with the Bhagavad Gita's words. Well, last time, good evening. We're all pretty soon going to be sashamed. And you can figure all this out for yourself. You know how it is, sink or swim. So tonight I wanted to go back a little bit to the hindrances. There's a nice analogy, by the way, about the hindrances I meant to tell you last time,

[01:01]

which has to do with water. And so the sense desire is considered to be like water with lots of bright colors in it. And hatred or anger, that's like boiling water. Sloth interprets like water that's not moving much, you know, lots of moss and slime. Stagnant. Worry and excitement, that's like the wind blowing across it, it's agitated. And doubt, that's kind of mud. So, of course, in the analogy then, once you get the water clear, right, it's pretty nice. I mean, you can see things then. And things reflect well, etc. So we're going to talk a little bit, first of all, about the antidotes.

[02:07]

The antidote. We talked about this generally last time, but there's actually a kind of specific thing, and I was trying to find it tonight. I went to the library, I looked in some books, I couldn't find exactly. But in fact, concentration that we talked about, the five factors of concentration, are the antidote for the five hindrances. Isn't that convenient? So, initial application. You know, applying awareness to the object. That goes with sloth interpreter. I know that. Pretty sure about that. Initial application. In other words, in the face of sloth interpreter, do something. And the sustained application, that goes with doubt. Because with doubt, you know, it doesn't help just the initial application. You've got to do it for a while to get past your doubt. So this is sustained application. The others I wasn't so sure about, but it seemed to me that,

[03:13]

I think with sense desire, you could use a little ease. And with hatred, you can use a little joy. And with worry and excitement, one-pointedness. So basically, just to concentrate on something. To turn your attention to something. Other than your make-believe. Other than the hindrances. It helps. It helps counteract the hindrances. Another way of mentioning this is, we mentioned in the last class that these things tend to chase the last one around. So when we get angry, we get angry at being angry. And then after a while, we feel guilty or depressed about having gotten angry. And then we get worried that we might get angry again.

[04:20]

And then that's all very tiring, etc. So the thing obvious, I mean, it's pretty clear then, that at some point you just have to stop. Like you don't actually get it sorted out or figured out or resolved. You just stop and you just, so to speak, you come back to your breath or activity. Or stuff that's right in front of you. Or your actual body. Your actual sensations in your body. Rather than being all involved in the hindrances and actually trying to do battle with the hindrance. Once you start to do battle with one of these, then basically you're calling in one of the other ones. In order to battle the first one. So you don't want to battle. You want to just, you know, so it's otherwise known as, you know, breathe. Or be in your body. I have a book here called Taming Your Gremlin, A Guide to Enjoying Yourself. So this, I don't know if you've seen this book, but it's quite a nice little book.

[05:22]

And it's about Buddhism without all the Buddhism. But this is what it says for your gremlin. Don't do battle. And, you know, you might... It says, again, one of the most commonly overlooked options is simply to breathe. And enjoy what you're feeling. It's pretty good, actually. But it's very tempting to want to go back to one of these, right? Instead of just breathing. Because it seems like we ought to do something about it. But that tends to keep the whole thing going. Right. So this is a fairly... This is the more so-called temporary solution for these things. The more long-term, supposed long-term solution is what's known as wisdom. Have you heard of that word? You know, wisdom? Okay. And we've... We've actually touched on this some.

[06:25]

In talking about the fact that the supposed object of our anger or sense desire and so on doesn't actually have an inherent... Isn't actually existing in the way that we're thinking that it did. So my example... One of my examples was, like, if you imagine having a relationship with someone and how nice it would be or how gratifying it would be to make love or how gratifying it would be to eat something, right? You leave out the part about what it's actually like. You leave out... You can't... You can't ever imagine, really. When you... The reality is always bigger and more multifaceted than our imagination. Okay? So that means that... That means that we can leave out certain parts. When we imagine how good something would be, we leave out the faults. When we imagine how bad something is and why, you know, we're going to be angry with it,

[07:28]

we leave out the virtues. That's just the way it works. You know, if you want the American people to go to war in the Middle East, Saddam Hussein has to be all bad. He doesn't have any virtues. And, you know, we... Our government... We spent, you know, six months educating the public, you know, on how bad he was and how he had no redeeming characteristics. So that's what you do when you want to get trapped into the hindrances, is that you just look at one side and you don't look at the whole picture. You know, and then you can have a real stake in that. So the... We've mentioned this before, but, you know, we have object and organ and consciousness. And these three have come together now.

[08:32]

And we have a moment of experience. So what we're just saying is that if we have an object here, whatever it is, like cake, we say, oh boy, looks really good and couldn't be bad. And then there's maybe there's sense desire. There are a lot of these things, you know, that we could have the hindrances with are, you know, things that we imagine. It's easier to make things up with the imagined things than the thing that's in front of you. It's a little easier, but still, the thing in front of you, you can do pretty well at making things up with. You know? I like, you know, certain things, like I tend to like potato chips, you know. And then when I eat potato chips, I always feel terrible. What's the problem? You know, why would anybody eat them when you feel terrible a little while later?

