Over a period of a few weeks, give you a kind of course in basic Buddhism. Because somebody had asked me about that. Now that I've arrived here tonight, I had a request or two to talk about how we recover or deal with or relate to the fact that people are getting killed in other parts of the world. So, I don't know, why don't I give you, you know, start with the basic Buddhism and then we can see if it relates to this at all. So, last week, just to give you the, those of you, well, both those of you who were here and those of you who weren't here, I can give you the brief synopsis, you know, the capsule, the capsulized version of last week. So, last week was the Four Noble Truths, which the Buddha is said to have realized when he sat down and sat still

[01:02]

and decided not to get up until he'd figured things out to his own satisfaction as to why there was, in fact, old age, sickness and death. Or as Rumi says in one of his poems, why organize the universe this way? Mark Twain is a little bit like that, you know, now and again, too. There's a book of his, Letters from the Earth, and it's one of Satan's assistants or something who's writing back to, you know, who's visiting the earth on a little mission and he's writing back. And he kind of goes on about, you know, why do you suppose God made a place like this? And he goes into detail about flies and mosquitoes and gnats and long lists of, you know, hemorrhoids and various things that can befall one. Anyway, the Four Noble Truths, the first is that, loosely speaking,

[02:12]

the translation we use oftentimes is life is suffering. But it's probably better to say that life is unsatisfactory or to put it another way is things aren't the way we'd like them to be if we had the choice. And that's true in big senses and little senses, you know, in terms of what goes on in the world and then what goes on in our own life and what happens with our body and what happens with our mind. And if we could choose and if we were able to pick and choose, we wouldn't pick and choose a lot of things that come our way and that we end up having to experience. And this is a kind of then suffering, so to speak. It's painful that we have so little, in that sense, so little degree of control over events. And unfortunately, we tend to tie our well-being and our peace of mind,

[03:19]

so to speak, to the particular events. So if good things happen, we feel good, and when bad things happen, we feel bad. And so most of the time we end up feeling pretty bad because not that many good things happen. And the good things that do happen don't last long. That sort of thing. Then the second noble truth is why do we have this kind of suffering? It has something to do then with craving or desire, the fact that we do want things to be other than they are and that we have such little degree of control over events, whether it's on the world as a whole or in our own life or just in a period of meditation in our own body, let alone trying to have any degree of control over anybody else. There's our own body and mind, and we want it to be a certain way, and it isn't.

[04:21]

But somehow we want things to be a certain way, and so we have a kind of suffering related to the fact that we have those kind of wishes. This also then is exemplified in things. You can see this then. Another way to put it, perhaps, is that we tend to have addictive personalities. And I know at least some of you have been involved at times with 12-step programs, but everybody, we all tend to have this kind of addictive personality, which means that we want to set things up in some particular way, and we want to have something that we can rely on to reestablish what we're familiar with and know and what we can relate to and be comfortable with, and it's not too overwhelming. But even though it's not too overwhelming, we want it to be a little bit interesting, but we want it to be challenging, but not too challenging. So there's substances and people and relationships and whatever that we turn to

[05:25]

to try to get things to be the way that we feel that we'd like them to be or that we can deal with or whatever it is. So that's another. And so it's pretty obvious that we have this kind of tendency, at least, toward a kind of addiction, so to speak. And people use different things, whether it's food or substances or whatever, or some people just work hard, have a kind of addiction to work. And occasionally there's somebody who's kind of addicted to meditation. But it's harder to get addicted to meditation because it doesn't work very well. That's an addictive device, you know. You tend not to be able to. Most people tend not to be able to kind of control things that well under the circumstances of alcohol. I mean, not alcohol, but of meditation.

[06:26]

Slip of the tongue, boy. Anyway, the third noble truth is that there is such a thing as a release from suffering. There is such a thing as calm, as well-being, as peace, harmony. And this is related to the fact that, in a certain sense, of turning our awareness or understanding and realizing, the fourth noble truth is, how do you go about having this kind of some calm or peace or awareness, tranquility in your life, given the fact that things are so out of control? And this is to some degree then related to having a better understanding so that one does not make one's state of mind dependent on the phenomenal changes.

[07:30]

Things are always changing and happening and coming into existence, going out of existence. There's always suffering going on. There's always... things are always happening. And in our own life, one day we feel good, the next day we don't. Somebody says something to us, we feel bad. Somebody yells at us, we're upset, we yell back. Somebody is nice to us and smiles, we smile back. And so we tend to then have our well-being or our state of mind, as it were, dependent on the phenomena. And so we usually then tend to... the mistake then, in that sense, that we tend to make is that we think the way to have happiness and peace and well-being and calm is to arrange all the circumstances so it all works the way it should. And then we can relax and then we can feel good. And if we limit our arena enough to just maybe our own body and mind or our own family

[08:35]

and not try to go out too far or... You know, you can go out sometimes and have your garden and be fairly successful at that. You can have a little area where things are kind of in harmony before the gophers get it and... But anyway, essentially that kind of a strategy, which is the strategy we tend to have of fixing things first and then we can relax or then we can feel okay, this doesn't tend to work, right? So we're perpetually in a state of trying to get things worked out so we'll feel better and the circumstances arranged and things resolved and then we'll feel better and then we can relax and then we'll feel good and then we can be happy. And we tend to then pick out things to... You know, whether it's food or something happening to... If I do this then I'll feel a little bit better and then I'll do this now. So this is all very natural for us as living beings and as human beings.

[09:41]

So it's the degree to which we do it and whether or not we kind of have some over-reliance or a kind of addiction or we're sort of misusing things then in people, in our own bodies. You know, we can get mad at ourself about something we did and it's sort of with the idea that if you don't behave right, I'm going to get mad at you. But who are you getting mad at, right? Now it's yourself. And so, but it doesn't actually work. Nobody's paying any attention, you know. I mean, then you're just getting mad at yourself and now you're upset, you know. And it doesn't feel good. Usually, you know, I see to get mad in Buddhism they say, you know, the person when you get mad at someone and you go to throw the mud clot at them, you have to get your hand dirty first. And then if you throw the mud clot at yourself, you know, why did you say that? What's wrong with you anyway? See how that didn't make any sense?

