I'd like to start, let me read just the first two Noble Truths. We'll begin talking about Dukkha and then talk about the cause. So, this, O Bhikkhus, is the Noble Truths of Dukkha. First is Dukkha. Aging is dukkha. Sickness is dukkha. Death is dukkha. Sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are dukkha. Association with the unloved or unpleasant condition is dukkha. Separation from the beloved or pleasant condition is dukkha. Not to get what one wants is dukkha.

[01:07]

In brief, the five aggregates of attachment, or the five clinging skandhas, are dukkha. Then, this obhikus is the noble truth of the origin of dukkha. It is craving, or tanha, which produces rebirth. It is craving which produces rebirth. bound up with the pleasure and greed. It defines the life in this and that. In other words, craving for sense pleasures, craving for existence or becoming, and craving for non-existence or self-annihilation. So those are the first two truths. And the way I've been thinking about them this week Remember last week we were talking about asking the question, how, rather than the question, why.

[02:11]

And what I realized is one way of looking at the Four Noble Truths is, so the first truth is, what? Just, what is it? It's suffering. The second Noble Truth is, how does it work? The third noble truth is also a what. It's a what is, or it's a there is the reality of cessation of suffering. And then the fourth noble truth is, well, how does that work? How do you do it? So that's why You know, one formulation that you often find in the sutras is, I come to teach, all I teach is suffering and the end of suffering, just talking about the whats.

[03:15]

And then the teaching is both in the nature of that what and also in nature how the end of suffering works. So just to review for a moment, just to remind us of the way to hold the notion of suffering and the experience of suffering. Just that is, there is dukkha. It's not my dukkha. It's not personalized. Each time we run into a personalization of it, whether it's owning it ourselves or trying to get rid of it, we end up having a big problem.

[04:17]

So Ajahn Sumedho writes, we look at dukkha not from the position of I am suffering, but rather there is the presence of suffering, because we are not trying to identify with the problem, but simply acknowledge that there is one. So he adds a little later, so do not grasp these things as personal faults, but keep contemplating these conditions as impermanent, unsatisfactory, and non-self. So that's just a real capsule review. I just wondered if any thoughts or questions came up to people before we go on. I'd like to get to, there was an assignment about bringing

[05:26]

some experience of Dukkha to share, but I just wonder if there are any questions first. I was just having a reaction when you were talking about that. It seemed like the effort of not to, when you say not identify with the suffering or something like that, it seemed like you have to be very careful to draw a very fine line between pushing something away and yet at the same time, what you said, not identifying with it. So what you said was just sort of being aware of its presence or accepting its presence seems to be very careful not to sort of push it away or set up sort of an artificial divide, it seems like. I don't know, maybe it's just a reaction. Well, I think it's easier to do when you actually understand it or experience it as not something to get rid of.

[06:30]

And that's, I think that's the whole point as we, you know, as we proceed. That's why all of these are sort of collapsed into each other. But I think the point as we go on and talk about, when we talk about the Eightfold Path, you know, it's a way in which you can actually experience Dukkha. without pushing it away. And that's very much in our practice, actually. This is sort of leaping a little ahead of where I thought. Let me see if I can find a place. flow in the darkness. Actually, the whole book is about suffering.

[07:33]

It's a much tougher book in a lot of ways than Zen Mind Beginner's Month. And commenting on the Sandokai, it just keeps coming back to the question of clinging. We are full of grasping and clinging as if it were an inheritance that has been passed down for an immeasurable amount of time. So it's like in our nature, I'll read more later when we get to the Second Noble Truth, but it's in our nature to grasp or to push away.

[08:40]

I mean, it's not in our true nature or our full nature, but it's in, he goes on to talk about all the ways in which we're habituated into that kind of mind and that kind of activity from infancy. So what Neo-European has to do is something that's actually quite radical. It's very radical. Not doing the ordinary. I don't know if that's a start, but it's basically something each of us has to work out for ourselves. We sort of get to talking about, is suffering simply an inevitability of life, and everyone experiences suffering, or is all life suffering?

[09:46]

And I was reading Joseph Campbell this morning, too, who has a lot to say about suffering. And he interprets the First Noble Truth as saying, all life is suffering. And that leads to that view of the negativity of Buddhism. And I'm trying to reconcile that notion of the fact that, in fact, there's a lot of pleasure in our lives right, but depending on whom you read, for some people it is, because in its essence of being impermanent, that it goes away.

[10:48]

and what our habit is. If what you're able to do is just have this pleasure and enjoy that moment and then actually enjoy the fading away of it, you know, that's fine. But usually what we do is, in watching it go away, we want to follow after and hold on. traditional Buddhism. So one list is the seven factors of enlightenment. The fifth factor of enlightenment is joy. It's just the joy or contentment that comes up with being present. And it's different from the joy of sukha, which is pleasant feeling.

[11:59]

So you have sukha, and then you have, among feelings, all feelings, as you perceive them, are traditionally seen as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. So it's sukha, or dukkha, or I don't know what the Hali word is, or neither. But that both of those are dukkha. That that kind of feeling has a potential, has dukkha. But the thing is that it's only dukkha when we cling to it. And so that's where the suffering is optional. So in that sense, life would be joyful. Life can be joyful.

