It comes from Seeking the Heart of Wisdom by Jack Thornfield and Joseph Goldstein. It's stuck around now. People are coming in. The Seven Factors of Enlightenment from Jack and Joseph. And the second handout is on the precepts. And this is a little bit It's a little bit ahead of our study, but I'm handing it out. Most of you are practicing here. It's sort of helpful to have some real direct clues about where our practices come from. There's only the one big one. The second one that's going to come around is the little one.

[01:02]

And hopefully they're all the same. I interrupted at the copy machine today. If you have a deviant one, send it back. It should be the seven factors of enlightenment and it should be about, it should go from page, from a nameless page, to page 63 to about page 77. And hopefully you have them all in order. I have an extra page 77. Yes, many people have an extra page 77. That's what happened to my copy when I got interrupted. The small handout is the precepts. I'm not sure exactly. This is, I think it's Dogen, or no, it's Kazan Benji. It's from a book called The Teachings of Keizan Zenji which I in fact have not read. I got this version of the precepts from Mel a long time ago when he and I were studying precepts and I'm just passing it out mostly for your interest and hopefully it will become obvious by the end.

[02:14]

I think the tape from last week was very good. I could hear you very well, especially after about the first five minutes. I don't know if anyone else wants to... Thanks for saying that. There's no way of knowing. I mean, it goes over, but that's good. Probably if you can hear me, the tape can hear me. If you can't hear me, let me know. It also picks up coughing very well. We're all doing the best we can here with the coffee. Margaret? I want me two tissues. Well, let's start with maybe five minutes of just sitting. I don't know about you, but I've had quite a busy day. Let's just see if we can breathe. together for five minutes and just breathe.

[03:46]

Okay. I just want to start out by saying I really appreciate your questions because they really clarify my thinking.

[09:16]

The questions from last time especially got me started thinking about what I'd left out and what was really most important about what I had left in but maybe not made so clear. I was thinking a lot about your question, Margaret, about the oral transmission. And why was it that it took so long, so many centuries before the Dharma was written down? And I talked last time about how not so many people knew how to read and stuff. And I think that that was an important factor. But then I started thinking about the history of my experience here at Berkeley Zen Center as a Zen student in the 20th century. And I remember that we didn't used to write much down either. And we had a lot of oral tradition going here that we now have as written tradition.

[10:25]

And that something has really changed in the way we practice. from the days that we didn't write things down. And there's some trade-offs, and it's very interesting, as I think about that experience, when somewhere along the line, I remember asking Mel if I could be trained to do the service things in the zendo, to ring the bells and be Kokyo and that sort of thing. And he said, sure, see Ron. And Ron will teach you that stuff. And Ron spent a lot of time teaching me how to ring the bells and how to be Kokyo. But none of it was written down. And sometimes Mel would say something and give some feedback or something. But when to ring the bells and what

[11:29]

else the Doan did besides ring the bells. None of that was written down. When to offer the incense and light the candles and all that stuff was transmitted orally from person to person. And in fact, it was also transmitted orally who were the bell ringers and who knew how to do the Kokyo and whose turn it was. It was all in people's heads. So if Ran wasn't there or if he forgot then the new person might not get called on or something might not get done because it was all kept in the heads of one or two people. So sometimes we had various confusions and tangles about it. We'd decide it was a day to have a memorial service and somebody would tell somebody that it was a memorial service, but the person who was supposed to do something about it might have spaced out at the last moment and forgotten.

[12:36]

And now we write those things down on little stickums on the Doan book. And the Kokyo has this little stickum and it says, today is a memorial service for so-and-so. Don't forget. And then it also tells The list, there's also a book in which it tells what you do at a memorial service, which chants we do at memorial service. We used to have to remember all that stuff. Now it's all written down. It's wonderful to have it written down because it's much easier for most of us to learn that way since we all went to school and we read and we're dependent on that kind of thing. When, in order to learn anything, like, well, which chants do we do for memorial service? Which chant do we do for Suzuki Roshi's Founder Day ceremony?

[13:38]

What, you know, what do I do next here? We had to go to the teacher for that information. There was an interaction, there was a relationship, and there was an opportunity. for something to happen. And what's important about ringing the bells, what's important about the teachings themselves, what's important about the words that we chant, isn't so much in the words. It's not so much when you ring the bell as how you ring the bell. Although it's nice if you ring it at the right time and in the right way and all that. The Dharma really isn't content. It's process. It's not in the documents. If you see the documents and the words as the teaching, that's a big mistake.

