I said that you have to *do* it. If you can drop thoughts and not be negative, and come back to the land of "here", then you don't need a map. You can do it. When I was in college, I was down on myself. I went to a green, endless campus, with gardens and woods. I had a hard time coming to class and would lay in the grass and smoke cigarettes. At night, we would drive around and look at the ocean. I would say to myself that I was so lazy, that I was going to an expensive school. But later I realized that that was the best part of me -- being and not thinking. Later when I practiced a lot, I realized how valuable that part is. In the meantime, our conditioning keeps us thinking negative thoughts. You won't be sorry if you spend some time "here". All of you: please sit, sit, sit.