[10:44]

And you throw the mud, then you not only get the mud on your hand but you have it on your face and, you know. So we go about the things in this kind of funny way, right? We have this kind of tendency. So the idea is to begin to understand that our well-being, if we're going to have some calm or if we're going to have some warm-heartedness or if we're going to have some kindness, if we're going to have some generosity, we can't sort of wait for the circumstances to be right to elicit those things. Under various circumstances we make the decision then, we decide, we make the decision or we have the intention then to be kind, to begin to practice being kind. Even though somebody else is angry or even though I'm tired, we're intending. So now I've already started talking about the Eightfold Path here without telling you that it's the Eightfold Path.

[11:50]

So we're now talking about the Fourth Noble Truth which is also known as the Eightfold Path. Now the first of the Eightfold Path, and all these in the Eightfold Path have the little adjective in front of it, right. So the first one is right views or right view. And this right in a certain sense isn't, I don't know, it's not exactly like right and wrong but it's kind of, with this kind of a view then you'll, this is the right kind of view to have if you're going to work on things in the way that Buddhism is talking about. Obviously we don't always have this so, I don't know, we have to be a little bit careful about sort of pointing out right and wrong and, you know, who's what or something. I may say a little bit more about that later but the right view then is to begin to have this understanding that I've talked about.

[12:52]

To have some sense of the Four Noble Truths, of the kind of pain that is involved in trying to control phenomenal aspects, things that are coming into existence and going out of existence and to begin to understand how little degree of control we have. And usually we get very upset with ourself because we don't have enough control. That's what happens to me anyway. Why can't I be more successful? Well, you didn't try hard enough. But actually, you know, life, everybody in life can't be, we're not all going to be fabulously successful. Not everybody is going to make tons of money. So we go sort of like, well, what's wrong with me? Or why can't, you know, the last few weeks I've been going like, well, everything I say, whatever I say, whatever I do, nothing stops the war. Okay, so now what? But the view then, this right view then begins to include the fact that

[13:58]

but I still want to have peace, I still want to have harmony, I still want to have, I want actually what I want. Now this, we're getting into the second of the Eightfold Path, right intention. Okay. Now the right intention comes right out of this view. We're seeing how the usual way we go about things inherently doesn't work. This usual way of, there's basically, it's sort of like, there's something wrong here and I'm going to have to do something about it so that then I'll feel good and I'll feel better and I can relax. And I'll be happy, whether it's in a personal sense or a world sense. Okay. And the thing is that all that stuff is always going on, right? So if you, and you can apply it to meditation too. You can come into meditation and I said tonight, there's not really anything to accomplish. But when I started meditation, I never believed the teachers when they said that. Right? Teachers would say that to me and I thought,

[14:59]

what do you mean there's nothing to accomplish? I want to sit still. And in fact, I want to sit more still than the other people. And I want to get better understanding than they have. And, you know, I know a lot of people have sat for 20 or 30 years and they've gotten only a little enlightened. Well, I'd like to do that in a year or two because, you know, I'm sure it was because they weren't trying hard enough. And so I'm going to try extra hard. So even if I say there's not really anything to accomplish, we tend to put in that there's something to accomplish. So then I have this goal of, well, I want to sit still. So then I can sit still for 40 minutes. Then I'd like to sit still for two periods in a row. And when I can do that, then I'd like to sit still for a day. And then I want to be able to sit still for a week. And so do I ever get to, do I ever actually get to where I've accomplished what I set out to do? For about two seconds, you know, or one, until the next goal springs out there. And I can drive myself forward to the next accomplishment

[16:03]

or the next thing that needs to be done before I can relax, before I can feel good, and so on. So it's this repetitive kind of quality, you know, which samsara is, the samsara of this world, samsara is the term given to this kind of effort, which is the rat race, where it goes around and around and you never arrive, right? So the point of the right intention is to arrive, right? So the intention is, well, actually, I'd like to be kind. I'd like to be... What is your intention, given the fact that we can't control things to anywhere near the degree we'd like to, what will your intention be? Well, I'd like some peace of mind, or I'd like some kindness. I'd like some generosity. I'd like to be more patient. I'd like to be friendly and considerate to others. I'd like to be compassionate. I don't want to hurt others.

[17:06]

I don't want others to hurt me. So we can have various intentions, various expressions of intention, and we're not... we're understanding now that we're not waiting for everything to... you know, just the right time to be kind, but that somehow there's the possibility of being kind even when things are painful or difficult. Whether I start with myself or somebody I'm with, there's also the kind of intention of I will come to know and I will come to understand what I haven't yet, what I don't yet know, and what I don't now understand. You know, that I... that that's my intention, that's what I want. I want to understand things better.

[18:09]

You know, in a way that I don't understand them now. That's a very important kind of intention to have. And also, a basic kind of intention is, given the fact that... you know, where are we going to get help for this, right? Now, depending on your theology here, you might look for help in various places, and one of the places is God, or a supreme being, or a cosmic being of some sort. Another, you know, in our society, is the therapist. Maybe you can get help from AA, your friends, your family. But essentially, what Buddhism finally is suggesting is that if you want help, the answer is in your experience. So when you say, I will come to understand what I don't now understand,

[19:14]

it means I will look at my own experience and how things work in my experience closely enough so that I can sort things out on the basis of my own experience. This is a little bit like, you know, like in the Twelve Step Program, making a thorough inventory of your life. That's sort of a step. But it's very fundamental. It means, in some sense, no longer looking to somebody else to tell you what's the right thing to do, but really turning to your own experience, relying on your own experience, and however, you know, awkward you are about it, to feel your way along and in your own experience to be finding out which way to go, what to do. And in this sense then, Buddhism is saying that fundamentally we can trust ourself, you can trust yourself. But a lot of the time, when we adopt the normal way of going about things,

[20:22]

we're always telling ourself what to do, as though we were our own child. Don't be selfish now. Well, you better not say that. And so, we're all the time telling ourselves something so we can't actually act on the basis of or out of our own being. So we're trying, in some sense, to know our own being well enough to be able and trust it, to get to know and trust our own being well enough to act out of that, from out of our own being. This is intention. Okay? So that leads right away then into the third Noble Truth, Right Action. That our action, the right action is this action that comes out of our being. What is your intention? You want to be kind or I want to be generous.

