is also the fourth noble truth. The first truth is the truth of suffering. The second is the truth of the origination of suffering. The third is the truth of the cessation of suffering, the freedom from suffering. And the fourth is the truth of the past. The way the Buddha said it at the time, apparently, was the path that leads to the cessation of suffering. I found it very important to emphasize that the path which leads to the cessation of suffering is the cessation of suffering. They're not two different things. Also, I mentioned this morning that these Four Noble Truths are the topic of highest wisdom in the Buddhist teaching, and that when one understands these Four Noble Truths, one has the same understanding

[01:27]

as a Buddha and experiences the same personal liberation that the Buddha experienced. But the Buddha Shakyamuni was not just someone who had highest wisdom. The Buddha also had great compassion. In early ways of understanding Buddhism, the disciples of the Buddha wanted to have the same understanding as Buddha, so they studied the Four Noble Truths. And those who understood the Four Noble Truths realized personal liberation from suffering, just like the Buddha did. But then later in the history of Buddhism, the idea came up of actually following a path that would not just lead to personal liberation,

[02:30]

but that we realize Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. And in order to realize Buddhahood, there has to be a combination of this highest wisdom of understanding the Four Noble Truths, coupled with great compassion. And I just want to emphasize that this week we'll be talking about The emphasis of the Eightfold Path culminates in wisdom, which roots up basic delusion and sets the practitioner free. But you should understand that in our practice of Zen, that kind of wisdom has to be coupled with great compassion in order to realize the bodhisattva. puts out the goal of Buddhahood for the world.

[03:44]

I'll say more about this, but there is a difference between being personally ethical, which is part of the Eightfold Path. You cannot realize penetrating insight if you don't conduct yourself in such a way as to not harm beings. Ethics is definitely part of wisdom. It has the root, the foundation of wisdom. Ethical conduct is not the same as great compassion. Now, you can say ethical conduct can be expanded infinitely to become great compassion, but you can be very careful of what you do, and you can be very careful that you don't hurt anybody or yourself.

[04:45]

You watch carefully all the things you do, but that's not the same as being willing to give your life for the welfare of all living beings, and not just the welfare, but the actual enlightenment of all living beings. It's not the same. And once again, you could have sufficient ethical training and discipline of yourself to realize insight for yourself. But that level of ethical concern is not the same scope as the scope of compassion of the Buddha himself. But I don't think this week we're going to be able to bring up the whole side of things, we're going to emphasize the Eightfold Path. I just want you to keep that in mind, this huge compassionate trip, this wisdom trip, okay? Alright, so the Eightfold Path is, well, you know, it's called, in Pali it's called

[05:56]

Each one, before each one, they say Sama. Like the first one is Sama Drishti. In Sanskrit, it's called Samyak Drishti. And that word Sama, or Samyak, now most of the time you see it is translated as right. So Drishti means view. Most of the time you see it now is translated as right view. and so on. But also, I may say right, but samyak can also be translated just as well as complete, comprehensive. So sometimes I may say right, sometimes I may say complete, sometimes I may say comprehensive. So it's not right, like kind of the opposite of wrong. It's not the opposite of wrong. It completely understands the whole range of right and wrong.

[07:03]

It's a very big view. It's not so much the right view as opposed to the wrong view, but it's the understanding of how right and wrong work. It's the understanding of the whole range of phenomena, how they happen. So the first one is complete view. The second one is complete thinking. Comprehensive thinking. Third one is right speech, or comprehensive speech. Fourth is action. It is comprehensive livelihood. Sixth is comprehensive effort. That's a good one. How did I get to six? Anyway, somehow I got it. The number went up too fast. Five is comprehensive effort.

[08:05]

Six is comprehensive mindfulness. Seven is comprehensive concentration. Eight is comprehensive concentration. Seven is comprehensive mindfulness. Six is comprehensive effort. Five is comprehensive library. Four is comprehensive Three is comprehensive speech. Two is comprehensive thinking. One is comprehensive view. Those are the eight. You probably see the Buddhist wheel, one of the symbols for Christianity is a cross. Judaism is often a star. And Buddhism, you know, Buddhism make a circle usually. And then they usually have eight spokes.

[09:10]

Does that make eight? And so there's, what do you call it, right view, thinking, speech, and so on, right? Contradictions. So, after you get into the practice of the Ipoh Path, by ways, one knows that by far, but at a certain point, when you get into practicing this path, you have a feeling, you get more of a feeling, like when you're practicing one, you're practicing others.

[10:17]

You become more and more certain that you practice all eight simultaneously. But they're not exactly a sequence, but they're components of wisdom. They're components of the path. Put it the other way, maybe as you practice more you realize that when you're not practicing one of them, you're not practicing the other ones. But at first, before you realize that's true, you might be able to feel like you're practicing one, even though you're just kind of nice. For beginners, right? So this is the order. Usually the first one is called right view and the last one is called concentration. That's the order they're presented. But it's not the usual order of practice.

[11:22]

The usual order of practice is, let me just take that back in a sense. Before I say that, to say that these eight can be broken up into three groups. The first group, in terms of practical application, the first group would be right speech, right action, right livelihood. I agree. Right. Speed. Those are the components of the path which are concerned with ethical discipline. OK. They're concerned with what you do with your body and your voice. Yeah. Discipline. Ethical discipline. These three.

[12:24]

And the next group is right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. And these three have to do with not so much your action, but the quality of your consciousness. The kind of presence, the kind of mental culture such that understanding of what's happening could arise. The basis of wisdom, these three practices. And in the last two, right view and right thinking and right thought and right intention, those are talking about the actual wisdom that does the job of setting us free from our delusion.

[13:42]

And so there's a little bit of a confusion here that might be experienced because we start with the wisdom. You start with intention at the beginning of the study of the Eightfold Path, even though, in another sense, the wisdom is based on the practice of the later elements. It's because at the beginning of studying the Eightfold Path, before you even start studying, right speech and practicing right speech, right action, and right livelihood, you need kind of a right view, orientation to the course. So the first kind of right view is kind of like a view where you understand the curriculum of the path.

[14:51]

And then as you go through from there and practice ethical discipline and concentration, and you come to Right View again, but this time Right View becomes pure wisdom rather than an overview and rationale for the whole program. For the first time, Right View partly convinces you and orients you to, convinces you that it's necessary and practical practice and also shows you the root. So it helps motivate inspire and bring when you first look at it. So today, I'll start looking at right view, but it'll be the right view of this preliminary type, which is necessary to enthusiastically practice right speech and so on. Then later, by the end of the week maybe, we can look at right view

[15:53]

as it is in terms of actually becoming intimate with what's happening, developing the understanding which is liberation. Again, the first right view is about the world and how the world of bondage works. And respecting the rules of the world. The last right view is seeing the freedom from the world. Okay? So that's kind of an overview of the situation. And that overview, which I just gave you, is a little right view. Okay? So that's kind of the right view type of, preliminary right view that I've been doing since that tape recorder started. Yes. Yeah. When I turn it over this way, I have to speak louder.

[16:57]

When I turn it over this way. If I talk like this, can you hear me over there? Very. I'm closer to these people. And you're near the creek. Oh, you're near the creek. Okay. Any questions so far? Can you maybe say more about ethical conduct? Ethical conduct, if you're not paying attention to your behavior, then when you try to meditate, blue jays will come and peck on your head. Because you forgot to close the door to the meditation hall.