[13:01]

It can be joyful in that sense that life isn't all suffering. Right. I mean, sometimes, you know, just every now and then you meet some rare being and they're just full of joy. I mean, the only people that I've met like that have been monks or nuns. But when you meet them, it's like, wow. So this is the, this is, and you know, they weren't born that way. You know, this is a way that one can live one's life. And it's really urgent. And they just, they live very lightly. The kids playing outside, your kids out here, they're there too. They are, but if you watch those, they are when they're enjoying themselves, they're enjoying themselves.

[14:04]

But if you live intimately with your kids, as a number of us do, you see how quickly that turns. And how it's like, even in the midst of the joy, They can just turn and want something else, or it will not be satisfactory. Their joy, whatever it is, is not satisfactory. So that's what dukkha means, is that unsatisfactoriness. The fact that it's not that there aren't pleasant things. It's that we have this digging and suddenly perverse minds that want to look at what's unsatisfactory in the very moment that we're enjoying something. But it's not what we think is perfect. Right. We want it to be perfect, and then we want to nail it down. And we want it to stay perfect.

[15:07]

But isn't that a learned thing? I mean, like, as a child, as an infant, as a young, very brought into, like, say if they were born into a Buddhist culture, Well, OK, I'm going to read this. I'll just tell you, it's really hard. I'm having a hard time with this stuff because each one so much, it's like hard to keep the first truth and the second truth and the third truth separate because they all really do They not only lead one to another, but they are flowing back and forth all the time. So I'm trying to make an equal effort to introduce some rationality to my presentation, but I'm willing to fail. We are full of grasping. This, by the way, is from Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, who's one of my favorite teachers of all time.

[16:15]

He was a revolutionary figure in Thai Theravada Buddhism in this century. And he was the teacher of my very close friend, Sankyakaro Bhikkhu, who actually translated this. We are full of grasping and clinging as if it were an inheritance that has been passed down for an immeasurable amount of time. We can see that from the moment of birth we receive training from those around us, some of it intentional and some unintentional, solely in the ways of ignorance, solely in the ways of grasping at self and the belongings of self. Never once were we trained in the ways of selflessness. Children never receive that sort of training. They are taught only in terms of self. Originally, at birth, a child's mind doesn't have much sense of self, but it gets stirred up by the environment. As soon as the child opens its eyes or experiences anything, it's taught to cling to that thing as being my father, my mother, my house, my food.

[17:26]

Even the dish that the child eats from has to be mine. No one else can use it. This unintentional process, the arising, development, and growth of the child's ego consciousness, occurs continually according to its own laws. By the time the child has grown into an adult, she or he is stuffed full of attachment and the mental defilements that it causes. So for us, ego is life. Life is ego. When the instinct of clinging to self is the ordinary life, that life is inseparable from dukkha. It is heavy, oppressive, entangling, constricting, smothering, piercing, and burning, all symptoms of dukkha. So if we stopped there, it would be pretty dire. book and the essence of the Dharma is like, you don't have to stop there.

[18:33]

You know, you could be free from this. You know, the one question I was thinking of is that, I mean, I could imagine that if a child is taught, you know, from the beginning, these concepts that there would still have to be this, there would still be dealing with the concept of what's theirs and there's going to be a certain amount of claiming. But if they were able to be taught from very early on not to take on, would, this is where I'm a little confused, would the condition, suffering, exist in any way beyond the group? Well, it would exist, I think, because nobody is apart from the society and the culture in which they live. So it's like you don't live in a laboratory, closed environment where all these things can be controlled.

[19:41]

You get these messages in so many different ways. Well, what I'm thinking of is, in here, I guess I was reading about what we had taught, and it was talking about And you had mentioned it last time about subject and the object of mind and the condition. There's three different sufferings, and the third suffering was... Conditioned suffering. Yeah, conditionality. But actually, well, yeah. So I'm trying to understand that in the sense of what you're taught in a conditioning. with all your sensations and perceptions. Is that different? No. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. But actually, I think that all of these three forms of suffering, so the three forms of suffering and the way they're often represented, and do we talk about this a little less?

[20:55]

The three forms of dukkha are ordinary dukkha, which is in Pali, dukkha-dukkha, the dukkha of change or impermanence, which is viparanama-dukkha, and the dukkha of conditionality, which is sankara-dukkha. And as I was thinking about it, I think they're actually all of that conditionality. Well, suffering, ordinary dukkha is seen as just sort of pain as such, actually. The ordinary, Dukkha is pain, or getting rid of what's unpleasant, or moving towards what's pleasant.

[22:06]

Those physical aspects are usually thought of as ordinary Dukkha. But that's conditional. I mean, what happens to your body if you have pain or illness? If there is pain or illness, it's because of causes and conditions. All of this is conditions. So this is just a kind of shorthand, I think, for making some simple distinctions. So the conditionality is much more to do with the ideas and thoughts of the mind? Well, they traditionally do. So, the last line that the Buddha says in the discourse where he's talking about the first couple of trips, he said, in brief, the five aggregates of cleaning are dukkha, the five skandhas.