[09:39]

You see, it's a little confusing, isn't it? Or like, you know, smoking cigarettes. When I used to smoke, I used to feel badly later. But all I remember is that actually I felt better somehow. I don't know why. It's very confusing, isn't it? So, if you think about... So, here's some object, and then, you know, whether it's the cake, or the cigarette, or whatever it is, or the person. And then we have... And we mentioned that all of these things have come together in a moment now. And associated with this particular object, there's sense desire, or anger, or something, you know. Now, I put this over here because it's pretty clear that the sense desire and the anger are not inherent in the object. Because if it was inherent in the object, then everybody would want a cigarette.

[10:41]

Everybody would want potato chips. Everybody would be in love with that person. Right? If it was in the object. So, it must be in the consciousness. You know, the desire, the anger, the, you know, the falling asleep. That's a pretty ho-hum object over there. So, these things must be in the consciousness. Now, and yet, we like to attribute them to the object. You know, we mentioned that this is basic kind of teaching in Buddhism. Don't get confused and think that these things are in the object. And that because samsara is thinking you should control the object in order to control desire and anger. So, you should get the person to change. The person that is arousing your anger or your desires, you should get them to behave in such a way, you know, that they that they relieve you of

[11:43]

of your emotion or your feeling. That's our, that's basic, usual basic strategy, right? And so, we're saying, Buddhism is saying, no, you should work on your consciousness. We understand that. and we mentioned then, so then, and then concentration is basic way of of how to actually relate to an object with some thoroughness. Okay, so when you take the concentration and you have the application and the joy, ease, one-pointedness, then you can actually, you're actually relating to the object, you're taking the object in, and it's like picking up and looking at it. So, if originally, at one level, you had desire for the object, then by actually living with it for a while, you might actually begin to see some faults. Usually this happens, or sometimes this happens after you've already made a big commitment. It's known as the honeymoon is over.

[12:45]

You know, classically, they say 90 days for the honeymoon. So, that's about the length of a practice period. It doesn't quite give you necessarily enough time to work through, you know, the kind of, you know, things that you might have had. You know, you might be directing at a particular person one way or another, either with desire or anger. But about 90 days, you should be able to work through that stuff. And if you've had desire, you begin to see some faults, and if you've had anger, you begin to see some faults. And if you have anger or hatred, then you begin to see some virtues. In this supposed object, there was supposedly one way, a fixed way, with a particular nature. So, after a while, with the aspect of concentration, of actually staying with it for a while, and beginning to have some joy, so to speak, or, you know, beginning to a little resonate with it, something, and a little bit of ease of finding out how to be with that object,

[13:48]

then we begin to see that this object, which we thought was one-dimensional, has many facets. Now, another aspect of this which I want to bring up is that, you know, if we get the anger or the desire, and partly we want to direct that to this object, but, you know, how are you going to direct it towards the object without having it in the consciousness? Since they're all in the same little package here, called the moment of experience. In other words, you know, there's places in the Buddhist, in the scriptures and so on, where it's pointed out, in fact, that if you have anger towards an object, it's like picking up a cloud of mud to throw at somebody. You must have it in your hand. So, who's getting muddy? It directs the anger at this object over there,

[14:51]

but, in fact, you know, this whole thing is colored with anger now. Your own consciousness is colored with anger, which you're trying to direct towards that object. See? So, there's picking up the cloud of mud, and you're already muddy when you try to throw it. And then there's throwing something at somebody, and the wind is blowing towards you. And then there's all these things about somebody who's angry. You look ugly. You have trouble sleeping, you know, and so on. There's all these problems with it. And desire has, you know, various kinds of problems like that. And sloth and torpor has these kinds of problems. Actually, you think you're directing it towards something outside, but it's all part of the same packet called your own being, your own consciousness. This is why we say, well, if you see somebody practicing well, that must be you practicing well. If you see somebody practicing poorly, that must be you practicing poorly.

[15:51]

You see, it's inescapable. You know, this kind of relationship where our own consciousness is intimately the same as the object. So, at some point, we do have these various... At various times, we do get these kind of... Whether it's a small insight or a bigger insight, we do have sort of smaller insights with particular objects that they're not what we thought they were. In other words, that's wisdom. When we find that out, that, in fact, this object doesn't have a fixed nature. You know, even in simple ways. Potato chips aren't just good. They make you feel crummy. You know, and so on. You know, the person who you liked also has these faults. The person you disliked has these virtues. And sometimes, you know, you might even surprise yourself.

[16:56]

You know. Now, it's important to be able to make this kind of, you know, have this kind of acknowledgement over and over again because otherwise, how are any of us going to change? If objects are fixed, then also self is fixed. Then I'm fixed. I'm stuck with being the way I am. There's no point in practice. There's no point in anything. You know, then I'll just be stuck being the same object. So we have to have, at least at the level of faith, a recognition that objects, people, me, the world, things, don't have a fixed nature that I need to react with. Now, another interesting part about that, of course, is that even if the object did have a fixed nature, let's say we're pretty convinced that this is a despicable, evil object. I don't know how you spell despicable.

[18:08]

It doesn't look right, but anyway. It's bad. Now, somehow we think that the thing to do with something that's bad is, like, you push it away. You have to sort of push at it. Like, because that's what you do with something that's bad. Remember our model of, you know, let's get to put the bad things out there and let's get the good things in here. You know, and we'll have within this consciousness, which is vast and unlimited, we'll sort of set up the notion that actually there's this sort of boundary where I can put the bad stuff outside and I can get the good stuff inside. And I'll call this me and I'll call this you. Or this is me and this is the world.

