Human activity is, you know, it's at the very basic level of human beings, so it's pretty universal. And the observation of the Buddha, which again seems to be borne out by experience, is that unwholesome activity seems to be characterized by one of three modes, and this is something you've all heard many times, I think. We often say greed, hate, and delusion. It's a little unfortunate that we say that. A lot of these terms that you find that become our standard vocabulary in Buddhism came out of early books, early translations, by people that often did not, you know, they did their best, but the terms they used were not the best, and these terms are not really too

[01:03]

accurate. So I'd like to explain for a minute what these words mean, greed, hate, and delusion. More accurate words would be something like desire, or attraction, aversion, and confusion would be much better words. Now if we say it that way, you can understand that what we're referring to here is your relationship to another, to something that you think is outside of yourself, and a description of the dynamic mode of your relationship to that thing. So here is this glass of water, for instance. There are three basic possibilities, simple possibilities, in which I can relate to this

[02:12]

glass of water. One is that I can be attracted to it, I can want it. I can want it to satisfy some desire that I have. So in a sense, my dynamics with it are I want to draw it closer to me, I want to bring it in, I want it. So I reach out, either literally or figuratively, I reach out and draw it closer. So I reach out, I actually am thirsty right now. I reach out and drink the water, and then I feel better, I feel satisfied. So this is one possibility of dynamics with something. This is desire. Its opposite possibility, of course, is that I don't like it, and I want it to go away, I want to push it away from me. So this is aversion, and within aversion we have all the emotions that go with this basic

[03:27]

dynamic, like anger, ill will, jealousy, envy, stinginess, and so forth. The negative side of our emotional life is some version of the dynamic of aversion. I don't want the object to be around, I want it to push it away. Now both of these are based on having an object clearly in view. I see the glass of water, or whatever it may be, another human being, or the enemy or somebody. I have a very precise, focused picture of the object. Another whole possibility is that because my mind is quite distracted, I can't get the

[04:32]

object clearly into focus. This is the third possibility, which we call confusion. So confusion is characterized by, unlike the other two, which are opposite poles of focus, this is opposite from that, which is unfocused. You're not focused enough to be able to decide whether you like it or don't like it. So this is the third big possibility. And these are the broadest categories of what we call unfocused karma, or unwholesome action. Yes? Well, is it unwholesome then to be thirsty? Oh, I knew someone would ask that. There's a famous phrase in Zen, when hungry I eat, when tired I sleep. And it's been bandied about ever since the 30s when D.T. Suzuki first published his essays.

[05:37]

And it's actually quite a profound statement, and it might be worth our coming back to that a little later, because, of course, one's response, if you're honest, is, well, what's so great about that? It's what everybody does, right? And in fact, there is a dialogue, and that's taken from a dialogue, which is sort of a koan in Zen, in which the response of the teacher who said that is, I'm sorry, that's not what everybody does. You know, hunger and sleep, in this sense, refer to the entire range of the possibilities of our desires and so forth. It means all of human life, really, all the things that we do. It means karma. And to say, when hungry I eat and when tired I sleep, is, you might say, a very succinct expression of awakened ethics. But it doesn't mean, you know, some kind of naive spontaneity at all.

[06:45]

It means a state of purity, or a state beyond purity, which has been reached by much hard work. You might say it describes a state of consciousness which is quite thoroughly cleansed of the karmic hindrances. So this is a rather profound point that we have to come back to, because taken out of context, a statement like that would imply that, well, you know, just take it easy, and eat when you're hungry, and sleep when you're tired, and so forth. So you might say it's a statement which is in code, in some sense. It's a kind of succinct utterance which expresses a great deal. So, of course, it's not unwholesome to drink when you're thirsty.