[17:58]

Or in your ears. Because you forgot to close the door to the meditation hall. Also, if you've just eaten too much, you'll have problems doing your meditation. If you've just been cruel to someone, your mind will be disturbed. If you've just done various things too much, for example, done various things to excess, inappropriately much, or inappropriately little, if you eat too little, that's kind of actually not right action. And then if you don't eat too little, the Buddha actually did that, you know? He ate so little, although he ate so little his meditation wasn't quite right. So then he started eating a little bit more, and he had enough energy to see what was right there. He was totally dedicated, but he kind of overdid the not-eating thing.

[19:02]

That actually wasn't right action. So then he ate a little bit more, and he hit the right spot, and he had enough energy to see. So what you eat, what you smoke... what you breathe, what you think, and the things you do affect your state of mind. Then once your state of mind is affected by those things, too disturbed, or too weak, or too strong, you have too much energy or too little energy because of what you did or what you said, then wisdom is difficult to realize because the mind is so shaky that it's hard for it to harmonize. Even though what's happening is that it's shaky, it's hard to realize the shakiness of shakiness when you're shaky. It's better to be unshaky first, and then later you can realize the shakiness of shakiness more advanced. So the Buddha, many, many deep penetrations of the nature of mind, probably the Buddha could still see what's going on.

[20:08]

As a matter of fact, the Buddha did say at a certain point, these ethical rules are for you, not for me. I don't need them anymore. I keep practicing because I like them, but I don't actually need them. I won't lose my understanding just because I do some of these actions which for you will disturb you. Like we're reading, it's not necessarily harmful to other people, but it's harmful. And under-eating also might not be harmful. As a matter of fact, some people under-eat because they don't want to harm people. If you under-eat too much, then you can't do your meditation, which that might harm people if you don't do your meditation. So that's just a little bit about how the basis for concentration and concentration is a basis for movement. So, ready? So, right view. The main thing about right view in a preliminary phase, and this is a huge topic, and next week I have a workshop on this topic, and I'm sure you'd like to spend a whole week here talking about this first topic, but anyway, the main ingredient of right view in a

[21:39]

is the actual understanding that action and effects are pivotal for liberation and happiness. Not just belief in cause and effect in nature, but particularly that moral action or immoral action have effects. That's the basic thing. Trusting cause and effect. Most people, even if they're practicing sincerely, do not actually have eyewitness, cannot verify from personal experience how action leads to effects.

[22:55]

They don't necessarily see how that all is true. But to see it as an inexorable law, these are the spiritual developments. Most people can't see that. And some people who aren't Buddhas have been able to see this. but have a very different interpretation from Buddhas about power. Buddhas all teach this. All the Buddhas I've heard of teach that action has effects. And you have to study that in order to move forward in the path of liberation. You have to accept and study this phenomenon. What do you mean by that? What do you refer to as right time? Well, I was looking at the way you were talking about the steps this morning. And when you go from understanding the action, you're doing a cosmic fact.

[23:56]

Yes. And what I hear people using, I never quite understand what they mean. I'll tell you that now. So, by action, what the Buddha meant by action is the basic definition of action, the definition of karma is I'm going to write Sanskrit word is chetana. And I like the Chinese character. The character has two parts. One part, the top part of the rice field, and the bottom part is the character of the mind, the consciousness. I like this because the rice field has a shape.

[25:14]

It's shaped like a rice field. See the rice field? It has a shape. So, it's the shape of the consciousness. So, the basic definition of karma is the shape of your consciousness. Chaitanya means that root of the word citta, which means consciousness, and citta now means the shape of the consciousness. So every moment, your consciousness has a shape. Even a Buddha's mind, even a Buddha's consciousness, as a Buddha has a shape. If you just look in a Buddha's consciousness, or a Buddha can tell you what's going on there, you can see the shape of that moment of consciousness. certain confirmation. Okay.

[26:19]

I don't know if you can look at your consciousness right now and see the shape of it. But maybe you can. And then maybe if you can see the shape of your consciousness, you can see the changes from moment to moment, the last kind of landscape in your mind. Now if you take a consciousness which has a shape, and then you have a sense of belief in an individual, a person who owns that consciousness, then that consciousness can be seen as the way this person can act, the way this person wills. They often translate chaitanya as volition, but volition isn't necessarily the translation, but volition or will or impulse or tendency of a moment of consciousness, that's the action.

[27:39]

If you have a sense of a person, then that action is karma. And if you have the sense of a person with this shape of the mind and the illusion of action, this person does and acts with body and voice based on the shape of the consciousness. then that pattern of person and mind being shaped this way, an action that has effects. And the rule is that there's basically three kinds of effects, three kinds of patterns. Wholesome, unwholesome, and indeterminate. Look at the shapes of the consciousness. The wholesome consciousnesses are in some sense, you could say, well, the wholesome consciousnesses, the rule is the wholesome consciousnesses lead to beneficial fruit.

[28:56]

The unwholesome consciousnesses, when acted out, lead to harmful fruit. Negative results for the actor and for others. But for sure for the actor. The one who's imagining it definitely gets the results of wholesome and unwholesome actions. And some of the unwholesome actions hurt other people, so other people get hurt. The main brunt of the unwholesome is coming back in the person who does it. Other people may be harmed, but it doesn't affect their spiritual development. But it definitely affects the spiritual development of the one who imagines that she did it. That's the basic thing. It could be hotter, though.

[30:06]

It gets hotter. Before I stop, I want to mention to you that there are these three basic types of consciousness, which are the basis of all karma. traditionally ten basic types of wholesome and unwholesome. There aren't ten basic types of intermediate, indeterminate. Think about why that's so. Anyway, for the unwholesome, the ten basic types are the ten waves, the ten patterns of mind, which a person then can act out with, number one, body. Killing. Killing life. Hicking was not given. And sexual misconduct.

[31:07]

Three physical ways. Basic physical ways. Of course there's many more. Then, the speech. Lying. Harsh speech. Slander. idle chatter gossip sometimes it can be idle chatter and sometimes can be slander sometimes you can gossip without so slander means let's see I think I was talking to somebody lying means you know trying to deceive harsh speech means talking in a way that hurts people, which is harmful to people. It's possible sometimes to speak loudly and have it not be hard speech, but speech that really hurts people, basically.

[32:14]

Slander is talking in such a way as to, even if you tell the truth, to hurt a person's name and to say it with the intention of hurting their name. Of course, if you say it without the intention, it still counts if you don't think about it, because on some unconscious level, you want it to. On some level, you're saying something bad about people, even though it may be somewhat factual. Like some people, you might say, that person's a basketball player, in a group of people that hate basketball players. So in that context, you would be slandering the person because you're ignoring their... In some circles, like we have some vegetarians here, in some circles if you say that a person is a vegetarian, everybody hates them. It's a slanderous thing to say about somebody. In other situations, you say it's a meat eater.

[33:17]

The point is you're meaning to devalue the person in some way. If you sincerely looked at somebody and said, there's a vegetarian, and you really meant it as a compliment, even if somebody else thought it was an insult, your intention would be, you're praising them, right? So even if somebody didn't, that wouldn't be your intention. Your intention would be to say something good about the person. So to say something that you think is bad about the person, that's slander, even if it's true. Even if they really are a basketball player, I don't think that's sickening. You say, now there's a basketball player. Or like some people say, there's a man. So you're sometimes saying there's a man. There's a man. And then sometimes the other way. And then idle chatter is talking and using your speech and using your energy in a way that's not helpful.