[19:12]

You know, something like that. And how long does that last? At some point, we notice that this is also me, you know, that the whole thing must be me. All this is going on in me. All this is going on in consciousness and I've just set it up so that as though I could put the bad stuff outside and get the good stuff inside. That's just the way I sort of thought that I was up to. So when the bad stuff comes along, then there should be some anger or there should be some rejection or there should be some, like, at least staying away from it. Because otherwise it's going to taint me. You know, it's going to color me. It's going to taint. It's going to... It's going to mess with me. And I want to keep my little space kind of neat and pure and that's going to really mess it up. It's going to... You know, if it gets in here. So I should at least keep it at a distance. Then I have this sort of sense that

[20:13]

something nice and pleasant is happening here. But of course if you're pushing at something at a distance, how pleasant it can be to be busy like that. That's called tension. And stress. Or another way to think about this is before the bad and the evil can get to you, tense up. Before the person actually touches you, get tense. Before the... Before that person, you know, as that person actually comes into your vicinity, tense up, you know, emotionally. Or as that feeling starts to happen in your body, become a little, you know, get tense. Because if you're tense, then it's already, you know, we're already trying to keep this at a distance. And sometimes we get... See, basically our problem then is that we get into a habit like this regardless of the object. We haven't even checked out the object yet and because we're in such good practice of being tense and worried and defending the space of our body, mind, emotion, heart, etc.

[21:21]

then we're, you know, our whole being is sort of filled with this tension in various places to ward off this bad and evil that might otherwise happen to me or color me, taint me, you know, get the best of me. Which is some area of my mind that I've staked out as being better than that. Now, you know, when you go to practice Buddhism, you think that Buddhism is probably going to be a better way to do this. This is one of the reasons why we start practicing Buddhism because this strategy didn't work in the first place. Right? As a strategy, it didn't work. So then we think, well, let me get some spirituality behind it. In other words, yeah, this stuff really is good. That stuff really is bad. You know, Buddhism says so. This sort of thing. Or Christianity or whatever. Some religions are better for that than, you know, Buddhism.

[22:22]

But Buddhism isn't always such a help. But you can do pretty well at that, you know, with Buddhism. This is good practice. This other stuff is bad practice. You shouldn't let this bad practice stuff happen to you. It's like, you know, in Zen, I use that expression sometimes. I told you, I think, in a lecture. The priest who said, for 30 years I tried to sweep away the dust before I realized that sweeping away the dust was dust itself. So real busy. Sweeping away the dust, you know. Sweeping away the bad. But that sweeping, what is that sweeping? See, that's a certain state of body and mind, which is like having anger. It's coloring your whole being. This effort to make yourself look good, not let that bad stuff from outside get to you,

[23:23]

not let those people behave that way, etc. So, after a while, it just colors everything. You know, that underlying effort that we're making. And this is really the meaning of samsara. You know, it's that we're stuck in a... Samsara is to be stuck in a way of going about things that doesn't work, that is just senseless, that's futile. And here we are being colored with desire, anger. And it's, you know, we're being colored with this thinking that actually, you know, we're manipulating the object or we're, you know, we're getting rid of bad stuff, we're getting good stuff and we're going through all these machinations. But all the things that we're going through in order to bring about the desired result are exactly the thing that we didn't want. To be all caught up with these things. Do you understand? So that's samsara because it doesn't work like, it doesn't work well. Okay, the basic mode or way of going about things.

[24:25]

So when would you ever, you know, if this was... And so what we think is, well, I can have, you know, anger towards this thing, I can have desire towards this thing, and whenever I get, you know, like, when I get it all, you know, right, then maybe I can, you know, have some trust. Or now, then I'll relax. You know, then I can be generous. You know, when I get this object to be less threatening and so on, you know. But when does it ever happen? You know, we're going through all these emotions to try to bring about this desired state where I feel finally good. I finally accomplished, you know, my goodness. Perhaps at the world's expense. And now I can be generous, now I can relax, now I can be friendly.

[25:33]

See, but actually it doesn't work like that, right? As we know, we're just going to keep doing these things. And actually these things are coloring us, and we're all caught up in it. So it's never ending, right? So the point at some point, you know, whether we say practice concentration, but you could also say, well, practice, you know, the paramitas. Practice patience. You know, practice generosity. Practice kindness. You know, be tender, be gentle. Practice it, you know, with your own body. Practice it with your own breath. Be kind. Take care of things. You know, and of course the Japanese have all these little ways to do that, like picking up a cup with two hands. And the Zen tradition then has those things, you pick up a cup with two hands, because it's a way to,

[26:37]

well, let's just try out honoring the cup. And while we're honoring the cup, and to honor the cup that way, this object called cup now. You know, cup which isn't... Cup which you look at the cup and, you know, I love the example like the oreoki balls, right? Oreoki balls, you know, I sometimes joke, that the oreoki is the Japanese revenge, you know, for our having won the war. But anyway, the oreoki balls, they're not particularly, are they particularly, you know, it's not like they're real valuable. Right? Sometimes they're just these little cheap plastic balls, right? So, but in fact when we practice oreoki, or we pick up a cup, you see,

[27:38]

rather than thinking about, well, is the cup worth respecting? Is the oreoki worth respecting? Should we be, you know, how do we treat that? What sort of a thing is it? And it's immediately wrapped up with our consciousness. And as soon as we treat the cup some way, that's coloring our consciousness. So if we say, oh, that cup, that oreoki, what a cheap little thing, you know, who cares, you know, these little things, God, you know, put them where and, you know, and then you can sort of like, see, you can get really kind of, you can get careless or whatever. Or you can say, well, I'm going to practice some respect here. I'm going to practice appreciating these things, which is also practice appreciating my being. Because we can't exactly practice appreciating or respecting my being directly.