[21:26]

I want to accept others. I want to know how to be with someone who's in pain, whether it's myself or someone I'm with. I want to know how to resolve things. And so then the action comes out of... action is based on this kind of intention. So then in an argument, for instance, where we might, if we aren't thinking about it, we might be trying to win the argument. And then, in that sense, defeat the other person. But if your intention is... when you understand how... when you have a good view that, you know, to win one argument just means that you're only as good as your last argument, right? If the important thing is to win the argument, you won this one, now you better get ready.

[22:28]

And, you know, where is the next one going to come from? And you've got some anxiety and you've got some fear, and you've got to be defensive and you've got to be on guard as to where the next argument is coming from. And then you're only going to be as good as your last argument, and whether you won or not. See? So this is... So understanding that, seeing that with that view, then the intention, instead of to win the argument, you know, would be something like to resolve the argument. And then your action, and now we're getting into speech in this case, which is after action in the list of the Eightfold Path, then the action in the speech comes out of this intention, which has some clearer ground to it, the intention to resolve things rather than to win. And we're doing this not because it's the good thing to do

[23:31]

or the right thing to do or the Buddhist thing to do, but because it's in our heart to do it. And we do it because we're in touch with our heart. We're getting to know our heart's desire. And then to resolve the argument, though, doesn't mean to abandon your own point of view. But not to use your own point of view, not to use your own point of view to defeat the other person. But to be able to present your own point of view and then help somebody else present their point of view and find out how you can resolve something, come to a resolution, which then won't last that long, necessarily. It was interesting to me... A week or so ago, I did my first class with the Chinese medicinal herbs, and we were doing a class on the digestion and strengthening what in these terms is known as the spleen,

[24:32]

which is the digestive network. And somebody asked about candida. You all know candida is a kind of yeast infection, right? And it's where the yeast in your digestive system has gotten out of control. And while it's growing in your digestive system, it can cause lots of gas and pain because that's what yeast does. It takes sugars and converts them into carbon dioxide, and then you've got all this gas. And it also makes alcohol. It turns sugars and oxygen into alcohol and carbon dioxide. So you can feel pretty miserable. And so somebody asked about candida, and the basic Western idea for candida is, well, then you should not have any sugars, and not only should you not have any sugars, you should not have any complex carbohydrates.

[25:32]

And this is to starve the yeast out. And so what my acupuncturist said, who's with me during this class, he said, well, you know, this is a good example of candida because between the Western approach, the Western approach is attack the pathogen. And the idea in Chinese medicine is rebalance the environment. This is an ecological problem. The yeast is burgeoning because the environment is out of harmony, is out of balance, okay? So Western idea is attack the pathogen. What happens when you attack the pathogen and you don't eat any sugars, you don't have any complex carbohydrates? Those are the things that strengthen the digestive system. And now you don't eat those. So consequently, oftentimes when people follow this diet, you know, they make themselves worse. The whole ecology, the whole environment

[26:35]

becomes more further weakened and further depleted in the effort to starve out the pathogen and to, in that sense, attack the pathogen through starvation. And it's a much more complex and more difficult work to rebalance the environment. So about two days later I thought, oh, we have a little pathogen in the Middle East. And our approach is to attack the pathogen rather than rebalancing or reharmonizing the environment and creating an environment in which pathogens like that cannot flourish. Now that is a much more difficult kind of work, don't you think? And once in a while somebody says something about that, but in fact, you know, we'd rather just attack pathogens than do this much more laborious kind of work of creating environments where pathogens like that can't flourish.

[27:36]

And, you know, maybe at best we'll get rid of this pathogen and then we'll start working on things that other way. But most of the articles I see in the paper is, or, you know, I don't know, I read New Yorker magazine or various things, and as far as I can tell, the administration will think of this when the time comes. You know, they haven't thought about, you know, what's going to happen in the Middle East after we've gotten rid of the pathogen or what kind of, you know, balance there will be or won't be or, you know. I know it when I see it. Huh? I know it when I see it. Yeah, yeah. So when the time comes we'll kind of try to deal with that. Anyway, this is, you know, and I'm sure there's, you know, obviously life is very complex and there are many ways to look at things and there's something to be said at some point for attacking the pathogen as well as rebalancing the environment and so on. But on the whole, our culture tends to err on the side of attacking pathogens

[28:40]

rather than doing this more basic work of creating stable, safe, harmonious environments. And this is similar to are you trying to win the argument and defeat the other person or are you trying to, are you working on creating a good relationship where I can express myself and what I think and you can express yourself and what you think and it's safe to do that. And we're trying to resolve things and that means, and it doesn't mean that I have to abandon my point of view or that you have to abandon your point of view and that there's space for points of view to arise. And we create that kind of space. This is also then the kind of space that we're trying to create in meditation because we're so many people, right? And we have so many voices to listen to. Okay? So action and speech and then right livelihood is the fifth one. This comes, this follows right on the heels of, and some people say, well, why do they make that separate than action?