[34:20]

and perhaps distracting other people from their practice. Gossip, I think what that means is to tell stories that you haven't verified and that might be untrue. You don't mean to be lying, but you're telling stories that That might not be true. And it might, again, undermine community in some way and cause disturbance in people's meditation practice. And then the thought ones are... Harshness is in the volume of the speech or in the meaning of the... It's that you talk... loud but not necessarily i could quietly say i could quietly say uh you know salve your way

[35:27]

Could you hear that? Yeah. That wasn't too loud. Could you hear it over there? Yeah. See, they couldn't hear it over there. I said salve or rap. Could you hear that? Not too loud. It's kind of... Especially if I meant it. And it hurts you. Now, if I say salve or rap and you think it's cute, and I meant it to hurt you, then I don't give quite as much trouble. Now, if I say it and I really meant it, as a compliment, because you and I are kind of like... Did you see that cute rat last night on the wall? That was a rat, right? Wasn't that a gorgeous rat? Now, if we look at that rat, and then I would say, Salvi, you're a rat, you might say, well, thank you. It depends. The point is, do I mean to be hard on you? And then do you actually feel it? Am I skillful at hurting you? Then that's harsh speech.

[36:31]

Kind speech is the opposite. So then the last three are having possessive, greedy, get something. Are you trying to hold on to what you've got in your mind? And then the other one is skill, will. Actually, not just being angry, but you know, dwelling on it. You're angry and then you keep being angry. There's a flare and then you sort of hold it. That's an unwholesome action. Just an angry thought is not this kind of unwholesome action. But to do it again, that makes it unwholesome. And the last one is called The last mental karma, which is unwholesome, is called wrong view.

[37:36]

To meditate on karma is to see how actions lead to effects and to meditate, for example, on how unwholesome action leads to effects. But the last unwholesome thought, the type of thought karma, is wrong view. Wrong view is that karma doesn't lead to results, and therefore you don't have to watch it, and it's a waste of time to study it. So wrong view would be the kind of thinking that would toss off this whole meditation on cause and effect, on karma, cause and effect. And the ten types of wholesome action are basically the opposite of those, which are put negatively because it's sort of Indian style to put things negatively. So, it's the non-offensive, non-killing, non-stealing, non-selfish misconduct, and so on.

[38:48]

non-ill will, non-covetousness, and non-wrong view, namely right view. So those are the ten types. So part of the meditation is to notice, be able to tell, to be able to understand unwholesome and unwholesome action, to be able to see it happening in terms of body, speech, and mind, and then also to be able to see the roots of wholesome and unwholesome action. So you meditate. In your right view now, you're meditating on, you're watching your behavior. You're getting ready to practice. That's coming up. So you're starting to notice what is wholesome and unwholesome states of mind. You start to notice acting upon those wholesome or unwholesome states of mind.

[39:52]

You start to notice it's unwholesome. Which of these ten types is it? It's wholesome. Which of these ten types is it? An unwholesome thought gives an unwholesome state of mind. Here's acting it out physically, verbally, or mentally. I can see that now. Here it is. Right here at home, we have an example of lying. Watch all that. And also, as you meditate on this, you start to open your eyes as part of this preparatory right view. You start to see the source, the root of the unwholesome, or the root of the unwholesome. And the root of the wholesome, of the unwholesome, basically three roots, right? aversion, or victory, and those are the three roots.

[41:03]

And the three roots of wholesome actions are non-greed, non-aversion and wisdom, at least some wisdom. If you're practicing wholesome karma and acting it out, there's some wisdom at the root of that. So this is a little bit about right view. How would non-greed or non-aversion be wholesome as opposed to indeterminate? Oh, because that's a good question. Non-greed, wholesome as opposed to indeterminate. Because what is meant by non-greed is not just the absence of greed.

[42:14]

Non-greed means renunciation, detachment, and gentleness. Non-hate means loving-kindness, gentleness, patience. And non-ignorance and non-delusion means wisdom. So those aren't indeterminate. But an indeterminate state, the wholesome and unwholesome, you can't tell, it seems to be wholesome and unwholesome elements. Like it's possible to have and have it be a wholesome state of consciousness. There could be anger, but there can also be uh-oh, got anger here, watch, be careful. There can also be a strong kind of gentleness

[43:18]

Or you could be angry about your lack of gentleness, and at the same time you feel the anger, you notice the anger, you could feel resolved to be more gentle at the same time. So it's possible to have a balancing of elements, a state of mind that you can't really tell whether it's wholesome or unwholesome. There are states like that. And there are also states which are very, very simple states. where there's very little emotion going on. And there's this basic delusion of ignorance that there's no greed or hate. There's not great wisdom in the state, but there's also not a lot of negative elements in it. And also not a lot of positive elements. So you can't really tell. Why do you think that's unwholesome? Ignorance isn't exactly unwholesome, it's just the source of unwholesomeness.

[44:28]

Unwholesomeness, again, means, unwholesomeness could also be called unskillfulness. Unwholesome, the word unwholesome applies to action. That's what we're using in the talk. Basically, that has effects, gross effects in the world. and the source of all unwholesome action is ignorance. So ignorance isn't really itself unwholesome. Ignorance itself, in a sense, isn't really ignorance. It doesn't really do anything, except it basically ignores or turns away from what's happening. So it's pretty hard, for example, talking about cutting vegetables in the kitchen, it's pretty hard to skillfully cut the vegetable, ignore your hands, or ignore the knife, or ignore the vegetables.

[45:30]

Any kind of ignoring the situation, in a sense, is a kind of unskillfulness, but it's not exactly unskillful. It just sets up unskillfulness. It sets up missing the vegetables or hitting your fingers a little bit more. or not getting the knife and the vegetables together, or whatever it is, because you're ignoring the situation. Ignoring isn't exactly karma or action, or unwholesome action. Unwholesome action involves at least a little wisdom, because there's a little wisdom in cutting vegetables in such a way as to not cut your fingers, but to cut the vegetables. There's some wisdom there because you're somewhat in accord with what's happening to be able to do that. Zen monks sometimes like to cut vegetables because they have some wisdom there. Now, of course, sometimes while they're cutting the vegetables, they're not there, right?

[46:33]

They're thinking about some other place. Their mind's in Hawaii, even though they're really in California. Or they're thinking about someone next to them who they like or don't like. And still they don't cut their fingers off, but they're just lucky for a long time. There was a time when they developed a skill. They were present for a while and they developed a skill. And then once you develop a good karma of developing a skill, you can sometimes say, well, how are you to do it? And you still don't cut your fingers off. But if you're just developing your skill, you've got to put all your energy in there and be very wise. Beginners have to be very careful. Keep those fingers close to that vegetable. Not up ahead. So that's the preliminary right view. Any questions about that?

[47:39]

Can you go sharp now? Please be skillful. No? to visualize what an indeterminant state is. I mean, when I think of states that seem basically harmless, I can imagine some degree or the opposite. Is that not it? When I try to visualize a state that's indeterminate, that's basically neutral and neither are beneficial.

[48:42]

You know, when I try and think of that concretely, I always come up with some greed in there or some wish to benefit in there or... Yeah, that's a pretty good imagination. What you just said, you were trying to imagine when you came up with that stuff? Yeah. That sounds fairly indeterminate, what you say. Another way to do it is just watch your states of mind and see if you see any wholesome ones. Like some people, you know, just look inside and see if you see a wholesome state of mind. Do you? Just look inside and see if you see a wholesome state. If you can't find a wholesome state, well, put that aside for a while and look for an unwholesome one. If you can't find an unwholesome one or a wholesome one, But maybe you've got an indeterminate state. And maybe eventually you'll see an unwholesome state.

