Baizhang's Fox

00:00
00:00
Audio loading...

Welcome! You can log in or create an account to save favorites, edit keywords, transcripts, and more.

Description: 

Being clear about cause and effect, intention, karma.

Auto-Generated Transcript

will the sound of an in meditation maybe should stay with feelings for a long time until he really see the comic that they can comic conditioning pattern
you can't always see feeling not because it's not the only thing that's happening you don't just go around having feelings you have to have other families you have to other experiences to get up and down those stairs
but you can have quite a few feel is going up and on the set of stairs because they're have turned out to be quite a bit of
moments from the bottom of the stairs to stop at the top of the stairs unless you go very fast
so there will be some feelings probably going up and down a set of stairs but the lot of other experiences to so you can't just focus on i shouldn't say you can't but we're not recommending only box on feelings because then you'd be skipping over a lot of other stuff in your life but you do get chance a lot of chance to
to be aware of things a lot often they're strong enough to that's what they do come up and you do notice but some people although they're having feelings they don't even notice them
if you ask am i having a positive negative or neutral sensation
the can of the question not because they're not having them but because they haven't learned how to spot them
so when you're having a feeling hey you don't have to go to your way to have it
when you're conscious of pain it's no skin off your nose to be conscious of having pain
and so wired and while you're there you might have you might also practice a little meditation and karma
if you have any obstruction to the buddha away he must check out that think of there's where your there's where the obstruction occurs that's that's where the extract the obstruction production the a structured productions exposed around that thread of feeling
okay
there's lot of other stuff to do but that don't miss those chances
because that's that's the place to turn into the process
of comic hindrance and find the pivot of the pivotal experience there
yes plan
could you speak up
well resemble the sound of an airplane
our sound which i call the sound of an airplane
a color
a touch smell or taste
a conceptual cognition
all these are good cops sensations
hmm
pardon
if you caught in this case you caught thought sensation
and you have that you have feelings about these sensations
a and you can do you have every every time you have a sensation you have a feeling about it now you not all the feelings man i was right up front like what sometimes you look at a color and you'd aren't aware that you have a positive sensation sometimes you are but even if you're not aware there is a positive sensation there
so there's five aggregates but which and you're gonna be aware of
well basically going to be aware of all five sometimes but in a given moment the one that you're actually conscious of as the object of your main consciousness it's gonna be one of it one before
and and you can be aware a body
so if it's a aware as you say i say not aware of body you can be aware of the things that the body sensitive to
like color
at that time the second aggregate is is operating to so there's a sense of pleasure pain or neutral when you look at all colors have call you look at there's a positive negative neutral sensation but that very moment where you for your first registering the color
you aren't consciously looking at the at the sensation of pain your pleasure but then my can call look directly at the sense of pain or pleasure and you can have pain or pleasure about looking at the pain or pleasure because the my know knows the pain or pleasure you can have pain about that too
you can have pain about pleasure
and you can you can have pleasure about pleasure and you can have neutral sensation about pleasure
maybe you know something about this
right
guess
going through it
yes
yes

a version is not to say now
that's the conditioning process
a version is not pain it just that we are often condition to avoid pay
the version or the moving away is part of it is part of the conditioning process if a pain arises in you move away the consequence of moving away
the consequence of wishing to move away or intending to move away is going to be the next time pain arises it's going to be conditioned by that past conditioning
but the pain pleasure neutral just observing them does or not like the conditioning does or the maturing of conditioning
to some extent but they're not conditioning themselves
however when pain arises which means when you're when you evaluate situation is painful
again due to past conditioning it's a come that's the second skanda it's accompanied by the force scanned and in the forest gonda there's all kinds of conditioning factors which can now operate on that feeling or not
but there's probably a tendency to opera in a feeling because the past of the opportunities here to operate on were activated so the sun tendency to do it again
but if it you can actually train yourself both to catch the condition is continuing are emerging again but sometimes not do it sometimes just deal with it and those conditioning is cut
and that that of course tends to promote
tranquility however noticing the karma consequent noticing the comic conditioning arising with a feeling is also transformative because you know now you're not just cutting the conditioning you're observing the conditioning and your and you starting to see how it works so that's all
so useful so having moments where it's cut are useful calms you down and when you're com to observe how it works
is in sometimes even more ultimately useful than cutting it out
because then you get to see that actually
there's a way to neither fall into it or not fall into it but to see it clearly is really what is living in the world with all kinds of all kinds of causation
and freedom