[14:43]

When you listen to a Dharma talk in the Zendo, when the abbot is giving a talk, if you understand the words, That's not really the point. It's the music. It's the dance between, it's what happens in the air, in the space, between you and the person who's speaking. It's like the Dharma that's written down is like a map or a picture or a travelogue. You know, you go see somebody's movie or their slides about where they went on their trip And you get a sense of what their trip was like, but it's not like having been there, and felt the earth under your feet, and smelled the smells for yourself, and felt the air on your own skin. And the Dharma, practicing the Dharma, is being there yourself. Your experience is the reality.

[15:47]

It's not the notes you make in your journal. the pictures, however lovely or evocative or helpful to someone else they may be. So when the Buddha talked with his disciples, and they listened with their whole body and mind, they shared something all together with everyone. And that process is the Dharma. That's the oral transmission, with the emphasis being on the transmission. It's a verb. We use it as a noun, but it's really a verb. So the Dharma is the truth. It's things as they are. It's alive and it's moving. It's like, you know, things always fall down. So that's a generalization. Yep, fell down again. But that's a conclusion about what happened. You watched it, okay?

[16:54]

What happened? Your eyes did something, your mind did something. That's the reality. The words are just an abstraction. You say, well, I saw the pen fall down. And you can watch your mind a little more closely and You know, it's not very far for this pen, but if you can watch your mind very closely, there may be other things going on there besides watching your pen. Maybe you had some other thoughts going on. That's the stuff that we all have to do for ourselves, and what Buddha did. And Buddha's sermons and talks and all the teachings are kind of his various explanations of, I dropped the pen and every single time it fell down.

[18:01]

This is my experience. This is how I saw it. And some clues he gives us about his process of observation, what his method was. that led him to be able to see so clearly things that aren't as clear as things always fall down, they never fall up. So we all understand how language is removed from experience and written language by its nature is kind of a little bit more removed still because You don't interact with a book quite the same way as you interact, say, with a live speaker. You don't interact with a record the same way. It's not the same as going to a concert. There's a line in the Lotus Sutra where Buddha says, only a Buddha together with a Buddha can understand this wonderful teaching.

[20:07]

And to me what that means is that the Dharma is interactive. It's not what you understand. It's not what I understand. It's what we understand because of our connection with each other, what comes out of our But the words that we say about it, the words that we have left over, like the stories, it's kind of like we just have the plot. And if I tell you a story that happened to me, I can tell you a little bit more because it happened to me, but I can't describe it all, and I don't even remember it all. But what was really important is the part that's all left out, the part we can't talk about. And that brings us back, really, to the first noble truth, that life is impermanent.

[21:17]

What I've got up here is sort of a summary of what I've been saying. The reason the three treasures go together, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, it's like there's a teacher, there are students, The Dharma is the teaching, but really it's the process. It's the process we're all engaged in together. Practicing Buddhism is sort of staking your life on the process, investing your life in the process, deciding to choose this path. and to walk on it with your own feet. And the path is what we're going to talk about tonight. One of the things that's going to be real clear, if it isn't already, is that Buddhist thinking is not linear, it goes in circles.

[22:30]

It's systemic. Nonetheless, we talk about things in some order, and hopefully we make a little sense out of it. So we started with Buddha's observation that everything is insubstantial, it's impermanent, dukkha, which is usually translated as suffering. want to grab on to something. We want something permanent. And that's the cause of our suffering. There's a story, and maybe it's in what I handed out, about how in the forest they can catch monkeys very easily in a trap by putting a piece of fruit in the trap

[23:35]

so that the monkey can get his hand in, but he can't get his fist out, and it's the rare monkey that can let go. And essentially, Buddha's giving us instructions for how to let go. He's not just saying, let go. He's saying, letting go is a process, and here are some clues for what we need to let go of, how we can let go. Most people, like most monkeys, organize their life around desires. What do we want? We follow that. We try and get more of it. So we go from one thing to another, like a donkey following a carrot, or a monkey following a banana. Buddha's way is to organize our life according to the way things are.

[24:36]

And maybe we don't see quite how it is, but what Buddha said makes some sense to us. We have some sense that the way we've been doing it isn't working so terribly well. So we organize our life around intention or vow to see things as they are and to live in accord with that reality. And the beautiful thing about the process is that you can start anywhere. You can start from this point. Life is suffering. Grasping is the cause of it. I've got to get out of this. I see that this is the cause. I see that I've got to get out of it. Or you can start somewhere else. You can start with wanting to just do the right thing. You can start with ethical conduct. Or you can start, and if you practice, in this way, it will become clear to you how it is.