[49:45]

Or a wholesome state. Once you start seeing them, you'll realize that maybe a lot of your states are indeterminate. Or maybe you just can't see very well. But as you get more and more experience of seeing wholesome and unwholesome, the more you see of those, the more you realize that maybe the other one's part of the determinants. But then you might realize that more and more and more, you're seeing more higher percentage of wholesome and unwholesome and lower and lower percentage of indeterminate. And the reason why you thought there was more indeterminate before is because you weren't so good at seeing the wholesome and unwholesome. But then afterwards, you're getting pretty good. As your vision of seeing the wholesome and unwholesome get clearer, your vision of indeterminate will get clearer, too. Actually, I can see what's there and it is indeterminate. I can see that there's some aversion. There's some confusion. There's no lust. There's some faith in studying this because I'm actually studying it. So, that's pretty good.

[50:48]

I'm studying it. The fact that you're looking at it in an indeterminate state is pretty good. But you also have some greed there. You have some aversion. So not super greedy. So the fact that you're studying the state is already pretty good. But if you don't see any real positive things besides the fact that you're studying it, like there's not real zeal, there's not, you know, what do you call it, mental and physical relaxation. There's not It's not diligence. Now, there are certain dharmas which if you see them, you immediately know it's unwholesome. For example, the dharmas which basically neglect positive effects, those immediately make a state of unwholesomeness. Those two by themselves will immediately make unwholesome.

[51:50]

but you may have to have quite a few wholesome states, wholesome phenomena, wholesome mental factors, before it gets to be a wholesome state. Like, if you went over there to work in the kitchen, they might actually, in their mind, at some point, be willing to do the work, but not be willing to concentrate on their hands. Or, they might have some resistance to the work, and even be saying, I don't like this work, but be willing to actually pay attention to themselves. Or, they might be able to, again, be willing to do the work, actually be concentrated, feel joy, feel relaxed, and so on. And all those, in many states, start to seem quite slow, because not only are they able to concentrate enough now, but they're probably able to do it. And then if you could watch that, too, that would make it even more wholesome. But it is possible. The ability to watch your states of mind, your ability to look inside your states of mind, I would say, is the result of what's called a merit or a virtue which comes to you as wholesome action.

[53:01]

One of the wholesome effects, beneficial effects, of wholesome action is that you can study your state of consciousness. So if you're able to look inside yourself and see what's going on, that's because in the past you've done some good actions. But it's possible to have done lots of good and therefore be able to look at what's going on with you. But what's going on with you is not wholesome. So if you're able to see unwholesome activity in your own mind, that shows that you now have unwholesomeness, but you did some good in the past. If you do good. It's also possible that you do unwholesome acts for a while, and then you can't even see that you're doing unwholesome acts. If you do wholesome acts, you can see when you can meditate on your unwholesome and neutral actions. If you do unwholesome acts, it tends to lead to not doing, which of course is a great tragedy.

[54:04]

Because human beings can do this. They can meditate on what's going on inside. But if they don't do enough wholesome karma, they lose their chance to see what's going on inside and learn from the process. So that's why, in some sense, we might have to take it out of faith that we better do good karma, that our actions should be wholesome. Otherwise, we won't even develop the ability to see how true it is that it better be wholesome. Most people that I know, I've talked to and heard about, that do wholesome karma, they get the reward of being able to see how good wholesome karma is. Most people that have enough awareness to see and watch how wholesome karma works are very happy about how it works. And most people who have enough presence and awareness to see how unwholesome karma works convince that it's not a good deal. But just hearing about it without actually seeing it for yourself may not be sufficient

[55:10]

for you to be convinced. If you aren't convinced, you sort of have to do it according to some extent. Give it a try. You're never going to be able to verify it. So the Buddha said, don't just take what I say because I said it. Test it out yourself. In order to test this out, you have to do some good karma to see whether he's right. But you and you have to do some good. Right. About bad karma, too, because we do bad karma. You won't necessarily be able to even see that bad karma causes trouble. It's a bad part about bad karma that you do it. You get in trouble. You don't even know that what's wrong necessarily unless you did some good. So how does the addictive thing to come? They said they could think in a person who keeps doing the same thing. Unwholesome, and they keep creating bad karma for themselves. Is that a weak mind, a strong mind? What kind of mind would that be? An addictive... A person does an unwholesome thing? Yes, because he keeps repeating, like, say a person has an addictive thinking.

[56:15]

This is the problem. This is the big problem. You do... You get in trouble. What do you do? You do an unwholesome thing again. Right. then what do you do? Get in trouble. What do you do? This is terrible. This is what happens. That's why, if you ever have the good fortune of hearing something about doing good karma, do it. It's a terrible trap. Once you start doing unwholesome, it tends to drag you down into more unwholesomeness and take you over. That's the way it works. You say addictive, but it's a self-perpetuating system. Unwholesomeness leads to bad results and bad results. What do we do? Often. Yes, there is. And so if you hear about that, then you should act on it as soon as possible rather than waiting any longer. Is that a weak mind? Why did you consider that a weak mind? No, it's not a weak mind. It's not a weak mind.

[57:17]

It is a power. The mind is powerful. Mind generates unwholesomeness. It's powerful. It has powerful effects. Our minds are not weak. Our minds are undisciplined sometimes. If they're not weak, they're like workhorses. You have to find some way to train these big, powerful minds. Our minds are incredibly powerful. It's not to say, no, we should... But that's the point. That's what right view is about. Right view is saying, karma is extremely powerful. You have to meditate on it. You have to pay attention to this thing because it can ruin you. You have a mind which can ruin you. But also, if you pay attention to this mind, it can become... The process of meditating on this karma, you can become free of it. But the opposite of freedom is not just like now freedom, it's like terribly negative results track of your karma.

[58:21]

And if you're still doing unwholesome karma, all you can do now is study it, and that's sufficient. You study the unwholesome karma, you understand it's unwholesome, you're developing the right view, and you're getting ready to practice the right speech, the right action. Do you have questions? I think maybe you answered it. An image came up of the exhausted new mother holding her baby and rocking the baby, singing a beautiful lullaby to the baby, and wishing she'd never had the baby because she was exhausted. So this was three, good speech, a good body, and the pain was a two-year-old positive. And the other thing, I didn't want to be here. I wish I never had the baby. I was exhausted. And does that awareness, if she becomes aware of that, those three things are simultaneously going on. Is the karma of the negative. The cool one mitigated in some way, mitigated by the.

[59:28]

For example, it isn't just that the thought crosses the mother's mind, you know, I wish I hadn't had a baby in the first place. It's not just that thought. It gets to be karma when she has it twice, you know, holds it for a while. Here's the fleeting, that's not quite karma. Now it's just a thought, but then she does it again for a minute or five minutes or something, or a week. Then it gets to be karma. Then it could be the source of speech, like yelling at the baby, or action, not taking care of the baby. Let's say, though, that she has actually a negative thought, even though she's still taking care of the baby and not speaking harshly. If she's aware of that, She's on the road to freedom. And she's on the road to freedom.

[60:35]

She's in difficult circumstances. But she's still able to I say, the fact that she can see inside her head and notice that she has these negative thoughts, that's because of good karma she's done in the past. Otherwise, the mother has this thought, doesn't even notice it. And then, of course, if she doesn't notice it, then her voice and her action. So, I know Mostly related to me who had thoughts like that. And she gave me the baby at those times. At times like that, maybe you notice you're still taking care of the baby, but maybe it's possible. Maybe sometimes you can't, but it's possible at that time to tell you maybe you should put the baby in somebody else's arms. Love the baby, usually, but right now is the time to have somebody else help because you're kind of like so that your awareness protects you from slipping into And then maybe your awareness helps you take a rest so that you don't... And rest is part of... So that you have the energy to not be in so much pain and overwork.