it's not justice such this yeah
you

inside
i think you should show me the text was look at the text together and have do we figure it out we can tell us that group of the answer the question is okay
so get the find that text and show it to me yes

ha
so unless you know where are we hear every moment
for further you know for the foreseeable future when consciousness arises it arises with an intention it's a normal you very important mental factor that rises with all cognition is an intention which is in other words mental karma arises with most almost all state
it's of cognition
hmm
what might it be
it might be an intention to do something skillfully or might be an intention to not to not particularly care about twenty skillfully because you know which goes along with doesn't really matter whether you doing skillfully are not so in that kind of that's kind of an unwholesome environment where you don't think it matters whether your pay attention or not so
so then there might be an intention which kind of like i don't really care about paying attention to your intention or attention or any thing i'm just going to like
go with the flow of my inertia in comic constant duration camps
that's kind of unwholesome intentions
but it's still that would coward be are quite an unwholesome intention not too many people in this room think that way ever except when they're really upset maybe can trying to take revenge on the universe but you know that that would be an example of an unwholesome intention

well
and a certain point the yeah there's the intention to study karma which is different from the intention to do awesome things
sit in a skillful way
and you had this intention to sit in a skillful way or eat lunch mindfully and carefully
or you know
clean the temple carefully and skillfully which would you know in such a way as to bring benefit to all beings this this is like grab your intention gay
and you can earn you can have some understanding like this activity falls into kind of causation or doesn't or something like that
that can be carded the environment of this intention
but there could be another intention which is really not about cleaning the templar are sitting up straight but the intention to study the intention
that intention is it intention which can cause a pivot
a transformation
of this enclosing in trapping process this samsara process of even wholesome things tend to and even wholesome activities have consequence which tend to drive even in this case somewhat more happily tend to drive intentions to do more wholesome thing
things and have more wholesome consequences but it still is kind of enclosing cognitive karmic
world
which doesn't actually see the whole picture of causation because it mostly seeing causation terms of what you think of doing not what you're doing with every all beings beyond your cognitive grasp are actually working together in a bigger way than our mind can grasp but we'd also much but in one of the ways we worked to
gather is as beings who live in caught cognitive realm that's one of the ways we worked together we are in that that's that is important but we but the mind tends to create an impression that that that the way the mind sees the world is the way it is the way the my sees causation is the way it
it is and we tell stories of causation within the cognitive realm and say that that's the way things are actually happening so you know so again like new yorker of course is all is struggling with these things right
people are in court
you know in in court like an court houses but people also court up you know at st peter's gate if he were in court down in hell you know cited some new yorkers a lot of people going to heaven or hell and and and regular judicial system in the united states mostly read the us courts you say seem to be where people to speak in english umair
second english you notice that
all these all these you know judgments coming down right
but and so hopefully if you do good you're gonna get a good judgment if you do bad you're gonna get a bad judgment best but to study the process
that's even that is in the new yorker where where people say we're all responsible but the defendant is guilty
so in for all responsible not just we're all responsible but everything is responsible for what happens
but in a certain round some people don't dare i say that the defendant guilty yeah but in some realm we say in this room this is a way it looks just like this person's guilty although we know we're all responsible beyond the way we can see it
if we can see how are responsible then were guilty to
the more you can see you have a story about it and and prove that that story is going to reign supreme
in the court than those who do are implicated are more or less guilty
gay study now process opens up to see the huge bigger than huge
causal situation
so the intention to study intention
is
more liberating than the just the intention to do good
the attention to do good however is pretty good because in order to do good you have to pay attention to your attention to some extent
if to pay some attention to what you're doing in order to do good and usually if you wouldn't do good if you didn't think there was some cause and effect
however it is possible to do good not because of believing in cause and effect but to do good just for good
without without dealing with in terms of cause and effect
and that way of doing good in some sense expresses
the person who's not falling into cause and effect are not causing a car phone because they just do good but not because of intention
and not because of our belief in in in causation