[07:48]

But what's the difference, is the point. What's the difference between some legitimate sense of satisfying your basic needs, and something which is not that? A lot of the early precepts of Buddhism had to do with refining that kind of distinction. And I just came across in my research something interesting that I didn't know before, which is that, on the whole, it looks like the monastic or monkish rules were, for the most part, designed to simplify your life sufficiently so that you could practice meditation in an unhindered fashion. Anything beyond that was considered unnecessary, if not actually deleterious to practice. And, as Brother David and I discussed earlier in the week, there is a tradition in Buddhism of the ascetic practices, like never lying down, and only eating a very small amount,

[08:54]

and living under trees, and things like that. And these, on the whole, were not considered necessary for monks. And Devadatta, who is the mythic schism-maker in Buddhism, I recently found out in studying one of the proposals that he tried to split from the Buddha, was on this matter of special ascetic practices. He felt the monks should be very, very ascetic, and do these special things. And the Buddha did not agree that it was necessary. And some of Devadatta's points seem to have been incorporated, particularly he mentions having to do with vegetarianism. It may not be known to you that the earliest Buddhists were not strictly vegetarians. There were certain categories in which it was okay to eat meat that were laid out in

[10:04]

the sutras. And later on, Buddhism becomes strictly vegetarian. That was one of Devadatta's schismatic points, is he felt the monks should always refrain from fish and meat under every circumstance. And this, apparently, was not of the Buddha's own teaching. He felt that under certain circumstances it was okay. That would be an interesting point to come back to. I think the issue of whether or not to eat meat is one of the practical points that we can discuss in the class to some extent, is just what's behind that, and what are the various arguments about it. As you know, in Zen center, our kitchens are entirely vegetarian. We don't even use fish stock. But I would say there's hardly anyone in Zen center who absolutely refrains from all fish and meat under every circumstance. And Suzuki Roshi himself ate meat from time to time. So, this all came from Laura's question, right, about is it not good to drink when

[11:15]

you're thirsty. We'll have to come back to that point. I didn't pick a very good example, you know, because drinking water is not something you ordinarily get emotionally very excited about. In fact, you know, I had this thing with my son. Any of you with young children go through this, you know, he wants to drink soda. And I say, well, why do you want to drink soda? He says, well, I'm thirsty. Okay, fine, let's have some water. Water, yuck. He wants to have a soda because he thinks drinking water is not something you ordinarily get emotionally very excited about. In fact, you know, I had this thing with my son. Any of you with young children go through this, you know, he wants to drink soda. I say, well, why do you want to drink soda? He says, well, I'm thirsty. Okay, fine, let's have some water. Water, yuck. You want them with soda because, you know, it's sweet and bubbly and it stimulates you.

[12:18]

You know, as we all know, water is probably much better for you than soda with all the sugar and junk. We go through this with him all the time, but maybe to make the question more vivid, we should put out in front of you four or five different glasses with different things in it. And then see, given the fact that you're thirsty, what is it that you choose to drink. You know, do you drink Calistoga water or some good vintage wine or some soda and so forth. You know, if we actually tested you without anybody around to watch, we might be very surprised. You know, it's kind of a joke here in Zen Center, but many people here have quite, on the surface, quite strict and pure ideas about what they should eat. Sugar is bad for you and no chocolate and so on and so forth. But everyone knows that if the kitchen makes a big bowl of chocolate chip cookies and puts them out,

[13:21]

you know, we all know that the ones who, as long as nobody's watching, the ones who rush in first are the very ones who, you know, have some very publicly stated preferences about what's right, and not only for themselves but for others. So the psychology of all this is rather complex, as we all know. And let me just finish my exposition here about wholesome and unwholesome karma. The description of wholesome karma would be the opposite of these three things. That is to say, wholesome karma means that one has the underlying root. These are called the three roots of wholesome or three roots of unwholesome behavior. And the roots of wholesome behavior are non-greed or generosity, giving, sense of giving.

[14:24]

Non-aversion or friendliness or goodwill. And non-confusion or clarity. So this is the acid test. This is how you can tell whether some action is wholesome or unwholesome. And as I said, wholesome action produces a wholesome result, and unwholesome action produces an unwholesome result. Now what do we mean by a wholesome or unwholesome result? Buddhist idea of karma is almost something akin to like a natural law. That is to say, if you act in an unwholesome manner, it produces a wave which persists indefinitely

[15:29]

and affects your future. This upper pyramid is color. In one school of Buddhism they use the image of perfuming or fragrance, which is a little less tangible than a wave. It's more like when you get angry at someone, for instance, it produces a kind of spiritual odor which permeates your spiritual body, or your consciousness. And it becomes then part of the bottom pyramid and affects your next time. The more that you allow yourself to act in an angry, aversive fashion, the more likely it will be in the future, the more charged there will be, the more habituated leaning there will be to go that way. And this is just an observational fact.