[23:14]

So, those skandhas, should we talk about the skandhas a little? We chant them, right? Forms, feelings, perceptions, no forms, no feelings, no perceptions, no consciousness, no formation, no consciousness. Right. So, those are Those are kind of what he thinks about as the critical word there is upadana, which is clinging. That the skandhas themselves are just impermanent things that are temporary constructs.

[24:17]

But then what we tend to do with them, they have a kind of stickiness. We're drawn to them, they're drawn to us. So out of that cleaning, the cleaning is both a description of condition and it's also an action. It's a volitional action. So out of these five skandhas, they're the building blocks of what we, out of which we create a sense of self, a sense of me and mine. The Buddha said, so for example, this is a simple analogy. When all the constituent parts are there, the designation kark is used. In other words, if you have the wheels and the axles, then when they're all assembled, then you call it a cart.

[25:24]

Just so, where the five skandhas exist, we speak of living beings. So these are the constituent parts. But they themselves are impermanent, unchangeable, conditional. I had a resident meeting recently. Actually, that was a while ago. Mel said something to the effect that we don't own our own bodies. We just take care of them. Actually, there's a Christian, this sort of parallel Christian concept where everything that you are and everything that you think you own is just all a mortgage to God. And so thinking that I own my body or my thoughts or my opinions, that's exactly how I get into trouble and make trouble for others.

[26:41]

That's the kind of thing that sets person against person or race against race, nation against nation. And that comes back to the five skandhas. So that's how we view them is really critical. So let me just delineate them. So the first skandha is, and all of them, it's interesting, they all bear a relationship to sense organs, and mind organ, and perception. They're just all different ways that the things of the world and living beings interact with each other and create something. So the first skanda is form, or rupa, and it's generally seen as a material world

[27:45]

the body itself, the elements of earth, water, fire, and air. And it also refers to the five sense organs themselves, the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and touch, and the objects of those sense organs. So that's the first one. All of the rest of the other four are all, in a sense, expressions of consciousness. So the second skanda is feelings, or vedana. And so as I said, those feelings are pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. They are what arises through the meeting of your physical and mental sense organs in the world.

[29:00]

In other words, my legs are crossed. And the feeling that arises when I put my attention there Just the bare feeling may be pleasant or unpleasant or neutral. Right now it's neutral or pleasant. If I sat like this for another hour or so, the same activity coming through the same organ of sense would probably, I might find it unpleasant. So right there is where, when you look at conditionality from another aspect, when you look at it from the aspect of dependent origination, right there is where you have the opportunity to let go.

[30:06]

that's the best opportunity to let go. You know, just to say at that point, whatever's going to be pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, it's all just stuff coming through. And it doesn't necessarily have any real substance. And my bare interpretation of it has no real meaning to it. So that's a good place to let go. But then we move on to the next one, the next skandha. Yeah, sure. Yeah, interruption. I have an intuitive feeling to this, but when I think about it that way, you know, my logical biological part starts fighting. And I think, why would you say, oh, well, what's going on is lactic acid is building up in my legs and, you know, this process of physical things is going on and I feel pain.

[31:17]

Like, why is that? Why? And if I should shift my position so that... No, that is something that's happening. So, the lactic acid building up is where, that's why these things are constantly flowing. The lactic acid building up is form. It's rupa, rupa kanda. So what we're doing is we're constructing self out of these constantly shifting things. Sometimes, you know, Often, if we're dealing with our bodies, there's a form element. You can't get around that. But there's also a conscious element, and we could debate for the rest of the year whether that's a matter of chemical... Is that chemical activity?

[32:22]

Is it something else? Who cares? The fact of the matter is that it's flowing. back and forth, so that's not a wrong interpretation, but what you make of it is, that's where you have the opportunity to intervene with your consciousness. So, the next, so it's Formed Feeling Perceptions, or Sanna, which is the faculty that recognizes feelings or sensations, that names them, conceptualizes them, that starts saying, you know, it's like, not just, so I'm sitting here and my legs, say, are hurting. And so the feeling level would just be, there is pain.

[33:23]

The perception level would be there's pain in my leg, you know, and it's like this and has these qualities. So you would do that with each. It's where we start to have sort of conditioned responses, where we start comparing the feeling to things that are in our memory. We begin to categorize Isn't that where opinion comes up? Yeah. Yes. That's exactly where opinion comes up. You begin to have an opinion about it, you compare it, you categorize it, and you describe, you start putting a name on the relationship between, on the relationship

[34:27]

of between, what emerges between your internal faculties and objects, or mind objects, because this also includes, it's not just senses, but it's also thoughts as well. So, so far? Is that why you're saying it's good to stop at feeling? Because you do get to the perceptions when you start? Once you get, you stop at feeling. Let go of feelings. Well, right, because once you get to the perceptions, then you're already, if you're getting to opinions, then you're already getting to your habitual mind. And it's like, you're going down the track. I know I'm experiencing it, so I'm distracted. I wish we could get to sleep. There was some homework. There was, and we will get to it. I can't have distracted before, so I'm just doing it slowly. Okay. I'm trying to read. So I'll have to hold on until we get there. I think so. But I've got to finish this thongus.