they do good because they have understood causation so doggone fast ago where he brings us up as deep faith and causation we believe in it before we understand it and if you believe in it that means you believe it's worthy of study it's worthy of focusing on it
so it's of course it's good to do good because of causation you should believe that it's it's good but the main thing by doing good he said sets up the possibility of meditating on the process of doing good to become free of doing good in cause and effect way and do good from a wisdom way
well you know cause and effect rather than believing in it
so maybe that's the kind of new intention that you thought i was referring to the intention to study intention and then there's another thing which is not even intention
because it's still intention is a cognitive thing in a way unless you say the intention of the whole cosmos for all beings to be to be foot doing buddha's work
that could be another intention which is not your into your cognitive intention but the intention you share with all beings which is inconceivable that can be another intention but that's stretching the word word a little bit far because now i'm using intention has a cognitive element
some cake
so the the vector or the the intention of the whole universe is not just cognitive i would say
it includes the the intention of phlegm and bile
just a second john
it was last there for second zero back just would use the example i just want to ground myself in your dissection of where you
yes knew what i heard the airplane i didn't know the feeling very quickly my first association was sounds like mosquito and then
it's kind of irritating
so is that
propagate had a feeling that i was wasn't mentally that was kind of it was amazonians discursive associations with it
yeah i i i think i was getting a little more descriptive than i would recommend just listen to sound if you can notice a feeling fine that's why i'm saying sometimes sometimes what you're cognizant is is actually the sound and you're not you're not actually cognize in the feeling at that time even though there is
a cognitive element accompanying your awareness of that sound which use a feeling and it might have been like to i know
today i think it went right past the field well i'm just saying at the moment that you heard the song the you couldn't maybe at that time
become caught be conscious of the feeling you had but there was a feeling i'm saying so there's five aggregates right when you're at when you're actually cognize ng
a sound at that moment that the sunday up the object to that moment of consciousness as a sound but there's a feeling there however the feeling is not the object of of cognition however it is the cognition is a cognitive element and it does affect the moment
simultaneously with that feeling even though you're not conscious of it
it's possible that conditioning elements that are present with that feeling are operating on it
condition by past ways but sometimes actually quite frequently because there's so many moments in a day sometimes the object of cognition is that the this is the first kind of seconds kind of third kind of force going to get these are the five aggregates this fifth one is is knowing one of the other the fifth one knows one of the other four
philip
use okay use the phantom this is the fifth so the fifth can know
since beta it can no feelings it can no conceptions and it can know hawkins a condition of the conditioning factors like intention is in the fourth aggregate
so when you're knowing the color at that time the noise the color and annoying doesn't know the feeling but there's a feeling they're the the elements in the fourth aggregate which can vary can manipulate and mess around with this with the feeling they can be operating there but not consciously and in the sense of that there was
known in the main cognition but they're still doing that by past action but sometimes what happens is you notice the feeling and you can why you noticed a feeling you can more sense these these conditioning factors plane or sometimes you notice the conditioning factors and you know that they're operating on the feeling
you can watch the conditioning factors work with feeling and you can also sense that they're coming from you seen it be this pattern before and you can see intentions
see this you see the sound and at that time i wouldn't go around looking for something else because you you actually have are completely denying this but understand that most of what's going on that moment in terms of year
what your what your minds doing other than knowing his unconscious so we're trying but we can other moments we could start getting access to what's going on other than just sensation because any the other three
can be direct can be directly perceived
and so sometimes you do a feeling now see when you have at the and and why you see what you can can you be can you be very simple with it if you can't the noise oh bob i'm not being simple with it which is the way i were developed tranquility
i am the getting a hint of the of the conditioning process and the intention so although i actually was trying to practice tranquility i'm actually getting to study karma because my start karma so strong it's in its isn't you can't just found that feeling you've gotta do this or that well okay fine like to see karma law
thursday the association's feel like yeah the association's right but don't but don't go looking for the association would let them intrude and and abuse you you know and let watch how they just come in there and forced their way and
not because of your program but because his by the force of their own pretty well that's the best also yeah it was probably very fast see the
yeah right
good
yes
when you are describing
other senses
if that was the