[61:46]

Overwork is also not right action sometimes. So when we talk about right action sounds, it's basically the fact that you... The fact that you're aware is the result of good karma. And it's not karma. It's not good karma. The awareness of not good karma. You may have an indeterminate or unwholesome state. But the fact that you're aware of the unwholesome state protects you from the unwholesome state. And you can learn, even though it's unwholesome, you can learn about cause and effect of this unwholesome state. That protection isn't karmic. You're saying the fact that she's aware. That's karma as a result of karma. But the awareness is not karma. Awareness of karma is not karma. Awareness of karma is not karma. Practice this. This is the thing here. Right view. Right view is not karma. It is studying karma. And if you have the opportunity to study karma, you're a lucky person.

[62:49]

And then if you realize you're lucky and then do study karma, You're very fortunate and you're using your good fortune well. You have the good fortune to hear about it and you're studying karma. That's excellent. But the study of karma is not karma. But the ability, the opportunity to study karma is karmically conditioned and karmically set up. So the more good karma you do, the more chance... have to study karma. In other words, the more good karma you'll do, the more chances you have to do life and live a life which is not karma. Buddhist practice is not karma, strictly speaking. It is to study karma. Right view is not karma. Right view is karma is important. It should be studied. Study it. That's right intention. Right intention is the next one. I understand that karma is very important to study. The cause and effect is essential to understand. And I'm going to study it.

[63:52]

So by understanding that you need to study karma and being willing to study karma, the two together, you start to study your karma. And you start to study karma by practicing right speech. You have to study it in order to do it. You have to be aware of karma in order to... You don't have to be aware of karma, however, to do wrong speech. That's one of the nice things about wrong speech. You don't have to study karma. It's very easy to speak badly, unskillfully, without meditating on karma. But in order to speak rightly, if you're doing it in order to act and have the right livelihood, you have to study. But the study itself is not permanent. The study itself is the path. OK, but anyway, I think people can you say your questions are OK. Do you remember your questions? So this eightfold path is another way to talk about Zazen.

[64:52]

And so I would say that Zazen is what's happening. What's happening is that way all the time. And so Zazen is like Zazen is all the time. And so what seems to be happening for us anyway is that there are... There's two ways we live. One way is a way called sometimes the way of the world, the way of karma, where we live in terms of personal existence as separate from other beings and where we do things by our own power. And that's happening. Although that may not actually be happening, It is actually happening, and that seems to be happening. Another world which is simultaneous with zazen, which is simultaneous with the world of karma, of freedom from karma, and of course the world of freedom from karma is meaningless aside from the world of being trapped in the world of karma.

[66:14]

The only difference about Zazen is because we don't realize what Zazen is. And the only reason why we're practicing Zazen is because we're not completely in accord with what's happening. So when we're not in accord with what's happening, when we don't appreciate what's happening, we're unhappy. When we completely appreciate and are in accord with what's happening, we're free and happy. Zazen is that both of these worlds are happening simultaneously. And this is partly part of Zazen, which is the part of Zazen that is the right view, is to see and understand that there's these two worlds. And the first level of this understanding is part of what's happening.

[67:20]

is to understand the world of karma, the mundane world, the world of bondage and suffering. The other part of understanding, which goes with zazen, is to understand the world of freedom. Zazen can understand both these worlds simultaneously when it's fully realized. And it doesn't prefer one over the other. Because it doesn't make sense to prefer one over the other because they're inseparable. Razen is what's happening. So it doesn't prefer that things weren't the way they are. It sees that things seem to be this way and that they're not. So they're not over that they are. Okay? That's right view.

[68:25]

Now, yesterday and this morning I talked about trying to develop a vision of how karma works. And if you see how karma works, that vision of how karma works is the beginning of wisdom. And also, when you see how karma works, you would start to understand that this karmic thing It's a big problem for us. So that naturally leads to the next step of right thinking or right intention. Because once you understand the world of karma, once you see how karma works, it would be natural for you to intend to find a way to be free of that world which you see as bondage and misery.

[69:31]

Or another way to put it is, once you see how karma works, once there's a vision of how karma works, it's not so much that you should, want to be free of it. But rather, the way things happen, the way things actually happen, there's a vision of how karma works. There's also an intention to be free of it. That's the way things are. And before there's a vision of how karma works, there won't necessarily be an intention to wish to be free of that process. Or another way to put it is, once you understand the laws of karma, you're thinking a kind of thinking which is thinking about what's the way to be free of this mess.

[70:45]

So once you, with right view, with the first part of right view, which is right view of the world of karma, I haven't talked about the right view, which is looking at the world of freedom. I'll talk about that later in the week. But once you start settling into the vision of how the world of karma works, that settling into things and seeing how it works is the free you already from delusion. Your karmic activity is continuing because you still haven't completely freed yourself of all self-delusion. But you're starting to see how the self concocts activity into delusion. When the delusion starts to be antidoted, by meditating on the karma which is going on, then naturally you start to give rise to an intention, again, to find a way to move the field in the most happy and reasonable and peaceful way, which is what we call right thinking or right intention, which would be

[72:13]

the intention of renunciation, and the intention of karmlessness. So, again, once you see how karma works, once you view how karma works, the bride is in the midst of that view. towards renunciation, loving-kindness, and kindnessness. So there's view, the world, how the world of bondage works, the view, and then connecting the view and these actions, the aspects of the path of action, speech, physical action, and livelihood, Connecting the view with these activities will be And I wrote on the board yesterday is worth shaping up you can be which is the definition of karma So as you're meditating on right view you're studying karma and as You start to start to zero in on and see the volition of

[73:44]

or the intention, which gives rise to karmic activity. So you're meditating on your karma, and then as you start to see what kind of karma you've got, the main way you tell is to look back to what is the motive, what is the intention out of which this karma arises. So by practicing right view, you start to tune your understanding into the basic source of all actions. And then you notice this kind of motivation causes problems and trouble and pain. It's wholesome and beneficial and happy. You start to see the volition. So then you start to develop now a volition which will be in accord with what you've learned is the beneficial kinds of motivation. So you start training. Thinking is the tendency of the mind, the tendency of a given thought.

[74:51]

It's the way of tending. That's what thinking is. So these two, view and thinking, view and intention, they're the understanding or the view part of wisdom. And also they show that wisdom has an intention. Wisdom isn't just understanding. It's understanding and it also shapes the mind. It shapes it in a certain tendency. And the tendency in this case is a tendency which will go with what's happening instead of against it. So, again, right intention is the antidote And view, right view, is the antidote to delusion. The view is the antidote to delusion and the right intention is the antidote to greed.

[76:00]

So all three roots, all three of the roots of our unwholesome karma are dealt with by right view and right hatred. Loving kindness and harmlessness address ill will. Loving kindness, wishing beings to be happy, and harmlessness, the compassionate wish that they won't be hurt, is slightly different. This is compassion. And renunciation is to think in such a way that you actually like thinking enough. Your thought is the kind of thought which doesn't cling to things. Which actually, first of all, wishes to find a way to live in the middle in such a way that you don't cling.

[77:02]

And again, it isn't that you should try to get yourself to not cling. It is necessary that we not cling. It's necessary that we not crave. It's difficult to not crave and desire, but it's necessary in order to be free of suffering. But you don't try to stop yourself from desiring. Rather, you understand the connection between craving and suffering. understanding it, the mind which is willing to kind of like cut through there and just let pleasant things be pleasant things and not go on onto them, the mind which sees how cool it is, how happy it is, how beautiful it is to let attractive be attractive and lovely things. And also, you learn by watching that if you let

[78:10]

attractive ugly things to attractive ugly things, attractive lovely things, and you let ugly things be ugly things, that that renunciation of aversion and clinging opens your eyes gradually to beauty everywhere. But when you cling to lovely things, you kill beauty. When you see that over and over, you're gradually going to like want to leave things alone and just, you know, appreciate. I appreciate this beautiful, lovely event. I appreciate it. That's it. Because then I don't destroy all the beautiful things. I don't mess with it. I don't try to get it in. And ugliness is the same.