[35:29]

OK. And once we start it, we have to finish it. It won't be that much longer after that. I have a question. Yeah. Can you have, you know, I sort of struggle with this sort of knowing if it's beneficial just to know what it is that to put into name, to sort of have an idea of what it is that's coming in, and feelings, without necessarily having an opinion about it. I'm just having a difficult time having both those things going on at the same time. It feels like having an opinion is a low step. that you can perhaps have feelings and then have a perception about the feeling without necessarily taking that next step to have an opinion or a judgment about it?

[36:31]

Because it happens so quickly. It happens very quickly. It happens very quickly. But this is where it's usually described as happening. I mean, this is where it's described we start having conditioned responses. to a feeling. So it moves very quickly from the sensation, from moving from name to... From pain to I don't like it. Yeah. Perception to I don't like it. Right. It's like this is bad. This is a bad thing. Right. I mean, I could go at it from another angle. We could talk about it. in terms of the way things evolve in dependent origination. But I don't want to do that, because that's even more complicated and abstract. But we can talk about that. What I like is there is a line from the Diamond Sutra that just says, and it's talking about the skandhas, where there is perception, there is deception.

[37:44]

Is that where you think, so you can't say that that's the root of the mind? Yeah. That's where it really takes... That's where it takes root, right there. When it moves beyond feelings into perceptions. So then, the fourth skanda is where it's called formations or sankara. And that's where karma starts to be created. In the formations is where we turn from, we move from the feeling to a naming or a characterization of that feeling to the desire to do something about it. So in this skanda, in formations, that's the home of all volitional and mental actions.

[38:59]

So that's where karma Karma begins in thoughts. It's expressed in thoughts, words, and actions. And this is the level at which you decide you're going to do something about this perception. You've had it before. You're going to do something about it. Or, I'm angry at you, and I'm going to So I'm going to do something behind your back, or I'm going to yell at you or abuse you in some way. I think it's where you start thinking about what that action is. And as soon as you start thinking about it, then it starts to have... it has an effect on how you live. Where does attention fit into that?

[40:02]

I think that intention... Intention in which sense? Well, suppose you have a pain in your leg and you move past tolerating it as neutral pain to not like pain. So there could be something with a negative karma of being really averse to this pain and not being able to tolerate it efficiently. But there could also be a knowledge that you've got trouble with your kidneys and you should not be in a transition for a very long time and your intention is to be kind to yourself and to maintain a healthy body. So then you might, or I might, breathe three times and very mindfully make the decision to out of kindness and compassion myself to recross my knee. Right. So I just wonder in this list of these karmas where that kind of intention, because whatever we do has karma, it's a question of whether we can generate hopefully some karma that's for the benefit of the world by acting in a kind of way.

[41:23]

Well, not exactly. Because in the traditional understanding, what you are aiming for is the non-production of karma. You know what I'm talking about? I mean, like, so it means, yeah, I mean with the Buddha, The Buddha and the Arhats are in a place where their actions don't create karma. What about Bodhisattva? Bodhisattva consciously puts themselves in the karmic realm. They subject themselves. So by willingly, intentionally staying in that karmic realm, as a matter of choice, they subject themselves to suffering.

[42:24]

They're willing to endure suffering for the sake of helping others. Well, that's when you're talking about beneficial karma. Yeah. Karma's not all bad. Karma's just actions. And the fruits of karma, they can be good or bad. So what you're talking about is where you start again if you're looking at the the wheel of becoming or the wheel of dependent origination it doesn't just move one way you know it's like it's you know at almost any point you can reverse it so you know you can make a decision to do something that's wholesome and move back you know let go of that attachment. I guess I just wonder where it is in the scheme. And if there is no I, then who is this I that has an intention to be beneficial rather than destructive?

[43:33]

Or is that just another form of schism? happens to go in another direction, in a destructive one. It's a skanda of consciousness, which is the next skanda, which is in constant motion. And it can move in either direction. So those are Just in brief, those are those five elements, and they happen real fast, as we know. You can move to a point of aversion just like that. So that's why in a lot of Zen interpretations of, say, the wheel of becoming, you're reborn moment by moment.

[44:34]

And Buddhadasa actually thinks of it that way. And then there's a whole other way of looking at where you're reborn over three lives. I can't, that doesn't make any sense to me. But let's go back now to what Ellen was saying. Wait, can you just say one more thing about consciousness? So formations were starting to make ideas of action. Right. So what's consciousness exactly? How is consciousness different from that? Let me see if I can... The fifth is the aggregate of consciousness. Consciousness is a reaction or response, which has one of the six faculties, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind as its basis, and one of the six corresponding external phenomena, visual form, and so on.

[45:45]

It should be clearly understood that consciousness does not recognize an object. It is only a sort of awareness, awareness of the presence of an object. So consciousness is just the awareness of the working of your mind. So in a way, the three, you've got Form, which is kind of an unavoidable reality on one end, and you have Consciousness, which is kind of an unavoidable reality on the other end, you know, the working of the body and material world, the working of the mind. And then in the middle, you have this process of what So this consciousness is just the working of the mind. It's just awareness. It's sort of a self-awareness.