[29:41]

And anyway, there's a separate listing for livelihood, right livelihood, so to speak, is the kind of where your work is something that, again, that comes out of your heart. And you do, although you get support for it, it's also something that you're doing, it's your heart's work as well as your, you know, as well as just your livelihood. And that on the whole, and people, you know, have tried to describe this in various ways but on the whole it's try to limit the amount of harm that's coming out of the work you do or have a work that is not harming. And Buddhists are a little bit funny about this at times. You know, they get the, you know, like the Tibetans, they live in this high country and almost everybody eats meat

[30:44]

because the soil there doesn't grow much in the way of crops and they have a few yaks, you know, grazing on the hillsides and they're not like the Indians where they preserve their cows. They actually, well, they have dairy things and they have, and then they eat meat now and again. And their idea is that every life is equally valuable so if you're going to kill something you should make it something big rather than like eating shrimps. But, and then they want to have a little, you know, sort of class of Muslims or somebody that there's a few around who actually do the butchering because that's not a good thing to be doing. So, I don't know, you know, at some point all these things, you know, I don't know. But anyway, there's this kind of, again, going back to our intention and how do we manifest our intention in the world. And so the basic point of this though is that we're,

[31:49]

we have some intention and we're not letting the circumstances stop us from trying out or practicing our intention day after day and in various ways. Okay? You know, my intention to be kind, not to harm, not to hurt. My intention to resolve things. My intention to have harmony. My intention to, in that sense, create a stable environment where pathogens can't flourish. And how do I do that? And I'm looking into that and then making some effort. And obviously, because we understand the First Noble Truth and so on, we know that there may not be much to show for this kind of effort. You know, end of the day comes or the end of the meditation or the end of our life comes and there may still be famine in the world and various things. But it doesn't mean that we shouldn't make any effort. You know, that's our heart's desire, what we would like to do

[32:52]

or express. And then the 6th, 7th, and 8th of the Eightfold Path are then right effort, right concentration, right mindfulness and right concentration. And so now we're going a little bit more into the contemplative or meditative side of this. But it's not necessarily separate from the work we're doing but another aspect of the work we're doing. I've talked now and again about effort and concentration and mindfulness. So I don't know that I'm going to... I talked about it in another context.

[33:57]

But basic effort in some way is... You know, sometimes I think about... So I'll just try to, you know, limit myself here but to say a few words. Effort in some sense is... You know, last night I did another cooking class and then at one point in the evening we each said something about what brought us to cooking. And people expressed many of the things that we find wonderful about cooking, that we can feed ourselves and feed other people and that there's a certain... there's sensual aspects to it and there's a certain kind of pleasure in the smells and the tastes and there's at times a kind of creativity and that is rewarding and there's a certain at times friendship involved in it and so on. But in some ways, you know, it all comes down to what the basic effort is. Do you do it or not? You know, and that involves a kind of...

[35:08]

You know, it's a kind of generosity whether it's cooking or washing the dishes or even just saying hello to somebody. There's a kind of generosity and basically we're alive and it's a certain effort to be alive and, you know, with all that's going on. And you've noticed that lately, haven't you? That's what I heard tonight. There's an effort just to be alive and then, you know, and then to have to have people look at you, you know. And you can hear all those accusing voices sometimes and, what are you doing to stop the war? And, you know, we're all kind of in a certain sense then, you know, life is, you know, sometimes we say precious but we can also say vulnerable. It's only a little difference between whether, you know, two or three times I've almost died in automobile accidents. You know, it's just a fraction of a second.

[36:11]

The other night I was driving to yoga class and I suddenly realized that a dog was running straight towards my car. I was going along about 25 or 30 and the dog was running as fast as he could straight towards the car. It was late in the day, sun was setting. It's that time when the headlights aren't really picking things up and the dog just ran straight into my car. I was screeching and, you know, if I had noticed the dog maybe half a second sooner, you know, because at the end, you know, I hit the dog by about half a foot or a foot or something and it went under the car and the wheel went over it. But, you know, that's not very much. And that's, you know, our life goes like that, you know. It's also like, well, you know,

[37:12]

people, we all understand this in a certain sense but there's a certain effort then to, you know, just to have to go endure life, right? Endure. And to bear the pains and everything that goes with being alive. To be present with it. That's effort. So that's basic to whatever we're doing. That kind of effort, the fact that we're here and are we going to put ourselves out or what do we do? But everything else that we do comes out of this basic effort of being alive. It's an effort to be alive. So cooking at some point is just, you know, just do it. And then if you're lucky, there's a little creativity or some other things going on and it's kind of enjoyable. But none of that happens if you sort of say,

[38:15]

no, I'm not going to do that. And meditation is the same way, right? Are you only going to meditate if it's going to be a great time and you're sure it's going to be a great time? You never meditate, right? So there's some of this, there's this effort to, in a certain sense, the Japanese Zen, they refer to this as diving into your life. This is the basic effort, just to dive into your life. And it's in that Roku poem that I used, too. It's not too late and you are not too old to dive into the depths of your life where it calmly gives out its secret. So that's effort, to dive into things. And in terms of Japanese Zen sort of understanding, then you have whatever it is. If you're washing the rice, wash the rice. When you're practicing meditation, meditate. When you're driving, drive, and so on. Whatever you're doing. So that's basic effort. Which leads into concentration, you know,

[39:17]

being absorbed in the activity that you're involved in and mindfulness, having awareness moment after moment, knowing things for what they are. And then all of this kind of, you know, this Eightfold Path keeps feeding into itself again, that you understand things, how things work, and you reconnect with your fundamental intention and you try out putting it into the world and so on. Well, I think my voice sort of tailed off there at times, but I tried to keep it up loud enough so you could hear. Could you all hear it tonight? My mom is a former drama coach,

[40:21]

so she coaches me after these events. So is there more you want to talk about tonight? Oh, it's pretty close to nine. Maybe we'll just stop. Come up and talk to me. We'll let everybody else go home. If you have something to talk about. Okay? Thank you. It's been a wonderful evening, for me at least. And I wish you well in your heart's endeavor. Yeah. I was a little late getting started tonight. Come in here. For various reasons. I haven't been feeling entirely well the last few days, so I, deception and somehow, I was very tired. So I thought rather than like having some coffee and just persevering through it, I thought I'd take a nap