[28:41]

How am I going to do that? We actually, the way we do that is by doing it with the things. So we can practice, so if you pick up a cup with two hands, this is a kind of generosity. You know, you're being generous with your arms, with your hands, with your being. You're generously giving yourself to the cup. And with the oreoki, here's a chance, you know, here's where we practice patience. Actually just being with something. And even though, you know, from another viewpoint, you know, from another viewpoint, this cup or this oreoki has a very definite nature. It's cheap, or it's chintzy, or it's whatever it is. You know, these dumb black things. It's silly. They're too small. You know, it's got all these problems, right?

[29:45]

So based on that, you would just treat it any old way. You see? Based on what you happen to think about oreoki or think about the cup, then that's the way you treat it. It's not worth it, you know. And this is, so this is where, you know, literally practice or cultivation comes in. Whether you just say at the level of just concentration, or in a sort of larger level of, you know, patience, generosity, trust, kindness. And try it out with the cup. Try it out with the oreoki. Because it's also your conscious, it's also consciousness. It's also mind itself. It's also your own being. Otherwise, you know, there's no end to, you know, seeing only the fixed nature of something. And then, when are we ever going to get around to practice, you know,

[30:47]

to having some generosity and kindness and patience with these things? Because their habit of mind will be to say, oh, well, this isn't worth it either. Then, when something actually comes along that would be worthy of respect, we barely know how to do it. We try. And then that's actually pretty nice, you know. I'm just wondering if you had, like, incredibly valuable oreoki. Would it make any difference? Could you sustain that? Or would you have to get even more valuable oreoki after a while? Or would you adapt to it? Like an emperor, you know, like, they give him all these valuables. Actually, you'd have to be a poor person to give them valuables. They could concentrate on those really valuable things. To get used to them. Well, basically, it's very difficult because it's so dependent on our habit of mind.

[31:48]

Even when something actually valuable comes along, it's often difficult to, as I was saying, it's often difficult to actually treat it as though it was valuable. Because we're in such, you know, our habit is so otherwise. And it takes a certain, you know, it does take a certain amount of training to actually change. My favorite story about this, in some ways, is my experience, you know, and when something, when something, you know, really valuable or precious does come along that you do respect, for me, it was, I did respect Suzuki Roshi, I have a deep respect and love. So then, when I serve in the zendo, very careful. But basically, most of the time, we were in sort of a race to see who could get down the road first. And so then, when you're doing that, it doesn't, what the people are doing is more to do with

[32:52]

how fast you're getting down the road. Like, why can't they get their bowl out faster? Why are they so picky? And so on. Couldn't they pay more attention? In other words, to help me with what I'm trying to do, which is to get down the road faster. But one day it occurred to me, like, well, what's the difference really between Suzuki Roshi and these other people? I mean, on one hand, you know, on one hand, things are different. But on the other hand, in fact, everybody is Suzuki Roshi. Everybody is Buddha. However you want to say it. There's no fixed nature. Nobody has a fixed nature. Everybody has Buddha nature. So, why would we pick one person to feel one way about and somebody else to feel another way about? So, once that occurred to me, I started practicing being patient and generous with each person. It took some practice, because once I noticed that, I would be a little less Suzuki Roshi,

[33:54]

a careful next person, a little less careful next person. By about the third or fourth person, it was gone. And I was back in my usual way of relating to people on the basis of my, you know, my thinking. And my evaluation of what I was up to. And how come they were getting in my way and making it hard for me? So, this is very important that we understand, at some level, that things are not just things. We say things are not just things. Things are also the Buddha Dharma. Things are also Buddha nature. And that at least we have a few places in our life where we actually can practice treating the object with some generosity, kindness, patience. Warmth, gratitude. Because that's also my own consciousness, my mind, my being.

[34:54]

That's also me. And very literally, of course, in Sazen, we're doing this much more literally because the object here is my breath. So, am I going to wait for my breath to be warm or kind? Or do I, you know, I can also practice relating to the breath with warmth or kindness. As though it doesn't have a fixed nature and I'm actually, you know, going to be receptive and open, or however, to the breath. I'm going to try to touch the breath or be with the breath with warmth, with this kind of kindness. How does that color then, like in Sazen, how does that color, and we do that with our breath. Yeah. And we talk, it changes the color of, well like desire and anger is setting up.

[36:03]

Well, that's desire and anger. But I mean, by breathing that way, how does that change the color of your consciousness? Oh, well it's changing the basic, it's changing the basic mode or way of going about things. Which is what we're working on. Samsara is the basic mode or way of going about things, means that we start to get, we get really knotted up with desire and anger and so on. Once we start to practice with some generosity or kindness or patience with the breath and objects and things, pretty soon our being is no longer so knotted up with this, these conflictive or afflictive emotions. We're not so knotted up with that and we actually find by practicing that at a deeper level, you know, in Buddhism we say, at a deeper level this is the nature of consciousness or mind.