[46:48]

So I think that this can be very abstract. But I feel like you need to talk about it if you talk about the five cleaning skandhas or dukkha. If that's kind of in brief, the five cleaning skandhas or dukkha, then you have to have some sense of how this works, or theoretically how it works. But all you really need to know is, You can let go at feelings, which is the most effective place to let go. Each successive one, it actually gets harder, because you have more invested, you know, by the time you say, but if you have just pain, you can stop there and say, well, there's pain.

[47:49]

And I can accept it. It's easier to let go at that point than to say, oh, there's pain in my leg, I know where this is going. I've had this before. That's already, you're bringing some mental energy and cannabis to bear on that. And then at the next ones, this is pain in my legs and I've got to do something about it. Here's what I'm going to do about it." At each point, it gets more and more difficult just to accept the fact that it's not your pain. It's just, there is pain. Or the same thing with joy, or pleasure, let's say. It's like, oh, there is pleasure. this feels really good, and I want some more of it.

[48:56]

How am I going to get more of it? And then, oh, it's going away. So those three in the middle, I think that's where you really have to investigate. Is the pain itself objective? Is it absolute? And just the perception and the feeling of it is... You tell me. Is it absolute? Well, I can say that if the skandhas are shadows, if they're not absolute, if they're deceptions, then the objects that they attach to, or cling to, must also be empty. And then suffering itself is empty. It's good logic. Now all you have to do is live that way. I mean, but that's the logic.

[50:00]

But there is also a way of, in practice, what we're trying to do is actually experience it. So that's why, this is what you were saying at the beginning of your talk earlier, you press it to make a mistake on purpose. Because I can't, all I can do is, We can just lay this stuff out, and we can talk about it, but the real work is not here. It's for each of us to do as we face the wall, for each of us to do as we meet each other, or interact with other people or things. So, that's a gift. Could you perhaps say a little bit more about neutral feelings? Because it seems to me that in that little ground there is sort of the path through getting attached one way or the other and just letting things be.

[51:11]

Well, it's not really a neutral ground. It just happens to be something that we don't, we're not likely to build a response. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It's like it's something... But you can't make something neutral. No, I'm not thinking that you can. Just that something can happen, there can be a feeling about it, but there's no reaction to the feeling. I mean, that's sort of my experience around what so far I've come to consider might be a neutral feeling. Well, I don't know that this... Yeah, you would build... Attachment? What? No attachment? Yeah, you would build less attachment on it. But you can't control what you feel. Well, of course not. Why can't you make things neutral? I'm not going to see what I'm doing. You can make them neutral. If there's pain in my leg, and I'm having a reaction I've labeled it pain,

[52:17]

to let go of the concept of pain, let go of the aversion, and just be with the sensations. That's sensations, but to do that with an emotion, or to do that with someone's face, say, oh, there's a reaction to the space, and this reaction has got condition to it. I know the reasons for it, but that's not always necessary. And then I can go back and be open to that face, and let maybe some new information come towards me from that face. I think that's right, actually. And with thoughts also, I'm having a thought about, you know, a story in my head, a very elaborate story about something. And I can make that story and say, that's a mental formation. I think that's right. I think that's actually working the... I sort of find that almost like seeing things as being empty because I see where they're connected to and that sort of lets everything go.

[53:34]

I mean, that's what you're reminding me of. I would be doing that sort of stance. But isn't that, like the little channel, the idea of knowing something, seeing it and letting it go, you know, and that you may see something and they, you're talking about having gone further along the standards, but yet then letting go once you recognize that and getting back to a place where you feel neutral or where you're no longer in duality. But for me, it's when the pain becomes intense, the pain of my feeling of contraction, which means my ego's up. The contraction inside myself is a sign there's suffering. So what am I clinging to here? What do I want? And I'm trying to get back to, you know, what... But I think that neutralizing reality is different than what they're talking about when they talk about pleasant or pleasant or neutral.

[54:36]

They're talking that there are actually some sensations, maybe brushing your teeth, that are neutral sensations. And that's usually what they mean when there's the three. It's brushing your teeth. It's what your foot might feel like on the floor right now. It's not pleasant or unpleasant. It's sort of there. I think that's right. But once you actually had a response to something, then you're creating, then dukkha is created. And then you have to go, then it's birth. You don't have to cling to it. You do not have to cling to that moment. Right. It's just like coming back to the breath. Right. So it's like a story about the thought. Right. Actually, you have to go through the whole process of birth and let go again.

[55:41]

And that, I think, that's part of, again, the Noble Eightfold Path. But we will come back to that, how that works. But let's go back. Or rather, who wrote something or brought something to share as an experience of suffering? Well, I didn't write anything, but there's something happening right now which seems to be about this inability to understand what's going on. And I'm sort of seeing, I mean, I understand which is that, okay, you're there, you're reading this stuff, I'm listening.