[41:23]

to sort of honor the fact that I was really tired and that I might be getting sick, right? And that if I actually took a nap now, I might save, you know, days of being sick. So I took a nap, and I feel better. But then I woke up, and I had to at some point get ready to come out here. And it has to do with this event. I mean, this weekend I'm doing a cooking class, so I had to pack up all the food for the cooking class too, which I've bought over the last couple of days. You know, one thing and another, anyway. So then, you know, phone calls. There's these last-minute phone calls and things. And then on the way out here, I was almost a little bit late. I was going fairly fast on the freeway, but there was a car in front of me that, thank goodness, he was only going 62 miles an hour. So I was just following along at 62 miles an hour, and this car came up behind me, and pretty soon it had this red light flashing in my rearview mirror. So I put on my right turn signal and pulled over, and he just kept going. But it's always a little kind of ironic

[42:31]

to be speeding somewhere in order to sit still. Oh, well. And Harry, were you freeway 65? No, that's 55 on the freeway there. Oh, 55. Yeah, I was going 62. But it's not quite fast enough. You know, usually they want you to be going 65, really, before they... or 63, anyway. I mean, I don't know. It seems the last couple of weeks, the instruction I've given you before meditation has to do more with, like tonight,

[43:31]

more with attitude or what in Buddhism, roughly speaking, you know, there's perhaps two sides to meditation practice, the side which is considered to be the wisdom side and the side that's considered to be the compassion side. And naturally they kind of go along together, but the emphasis I've been giving you in the instructions is a little more on the compassion side, the side of generosity and kindness or compassion, some warmth, and to begin to cultivate a warm regard or a compassionate regard for yourself and your feelings and so on rather than being always criticizing yourself in some way, not being the way you want to be or as though it helped to criticize yourself, and by criticizing yourself you could improve. And usually this plan, you know,

[44:34]

this is an example of how suffering works because if you criticize yourself and then you improve a little bit, it works so well that you criticize yourself more so that you can improve more, but you spend most of your time criticizing yourself then and not much time actually enjoying the benefits of having, you know, strived to accomplish something or change. So it's known as suffering because you don't really get anywhere. You go around in circles. So one way to begin to change that kind of pattern is to practice compassion, so to speak, or at least as I was saying tonight, having some warm place in your heart for the possibility of compassion or warmth or kindness or generosity or patience, whatever it is. And in that sense, you know, I realized at some point it was sort of changing around the golden rule a little bit, you know, instead of doing to others as you would have them doing to you,

[45:36]

doing unto yourself as you would have others do unto you, right? So I think that's pretty useful. Instead of waiting for the world to treat you some way, to begin to treat yourself that way. It's a kind of unilateral, you know, decision then. And it's better to have some practice that is not dependent on others than to have a practice that, you know, is dependent on others behaving a certain way for you to behave a certain way, right? So tonight I was going to talk about the twelvefold chain of causation, which in some sense then is a little more on the so-called wisdom side rather than the compassion side. The twelvefold chain of causation is...

[46:40]

Why don't I, since I made the mistake on one of these other lists of not telling you ahead of time what the, you know, what the whole things were on the list, I'll tell you what they are this time. I have my notes right here in front of me. But that's just so that I feel secure. You know, in case things get really desperate, you know, I can look at them. But this chain of causation is meant to be a kind of... Well, it's various things, but anyway, I'll tell you what the twelve are. The first is ignorance. And the second, when there's ignorance, the second thing that there is, there's tendencies, mental tendencies. These are all, of course, translations of, you know, various Sanskrit or Pali terms. So second, some tendency. And then the third is consciousness. And the fourth is a body and mind. And... or it's usually translated name and form.

[47:44]

And then the next is that there's six sense organs. And once we have six sense organs, and there's always... there's some contact. Contact is the fact that then there's consciousness, the organ and the object, and they come together. And we experience a sight, sound, or a thought, a feeling, emotion. And on a particular occasion, we experience something. And the next thing that happens is there's some feeling. And the feeling then is, in this sense, is pleasant or unpleasant or neutral. Or we have some feeling about what we're experiencing. In Buddhism, by the way, there's six sense organs because there's the five usual ones, and the sixth one is mind. The object of mind as a sense organ are thoughts and emotions. Or any kind of aspects of mind.

[48:51]

And in that sense, mind is divided up between... mind as the subject and mind as the object. So since it's considered to be the sixth sense organ, it's mind. So then there's the experience... there's contact with some particular experience, a feeling about it, pleasant, unpleasant. And the next thing that happens is that there tends to be some... what's called, variously, but craving, or desire of some kind. Namely, there's some tendency when it's a pleasant, something pleasant, that I'd like to keep this around, please. See, some way I can get this to continue. There's a kind of interest in this or craving for this. And when this gets intensified, the next stage is known as clinging or thirst. Or maybe it's thirst, clinging. Anyway, this is more intensified, clinging.

[49:58]

So at this point, of course, there can be... craving is a sort of... we look at it as a kind of positive thing, but the craving leads to the stage of this clinging that either... for something to continue or for something to stop. Right? I mean, generally speaking, if it's something pleasant, we'd like it to continue. If it's unpleasant, we want it to stop. And this leads to... this is said to lead to a kind of birth. And a becoming, a becoming. And... I'm not sure if I've gotten up to 11 or 12 now, but there's three left here. So we have birth becoming us, and then we're making some movement in that sense

[51:02]

towards our desired object. And then there's... rebirth, and then there's old age, sickness, and death. So we've roughly got 12 here. It's not exactly so important that... you know, we know each 12, I don't think. I had to study up so I could tell you what the 12 all were. But you can view these... First of all, you know, we have to understand, I think, the language of this, which is, when there is ignorance, then there are mental formations. And then in each case it's like that. When there is this, then there is this. And I talked about this a little bit last week. It's the difference between cause and condition. So we don't say ignorance causes mental formations, and mental formations cause consciousness to arise. Because if you have cause, [...] this causes this, causes this, causes this,

[52:02]

then where is the possibility of any freedom or liberation? Once you've got ignorance, then the whole thing goes through. What can you do? You're stuck. Then there's no free will, it's completely determined. And things don't seem to be quite like that, right? So partly this 12-fold path is saying, when there's this, then there's this, and then when there's not this, then there's not this. It's not exactly cause because, you know, to have cause, and my example last week was, you make me angry. Well, it's not that simple, right? You know, that somebody is causing you to be angry because you also have to receive something in a certain way for you to get angry. And you have to not want to hear something or be, you know, frustrated to hear something. In some way it's upsetting for you to hear something, then you become angry. So there's other conditions as well as the condition of what somebody said. So cause, in Buddhism we say there's not any one single only cause.