[37:08]

And these are, you know, coverings, these are not the fundamental basic nature. So by practicing these, then we, this is, you know, it's fairly difficult because, you know, the problem that you can have here is that once you start to practice generosity, you have to be careful or kindness, it's sort of like you have to be careful not to fall into that sort of thing of, that sort of parental thing. Be kind now and sort of boss yourself around with these things. You know, what's wrong with you? You're not feeling generous enough. You need to be more generous. So pretty soon we can be involved with, you know, while we're trying to cultivate these things, we can actually start using them against ourselves the same way that, you know, these things were going on.

[38:12]

So it's not always so easy. Then we have to have some patience with that. Tia, did you want to bring up something? You had your hand up a little while ago. Oh, well, it was just that later at a Shosan ceremony, Mary Quagliata asked him, how do you feel when I serve you? And he said, I feel like you're offering me your most perfect love. And I think a lot of us felt that way. And he got it. Anyway, it's such a simple exchange, but it's tremendously intimate, isn't it? The offering of food and send up, you really meet somebody there. Then the whole person is there just in the way they hold out the bowl.

[39:14]

And just in the way it serves them. And in both senses, you know, in both the sense that you see something that, you know, could be viewed as a fault, or you see something that could be viewed as a virtue. And you also, if you're, you know, looking with some depth, you see that that's just the, you know, sort of surface, so to speak. Or that's just the way it's appearing right now. But there must be more to it. There must be more. There's always, a person is much deeper. A person is boundless. And so anyway, this is, you can see how basic notion of, you know, that the object doesn't have inherent nature. Even at the level of faith, means that we can start practicing. Let's just try it out, you know. Let's try out being generous. Let's try out being patient. Let's give something respect. Let's give something our love.

[40:20]

Let's give something our devotion. Because if we wait for the perfect object to come along to give that to, most of us are going to be dead for centuries. And so we end up having to, you know, practice at times a bit of forgiveness, in that sense, for the fact that something, you know, at one moment, a person or a thing, you know, was disturbing to me. We have to forgive that and come back to some basic practice of generosity or kindness, which is in our nature. You know, we talked earlier in the precepts class about intention. You know, what is my intention? And at some level, you know, this is our intention to be patient and generous and trusting and, you know, to, that's our intention. So, we have to actually try it out because we're not going to get the objects in our world to appear as though they're, you know, fully deserving of this.

[41:24]

Yes, Patty. I might want to... A life and death struggle. You may even want not to be angry, but sometimes you might have to start cultivating joy and anger. But, I mean, sometimes it feels like, by cultivating, let's say cultivating one of the four angers, that the death's just veiling or somehow putting something, another layer on top of the anger. And at times, if there's just a willingness not to do that, even though you'd like to.

[42:32]

So, I guess I, sometimes I'm confused about cultivating. Cultivating, is it a more positive emotion? Or just a willingness to be in the state of being in that hindered state? Well, basically, you know, our way in Zen. You know, our way in Zen is, as I was sort of saying at the beginning, you know, sink or swim, and don't worry about it. Or another way of saying it would be, well, follow your nose, play it by ear. I mean, it doesn't, you know, you can do whatever, right? And part of our, you know, another sort of sense of wisdom is to, certainly over time, try out a variety of approaches. And, you know, you'll come to this sort of thing at some point, you know, somewhere.

[43:42]

That doesn't mean you'll stay there, stay with this sort of thing. So, sometimes, sometimes it will be, in fact, all you can do, so to speak, to just be with something. And that ends up being a kind of patience, and it's not because you decided to practice patience. I'm going to be patient with this, I don't know, whatever it was. But, in fact, you, you know, you just end up like, you know, I'm just sort of, you give up, or, you know, you bear with it. But part of that is, so, you're right, you know, that's fine. And then, you know, other times you may, you may want to try to examine, you know, or analyze. What, what is there really to be, you know, where is the anger coming from? What is, you know, what is it about? And sometimes then you'll notice, oh, actually my, the object of anger isn't, you know, isn't actually worthy of it.

[44:46]

You'll notice that, well, it just comes up. It doesn't seem to have any own being. It doesn't seem to have any, and well, it just makes me mad. So, and then, because you're with it over time, actually, that's what I was saying in the second class is, in some ways, basic sotas in practice is just to be with something, you're going to be with something for a while. And that's how we, you know, and just sit with something for a while is like, is how we finally, you know, find out how to be with it. And how to, in a sense, relate to it, or in another sense, absorb it. I want to talk at some point tonight about the five stages of re-owning the shadow, which is related to all this. The five stages of re-owning the shadow. Re-owning.

[45:47]

Re-owning, yeah. So, does, you know, whether it's out of habit or whatever you want to say, you know, our emotional state does tend to be colored by the objects that are present. In other words, you know, if anger is here, if anger is now the object that consciousness is aware of, okay, well then, you know, consciousness is also angry. So now I'm, you know, now I'm angry. But what Buddhism is also pointing out, and, you know, somebody mentioned the night after class, which is that once you're aware of anger as anger, then there's also some, then in a certain sense you're not angry anymore. It's not exactly like you're not angry anymore, but there is the possibility of this awareness or mindfulness. Of anger. So there's, in a sense, a part of consciousness, or, and, you know, consciousness is not something that you can have a part of, exactly.