[79:11]

Try to push away ugliness, that makes it harder to leave loveliness alone. So, Zazen contains this whole chart, but in particular now, I'm emphasizing that what's happening is, the way things are happening is, that when one appreciates what's happening, on antidotes to delusion, and one wishes to find a way to become free of the karmic processes. When what's happening is that one is not meditating on karmic processes, then that's what's happening, and that does sometimes happen. In a sense, the Dazen is that. The person doesn't want to stop coming to Dajin. He's sad, Dajin. But in fact, Dajin has been letting people indulge in karma all this time.

[80:18]

It hasn't been... It lets them go ahead. That's part of Dajin, is that there is such a world of misery composed of composed of people who do not yet want to study karma. It is also that thinking changes into right intention gradually, and the more you understand karma, the more right intention becomes mature, and the more clear you are that you want to become free of the process. Okay? So that's a little bit about right intention and how it kind of like naturally comes up out of right view. It naturally comes down from right view. And how right view and right intention then prepare us for right action and right livelihood.

[81:22]

But again, it won't be that we're forcing ourselves to speak right. It will be that we want to. Our intention is to speak in a way that promotes renunciation, that supports loving-kindness, and that supports harmlessness. The antidote to harmlessness and loving-kindness are greed and hate. You should turn around sometimes. You should remember that. If you ever get too much lovey-dovey kindness, just generate some goodwill, and that'll pretty much take care of you. Although, you know, if, huh? What?

[82:26]

Generate some ill will. What'd I say? Good will. Oh, yeah. Ill will. Generate some ill will, and that'll pretty much take care of your loving-kindness. However, if your loving-kindness is super strong, a little bit of ill will won't do it. But basically, if you keep working at it, you can gradually overcome quite a bit of But if the loving-kindness is really, really fierce, then ill-will actually makes you get stronger. Now, like I say, a breeze will blow out a candle, but wind blowing on a forest fire just makes you stronger. So the thing to do is to get your loving-kindness pretty big, and then you'll be in good shape. Why, the antidote to it won't hurt you.

[83:26]

And the same with... Actually, I think I said that wrong. When you say what the antidote to harmlessness and loving kindness is, it's just ill will. The antidote to denunciation. I said that wrong. So greed is the antidote to right view. And delusion is the antidote to right view. But once you see how karma works, once you start seeing it, it's kind of spoiled. Owen? What we just said might get at what I'm going to ask. Does karma invariably lead to suffering, or are there types of karma that can be pleasurable and not a cycle of suffering that we've been talking about? Hopefully. Can you interact with beauty in a way that doesn't destroy the beauty?

[84:27]

Yeah, there are two points. The first point is wholesome karma does not cause suffering. It leads to good fortune, material good fortune and good spiritual opportunities. just good karma by itself will never set you free from samsara from from bonding to birth and death and you know good karma by itself isn't sufficient so in some sense good karma perpetuates the life of suffering so in the life of suffering within the karmic world good karma makes it more and more unpleasant under this basically faulty situation and sets up spiritual So good karma is the best karma because it sets up the possibility for receiving the teaching which can liberate us.

[85:32]

But you can't receive the teaching which will liberate you before you understand the workings of the world in practice. If you practice wholesome karma, you can eventually receive a liberating teaching. But practicing wholesome karma is not sufficient. You must see the teaching about how to become free of the whole karmic situation. So you also want to associate sexual-related karma, wholesome karma, ideally? Because that gets you trapped into the world of karma. Yeah, not exactly renounce it, but what you want to renounce is the source of You want to renounce your attachment to yourself, which is the source of good karma, too. So if you want to take care of yourself, the best way to take care of yourself and keep yourself is good karma.

[86:38]

If you want to become free, completely happy, and still, you should do good karma so that you can do a practice which will then help you become free of yourself. It sets you completely free. As long as you've got any kind of self, then you're involved in karma, and good karma is perfect. But that's not enough. To begin the path of liberation, you start practicing Right View, which is not only you're doing good karma, hopefully, but you're studying the karma. And if you happen to do any unwholesome karma, you study that too. So this starts the process. By in some ways making the right view will make you more skillful at your karmic life. And also by becoming more skillful at your karmic life, you should be able to be more successful at studying karma. When you're really successful at studying karma, when you really understand karma, then your thinking will get clearer, your intention will get more pure.

[87:47]

your speech, action, and life that will get more pure. We move into these concentration practices and we become more successful. And then right view, we'll be able to now look at the actual liberating principles. And then you said, is there some way of relating to beauty in a way that doesn't destroy it? Yeah, other than appreciating it. Well, actually, I said appreciating it, but that actually is a little bit too much. almost the way of relating to beauty that doesn't destroy it is to just be intimate with it which means don't touch it and don't turn away from it don't deny it don't exploit it just be there with it purely that won't destroy it and that won't promote it but It sets you up to have the revelation of beauty again, and again, and again.

[88:50]

It'll also help you let it go when it changes, because beauty changes, because it also will let you not make beauty into something, because beauty really isn't something. In fact, that's what beauty is. It's not really anything at all. That's what's so beautiful about it. Like one time I heard Yo-Yo Ma play the cello, and I couldn't even tell it was beautiful. I couldn't tell it was beautiful. Maybe it wasn't. But I had, usually, these very good musicians I can tell if they're beautiful or not. But that's not real beauty. Beauty is primarily not beautiful. And when that hits you, you may want to bring that into something beautiful that's make it into your self-defined beauty, then you kill it. I think it says, beauty is something like the beginning of a terror which you're just buried in.

[90:02]

Are you next, Liz? I have a question about backsliding. Backsliding, yeah. We're over here. You're aware of clarity, you're aware of intention. You're trapped in a sticky mind. You're trying to experience your mind going out and sticking it in. And in your heart, you know that's not what you want to be doing, but there's still this momentum of old habits. Yeah, so like maybe you're practicing right view, maybe. You're noticing this strong habit to generate certain kinds of karma. It gets stuck in certain situations. So when you see that, then you're going to want to, you're going to develop a thought or an intention which would be, it would be cool to sort of like slip free of that stickiness. Right?

[91:05]

So is there more? No. Yeah. So when you see the stickiness, in some sense, you've got the stickiness down. The stickiness is under surveillance. It helps. And the more you watch it, the more you say, well, there it is again. I don't know if I really like the stickiness all that much. I don't know if I should hate the stickiness that much either. Maybe I should just not hate it too much. But actually, I think, you know, I would be willing to let it go, to get that checked. If that would happen, that would be OK with me. So I'm not going to be real heavy on this, because that would be another kind of stimulus, right? You know that story that I tell about, what is it? How many people did not know the story of Br'er Rabbit? OK, so this is a story from the movies or something. So there's a. Is it rare or rare?

[92:15]

How do you say rare, [...] briar, [...] briar. Anyway, somebody some kind of rabbit, some kind of bear and some kind of fox. So the bear and the fox are always trying to catch the rabbit. But the rabbit's too smart for them. So I think this is a car baby. take a pile of tar and shape it into a baby. And the rabbit goes by the tar and says, hi, baby. But tar babies can't talk, so the tar baby doesn't say anything. And the rabbit says, hey, I said hi. The tar baby doesn't say anything. I said, hi. Hey, you. And he goes, hey, poof, and pokes the little tar baby. He gets his hands stuck in the tar. Right? A little sticky.