[53:06]

You know, you made me angry. So if there's you, then there's also the fact that I have to have ears, I have to have been able to hear the statement, you know, and then I have to have been able to, I have to have taken it a certain way so that I can become incensed. So these are, when there's ignorance, then there is this, then there is mental tendencies, then there is consciousness. When there's consciousness, there's body-mind, and when there's that, there's the sense organs, then there's some experience. When there's experience, then there is a feeling, pleasant, unpleasant, and this feeling is what tends to give rise then to a craving and to clinging. So this is the way that, you know, more technically or more carefully, Buddhists have talked about what I've talked with you before,

[54:10]

which is just basically our tendency to want things to be a certain way. And when they're not that way, and when to find out that we have that little control over things, and to accept our little control over things is pretty difficult. And so, and we tend to have some idea that the way to go about life is kind of like the American dream, and that the idea is that if you have a desire, the way to be happy is to satisfy it. If you want something, then you get happy by getting it. But obviously, you know, most of the things we can't get, a good number of them we can't get, and then also, like, there's a good number of things we can't get rid of either. So we're sort of stuck. So what do we do? So, you know, Buddhism is saying, well, we don't have that level or capacity to control things in our life, even our own body and mind, which is getting old and decaying and getting sick,

[55:12]

and, you know, you get itches, and then there's mosquitoes and, you know, hemorrhoids, all kinds of things. I had a hemorrhoid a couple of weeks ago. It was awful. But one seems to be subject to these things whether one exactly asks for them or not, as I, you know, talked about. And on the whole, you know, I was talking with somebody recently who was talking about a friend of hers who is planning to get married in a month or so, and she's saying, I feel so sorry for her. It's not exactly like I feel so sorry, but it's like she is so in love, and I feel just kind of, you know, there's some sense of like there's a disillusionment at some point in the future there. You know, a kind of unavoidable disillusionment

[56:14]

down the road a piece. I can see it coming. But you can't exactly go to somebody like that and say, you know, don't get married because there's a disillusionment down the road, but we, you know, in some sense we get married because we have a good context for experiencing disillusionment. You know, because if we, because if we didn't have some good context for it, then, you know, we would avoid it at all costs. So we have some vehicle to experience it, you know. There are lots of good ones, you know. And meditation is a pretty good one in that sense too, because you know that if you start practicing meditation, maybe it helps you for a week or two or a couple of months, and then pretty soon you have all these problems with meditation that you didn't have, you know, when you weren't meditating. Have you noticed that? I don't know. So that certainly happened to me. I mean, I thought I was a nice person, and after a couple of years of meditation I found out I was angry a lot. And I wasn't angry until I started meditating.

[57:17]

You know. And then I got relaxed and, you know, sort of calm enough to notice. I mean, and then pretty soon I don't have, you know, such a tight control over my anger, you know. It's sort of a little more... I'm a little more relaxed and, you know, and the anger sort of sneaks up on me and gets the better of me a little more easily than it used to, you know. Anyway, you know, these things happen when you start to meditate, that you actually begin to encounter problems. Well, this was all to say that... but this is a... the twelvefold chain is a little more careful kind of elaboration of how does this happen, what is this process, what is our usual sort of way or tendency, how do we tend to go about things, and what are these roots of suffering. And this twelvefold chain, you can look at it in various ways. Sometimes it's looked at as how we have rebirth from we have a life which has the past. In the past there's some ignorance and mental tendency

[58:19]

and that leads to the present of consciousness, body, and so on, which leads to then rebirth in the next realm, the rebirth, the birth, the old age, in the future. And we can look at that in terms of life-to-life or we can look at it just in, you know, day-to-day, more in day-to-day terms. And we can also look at any particular time as having all of these aspects so we can see it both as a kind of time and as a cycle. So let me just go through a little more slowly now and talk just a little bit about some of these in particular, which I tend to think of as, for me, sort of more pivotal. First of all, this starts with ignorance. The first one is ignorance. And as I told you, I think a week or two ago, once there was that one session

[59:22]

that we had seen in Suzuki Roshi after we had this communal event where all the students asked the teacher a question. And so somebody asked Suzuki Roshi, what's the cause of suffering? And he said, ignorance. And then somebody else asked him, well, why is there all this suffering? And he said, no reason. So in a way, this explains things. But on the other hand, it doesn't really explain anything, right? We don't really know why is there ignorance. this list starts with ignorance. And I thought it was interesting. Last week, I was reading Lama Govinda's book, which is, oh, I have it here, actually. It's called Psychological Attitude of Early Buddhist Philosophy. It's a little bit scholarly. If you're looking for a beginner's book, it may not be the best one for you. But it's awfully nice, too. I like it. But what he points out is that there's two tendencies in life.

[60:23]

One is that we have some tendency to organize and centralize things. And we need that kind of aspect in our life, which means that when we take things in, it's discriminating how to take in something that's similar enough or the same enough or that can be made the same. And then we can take it in. So if we take in something that's too dissimilar from us, you know, we can actually die. It doesn't work to take in something too dissimilar, whether it's a poison mushroom or certain experiences that can be so devastating. And so it's useful to have this kind of aspect in our life that is kind of centralizing and it includes, then, this aspect of discriminating what is suitable to take in and what do I need to keep out.