so again you're saying
what
i intention he has in the chant may attention equally extent
gotcha seems different from the standard intention moment
well
just describing
okay so she's asking about the intention in the dedication of merit okay
i just want to this is kind of a big topic to bring up i just say briefly and we can talk about this more after lunch
and that is that on the original translate the the basic text is now aku aku aku dog was more demonic resign you or your boys you are outdoors huge autonomy lot of money but door jaws and goto that the original right
and it's it's basically saying we pray that the merit of what we've just been doing would be turned over to the welfare of all beings so they can attain the boot away
the print any intention is in this chant originally it's not aren't it is not our intention exactly but our it were saying our intention is that this merit given over
gay
now
that intention goes you can say well that's the intention to hope that everything we do will be for people's welfare and that our intention is that what we do will help people attain the boot away
now that intention
for each of us could be different
you can do know but we can also say know what we mean is
that the intention that everything we do any merit of what we do be turned over to people becoming free once again
that there is an intention and we want to join the intention that whatever merit we contribute to we want to give this merit over to people becoming free of merit
because the buddha way is to be free of merit and demerit and use merit to help people become free of merit and demerit so there could be added that could understand that way
that was seemed but it's not that were saying may all have our different intentions
i extend we don't we don't want some of our intentions to expand any further than the garda gone
what you just did described
the intention way liberate
not mine
right is is that
use intention that when you were describing
the intention of the universe is that the intention of universe that's that's the intention of the university yeah
and the intention of the universe completely embraces all of our sort of limited intentions oliver of our our our cognitive inclinations are totally embraced by that
thinking about
obstacle
they said
story of
one
face slapping first slack as a response he couldn't he was too big to punch 'em
in particular kind of
right right
het can
any idea when you're examining
these feelings
maybe breaking the pattern
why not
try try to differently and it's possible but even if eraser he just gives me even if you don't break the pattern for most people noticing the feeling and noticing a pattern that that awareness is kind of and is quite unusual in this world that's a big step
up even to look for their family is a big step to find the feeling is another big step to notice that there's some condition behavior around the feeling is another big step so even while still going on you actually this a lot of changes occurred in the meditation process already you're actually quite successful on three accounts if you get that far
our
be while the brother conditioning process is still going on you there's this is really good that you're in that much involved in in studying and becoming clear about cause and effect
so i want to make that point before you go on to the next step in your discourse
yes i can see how many
you know that that you can also see that and make the choice to do it do it more yes you could has an experiment maybe and there's something about
that image of the slap in the face the heat that comes from
i'm noticing that sometimes particularly in groups of people in an intentional
where where there is sound
desired
that's a value for it's like it's like the price of admission you have to promise to try to do good will come in the road
but i did have it
oh guess our forget it
something something can happen and often does happen were in fact there's a he had shattered it's gonna create it
with that intention that that can cause old a tremendous amount of damage right
even though
and when you're a member of the right you are having to respond to it in some way either participate or fight or make different toilet working nothing watch you know
and i'm just wandering in terms of cultivating this sense it
deepening our understanding
good how those kind of active choices
in heat
intense emotion intense
interaction