[56:44]

I can't conceptualize it in the way you're talking about it. And initially I just kind of float with that and sort of know somewhat from past experience that there's a way, there's a chance that it might come together. But increasingly, if it doesn't come together, well, I don't know what the thought or feeling, what comes first, but I begin to, well, I guess I begin to think, I don't understand this. And then I think in the future, I'll never understand it. And then I start feeling this sort of sinking feeling and sort of despairing. And then I just do all kinds, then it's like everybody in the room understands it except me, except this woman who's smiling over here.

[58:00]

And then it becomes, you know, I'm in a foreign country and I can't speak the language. And I mean, this is all, now I'm sort of still here. And it's, you know, and So like, when I can tell you about it, but if I'm not talking about it, then the despair begins to creep in. And I'm different, and I'm impaired, and I could be with you for five minutes, but I'm not. And even people laughing, I'm impaired. And this is sometimes when I'm here, I feel like I'm the only person who's like this and other people aren't. Of course, let me find out the other stuff's not true. So all of that, you know, from... So that's sort of the mini creative suffering. But then I can sort of... Sort of let go of it and kind of

[59:06]

go back to that place of, OK, well, now, tomorrow come in. I don't know what else to say, but that's sort of how it goes. And in circumstances where there's not the knowledge, and the knowledge that I have about my experiences with the victim and the people here are, they're good, whatever that means, so that I don't really have to despair. Some part of me knows that. But the experience that I just described is very real. And the despair at not understanding is intense. And at times, I choose to delve into that. At times, that becomes the reality. So, and I just didn't, then it goes places like, well, I shouldn't be at this end center.

[60:13]

Maybe I'm a Christian, you know. I at least don't understand, so I didn't put it on. I can't accept, you know, so. I didn't laugh at that. You see that? I was like, didn't you laugh at that? Well, I think you understand the process from the inside out. And there's nothing incomplete about your feeling of how these things are unfolding. You know, you're experiencing it in a very non-abstract way. All of us are trying to get to the place where we ask, what do I do with that so that I don't suffer?

[61:23]

So, you know, it's not really important. It's not important to me. I'm not going to give out a quiz right now and ask each of you to write out, what were the five skandhas? And how did they work? That's not so important. What's important is to see just, first of all, the first noble truth, to see just this fact of suffering. Second noble truth, to see How it's doing its work on each of us. And that's what you described. Can I ask a question here? Yeah. I think one of the things that confuses me is how is this different than me sitting in a group of patients at the hospital, the psych hospital, Warrenwood, and talking to them about the fact that the antidepressants that they're taking

[62:29]

are only part of the answer that they have to work with their thinking about cognitive therapy, which is a psychological system of thought. In some ways, it's like, oh, that's just really humiliating. That's kind of what I'm teaching them. But it's not. Because I can read it, and I can understand what it's saying. And I didn't actually listen to it before I handed it to you, and I didn't understand it. So, how is it different, or...? I think... I mean, I don't know any of that kind of information. But what I think is happening is that something I want to talk about it in the framework we've been doing it. So, you know, the feeling turns into a perception.

[63:34]

You begin to name what your experience is, and then you, you know, then you bring your, you know, the habits of past lives to bear. Past mental lives, moments that are just recurring. And, you know, you end up going down that track. Because it's appropriate. And the challenge is, stop it. You know, just, how do you not go there? Let me read something again, a little further from Rudraksha about about cleaning, about Vedana, he puts a large emphasis on Vedana.

[64:40]

So, the thing that comes before Vedana is just bare contact. something that has no name, just contact with the senses with something. And then you have a feeling. You begin to, Vedana is beginning to exercise a judgment about this, pleasant, unpleasant, calm. You begin to categorize. For the average person, it is extremely difficult to prevent sense contact from developing through Vedana. As soon as there is sense contact, the feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction always follow immediately. The process doesn't stop at contact, because most of us have never been trained in Dharma. But there is still a way to save ourselves. When Vedana has already developed,

[65:46]

Although there is already a feeling of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, stop it right there. Let feeling remain merely as feeling, and then pass away. Don't allow it to go on and concoct, cling, foolishly wanting this or that in reaction to satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Once there is satisfaction, there is desire, craving, indulgence, possessiveness, envy, and there is a stream of consequences. Once there is dissatisfaction, there is the desire to harm, to hurt, to devastate, even to kill. If there are these sorts of desires in the mind, it means that Vedana has already concocted a plan. In this case, one must suffer from the spiritual disease of dukkha, and nobody can help.

[66:48]

All the gods together cannot help. The Buddha said that even he cannot help. He has no power over the law of nature. He is merely the one who reveals it, so that others can practice in accordance with it. If one practices correctly, one doesn't suffer. Thus, it is said, if Vedana has already concocted clinging, if Dhillon has already concocted clinging, nobody can help. As soon as any form of craving or clinging has arisen, there inevitably must be dukkha. Does that make some sense? But the ability to transcend clinging, It seems to me that in the ability to transcend clinging, there is satisfaction, which is not neutral. That there's a smile on the Buddha's face, there's a little smile on the face of the deity.

[67:54]

Well, I think the smile on the Buddha's face is just ease and contentment. But if you look at the stages of of the great beings who are us, who are gradually, stage by stage, free of defilements. The last thing, the last one, is arrogance. Not arrogance. Well, it's pride. Not even pride, but just... Transcending clinging. You don't go to neutrality. You go to a kind of contentment. And contentment is not neutral. Right. And when you go there, you don't stop there. There's a lot of work to do.