[93:16]

Sticky, sticky. So what does he do? He says, okay. Push himself out. Saying he's got two hands in. Okay? So then he says, okay. And then he uses his feet to get out. And then he uses his head to get out. So then the bear and the fox come out to get the rabbit. The bear doesn't even understand what they're calling him, but the rabbit says, The fox says, okay, we got him. And they come out and they get the mouse. Because he got stuck, but then he didn't just say, okay, I'm stuck. He meditated on that. If you live in Mississippi, like where I was born, you live in Mississippi, you stick your hand in the car, okay? If it's soft enough to get your hand in, you just stand there for a while. and it'll soften up and you can pull it out. But if you're in a hurry, stick your other hand in, you can get all tangled up, even on a hot day.

[94:19]

And you just wait and meditate, that stuff will fall off and you'll pull your hand out. But he was impatient, wanted to get rid of that stickiness, push it away, then you get more involved in it. That's not renunciation, that's playing into it more. Renunciation is, I'm not even going to fight this. I'm going to let go. Fuck! In other words, I'm going to be willing to be stuck, because I am anyway. Why not? So then you get unstuck. Great story. It's a great story. Watching TV isn't all bad. I don't know who was next. Were you next, Ross and Dave? No, I just went back to the duty. I'm just wondering if duty leads to the future. Beauty is not good or bad. Bad is as beautiful as good is.

[95:26]

Evil is as beautiful as good. People don't like it if I say that, maybe, but the way evil happens, the world, the universe makes evil, and the way evil is made is good. And the way good is made is beautiful. If you can appreciate the beauty of evil, you won't attach to it. If you can appreciate the beauty of good and not try to grab the beauty, you'll let go of the good too. Letting go of good is good and letting go of evil is evil. Letting go of evil though, when you let go of evil, there's no more evil. When you let go of good, there's more good. So letting go of evil is good and letting go of good is better. And when you see the beauty of good and evil, how they make each other, and you leave it alone, and you're ready for the next moment to see how things happen. Again, that's the right view of Section 3, when you can actually see how things happen.

[96:29]

This is how the first right view is how the world of karma happens, which isn't exactly how things happen. It's more how suffering under the existence, we generate karma. We have to take responsibility Then later, after practicing these other aspects, you're ready to start looking at what an illusion karma is in the first place. Not just how karma works, but how karma doesn't work. How karma works before you can contemplate how it doesn't work. So again, based on how karma does work, you can receive the teaching of how it doesn't. But if you receive the teaching of how it doesn't before you understand how it does, you're just going to be crazy. Yeah. [...] freedom, liberation, renunciation, ending, ending all bad.

[97:52]

Yeah, I did that today too. Yeah, but that's what you said last time was, the biggest, as I understood, thinking that anything on the right side of the board, you get to. The reality was that we are in delusion, and that that side that we're stuck in, and that going to that dragon's cave and experiencing it deeper, [...] somehow we can release it, but yet the idea that it's a reward to get enlightenment. That's the same thing I'm saying today. I thought so, but I didn't see it. Thanks for rephrasing it. Saying it over. It's the same thing. Going in the dragon cave is to understand karma. When you understand karma, you're ready for the world. But you can't get the world free of karma because it's free. You can't get it. You can't If we could get the world of karma, we would have got it already. If we could get the world free of karma, we would be rich. Because everybody would want to buy that.

[98:53]

But we don't own it, so it's free of us. Nobody can capitalize on it. Freedom from karma, that world is on, I don't know. But anyway, the world of freedom from karma is given to us from being willing to understand the world of karma. It's inseparable from the world of karma. We can't get it separate from So you go into the dragon. Through a right view, you go down into and start meditating on karma. With the right intention, you develop your intention about how you're going to behave in the world of karma. So right view, you start to see the world of karma. Right intention is, okay, here we go. We're going in there. Going down into the cave now. We're going to go into the cave and we're going to renounce getting anything out of this visit to the dragon. There's a pearl under the dragon's thing, but I'm not going to, like, try to get that thing for myself. So I'm going to go in there with renunciation, with ill will.

[99:54]

I'm not going to hurt anything, including the dragon. I'm not going to hurt this dragon. There's loving kindness, you know, loving kindness, harmlessness, and renunciation. I'm going down in that cave. And then when I get in the cave, I'm going to practice right speech. Hello, dragon. Right action. Right action to, like, you know, Whatever, you know, right action. Right action, you know, hopefully it'll come out, you know. Because you've got the right intention, you know. You've got the renunciation, the harmlessness, and the loving kindness. So hopefully you'll say the right thing. You'll have the right posture. Stand up straight or bow down, whatever is appropriate for the dragon. And then you have a bright livelihood. You clean up dragon poop. Then things get pretty cool, you know.

[100:56]

You're talking to the dragon, you know, got a nice conversation going. You're in the right position. Not standing up too straight, maybe, or bending down too low. Dragons maybe don't like you to bend down too much, you know. You find the right posture, and then you find the right job there in the dragon cave. Then you're ready to, like, make the right effort. Then you're in the cave. You've got your situation in the cave. Then you can go on the right effort. Working on your inner states there, being with the dragon up close and breathing in your face. How the various things are going to come up. How do you take care of yourself? And then how do you practice mindfulness there in the cave? And how do you practice concentration? And then you're ready to see, how did this thing happen in the first place anyway? And you're back to the right view and the right attention again. So it is the same story, although it sounded different to you, huh? Now, you help me. Because I'm just thinking, as Red's saying, these are all the steps or ways we can try to get out of the cave. But no, there are ways to be in the cave. There are ways to be in the cave, to make your peace in the cave. And when you're at peace in the cave, when you find peace in that cave, you're all set.

[102:01]

Because if you can be happy in that cave, if they should happen to take the dragon away and bring you up to the surface with the flowers and the butterflies and stuff, you'll be okay there too, brother. This is to make your peace. peace with demons, you know, with your demons, with your deep, deep, dark. Become free of those. You can also become free of your lighter weight habits, your more beneficent karmic patterns. Anything else today? So you understand? Right intentions? Renunciation. Love and kindness. Compassion. Promises. Renunciation. Distinct. How's a distinct conversion? It's like this. You're stuck. You've got your hand in the tar baby.

[103:05]

You're stuck in the world. You don't try to push the tar baby away. That's not renunciation. that brings ill will in. So you're stuck out of greed, right? And that's the issue that basically can renounce your attachments. Right? That's what it's about, renounce attachments. You're attached, you're stuck. So then if you would, if ill will would like, it would actually help you, help you get more stuff. Because ill will, like, okay, desire's not good, so get rid of desire, then kind of like, you try to go just down there and over again. Your hand, It's stuck in the dragon, and you have to be active. And this is like, it's way through the time that you can let go of your attachment to the dragon.

[104:07]

Yes? . You don't try to be free of it, you try to... Yeah. Your understanding of right view is if you don't try to be free of it, you just try to meet an open heart. Okay? I agree. That's right view. However, after you accomplish right view, then you want to get through it. That's right intention. What? Pardon? you want to get rid of karma. But that's not right view. Right view is just to understand that karma is really dangerous and you're entrapped in patterns. You see them. And did you say open hearted?

[105:09]

So in order to see the pattern you're caught in, you see the pattern your heart's caught in, You have to open up your heart to look to see that you've got all these patterns in your heart. You've got this grid stuck in your heart. That's why it hurts. Open-heartedness is to admit, my heart hurts. And this is what hurts because I've got all these rigid karmic habits in there. That's right view. Right view has nothing to do with not wanting to be that way. If you don't want the karmic world to be that way, it's going to be hard for you to study it. So I agree with you, that's right view. But then you have right view, then it's okay to have an intention. This shows you that wisdom is not just understanding. It actually has a purposeful aspect too, is that the mind actually starts getting shaped in a direction which is a way to sort of like cut through the world of karma and live right there with the freedom.