[25:41]

So it doesn't really matter where you start. You can start with meditation and paying attention to your moment-to-moment process, but you can apply attention anywhere. And anywhere we apply pure attention, we'll see things just the way they are, and then things start going in a different way. So we can start with a vow to live in ways that will benefit others, that will increase harmony, that will decrease conflict, that will promote peace, we can notice ways that we increase suffering, that we decrease harmony, things, directions that we go in, that lead to more things that we don't like.

[26:50]

So Buddha organized, one way of organizing the eight ways to live in harmony with how it is, is to group the Eightfold Path into Ethical Conduct, Mental Discipline, and Wisdom. These are often referred to as the three. It's another way of talking about the essential ingredients for an enlightened way of life. Ethical Conduct includes right speech and right action. and right livelihood. Right speech includes not lying, not slandering, not praising self at the expense of others, not defaming the three treasures. Those are the precepts, and that's why I handed out the precepts. Right speech also means avoiding gossip and loose talk.

[28:02]

In Western psychology, we tend to make a big distinction between thought, words, and deeds. And we tend to teach ourselves and teach our children that talking about something is different from doing it, and that thinking about something is different from talking about it, and different from doing it. And generally we tend to think that if you do something that's bad, that's worse. The consequences are generally more negative than thinking something that's bad. And at a certain level, that's true. But in Buddhism, body, speech, and mind all are creators of karma. So we need to, when we are looking at right speech at the eightfold path, how some of these things are, how wrong speech creates bad karma may be more obvious to you than how wrong understanding or unwholesome thought can create karma.

[29:36]

There's certainly a difference between talking about somebody, talking about killing somebody, say, and actually killing somebody. And we often think about, you know, being really angry, and we might say, I really want to kill that person. And obviously, there's a lot less karma, a lot less severe consequences in the real world, as well as in the spiritual world. If you say, I feel like killing that son of a bitch, then if you actually, you know, and take an axe and kill him. But think about what that process is like when you're really angry, and you're thinking about how angry you are at this person, and how that builds and builds. It may not culminate in any actual destructive action on your part, but it will culminate that kind of feeding that, and watering that seed of anger will definitely make it grow.

[30:43]

And we all know how that feels, you know, when you just get in a snit, and you just go round and round, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and, you know, something always happens, right? And somehow it has to turn around. So, it's that kind of process that we're looking at. And we look at it as, by following our thought processes, and noticing the accumulation of tension in the muscles, and noticing the results of each step, each time we water the seed, how it grows and how much space it takes up. So, right speech, when you start speaking very carefully and listening to your speech, you find that You have fewer conversations in which you talk about how angry you are at that son of a bitch.

[31:48]

You water those seeds less. Where does the idea come, I love you so much I want to kill you? How did you get from, I love you so, to I want to kill you? To be funny, humor. It's just a joke? Is that wrong speech? No. But the words are wrong, aren't they?

[32:52]

The spirit is pure. If the spirit is pure and it's clear between you and the other person, it doesn't matter what the words are. I mean, that's like, you know, their Zen koans are full of that kind of stuff. Exactly. So I don't understand. Action would cover it all. Speech is part of action. How you make your livelihood is your action as well. So why did Buddha separate into three parts? Well, I think that's a good question. I think in some ways the categories are artificial. I think it's for purposes of explanation. You could say that, I mean, in some sense, each one of them includes all the others. Right effort. also completely and thoroughly applied, includes all the others.

[33:57]

Right understanding, that's very clear, will lead to all the other stuff. And I think that's the sense in which it's a circle and not a line or a ladder to climb or something. Each of those things, if you really follow it all the way, includes all of the others. Right livelihood is a particularly good example because, I mean, people really struggle with this, you know, in this place and time, you know, what is right livelihood? And you start thinking about all the people who are connected in some way or another to your livelihood. all the people who, every time you buy something at a store, and, you know, that's connected, you know, who bought that, and who grew it, and how did they treat the workers, and what did they put on the land, and how is this connected with the whole planet?

[35:01]

If you, when you really start thinking in that way, about how interconnected everything is, and how interdependent we are, you know, what's right? It's not so easy to say. The world is so complicated now that it's pretty hard to do something that you wouldn't have some second thoughts about if you knew everything that you could possibly know about. But when you start making that kind of effort to live for the benefit of all beings, you do pay a lot of attention to your choices, and you do have to consider your desires and your vows, and you don't... I think you do things less unconsciously.