[16:31]

It isn't some kind of great spiritual insight that's hidden from most ordinary people. I think that if you walk down Market Street and see some of these people who are always shouting imprecations at everyone, walking down the street with bags and so forth, and you look at their face, their face is lined with this emotion that they're experiencing because they've been doing it for so long it's actually become physically evident in their flesh. We all know, in fact, we actually, I think, judge each other and relate to each other on the basis of our face, a lot more than we generally admit. And the face that we show to people is our karma. It does express how we've chosen to be over a long period of time. So we talk about worry lines, our face, our laugh lines. So a wholesome or unwholesome result means that this action will affect how you will be.

[17:57]

And strangely enough, it bounces back in a rather unpredictable fashion. It doesn't always come back to you immediately. There's various divisions of how rapidly the effect of what you do bounces back. It somewhat depends on how severe the action is. If you... But the idea is, sooner or later, there will be some bouncing back, or consequence, or echo of what you did always. And in fact, this is happening all the time, and most of us don't notice it. One of the first practices that you do in a monastery is you practice mindfulness. And one of the first effects of practicing mindfulness is that you start to notice

[19:18]

that, at least in small ways, how rapidly the effects of what you do come back to you. For instance, just to give you a kind of trivial example, most of the time when you trip over something, or bite your tongue, or stub your toe, you don't think of it as something that you chose to do. When you practice mindfulness, and when you have some experience with meditation, very often you will discover that just prior to the event of stubbing your toe, or biting your tongue, or tripping over something, or tearing your robe, or something like that, dropping your shoe, you will have had some distracted or disturbing thought. And immediately there's some consequence. So part of the validity of this insight into karma is revealed only when you

[20:25]

can develop enough clarity or precision in your perception to notice these things. So a great deal of the problem, of course, is that people just don't notice the large and small effects of their actions. Perhaps I should stop, there's about ten more minutes to the class, and allow you to bring up any area of what I've said that does not seem clear or cogent to you. I may have gone a little rapidly there, because I wanted to make it clear I want to get, as soon as possible, into some practical discussion of these precepts, but this is practical too, and I think it's the underlying insight which all the precepts derive from.

[21:28]

Do you have anything to add or comment on? Yes, go ahead. Devadatta. Devadatta. He's calling David too short. Devadatta. He was the Buddha's first cousin in the legend. And he was very, very bad, I should say. He did, there are five deadly crimes, or the most serious thing a Buddhist can do, in which, in many schools of Buddhism, prevents you from taking redemption, and they are harming a Buddha, killing your mother, killing your father, killing an arhat, an enlightened person. And the fifth one is causing a schism in the Sangha. Devadatta did three.

[22:36]

He tried to roll a big rock down a Buddha, out of jealousy. You know, the actual stories are probably made up, but probably there was such a person, and quite likely there often is, among some great teachers. And what happened was, one of the great guardian kings of the celestial heavens saw this happening, and reached out his, whatever, hand or something, you know, and stopped the rock. The Buddha is very well protected in this story. But one little chip gets through and strikes the Buddha's toe and causes it to bleed. And so Devadatta is guilty of harming a Buddha's body. Now, it's interesting that also in the story, some of the monks are dismayed that a Buddha could come to any harm at all, and inquire of the Buddha how it is that he could be bleeding from his toe.

[23:43]

And he says, it is, oh monks, because of past deeds, that now I have to reap the karmic fruit of something I did in the past, which, you know, still, even though I'm the Buddha, persists, and I have to absorb the fruit of that this time. So they often say things like that. It's not that he's more karmic, but he's still experiencing the karmic experience. That's the exact difference between a Buddha and an ordinary person. A Buddha is someone who has learned not to be kicking at the waves, but has also learned to accept the waves that still come. And those things are the same, actually. If you can completely accept it, and not respond in any way, it creates new problems, then you're free from karma. And this is what it means to be a Buddha, actually. Technically speaking, from the standpoint of karma.