can can can teach you about you
i think i think i got it emails me to hear more but what you say before we answer it
i think it's pretty clear in this stories is example of that the story has a guy getting slapped in the face and he's very happy about it it doesn't do him any damage mere fact he's saying your slap was coming from the best place
you know your master he sang to the guy who slept and he was very happy to receive the slap and amongst got to watch that
there's something very unusual he did a funeral ceremony for an for i'm from dead fox that's also the most critics said what's going on here you how you wrecking the tradition here being a creative
so this story has
actually and in the first story too
this is thing of where a teacher is being asked a question and it gives an answer and there's a big strong consequence so all this various things which had been consequences in the story which we can look at the point is that underlying whole process which has potential like people
going to amazing trips to be fox for five hundred years and then getting to and then getting to go to zen masters even while they're still fox people doing unusual ceremonies and participating in people are and teachers giving talks to students coming for an interacting and slapping them and the teacher been very happy but
sometimes a teacher says you know
it's not really that handful actually in this interest stories often but the teacher says you know you're off track this is you're missing the point here slapping me today today the slap is not really you're just copying and this is old stuff this is not this is not fun today
and but these are stories where hope there's enough wholesomeness and the environment so that when people get off track
they can take him they can either be put back on track or just called know disqualified temporarily and you know and as but this is part of it that we're dealing with here
but the ongoing thing is that were we don't give up the meditation on karma as we go through these processes it isn't like were meditating on karma and then when things get intense and somebody gets really creative or crazy we then stop meditating on karma with try to stay in the meditation
even when it gets intense and hopefully with a group
we can we can actually deal with all these potentially very in simpsons creative opportunities where somebody's really getting off track
but if if if people aren't looking at their own stuff
then the cause of process is still go on
but it can get very unconscious
when people start getting swept up in group phenomenon stuff like that
and so this is part of the danger
you're making a choice
you can say is your as you as the appearance of choice is happening
k and you in that you may see that you think i'm making the choice that that you notice that that's the way you view this this is your way of seeing it and you notice how it works when you think that you make decisions by yourself you see how that works
and if you're hanging out with other people were watching how they think that way you can converse about how a group of people all think that they're doing things by themselves in the suffering that experience as result of that
and then you can also maybe sometimes not see your decisions or something that you're doing by yourself have done some new perspective on that
because again we you do not actually make you do not actually decide your decisions are
determined not by you by your past karma and lots of other factors that you can't see but you can tap into the past karma which is driving your present decisions but they aren't decisions you're making their decisions which are sponsored by are driven by past action and this
this decision you're making now will be a condition for future decisions which also you won't be making by yourself even though you're responsible to everything
so this is that this is try to tune into this is what i think these people who are trying to help us become free of karmic effects this is the way they're trying to help us
not to exclude anything you're looking at
but to notice that there's karma in the process it isn't just oh i'm just sitting here making a decision know this decision is being name is driven by past action it's not just like a fresh sarah doing it by herself it's sarah being made
in a very important way by past action and other things but you can't see the other things as clearly as you can see the past action because the past actions manifesting as your feelings and your intentions which you can see and you can see better than anybody else but you can tell people about it and the way you speak about it and you can get feedback on whether
the it sounds like the way you're talking about it has also driven by past action or whether the way you're talking about it is expressing present awareness
so you can develop more present awareness of the past action rather than the past actually doing the talking and it sounds differently
depending on who is talking whether it's the meditator talking or the comically driven person is talking
or both actually it's both actually
what for for for the foreseeable future is can be at least two to
in concert and concert with who knows what
anyway this is a this is an another
opportunity to let those who have attained the buddha away free as from karmic effects
when that be fine
and and nine eleven twelve thirty i thought maybe we could have a lunch break how also wanted to do news service better
when you think you do new service and have launcher as we have just have lunch
how many people would like to have new service
when we people want to have lunch immediately
k you get a special thing
you're not pregnant again are you
africa
so you can have some you construct your lunch right away or you didn't dinner service with us and take you i made i made my decision for you
i made a decision that you can do either one and we all sponsor you whichever way you go maybe do a short service okay
sure we do a short one
yeah mr one of our short ones
and then we'll have lunch after that
if
get ready

the