[36:03]

In a way, what we're really talking about, following the Buddha's way, is waking up. It means being more conscious, being more awake. being more aware of what we're doing. And we're going to save it for the last class, or towards the end, because it's usually thought of as being confusing. But one of the main teachings of Buddhism is the teaching of dependent origination, the teaching of looking in detail at how everything is connected to everything else. And dividing things up kind of gives us a way to focus on one thing at a time. But you're right, they're certainly not separate. So in the literal sense, right action has to do with avoiding things that are harmful or hurtful, stealing,

[37:14]

killing, inappropriate sexual behavior, that sort of thing. It also means, you know, more positive things, promoting life, accepting what's given as well as not taking what's not given. Using our life energy, whether it's our sexual energy or all our life energy, consciously and for the benefit of others, Right livelihood is making a living in a way that benefits not just us, but the whole society. Not making a profit in a way that clearly brings harm to others, like selling guns, drugs, that sort of thing. But it's hard. We do the best we can with this one in our society, being what it is.

[38:16]

The second category, mental discipline, right effort, mindfulness and concentration, all seem to apply most obviously to meditation. But since we know that meditation and everyday life aren't different, their efforts, ways to pay attention, that we can practice all the time. And because they're described in such detail in the meditation literature, we're going to really take them up in detail next week. Great effort has to do with attempting to promote healthy states of mind and to cultivate them when they arise, to promote the arising of healthy states of mind, to do what we can to prevent unhealthy states of mind from arising,

[40:53]

and getting rid of unwholesome states of mind when they do arise. You made a funny face. No, I just had a question. I didn't know if I should ask a question. That's fine. You know, when you talk about right sexual conduct, it always brings up, and I didn't grow up Catholic, but that whole thing about sex, you know, it's like, you're going to have sex, you have to make babies or something. And I'm just wondering if, you know, that there's some implication that the communication that you have between your lover and, you know, if you're on the pill or something, then is this what I'm having on all beings when I have sex with my husband? I was asking myself that. I was like, wow, you know, I'm a happier person. I don't seem to hit him as much. You know, whatever. It seems like a right communication, but am I helping all beings in this interaction? Well, if you're a happier person, are you helping all beings? If you take care of your marriage?

[41:57]

All the aspects of your marriage? I mean, it just seems funny, you know? Well, I think... Well, you know, it's not just that you grew up Catholic. This tradition did come to us, has been transmitted to us from a celibate... mostly from a celibate clergy. And the rules for, certainly, Buddhist disciples were no sex. That's what... not misusing sexuality or the precept about sex was about our Buddhist disciples, and it's certainly true. I mean, don't do it. That was the rule. Well, wasn't there an order of syllabus as opposed to the word? It was possible to be a Buddhist. You could be a lay practitioner. That's right. You could be a lay practitioner. there always have been lay practitioners.

[43:04]

But certainly the main body of teaching, until recently, was handed down by celibate practitioners. So there is that element of duality. And I think there is that tension there. I tend to look at sexual energy as life energy. The Zen priesthood has not been celibate for over 200 years. On the other hand, we don't have any handed-down teachings about how to use sexuality. But there are in the tantric teachings, in the Tibetan Buddhist teachings, there are teachings about sexuality. And the whole business of the joining of opposites not as just being a metaphor, not just as sex being a metaphor of the joining of opposites, but literally acting it out as a part of the spiritual, the enlightenment process is talked about a lot in Tibetan Buddhism, but not so much in Zen, and certainly not in early Buddhism.

[44:25]

It's the stand, I mean, there's right, that's where it hits every place. What's the standard for that? Is it inner? Is it on tablets someplace? Or is it an inner knowing sense? I mean, I'm not looking for anything on tablets about right. I think, you know, I know my, I get feelings. But I may have a feeling I'm in a right path or a right action or something. And someone equally well motivated by a set of values I might raise would have a different precept. of what is right, and what I should be doing, perhaps. I wanted their advice about that. Where's the standard for right? I don't think there is a standard. I think that's one of the ways in which Buddhism's a little different. Well, there's some standards up there. Don't kill. Yeah. And yet, I might find an instance where killing would be right for me. I mean, I can't That would push me right up to the brink, because it's part of my value set that I wouldn't want to kill. But I've smashed spiders before, too, and yet I've saved them and taken them out carefully and let them go.