[68:54]

But I'm wondering if you don't need to, I mean, I hope that one would have a sense that, well, I'm here because I'm not there. I mean, I'm saying this pretty well, but my thought would be that you wouldn't have gone through this whole process, realizing that you would be in that state of being content without realizing that you'd accomplished something because you weren't getting a task or whatever it was. I wonder, too, if the contentment why we're done feeling and let it pass away, which is the ability, the knowing that you can let something pass away, which ultimately is a contentment with impermanence. But that's the thing, because it will keep happening, right?

[69:56]

So it's not... That's the thing. Right. I think that's one of the factors of enlightenment. But, as a factor of an awareness, the fifth factor of awakening is joy of pre-healing. Joy goes with happiness, sukha, but there are differences. When you are thirsty and a glass of water is being served to you, that is joyful. When you are actually able to drink the water, that is happiness.

[70:58]

It is possible to develop joy in your mind even when your body is not well. This will, in turn, help your body. Joy comes from touching things that are refreshing and beautiful, within and outside of ourselves. Usually we touch only what's wrong. If we can expand our vision and see what is right, the wider picture always brings joy. we must take that on from a Mahayana perspective, which is somewhat different from what you're going to get from Buddhadasa. And yet, I mean, what he's going to say. And yet, when you meet, I never met Buddhadasa, but when you meet somebody like Mahagosananda, who's a monk from Cambodia, who I've been around a lot, you just see there's this joy, and it's very empty.

[72:06]

It's empty of preference. Whatever happens, it's OK. And I think that's the stage that it would be nice to arrive at. And actually, I think you can do it. I think one can do it. I believe it because it's what I work with in living myself. And I know what I was like 15 or 20 years ago. And I know It's like some of the processes you described. It's just like, sometimes I feel like I was just on a train, just roaring downhill, and there was no stopping.

[73:07]

And I just thought, well, this is the way it is. Shit, this is hell. But you can actually learn to work with it. control these things so that you have a greater measure of freedom. Which leads me to think that you can work with them, and I've been assured of this, you can work with it so that you can actually be free. Be more, be pretty fully free. And that's the kind of goal we should have in mind. The practice. Not to settle for less. That's, I mean, that is what Suzuki Roshi teaches you all the time. He says it in a soft way, he says it in a hard way. Is it a matter of control or is it a matter of acceptance? Both.

[74:09]

Acceptance is a matter of control, in a way. It's a question of, the way Suzuki Roshi puts it, who's the boss? Are your feelings, basically, who's the boss? Meaning, are your feelings the boss? In other words, are you pushed around by what you perceive as pleasant or unpleasant? Or is your conscious mind able just to see through, to see those things as transparent and not be pushed around by them? Does that make some sense? It does, and I guess I struggle with the, as I use the term, sit and let my emotions, so that my feelings aren't pushed away, that I don't control.

[75:13]

I actually try to avoid that. You try to avoid what? Control. Because then I feel like I'm denying something. I think we're not talking about control in the same sense. It's really important to get that clear because I'm not talking about manipulation or control in a mechanistic way or stuffing those feelings. And when you talk about sitting with them, that means having some measure of ability to look at them without being pushed around by them. I'm just talking about not being pushed around by them. There's no way you can keep things from arising, at least the feelings. That's what's going to happen. But Suzuki refused to let us talk about that.

[76:18]

Well, you be the boss. Or, as in this talk that I gave a couple of weeks ago about Joshu, the great Zen master, he said, you're, somebody asked a monk, asked him a question, he said, you're used by the 24 hours. I'm used to 24 hours. It's an interesting conundrum because, yeah, we're talking about acceptance, but acceptance calls for an incredible amount of self-control. So let's go back.

[77:28]

We only have a few minutes. I want to go back and reread the Skanda of rather, the Second Noble Truths, because we've been talking all around it, which is fine. But let me read it again. This, O Bhikkhus, is the Noble Truths of the origin of Dukkha. It is craving which produces rebirth, bound up with pleasure and greed. It finds delight in this and that. In other words, craving for sense pleasures, craving for existence, or becoming, that's craving for non-existence or self-annihilation. So he's categorizing it in different ways. But I want to see if I can find this.

[78:33]

Well, this gets to both of these things. This is a literature in its own language. We must treat things as part of ourselves, within our practice and within Big Mind. Small Mind is the mind that is under the limitation of desires for some particular emotional covering. or the discrimination of good and bad. So for the most part, even though we think we are observing things as it is, actually we are not. Why? Because of our discrimination or our desires. The Buddhist way is to try hard to let go of this kind of emotional discrimination of good and bad, to let go of our prejudices and see things as it is. When I say, see things as it is, what I mean is to practice hard with our desires.