[24:45]

And these precepts, which we're going to study, are the practical description of the behavior of such a person. So the precepts are clues to how you would need to behave in order not to be producing new waves. And Devadatta fell immediately into the deepest level of hell, at the time of his death, due to his great crimes. But according to Dogen, reading some texts, just as he was about to die, he began to recite the triple treasure, I take refuge in the Buddha, as it says on your sheet there. He began to, in a sense, repent. And Dogen said... Again, these things are not just made up. I think that by experience, you can observe how powerfully

[25:50]

someone can change their life by a true act of repentance. Like someone who's been an alcoholic for 20, 30 years can come to a point where they can actually change, and never drink again. I think all of us have seen that kind of change in people. And I think that when you have a spiritual community, and you have people coming to the community all the time, you see this happening, or not happening, as the case may be. Sometimes a person thinks they've repented, but you see that actually it hasn't happened, because they continue to go about it. Or that they have. Historically, I think, throughout Buddhist history, there have been instances of the Buddhist Sangha taking in murderers and people that have done quite a terrible thing. But they have actually somehow repented of it, and it's neutralized the karmic wave of what they've done.

[26:55]

So this possibility exists. That's why in our full moon ceremony, the first verse that we chant is a verse of a vow. We say a vow of repentance. You vow all of your ancient karma that you've ever done. You admit it. And this is supposed to have a very important, powerful effect on you. Something else? Yes. Can you repeat the verse that says follow karma and vipaka? Oh, karma I say action, and vipaka is fruit, or consequence. Would it be correct to write one of these two words in the lower cone and the other one in the upper cone, or is that not exactly what you're saying? Well, vipaka would be in both, actually. Vipaka would be here.

[27:56]

That is to say, the fruits of all that you have done, which come to you in this moment. And you might put vipaka in parentheses up here, because this would be the fruit that would emanate from what you're doing right now. And karma would be right just at this point at the present moment. Thank you. So the fruits of past and future come in both directions, come from the past and open out into the future. What we mean by karma, this is a particularly Buddhist usage of the word karma. It's not the use of karma in Hinduism or some other related tradition. You have to remember that this use is a particular use for Buddhism, because Buddhism emphasizes the possibility of dramatic and permanent change in your karmic stream by practice.

[29:06]

That is to say that you can be liberated from karma, or from human suffering in this life, is the basic liberative or optimistic message of Buddhism. That we are not bound by our destiny or by our fate or by what we have done in the past or what others have done in the past. Is confession felt to be important at all? I know you said last week that people used to confess in the full moon ceremony, but we don't do it anymore. Is that because of some change in them about the attitude towards confession? Well, in this way I'm talking, I think confession and repentance are almost the same. The difference is that we don't have...

[30:08]

Someone mentioned to me, it was Julie, wasn't it? Julie said last week after the class that Lama Govinda has commented to her frequently, he used to be a Theravadan monk, about the rules of the Pratimoksha precepts. He said they always find ways to get around them. And this relates to the idea of do you have many small rules that try to cover all the possibilities, or do you have a few very big rules that convey to you the spirit of your activity and then leave it to your own responsibility to figure out what to do. Because, of course, every choice is a new event. There's no actual precedent that tells you exactly what to do. So it's true that if you have a large body of minuscule rules that you go through one by one and say, now is anybody actually... Please confess, has anybody done this or not? What I meant was actually, is it important to tell someone what you did?

[31:17]

Or is it just enough within yourself to repent? Do you need to bring another person into it? When I said confess, that's what I meant. Oh, I see. It's important to bring someone else into it. But I still think what I was saying also applies, which is that when you revert more to the basic spirit of all the precepts, you would not have time to confess everything. You might say that your activity is a constant confession, because the idea is you have infinite lifetimes to take care of, from the infinite past. Which one interpretation of that is the infinite past of humanity? All the instances of greed, hate and delusion which have occurred. If you say, well that wasn't me, that was Nero,

[32:20]

or that was Genghis Khan, it wasn't me. But that's not exactly enough, because Genghis Khan and you are not all that separate. You're human and Genghis Khan was human. Given the circumstances, you might very well have gone that way. It doesn't necessarily mean that you personally have been reincarnated in all these lifetimes. Exactly. It may equally well mean that human beings have done these things, and you are a human being. It isn't enough to say, well I was born in 1947, so anything before that, don't talk to me about World War II. That isn't quite enough. So from the broader perspective of the Bodhisattva vow, which is our practice, there's not time to possibly incorporate everything.