[61:25]

The problem is that we tend to overdo this and then pretty soon we're not taking in very much. And if that's happening, then this results in a kind of stagnation and lack of growth because we're not taking anything in. We're being very contained. And we're trying to keep out experiences that might be painful that we don't want. The other tendency, the other thing that happens is called, you know, is the more outward going or the openness, the aspect of being open. And this involves growth. Growth comes from being open, taking things in, and then we grow. We take in food and we grow. We take in experiences and potentially grow. But to grow, of course, is something that happens automatically. Right? We get older and we don't necessarily grow. And you see, we see people who are older than us sometimes

[62:28]

who it seems like, geez, they've grown, and then we see other people who are older than us and we sort of like, what have they been doing all their life? It's kind of like, who was it, somebody who said by the time you're, it was Sartre, Genet, or somebody who said, by the time you're 50, unfortunately you're responsible for your face. Maybe even sooner than that, you know. But certainly by the time you're 50, I mean, you know, you sort of have some responsibility for your face, how you look. And it's, and you, there's, you know, some of us, there's this aspect of growing. Anyway, to grow, what's necessary is that we take things in and if you have experiences and you don't really digest the experience, then you don't grow particularly. And the digesting is sort of, in a sense, the other aspect, right? The digesting is, what is making that decision

[63:28]

and what do you actually take in and use and becomes part of your life and what are you going to discard and get rid of, whether it's food and experiences or experiences or whatever it is, right? And growth, the extreme of growth, if there's too much growth and not enough kind of discrimination, then you have, in a physical term, you have like cancerous growth. In mental terms, you have like, you know, hyper mental function. You have a kind of insanity. You have all kinds of things going on that are not getting, you know, integrated. This is kind of, you know, overly emphasizing that side, not enough centralizing and assimilating. Anyway, the ignorance, in a certain sense, is what happens, what tends to happen is that the centralizing principle or the organizing principle kind of gets a little rigidified

[64:29]

and it decides that, in fact, there's some inherent self that I have to take care of and defend from the world. And this doesn't change. There's some self that doesn't change and we're trying to maintain this unchanging self in the middle of a world that's changing all the time. And, in fact, when we're changing all the time, but we'd like us not to change because we have some idea of ourself. Only we'd like to change because we don't like our idea of ourself. But we can't change because it wouldn't be us anymore. It's sort of like that old saying that's in blues songs, you know, everybody wants to get to heaven but nobody wants to die. And even in our day-to-day life, whether it's a literal death or not, to change or to grow,

[65:29]

we have to stop being who we thought we were. the death of someone we were or are, and then we have to meet somebody that we didn't know yet we are. Somebody we don't know and it turns out it's me after all, you know, or something that looks sort of like I used to or something, you know. Well, once you have this kind of overdoing this kind of principle, then you have this basic what's going to happen to me and trying to keep myself recognizably me and I go out into the world and all these various things happen. It's pretty hard to do, to maintain what I thought of as me. And consequently, it leads to a certain kind of suffering. And there's also that another, you know, kind of aspect of that ignorance then is to say, you know, we sort of say colloquially

[66:32]

no. I mean, I don't want to have to change, you know, to accommodate a relationship or the way the world is or something. I'd like that it would be really nice if the world changed to accommodate me sort of thing, you know. Have you ever noticed that in a relationship? Why don't, you know, somebody, you say to the other person, like, why don't you change? Without and some tendency not to acknowledge how I might change. Right. And anyway, so this is the, this kind of organizing or centralizing principle overdoing it. And we need some balance in between taking stuff in and assimilating. When we just assimilate like that and we don't take stuff in, then we get stagnation. And things don't move and things kind of tend to rigidify and then when things do happen, it's upsetting. Stuff happens and it's disturbing that something has happened. So ignorance is,

[67:41]

there's various ways to look at ignorance and what, so one way is, in this kind of terms, would be to say that ignorance is this, to have this organizing principle rigidified enough so that we have the idea that I know who I am and I'm going to be on, I'm going to go on being who I know I am in spite of whatever the world does or whatever happens. And then I'm going to get, you know, the world to agree with me if I can. But another way to think about is ignorance is, you know, very literally in the sense of the term, ignoring. And what this ignoring then is, is to ignore the way things actually are. And in a very basic way, meditation is about just observing the way things are very carefully so that you know how things actually work. And when we ignore that, then we have suffering. So in those sense, in that sense, the basic thing that we're,

[68:42]

the basic things that we're, that it's considered that we're ignoring are the fact that everything is changing, including me, and the fact that there is inherently kind of some unease or dissatisfaction. You know, we can't get things perfect and keep them there. You know, even in the, you know, even when things are, you know, completely wonderful, you can find these little kind of places where it's not quite right if you look. And, and the third thing we, we overlook or we ignore is the fact that there is no inherent self. And if we look carefully, we can see that there is not a self that continues moment to moment.

[69:44]

In a very simple sense, that is just means that, you know, in any moment of experience, what is, whatever we consider to be self, what are its characteristics? And, you know, we can't exactly say that self is red or yellow or blue, and we can't say that the self has, what, certain feels a certain way, anger or no anger, which is self, the one that's angry, the one that's not angry? That's self. Or what exactly is self, right? And the conclusion is, well, but it's me. And not you. And, but each of us also, we're having experiences of other people. And where do you, where do you decide what is the other person and what is you? So on one hand, you know,

[70:46]

we can say, well, yeah, experientially, we can't really identify what would be one self as opposed to another self. In the same way that, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh has this little exercise like, take a look at your hand. Is it inside or is it outside? Well, the object of our seeing is outside, and yet our hand is clearly part of us. But, you know, and then, so the hand must be, you know, inside what is me, but, you know, it's outside my head. And, and then what about seeing? You know, well, where does seeing happen? Even though what we see is supposedly outside, but what we're seeing is happening in our experience. So pretty soon, you know, inside, outside, what is, which is, where do you decide which is self and which is other?