[79:56]

Not to get rid of desires, but to take them into account. If you have a computer, you must enter all this data. This much desire, this much nourishment, this kind of color, this much weight. We must include our desires as one of the many factors in order to see things as it is. We don't always reflect on our desires. Without stopping to reflect on our selfish judgment, we say, he is good, he is bad. But someone who is bad to me is not necessarily always bad. Someone else, he may be a good person. Reflecting in this way, we can see things as it is. This is Buddha mind. So that actually, that's another response to what you were asking. And that's, you know, that's Suzuki Roshi's attitude of how you, you know, that this craving, it exists, and we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking we are seeing things as it is.

[81:11]

That's his phrase, which is plural into one multiplicity of things into one big thing. So using that example that you lended with, would it be not saying, well, I don't really like this person, or this is a bad person, not just saying, not saying, oh, that's bad, but I'm not going to have that, or I'm not going to take that, but just saying, well, I don't really like this person, as a big person. And that's the point. Well, the point is that there is no, there's not necessarily an objective truth. You know, that what, so what you're looking at is just your subjectivity. And once you see your subjectivity, then, you know, your subjectivity, which is your, your clinging.

[82:15]

If you can see your clinging, then you don't have to be trapped by your clinging. which usually means, in terms of personal interactions, means you don't have to put the person in a certain bag. When you put that person in that bag, then, lo and behold, they tend to act just like you expect. Whereas if you don't do that, but if you recognize that there's good and bad, and that they're all mixed up, and you treat this as a complexity that is not a part of you, that you guys are doing this together, then something else is going to happen. You may not like it, but something else is going to happen.

[83:17]

Is that what is meant in the reference to craving which gives rise to rebirth? And if not, what does it? Well, that is a direct reference to the wheel of life and death. So, quickly, I'm not going to get into this in great detail now, force me to think about it. The way, basically, so you have contact, just bare, the contact of senses. Put my hand on something, on something cold. And right then, it's just contact.

[84:21]

Then, out of that, Oh, cold, or no, out of that just unpleasant. I don't like this. That's feeling. Then, in this particular system, depending on your imagination, the next thing you would have, you would go to craving. You know, say, I want to get away from it. You know, which is In that case, the craving for non-existence, the non-existence of this feeling. And then craving leads to grasping towards some other state of being. That leads to actually becoming, which leads to birth. And then that leads to old age and death.

[85:28]

So this stuff just unfolds. And you can think of it as your life unfolding that way. You can also think of it as just each moment unfolding that way. I find that that's a much more useful perspective. the long, the lifetime perspective is a little grim and deterministic, I'm afraid. So, I think that was so helpful. But, I think what it is, you know, that's just another It's just another perspective for looking at the way things move. And again, in these sutras, the wheel of life is depicted in the sutras in a lot of different ways.

[86:34]

Sometimes it's moving around one way, and then you can also reverse it and move back through those stages. in some sense of freedom. And then there are other places where you start in the middle. And I can't pretend to have a good-looking understanding of something like this. It's slowly approaching as something to, as a matter, as a course of study. But it's a lot more complex. than just the bare fact of suffering. And in Zen, we don't talk about these stages and phases. In fact, I was looking through Zen My Beginner's Mind, and it doesn't mention

[87:41]

It doesn't even mention the Four Noble Truths in any place in there. And in fact, you hardly ever find any talk of the Four Noble Truths in Zen koans. You know, except there's this one, which I'm going to read to you and then we'll end here. Master Sagan, or Jinyuan as he's known in Chinese, was a disciple of the Sixth Patriarch. who's a really major figure, Zen Master Wineng. Qingyuan came to Wineng troubled by the idea of this step-by-step practice that we've actually been having some trouble with. He asked, what should I do so as not to land in some class or stage? Wineng responded, what have you done so far? Qingyuan entered, I've not even practiced the Four Noble Truths.

[88:51]

The Master said, well, what stage will you fall into? Qingyuan replied, if I have not even practiced the Four Noble Truths, what stage could I fall into? The Sixth Patriarch was greatly impressed. So maybe that was unfair of him. But that's a negation in the same way that we say, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue. It was not a rejection of the Four Noble Truths. It was a plunging to the heart, through the heart of God. to a life of freedom. And being sincere enough to come to his teacher for help, at the same time being honest enough to express his freedom and his doubt in his freedom,

[90:17]

come up together, which is just a wonderful attitude towards our practice. His doubt and his confidence, what he knew, included the fact that he still needed to understand more. So, that's what we're trying to do. So, yeah, I'm thinking about it. What? Well, it's not too hard. Let's see how well you all did. Did anyone actually write anything? You did? Good. Well, I don't think that this assignment is going to be an extension of that one.

[91:19]

I'd like you to think about an example of how you make dukkha, how you create suffering, either by clinging to it or by blaming others. Judas was talking about this last week, and so I was looking through his Thich Nhat Hanh book, and there's this quotation in Thich Nhat Hanh's book, in the Har Buz teaching. He says, until we begin to practice the second noble truth, we tend to blame others for our unhappiness. So one thing you could do is catch yourself doing that.

[92:23]

Then bring in to share, honestly, an example of a place this week when you blame someone else for your unhappiness and you caught yourself, caught yourself doing it. And if you do that, then you know, then you get a star for working with the second movie. Okay? Thank you.

[92:49]

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