[33:24]

So we have more of a sense of ongoing confession, and ongoing effort to follow the precepts. But we'll have to talk about that more. It's a kind of difficult point to talk about very well. Yes, Vicki. You just described the myth, or the symbolism, that your daughter was the first person to do this. I mean, he was a bad man. He was very, very bad. He was the first person. I think they probably were first cousins historically. One of the things that we may tend to go too far in the direction of thinking all these things must be myths, because in an oral culture, I think they actually, certain things they convey very accurately. I wouldn't be at all surprised if that particular part of it was historically true. It would also be psychologically understandable

[34:28]

that members of your own family may have the most... The Buddha had quite a large family. I mean, he was the prince of a clan, the crown prince of a clan. So he abandoned the whole family to do this spiritual thing. And they weren't at all happy about it. It actually caused some problems for the family. So there may be something to that. Anyway, there were assuredly people... Whenever you are set up as a teacher, there are always people that will criticize you. Particularly people that knew you when you were young. Yes, Bill. I find the distinction between intention and action subtle and slippery.

[35:30]

I think it has... You're probably talking more about that in terms of spirit and letter. For example, or in a similar way, what if Devadatta had rolled his rock at the Buddha and missed altogether, not even a splinter to cut through, would Devadatta still have stored his hat trick? Or would he not, in fact, have harmed the Buddha in a way that exempted him from his own health, even though he intended to, quite frankly? No, he would have, although it wouldn't have been quite as serious. They have this distinction, which I believe also exists. Doesn't somebody name this Catholicism between body, speech, and mind, or thought, word, and deed? Distinction. You know, the karma of the body is the most serious. If you think, for instance, in our culture, if you think about the kill gap, that's not even a crime, legally. We have the freedom to think that.

[36:36]

From a Buddha's point of view, it already is killing, at some level. If you say it, that's, again, of course, much more intact, and it has a much larger way to contend with, because someone will hear it, and it will have some effect on that person, and they'll tell other people, you know. If somebody walks into here, if Green Gulch starts claiming to kill people, we're going to take it quite seriously. But it may be that lots of people think it. And then if they do it, of course, then it's a whole exponential level greater. But, from the standpoint of practice, the most important one is that you thought it, because that's the source of the other two. So, intention means a thought with an arrow on it, a thought with a direction. And that's the main arena of your work. Because the other two derive from that.

[37:40]

And until you can have access to the source of your thoughts, you can't actually be free in your activities. Of course, practically speaking, the first level of our work in precepts is to restrain our body from what we're thinking and doing. And that's where we begin, because the body is the place where we have the most access. So, in a sense, practice begins with the body, and works in. You can't have access to your thoughts directly very easily. The way to have access is by starting to notice what your body is doing, which is a big effort in and of itself, often. And then gradually try to increase the clarity of your awareness until you can notice thoughts which are inducing that action.

[38:42]

So, precepts really are ultimately about your thoughts. But, practically, they begin with your body, with your voice, of course. What you say is a part of that. So your speech and your physical action are where you begin in practice. And for most of us, speech is a very good place to begin, actually. Because speech and thought, of course, are very close. And practicing right speech is... We could have a whole couple of classes just discussing right speech. Right speech is a very good place to put into practice all of these precepts. And if you notice on the list, about five of them explicitly are about right speech.

[39:47]

Out of the ten predictory precepts have to do with what you say. So, we work in. But Zazen practice works with your whole body. And, in particular, it shuts down... ... [...] So we put in temporarily, we include these particular parts of your body. Your eyes are a certain way, your hands are a certain way, your legs are crossed, and your mouth is firmly shut. And, you know, that's... As Suzuki Roshi used to say a lot, the best way to follow the precepts is to do Zazen, because when you're doing Zazen,

[40:49]

you're following all the precepts. I think the bell has started. Perhaps we have time for one more question with all of us here, and then maybe the rest of you, if you have questions, you can get me afterwards. Any other questions? Well, you've asked a couple already. You can catch me afterwards. Okay. People can ask me afterwards. And I'll see you next week at...

[41:16]

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