[45:35]

When we see the word right, we immediately think of wrong. Yeah, or who says? Or left. Or left. Those are right is part of the path. It's not the same as being written on the tablet says, thou shall not. It has a whole different, I mean for me at least, it has a whole different aura. It's the path that you subscribe to or you do not subscribe to. is not the universal law handed down to applicants. Then you get another chance, even though you kill, you get another chance to kill again or not to kill. I mean, you have an infinite number of chances, even though... But that's assuming in every instance killing's wrong. Well, forget about right or wrong, you have a chance to do it or not to do it, continuously.

[46:46]

Yeah, you do. You're at choice, perhaps, although what you just said about jumping to the end of the course leads me to believe maybe the view isn't you're at choice, you're at... Well, I think it's not a question of choice. I think it has to do with responsibility. What were you going to say, Joyce? Well, two things. One is that, as Fran was explaining in the beginning, when you say all those words, it's just a pointer, it's a map. And the second thing is to remember that the Buddha is trying to get everyone to be aware. So it's not to judge yourself and say you're getting brownie points, you're going to make it to heaven. You can, I think, judge for yourself and say, well, is this speech making me more aware, or is it distancing me from what's really happening in the world? You're right about that.

[48:10]

And I think the ambiguity is that we want clarity. And I think that's part of the grasping. And there isn't clarity. It's ambiguous. Mostly life is ambiguous. So all of these are pointers to kind of pay attention. Kind of a map, kind of saying, you know, there may be a pothole a few yards down. Watch out for it. Maybe somebody fixed the pothole and it's not there anymore. We're kind of on a path. There's some blind alleys around. Go down them if you need to. The main paths over here kind of go this way. Mindfulness generally has to do with awareness and if you haven't made contact with the Four Foundations of Mindfulness or with Thich Nhat Hanh's wonderful books,

[49:27]

on mindfulness. Those are certainly wonderful, wonderful guides. I think that in next week's reading the Four Foundations of Mindfulness are going to be described, and this is Thich Nhat Hanh's translation of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. Right thought and right understanding. We've talked a little bit about right thought. Rahula says it means thinking of selfless renunciation, renouncing self-centered views, and cultivating thoughts of non-violence, love, and compassion. In Buddhism, thoughts aren't something that just happen to us. thoughts arise because of certain causes and conditions.

[50:32]

So, although we can't control our thoughts, and we're not here to control our thoughts, there's a lot we can do about the causes and the conditions that give rise to certain kinds of thinking. And the example I gave before about anger is a good example of that. In zazen, when nothing else is happening, we can be particularly aware of our tendency to follow certain trains of thought. Certain things come up that we're more likely to follow than others and then we're kind of like the caboose, you know, and the train's going somewhere and we end up there. So, right at paying attention to our thoughts is a way of Not boarding a runaway train. Not making a decision not to push the train right over the cliff.

[51:42]

And I had another analogy on that. What I noticed is, I feel like I'm a fish who's just got hooked. I'm out of the water. I'm getting thrown onto the bank. It's so funny. So how can you see the hook coming? Do you ever see the hook coming? Well, I think that Satsang is one of the ways to see that process, because you're... What I find is the biggest trap for me is in a conversation, I'll end up in slander, gossip, and all of that other wrong speech real fast, because I'm hooked, you know, I'm caught on the hook. But if I don't, if I'm not talking, have a chance to see it, especially sitting. So that's one of the ways that you change the conditions. Yeah, because most of the time, I think I'm getting a handle on it as I get older and practice more, but I just walked out of a party last weekend, you know, and I said, what the hell just happened, you know, I found myself

[52:57]

upset, angry, pissed off, just enraged at this woman and, you know, and found that I've been defending myself and arguing with her. And I didn't know what the heck happened. I had no idea what this was all about. I had to go think about it. But I was hooked real fast. It's hard when things are going by real fast, like a pregnant kid. Her male commenter once during a lecture was pointing to the image So you cannot talk for a while and sort of remove yourself from creating some kind of karma. But the fact of the matter is that we have to do something, and the choices are limitless. Very difficult.