[46:59]

But if there's mindfulness, it's all through consciousness. If there's mindfulness of anger as anger, knowing anger as anger, then there's actually this knowing. There's actually this mindfulness, which is also present. Okay, so this is also a, then a step in the right direction, so to speak. Because this is now consciousness which is not entangled up in anger, and knotted up in it. But there's, but there's actually a little space here now, called awareness of anger as anger. Or mindfulness of anger. Okay, and this is, so in that sense, you know, mostly this consciousness gets colored by the objects, or the collection of objects. And then, and then self-esteem gets based on how well am I doing at manipulating the objects. Getting the good ones in here and the bad ones out there. I'm doing really well at it. Boy, I'm really happy. Oh, this is so depressing.

[48:02]

Look at what I'm stuck with today. See, that tends to be our habit. So also what Buddhism is saying is, why not start just generating, just generate some equanimity, you know, even-mindedness. So this is like where, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh says, practice a slight smile. And this is where it gets tricky, you know, people bring up the same question. Well, isn't, if you smile, isn't that just covering things? If I practice smiling, I suppose I don't feel like smiling, isn't that? You know, covering up what I actually feel. So this smile, though, is intended to be, you know, some, some, in a certain sense, well-being, or some positive kind of regard. Or practice, it's just to practice regarding things with a, you know, a slight smile, with a slight, you know, with a little kindness, with a little sort of friendliness. Because if we, again, if we wait for the objects to warrant this. Most of the time we're so involved in this whole struggle and, you know, trying to get life to be something a way or another way.

[49:08]

We're so involved in all that, you know, we hardly have a chance to have a slight smile. So this is to, whether this is good, bad, whatever, you know, to begin to regard things with some slight smile. This is also like the, and the example, of course, is the statues of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas which have a slight smile. It's not because they're not aware of suffering, they're not aware of anger, they're not aware of pain. It's because they just regard it with a slight smile. And it's not because they're trying to hide it or mask it or cover it or, but it's just to have this, you know, a little bit of, you know, tiny little bit of warmth or kind regard for, towards the world, towards things. Whether it's good, bad, whatever, which is independent. See, the Bodhisattva's way at some point is independent of, you know, this so-called world. In the Bodhisattvas we say, does not course in the skandhas, in the production or stopping of the skandhas.

[50:11]

An unskilled, a skilled Bodhisattva does not course. An unskilled Bodhisattva courses in the skandhas, in the production and stopping of the skandhas. In the production and stopping of sight sounds, you know, in the production and stopping of emotions. So, at some point this is also then, this is a little bit of, whether you call it a smile or a kind regard or something, towards this whole mess. Rather than just, you know, the frustrated grimace or whatever that comes with the whole mess. Or just having one's mental state be determined by these objects, supposed objects. Actually there's a possibility of a little independence here. Where consciousness is not just the victim of the objects you happen to get stuck with. This is a mistaken idea. Yes. It seems like maybe it would help to address the pattern you were talking about. In that course in producing or in stopping the skandhas. It's not that the smile is sort of the same.

[51:14]

The anger has to be completely sort of killed. No, it's that you regard, you start to regard anger with a slight smile instead of regarding anger with more anger. Or with depression. Or, you know, with something else. You know, another reactive sort of thing. Worry or anxiety or, you know. What if everybody finds out what an angry person I am. So, exactly, yes. It's not to, and it's also, so, Thich Nhat Hanh gets asked that sort of question a lot. And he finally said one time at Green Gables, he said, you can mix hot and cold water, can't you? Let's go on to the five stages of Brianna in your shadow. Okay. It's sort of fun and it sort of gets us through all this. I thought you'd enjoy it. The five stages of Brianna in your shadow is a little different model than the ten oxfording pictures. The ten oxfording pictures is also sort of like a, a Brianna in your shadow sort of thing. It's kind of useful. I think sometime I'll do a class on oxfording pictures.

[52:16]

But anyway, tonight, the five stages of Brianna in your projection. So, the first stage, the five stages of Brianna in your shadow. The first stage is projection. What's the definition of shadow? Huh? The shadow is the parts of you that are in the dark, that you've disowned. And that you try not to have anything to do with. The parts of you that you keep down in the basement. Remember down in the basement? You're really not even aware of these. Yeah, right, down in the basement here. Somewhere. Where the mad dog is. Yeah, where the mad dog is. We have a nice place up here with a good view. And it's, um, high ceilings. Who doesn't have big ears?

[53:18]

Anyway, it's stuff down here in the basement. The stages of re-owning the stuff in the basement. So, the first stage is projection. So, it's very interesting, but it's actually hard to re-own something. You have to project it onto somebody or something first. And then you think, that person. Or, you know, we can project stuff on ourself too. Because whatever we think about ourself is actually a kind of projection. Because we also don't have inherent nature. If we start saying about ourself, Oh, you're always so angry. You know, we can say we do projection with ourselves. But it works even better when you project onto somebody else. You know, that they're bad, good, angry. They're greedy. And, uh, the second stage in this is that, you know, there's some slippage. I don't know what the technical term is for this.

[54:22]

Or otherwise known as, you know, kind of wiggling. Or waffling or something. Where the thing that you've projected the thoughts onto, it doesn't always fit. Person is, today, they're not angry like that. Or they're not greedy. Or you didn't, you weren't angry like you always said you were. You know, I'm such an angry person. And then for a while you weren't and then you noticed that. And then you go. So then the third stage is, better try harder. To, you know, reprojection. You know, more projection. And at this point you use the full force of your moral authority. And everything. You get Zen and everything, you know. Buddhism. And you really do your best to put that stuff onto the object. Person really is like that. And then, this is the point where you start to. I think I've missed some of these talks. But this is the point where you. If you think somebody, if you're trying to project that somebody's angry.