[71:47]

You know, somebody the other day said that I had, at a meditation retreat, I had sometimes it seemed like I was laughing a little nervously, and that she had found that distracting. So who did that? I mean, you know, it's not, you know, which is me and which is her, right? Things are always like this. We don't know exactly. Anyway, a careful observation of experience will begin to, will notice carefully what, what's what. And we won't overlook or ignore certain things that would be perhaps upsetting or disillusioning. When you live with something, somebody long enough, you know, then you, after a while you stop overlooking. The person is there and, you know, pretty soon cannot, you know,

[72:51]

when you fall in love, when we fall in love, we overlook the faults. And when we hate somebody, we overlook the virtues. But if you live with something long enough, you get a full dose of reality, you know. This is called waking up. Just seeing things carefully the way they are. And there's not going to be a particularly safe place to get to where everything will be all right and because I'm doing spiritual practice. So anyway, this is a little bit about ignorance. Thinking a certain way, then there are certain tendencies, mental tendencies. When we're ignoring the way things are, then we will tend to, you know, then we can tend to fall in love with a one-sided kind of reality.

[73:52]

We'll be experiencing reality in a kind of one-sided way or a limited kind of way. And then we will have some tendency because of that. And then our consciousness or our body will be conditioned by that. So that when we have... then we experience things and we'll have this contact with a sight, a sound, or a thought, a feeling, and so on. And then there'll be some feeling. Pleasant, unpleasant. And... and then there'll be some desire arising or some craving. Wanting this experience or this contact to continue or wanting this contact to stop. Wanting to have a different kind of contact. And then there'll be...

[74:57]

you know, this can get more intense. And then pretty soon we're propelled into action. A kind of birth action that... where we're trying to change reality or create reality or stop reality or stop it or change it or make it or happen a certain way. And then there'll be what comes next. What comes out of that. So the... we also then can look at when there's no longer ignorance then there's no longer mental tendencies then there's no longer consciousness then there's no longer contact

[76:02]

or we can look at it in that sense that the more we see things clearly or carefully then the more our action is not as colored by this kind of craving of making it or desire to make it a certain way. Now usually if this is presented one of the things that people think is that well this is just sort of surrendering or am I just giving up or do I just have to take whatever comes and so on. And it's not quite like that. It just means that we have a kind of more complete response to things. So we don't get caught up as easily in trying to make the world accord with our idea of how it should be. And also in that sense we don't because we can see that we can see the faults of someone

[77:11]

that we like a lot but it doesn't mean we stop liking them because of the faults. And we see the virtues of somebody we dislike. And we see in that sense that we have to know ourself and ourself too. We see our faults and we see our virtues and we're not trying to sort of you know there's all these things in Buddhism like don't try to become a Buddha. Don't try to make yourself into a perfect being. Or they say a clay Buddha doesn't last through water and a wooden Buddha won't go through the fire. You know don't try to become into some being that you think will last through the fire of life or the flood of life or the flood of experience. Stop trying to make yourself into some perfected person that doesn't have the problems that you have.

[78:13]

Otherwise you get caught up in this whole chain of causation or this kind of nexus of conditions which is not ending and which has no resolution. So another way to think about it as I've mentioned before too and which leads us back to the introduction tonight is to see that when we look at something like this we can see that we can't wait. If we find in our being a desire or intention to be generous or to be patient. We want to be patient with our family, with our children. If we have that kind of intention or desire then are we going to wait until the children are perfectly well behaved and then I can be patient with them? And by golly I am going

[79:17]

to get them to behave the way we want things and the way that we just get caught up and we can never be patient because they are never perfected enough. We can't get them to be you know they are still their own being. So if we want to be patient then we have to start practicing being patient whatever happens and even if we aren't patient we have this warm place and we are not waiting for everything to be just right and then we can be patient. .

[80:51]

. . . There are certain places in this you know in a certain sense we can kind of coach ourselves or be with ourselves in this process and one of the things that happens of course is that you know in terms of growth in order to have the growth rather than the crystallization of self which doesn't change and goes on being me in spite of the world if we want to have growth and capacity to assimilate

[81:53]

then you know we can work at that and so certain practices in Buddhism are aimed to help us you know not to crystallize. So for instance the practice of mindfulness which in some traditions is practiced by literally making a soft mental note inhaling, exhaling or thinking, seeing, hearing anger, noting this will help us to see how fast things change and not to identify with the changes as being you know reflective of me. You know if we note so this comes up as we have contact say with how about distaste you know or abhorrence disgust you know we have some contact with that

[82:56]

in our being we have this sort of sense of disgust or distaste if you and then you know there's some sense first of all if we're not you know so alert we are identifying me this is something that's happened to me and I am having this I feel disgusted you know and this is happening to me and I don't like this happening to me so a lot of this is just you know how we view the context in which we view things happening okay once you get caught in this view of this is happening to me it's obviously much more personal than if it's just disgust or distaste if the person across the room has disgust or distaste it doesn't bother me right but because it's happening to me this all of a sudden is very bothersome right so this this condition thing is to remind us you know we can remind ourselves then this is you know by observing

[83:57]

disgust, distaste so that's the contact and we can at that point we can note it this is what it is but we can't really note this person who's experiencing it we can note that there's this feeling and then if it keeps on happening you know pretty soon we can note well is there pleasant or unpleasant you know what if the next thing after contact is feeling pleasant unpleasant well it's unpleasant well then do you notice any clinging or aversion next thing is clinging, aversion clinging and grasping, craving or the other way around clinging okay well what's going on well I'm trying to get rid of it you know there's some aversion it's distasteful the disgust or distaste is also disgusting and distasteful

[84:59]

I'm trying, there's a certain kind of pushing it away what is the result of that pushing it away then you're sort of stuck with it okay what's going on here when something stays around huh you're rigidifying things overly rigidifying things if you want to grow you have to let go of it at some point and you have to absorb the experience okay if you want to grow you have to absorb the experience and then so sometimes this kind of careful observation of these things will help you absorb the experience so you don't endlessly go on being sort of you know as we sometimes can obsessing about something some things will take us more time to absorb than others but still we don't need to obsess you know forever

[86:00]

so we can notice if something is sticking around we can note pleasant, unpleasant grasping, averting and we can see how we participate in all of this then it's not just something that

[86:22]

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