[53:58]

So whatever we choose, we're responsible for the result. When we choose to follow the angry thought or the gossipy conversation, then we're stuck with the result of whatever happens. There's a big notion of responsibility in Buddhism, which I think people tend to confuse with blame, which is real close on to sin. And that's not, as I understand it, the message at all. The message is of complete responsibility, but no blame. I work with cancer patients, and a lot of people come in, you know, we have this idea,

[55:04]

that isn't without foundation that stress and illness are related. And so people come, you know, have been under a lot of stress and they get sick and they come in with the idea that they caused their illness and they think they're to blame. And, you know, it's not very helpful. Then what happens is somebody tells them, well, The way to get well is to think positively and live a good life. So whenever they have negative thoughts, they figure, oh, I'm killing myself, and then they start beating themselves up about it. That's how you create negative karma with your thoughts, is that you think. You find you're sitting in Zazen and you find yourself going over the argument that you had with your boss or your husband or whoever, and you think, oh God, I'm really a terrible Zen student and I'm supposed to be sitting here, you know, following my breath and I'm following all these angry thoughts.

[56:11]

And, you know, that's pushing the train over the cliff. That's the accumulation. So, the cancer patient starts being frightened and says, oh gosh, I'm so frightened, and what if this happens, and what if that happens, and oh, what a bad person I am for thinking all this stuff, and I'm probably making my cancer worse, or I'm going to have a reoccurrence, and works themselves up into a frenzy about it. So where it can stop is the awareness, and giving it a name, your thinking, and you're thinking an angry thought. The advice that Buddha gave us was, notice it. I'm thinking an angry thought. It's okay. I'm thinking an angry thought. Then you can let it go. You don't have to judge it.

[57:13]

You don't have to think the next angry thought. If the next angry thought comes, I'm thinking an angry thought. Know that you're angry. I'm thinking an angry thought and my shoulders are tense. I'm thinking an angry thought. Breathing a short, shallow breath. All that stuff about being a bad person because you're breathing a short, shallow breath instead of a long, deep breath. That part's extra. It's not that we only have, we only, we live forever in long, slow, deep breaths. Well, it occurred to me that one of the things that prevents me from saying, I'm thinking an angry thought, is that I, the precepts are presented in a way that I think helps prevent guilt, you know, it's I vow to do this, not thou shalt, so it's not an external, you know, father telling me to do it,

[58:21]

But there's still that aspect of it, and if it makes it difficult, you know, the pitfall is when you fall into guilt about not living up to your standards, and you have made those standards by vowing to behave in a certain way, so it sets up standards. You have expectations. If I am not behaving in that way, it's hard to admit it. What happens if you acknowledge it? Then I find I can let it go. I'm thinking, this is what's happening. It's like an objectivity about it. But if I'm avoiding it, I didn't really do that, I didn't really handle it. I had good reason to and, you know, she started it anyway. So what are you defending when you're not blaming it on somebody else or not having trouble acknowledging it? I think the point you bring up is really important because it leads to one of the next places we're going, which is the belief in self.

[60:28]

Exactly. I was going to say, I have a thought about a permanent self. That's what I'm defending. You're defending yourself. As if there was such a thing. And that's how we get into most of it. But isn't there also compassion for yourself? Pardon me? Compassion for yourself? Well, if you can get together some compassion for yourself, you're well along the way. Yeah. And when you acknowledge, can acknowledge, I'm having an angry thought. I did something I don't feel good about. It takes a lot of compassion for yourself. It's letting go. It's not labeling yourself. It's not judging yourself. Then that takes a lot of compassion. And especially for those of us that had very rigid or punitive upbringing, very difficult to have that kind of compassion for oneself, to be able to just acknowledge what is, moment after moment, without it being attached to a whole string of

[61:38]

negative concrete labels that are going to lead to very unpleasant consequences. And, yeah. I don't know if this is the time for it, but at some point I would very much like you, somebody, to help me with the concept of... But what I keep hearing is, we have a self and we don't have a self. We have an illusion of a self, but we're supposed to be compassionate with ourselves. It's that whole concept for me. It's just boggling.

[62:42]

It is a boggling one. It's why we're leaving it for the end. Hopefully it will get clearer. And I left it for the end. ...ways to cut up our experience by looking at it in terms of speech action, livelihood, by looking at it in terms of the four foundations of mindfulness or the factors of enlightenment, by cutting up our experience in various ways. will sort of naturally come to some sense of what the Buddhist idea is about self and the lack thereof. And hopefully it'll sort of begin to fall into place as we go. And again, as with all of this, having it fall into place will depend a lot on on listening to the silence between the words and not being careful when you see a sentence not to take it too literally out of context.

[63:52]

The questions that Buddhism addresses, the answers that Buddhism gives are answers to the questions that Buddhism asks. And Buddhism doesn't ask questions like, where did this come from, or why is it? Buddhism asks questions that have to do with, how is it? How is it going? How do I want it to go? How is it at this moment? Is it in the big picture? How is it right here? And the path has to do with kind of changing our orientation in a direction of, how can I live in accord with reality? How can I follow the path?