[55:29]

Then you start treating them in such a way that, by golly, you're going to make them angry. You know, you're going to make the object be the way that you say. Okay. Do you understand? So. You treat it the way you think it is. Yeah, you treat it the way you think it is. And then it reacts. And then it tends to react. It reacts that way, yeah. And you do this with, you know, with all your best effort. This may not be so conscious, you know. But I've certainly been in situations where, you know, both sides of this. The ones that somehow come to mind are when people are saying to me. You're really angry with me, aren't you? And I hadn't been particularly aware of being angry with them until they said that. Because if there's one thing that gets me mad, it's usually when people tell me how I'm feeling. Don't tell me how I'm feeling. So anyway.

[56:30]

If you try hard enough, you can usually get the thing to behave in the desired fashion. But still, it doesn't always work, you know. And at some point, it all kind of falls apart. And in colloquial terms, the fourth stage then is when you have to eat it. Eat crow. Yeah, crow. So this is where you realize. Oh my. I've been. I've been wrong. There's this wonderful quote attributed to Winston Churchill. He said, I've often had to eat my words and I found the diet very nourishing. Anyway, this is the stage here. Where you have to swallow. You swallow your tongue. You know, you've got your foot in your mouth now. And you realize you've got your foot in your mouth here. And that in fact, it was all you all along.

[57:39]

And so then the fifth stage is transformation. But this again is an example of the fact, you know, we were talking the other night about. You know, is there some residual anger or not? No. And in a certain sense, you know, we might say in a certain sense, we might say, well, yes, there's sort of residual anger. You know, it's part of what we like to keep in the basement. And part of what, you know, we start projecting towards, you know, others must be angry with us or we're projecting out on the world. But at some point, you know, when we actually eat it. You know, when it actually, we actually, you know, really get in touch with it.

[58:42]

And it's no longer at a distance. Then we find that, you know, what appeared as anger is also, it's also like energy and vitality and buoyancy or creativity. And it's not. So we can't say exactly that. Well, it's anger that's, you know, locked up or something. It doesn't have a fixed nature again. So that the transformation that happens is. And part of that is then that because there's. Because if there's energy in our being and. But for various reasons, we may experience, you know, even energy is threatening. Basically, you know, energy is threatening because it can overwhelm me. And also because it may not seem like that kind of energy is susceptible to control. Right. So I have to worry about it because, you know, I wouldn't be in control if that energy, you know, took over.

[59:49]

So what we've done then is, you know, we've sort of tied it up. And so part of what happens is we're coming in touch with something as energy is coming up. And the energy starts to penetrate in this. There's a part here where this has been the, you know, like in our model, this is where we've been averting from this. So there's a kind of, you know, we've been averting from this. So there's a certain tension here, which I'm just making this up sort of. But I'm just trying to make a kind of pictorial or something. But anyway, at some level, initial level, when we come in contact with something like this, this can seem like anger. But part of that is just the layering around something. Right. Just like we talked about the pain, you know, here, which we start to have our energy pull away from.

[60:51]

And now there's a further tension, which is our energy pulling away. And then our energy pulls away from that and pulls away from that. So things get a kind of layered in tension. Or my example tonight of, you know, let's in that case, if that's what we're going to do when there's pain, let's just do that ahead of time just to be on the safe side. Let's get a little layering. Let's have some layering in our body, in our mind. You know, let's get a little layering, a little insulation. And that's a kind of, you know, we experience the kind of tension or stress and that we hold ourself a certain way, the way that we do. In the attempt to have a kind of shield here. So at some point, when this is coming into consciousness, what we're projecting, anyway, I don't want to go into some detail here. But anyway, there's a level here at which this is anger. But at some level, when one eats this, I mean, it just becomes its vitality, its creativity.

[61:59]

And it's gotten so it's actually, it's not in this little package anymore. It's not in this little container. It's sort of liberated, so to speak. It's like, you know, the treasure store will open and you can use it at will. But the way to the treasure store means, you know, like whether it's, whether you call it anger or you call it dragons, you know, that you have to slay or whatever. But that doesn't mean that this is, that this, the inherent nature of this is anger. But somehow we have to, you know, integrate or, you know, have enough experience with our anger and eating it, so to speak, you know, and it can have, in fact, a transformative effect. This is our greater vitality that is in this little sort of locked up. It's been hidden away. And part of this, too, is, you know, something like joy, you know, when we have, when we release or, and again, you know, well, you know, like just to follow your breath in that sense.

[63:13]

Just to follow the breath with some softness and kindness or gentleness is to begin to, you know, soften these places. All through the body, whether it's in the knee or the stomach or the chest, we're starting to actually soften these places. And so sometimes there just may be this anger or this sorrow or sadness. And, you know, there's not necessarily any images. You don't really need, and it's not necessarily any object. People say, well, why are you unhappy or why are you sad or why are you angry? It's just, it's just stuff that's happening. It's not like, is it going to do any good to sort of sort it out and pick an object that you're angry at or pick an object or thing that you're sad about, as though that you could do something about it and fix it and make it all better and then you make it all better and you wouldn't have to be sad? It's, it's, it's human, it's human to feel sad, to feel anger, to have, you know, to have feelings.