[64:55]

Rather than, why is the path going left rather than right? But it's difficult, and we have various distractions, especially those of us that like to think. And Buddha's disciples had the same problems. And there's a great story, which I like to tell, because it could be about any of us here. And I think it has been, most of us, at one or another time. But Buddha had a disciple who, was very interested in questions that were important to him. And his questions may not be quite the ones that have bugged us, but he wanted to know whether the body and the soul were the same or different, and whether the Buddha exists after death or not, whether the world is eternal or not, whether it's finite or infinite. And these are questions that Western philosophy has concerned itself with.

[66:01]

These are serious questions. And he said, you know, these are really important questions, and if the Buddha can't answer them, I don't, you know, think he's a very good teacher, and I'm going to leave. And if he can't answer them, I mean, he's not a very good teacher, if he won't answer them, if he could answer them and he wouldn't answer them, then that would really be terrible. So I'm going to go ask the Buddha these questions. So he went to Dōsan and he said, What about the world? Is it finite or infinite? Why aren't you talking about these things? Is it that you don't know? Or is it that you won't say? Or what's going on here?" And the Buddha said, Did I ever say that I was going to answer that kind of question? When I asked you to be a monk, did I promise you this kind of answer? And the monk said, Well, no. But he wasn't satisfied. The Buddha explained to him why he wasn't going to talk about this stuff.

[67:09]

He said, anyone who demands the elucidation of such futile questions, which do not in any way tend to real spiritual progress, is like one who has been shot by an arrow and refuses to let the doctor pull it out and attend to the wound. If the wounded man were to say, so long as I don't know who shot me, whether he belongs to the Brahmin caste, or the Kshatriya class, or from which clan he hails, and whether he's tall or short, or whether he's fair or dark, and what kind of bow and arrow he used, then I will not allow the arrow to be pulled out, or the wound to be attended to. That man will die without ever knowing these details. The practical man should get himself treated at once without demanding details which will not help him in the least. Life is short. Death will overtake each one of us.

[68:18]

And the true purpose of life, that is the attainment of spiritual perfection, will not be achieved. So stick to the essentials. A holy life does not depend on the dogma that the world is eternal or not eternal. Whether these things obtain, they still remain. But the problems of birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief and despair, all the grim facts of life, and for their extinction in the present life, I am prescribing the Dharma. Accordingly, bear in mind, that these questions which I have not elucidated, such as the dogmas that the world is eternal or not eternal, and so forth, I have not elucidated purposely, because these profit not, nor have they anything to do with the fundamentals, nor do they tend toward wisdom and nirvana." That was very practical.

[69:20]

One of the reasons it's kind of funny that it's the so-called Buddhist philosophy that is of such great interest in the Western world. It's really not philosophical in the usual sense. It's really very practical. Even if the Buddha gave you an answer to those questions, there's no way where you could try it out and find out for yourself. Right? Well, I couldn't, but, you know, maybe... I mean, we don't have, like, the everlasting or the finite world laboratory within ourselves. But if that's your deal... I mean, I know people who are trying to figure out about all the matter in the universe. Dread oil's coming back.

[70:27]

Where's he been? I mean, but we can't know in the sense that we can know these other things. I have a similar question, because the Buddha seemed to say, well, don't waste your time even trying to find out. So these people who are trying to find out about the universe, say, in the physical universe, should they be spending their time... was that sort of a judgment call? You should be spending your time perfecting your spiritual nature? Well, that was Buddha's judgment call on this disciple at this time. I don't think you... You would want to necessarily generalize that to all people in all times. But if your mission in life, if you're a scientist, what do you need to do to accomplish what you need to do in your life?

[71:29]

That's what you need to pay, to give your full attention to. And if you're a scientist, there are lots of extraneous questions to your problem, to the problem that you're trying to figure out. Do you see what I mean? See, I don't think it says anything one way or another about the efforts of a particular modern scientist. There have been lots of comments in general that seem to be pointing in certain directions, like, if you see that somebody or something is doing something to make you angry, and you note that you're angry, and you note that you're angry, and compassion arises for yourself and for the situation, and then at the time that it comes, you decide to take action, that you need to take action,

[72:37]

but that you see all the consequences, right? Should you, you know, stir up the waters? I mean, there's another section that says, don't permit fault finding, that it's very hard not to see the many faults of things in the world. And it says, you know, you should live your life in such a way that you promote peace and harmony, but sometimes, In order to do that, you have to stir up trouble. Yeah. Those are all part of the same question. Yeah, and I think that it's that process of investigating and finding out for yourself, you know, how do you promote peace? It may not be the same as the next person, and it may be very balanced. You know, because the causes and conditions that are operating, that have operated on you and have brought you to this point are unique.

[73:51]

And that's why this is a very frustrating religion for people that want a recipe. Because it looks for all the world like a recipe. And that's why there's no definition for right. And that's why there's no definition for right. And periodically, we reword some of these things. I don't think anybody's re-translated the Eightfold Path, but we sure do go through the precepts at a rapid rate. And it's called a path, not a station. Yeah, it really is. It really is a verb in and out of process. And wherever we are is where we are. And wherever we are is okay. I think it's that we don't get enough, maybe enough reassurance that wherever we are is really okay.

[75:08]

And I think, again, that's where it's really helpful to have a teacher, because you can get that, maybe not reassurance, but you can at least see your reflection in the mirror and see where you are. And when you know where you are, it's like when you're following a map, And if you're looking for a place in a strange town, if you can't figure out where you are on the map, it's really hard to know which way to go. If you know where you are, and you have a notion of where you want to go, that really helps. But if you don't have a clue about where you are, it's pretty hard. Well, I want to get back to the question about no-self. You know, I was talking to my physicist husband about this, you know, I started reading this stuff from, you know, Rahula, and he says, well, of course, you know, and I go, what do you mean, of course?

[76:19]

It's very clear to him. But I just was, I guess it's, there seems to be a process here, a balance point between the conditioned self and the ultimate, of which there is no self. that there's a self that lives, that we have an idea of ourselves, and we are the ones, that self is the one that's trying to live up to the precepts, and experiencing, you know, dukkha, and grasping, and searching for nirvana, and then, you know, it's the dualistic self, I guess I want to call it. You know, when people talk about rebirth, reincarnation... Has anybody else solved the problem of self and no self?

[77:58]

Well, I can give you just a quote. I asked Catherine Thomas about this a long time. She says, well, there is an organizing principle called Catherine. There is no self. This is like that. Were you satisfied with that? I was, I was. So there's, it's like a force. There's living, there's breathing, but there's not a self. We assume that there's a self doing that. Well, there is at the moment. I mean, at the moment you are organized as soon. Okay.

[79:22]

It just seemed like one sort of big, farting, breathing, snuffling machine. One mind, one cult. You reminded me, Sue, about a whole controversy that has been going on the Buddhism, the Buddhist circles about the sort of Western psychological notions of self and Western ideas about wounded selves and troubled selves and how practice does or doesn't help us to deal with that stuff and those experiences which we identify as disorders of the self. or discomforts of the self.

[80:56]

And I think those are things that we're going to keep coming back to. And I know my feelings about them really changed. there's a whole Western literature on the development of the healthy self, a lot of which makes a good deal of sense and has been very helpful to many of us. And then there's this whole literature on how there's no such thing, which has also been very helpful to us. And so how do we reconcile that these two very different ways of looking and our experience are both very helpful, and both very right in some sense, and don't, at least in a logical sense, even include one another. I think you reconcile it because Ross rings the bell.

[81:59]

That just, you breathe. He can be reconciled in this moment, in that I was listening to a talk by Tony Packer one night in my car as I was driving to a class or something. She was responding to questions from students in a retreat about this whole question of the use of psychotherapy and the healing of childhood trauma and wounds to the self. the notion that we have to heal all that old pain and become whole in a psychological sense, that we have to heal the ego and have a healthy ego before we can drop it. And her response to that was, you can drop it at any moment. And, you know, it hit me kind of like where I fell, of course, you know, right now.

[83:10]

But I think what stops me from doing something like that is the fear that the pain will come back. The desire to have a recipe or a model or a resolution that will last indefinitely. And that's what I was talking about. It's at that level. So in meditating on always something, and really that is the subject of meditation, it's always something, so what is this thing?

[84:17]

So for these five minutes, each time you notice something, whether it's a thought, or a feeling, a sound, a body sensation. Give it a name. Notice it by giving it a name. Acknowledge If the practice of noting, giving a name to body sensations, feelings, thoughts that come up in meditation is something you haven't practiced, if you'd like you can give it a try during this week, and it will be a practical way of studying

[88:29]

the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, and the general topic of this week's reading. So I'll see you next week. Thank you.

[88:42]

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