[64:15]

And then how about just feeling the feelings? And it's not like you, you know, we do anything about it to fix it. Or like if your practice was better, you would never have to experience these things. But in fact, and as we, you know, soften these places in our body, and there's this, we have, and we know, by the end of Sishin, we have more energy. You know, we've gone through a lot of stuff and encountered a lot of, you know, places that, you know, we've touched a lot of sensitive spots. And by the end, then there's this bigger vibration, so to speak, or bigger energy. And there's actually a kind of joy, which is our, our, our bigger vitality, you know, which we've kind of contained in the meantime. I don't know if these five stages of re-owning your shadow are useful to you, but I sort of think they're kind of fun.

[65:25]

Where does ancient twisted karma come up from, then? You know, I thought that that was in me for a while. I don't know. Ancient twisted karma. You know, when I came in, what I was born with. Well. You need them. The ancient twisted karma is, I mean, there's sort of different senses about karma. You know, one kind of sense about karma is just that the, let me just say one other thing first, right? So, it's, I want you to, I want to be sure you understand, you know, I want you to, just to point out again that there's a conclusion that practice is not about controlling the object.

[66:33]

So that by controlling the object, we influence the consciousness, the mind. And when we think about, when we get involved with that, then we inherently are trapped, you know, in this endless samsara. So at some point we have, you know, to have a sort of, some sense of, you know, nirvana is to start treating objects as though they are worthy of respect. They are venerable, you know, we are worthy. You know, whether it's a cup or a bowl or a person or, you know. And the, and so then, you know, all these things like anger and desire and these things aren't going to go away. You know, they're going to keep, I mean, unless there's somebody here who's going to get to be an arhat, you know, or whatever.

[67:40]

I mean, you know, we're, not very many of us get to that, where these things really go away. You know, we're probably going to be living and practicing with these things for all of our life pretty much. But the, but it does mean that we can, and in that sense, you know, we don't have to be endlessly frustrated that we're still living with these things. We can kind of have some compassion for ourself and not think that we're failures because we still get angry. Do you understand? You know, or that, you know, we need to punish ourselves or feel guilty because, you know, because we still have desire or because we still have this or because we still have that. Can we get rid of it? You know, I mean, give me a break, you know, let's get real. You know, we don't need to do all these things to ourself because we don't measure up yet. You know, because our scorecard, you know, we're not getting A's yet as far as, you know, eliminating these, you know, sense desire and anger, etc., etc., or whatever it is that we thought we might do.

[68:42]

Okay. So, but in that sense, things are coming up now, but they're not, they're not coloring the whole picture. You know, we're not, and in fact, we're not tainted, we're not colored by it. When we understand that we're not colored by it, we're not colored by it. Anyway, I tend to think about ancient touristic karma. There's a level of karma which is sort of like, I don't know, you know, it seems like, you know, like the Tibetans and the Chinese. And Tarotoku said, as I was saying the other day, I think, Tarotoku said, well, that's our karma. You know, that the Chinese have invaded and killed so many Tibetans, and so on. So that's one level of karma. Okay, you know, that there may be these things that happen to us, which, you know, sort of, I don't know, I suppose that's as good an explanation as anything.

[69:48]

But ancient touristic karma also has to do with what, you know, we've been talking about tonight, is the fact that, you know, a particular habit or energy will tend to keep going in it, you know. There's this momentum there for, you know, seeing an object and finding fault. That's called a, you know, hate person. Or seeing objects and finding virtue. You know, that's the desire. And there is this, you know, delusion that the object has this fixed nature, and that manipulation of objects is the way to get through life and to make it better. And that by manipulating objects, we'll finally have some better, good feelings. So this is also, you know, these are also our karmic roots.

[70:52]

And whether we actually come into life with them or what, but at some point, you know, they started getting generated. And to a certain extent, maybe, I don't, you know, I can't talk about all that stuff. I mean, you know, it's interesting to me, though, that Buddhism says, you pick your parents. Now that's interesting to me, right? So you can't say, well, look what my parents did to me when I was growing up. Well, hey, you picked them. But you may have been kind of confused at the time you were picking them. But in one sense, in your mouth, you do pick your parents, because they're in existence, they're an object. And you're projecting on them, you're creating them. You actually have some control. But it just seems like people must have such, I mean, it just seems like, goodness, the level of suffering in the world, people's karma.

[71:59]

I can't believe. You know, what have all these poor people done? Well, folks, I've sort of run through what I wanted to talk about tonight. So do you want to talk about anything, or should we go to bed? That was easy. If you have any questions, sit some more. And the case is, a monk asked Yunmin, what are the teachings of a whole lifetime? Yunmin answered, an appropriate statement. Anyway, the commentary is the part I like. The first paragraph of the commentary, it says,

[73:02]

Members of the Chan family, if you want to know the meaning of Buddha nature, you must observe times and seasons, causes and conditions. This is called the special transmission outside the written teachings. The soul transmission of the mind seal, directly pointing to the human mind for the perception of nature and realization of Buddhahood. I thought that was very nice. You must observe times and seasons, causes and conditions. It's not about, you know, fixing them or manipulating them, but observing. Moment after moment, too. Observing on various times, seasons, causes, conditions. Thank you.

[73:46]

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