[106:16]

But that's not right. It's not that right intention isn't open-hearted. Right intention lives in consort, in concert with right view, which is open-hearted. But right intention is not emphasizing right open-heartedness. It's based on open-heartedness. But open-heartedness like this. It can express itself. It can make an intention. You know, like when a flower just comes up out of the ground. It's like... That's not openness. That's an expression which is based on... So, open-heartedness is not wanting karma to go away. Open-heartedness is understanding the nature of karma. And when you understand how karma is, that kind of thinking happens in your head. Which is a new kind of thinking. Not necessarily new, but which is a kind of thinking which is an antidote to the source of But it's not wanting the karma to go away.

[107:24]

It's wanting to be free of the karma. To let go of it. And it's not hating the karma and the beings which were involved in karma. It's having loving kindness towards beings in karma. And being gentle with the situation. That is the way that you become free. Just don't think that way. Yes? So does karma ever go away? Does the difference go away? It does go, it goes away. It actually goes bye-bye. The second time you get around here. If you at the ultimate level understand that the basis of karma is illusory, then there's no more karma. Karma means the kind of action that's based on, you know, this kind of the shape of the mind. When you no longer see this as substantial, you're no longer involved in karma.

[108:27]

You still walk around waving your arms madly and singing strange songs like you did before. But it's not karma. It's just the activity of the whole universe located at your body and voice. But there's no belief in self there anymore. So karma can't happen without belief itself. Because volition doesn't make you an actor. So there isn't any karma anymore in liberation. But it hasn't been destroyed or anything. There never really was any karma. But you have to understand how it is that you still think there is before you understand truth. What do you call it? Soul searching. See how that all works. Did I say the intention takes the place of religion?

[109:40]

No. Well, here, intention kind of takes the place of religion. Intention is a kind of religion. So here, the first time through the Eightfold Path, you're still believing in yourself when you come through here the first time. Therefore, your thinking is still somewhat karmic. You're definition of karma. So you still are involved in karma. But the kind of karma you're thinking of doing and the kind of thinking you have here is a thinking that is addressing the roots of the karma. It's starting to become an antidote to the basis on your karma . The second kind of truth, you still would have the intention to practice renunciation, loving kindness, consciousness, but you wouldn't be thinking of yourself doing it anymore. So, the whole process of speech, action, all these things are no longer permanent. They're just, you know, something that's free.

[110:42]

It's unbelievable. So what lifetime is that? Which lifetime? It's called as soon as possible. And it could happen to you. Some people think that it's not going to happen this lifetime. Fortunately, I do not see that it's not. So it could be this lifetime. But Even people who develop right view and become free of self out of it, they don't necessarily clear up everything in this lifetime, even when they get back to it. But they do always get it all cleared up in less than seven years.

[111:45]

Less than seven years. Seven years. Seven. And... This was gone by 35, right? Most people find it very difficult. Because it's so difficult. First of all, here, it's very difficult to watch your karma. There are many reasons why. One reason why I think not so much at Tassajara during the practice period, but sometimes during the summer reasons, people think that if you actually turn around and look at what's going on inside yourself and watch your religions, it will change your

[112:58]

People would have a problem with you and you couldn't work as fast. It potentially could cause some disturbance as you start meditating on your karma, watching yourself do it. So people are afraid to have difficulty with that. There's a social adjustment problem that might occur. And people do notice. People often notice when you're trying to do this, when you first try to do it. When you become more skillful, they won't necessarily notice. You can still watch yourself the same time. But when you're first doing it, you kind of like maybe need to stop for a little while. And look. Be kind of quiet. And see the motivation and not act on it or act on it. That's difficult. Also, it's not only difficult that way, but it's also difficult because of what you see. Sometimes what you see makes you go, oh. Some people say, I've heard Mr. Sweeney say, they're looking at themselves as if they have much more problems than they thought they had.

[114:08]

Their motivation is not so good as they thought it was. That's difficult to see, too. And then it's also difficult, even if everybody said, we really want you to do this, even if you have to stop in the middle of a conversation, or stop in the middle of a path, Not go to work right away because you're meditating on your motivation. Like a work leader here. And he says, well, that's it, go to work. Everybody stands up and says, now what's my motivation? A work leader, you know, go right ahead, just take your time. Everybody, like, check out your motivation to see if you're really going to work and clean the tablets with a pure heart. Even if a work leader did that, still, it's hard to actually be mindful and stay with it. So it's hard to change the habit. There's a lot of social hindrance to it. And also, it's grisly. And then the more you look at it also, then you also notice how painful some of this stuff is.

[115:14]

And that's also difficult. So it is difficult. And you know, people may actually do the work. It's rare that somebody like me, really, throws themselves into it. Even though it's such a great thing, it's so wonderful still. It is hard. Yes, it is hard. Yes. Right. So you got the pain up here. And then, because of the pain, you might be willing to study your karma. If somebody told you or suspected that you were studying your karma, that might help you, you know, deal with this pain. And actually, if you're in a lot of pain, studying your karma might not make you feel more pain. It might calm you down, actually. Because you might see, well, I'm still in pain, but now I see why.

[116:19]

So, as random, that my karmic habits That sometimes makes people joyful in the middle of their agony. Yeah, and that's why it helps to have a little group to do this work. So are you suffering too? Yeah. Is this hard for you too? Yeah. And reading scriptures helps too because the Buddha had a hard time. But he did hang in there and do it fully and he worked for it. A lot of stories up at the Ancestors are really painful stories. When you talk about hanging in here, isn't there a point somewhere along the line where you really don't have any choice? The jokes that are going to continue on in that direction of what, you know, you can't really go back.

[117:23]

Yeah, well, the sooner we realize that we have no choice, the better. It's just polluted when you have alternatives. So, you never really do have a choice. You never do have an alternative. And as soon as you don't have alternatives, and you go straight ahead. When you do think you have alternatives, you grumble and say, you know, blah, blah, blah, and make excuses and complain. There's time. So, there isn't an alternative. In spiritual practice, there's no alternative. If you think there's an alternative, basically, you're out of spiritual practice and you're complaining along the roadside. I'm just wondering, even like a person, say a person who does that, who drops out and complains along the road somewhere, I mean, how long, you know, how long can they... Long time.

[118:24]

More than seven months. Yeah, you can do that longer. That would be much longer than how long the path will be from now or whatever. In the beginning of when you stop having an alternative, you're realizing the way will be shorter. I need to spend complaining. But people have to complain because there's a long time before they say, I'm done complaining. Now I'm just going to stop. I'm going to stop. I'm just going to live a life of no alternative to my work. Once you get on deck, very nicely, although it's still difficult. It doesn't get, it isn't that easy, it's just that you go forward all the time, rather than off to the side. So, you know, we can't make that happen, but keep in mind that that's a good thing to let happen as soon as possible. No alternative, and you'll be on the path. Yes?

[119:27]

Do we start this over every time? Because I don't think that I have been born before. I don't remember having any of, done any of these before. I mean, I don't think they do last like that. I mean, I keep building up. Because at this rate, I don't think I'll ever make it. So we start over every time. I mean, it's called zero. Well, you know, some people say it's... I mean, you know, if it was from zero, some people would say we wouldn't be here if it was from zero. Okay. Yes? Often there's talk that when there's pain and suffering, it can be negative, but it's not.

[120:30]

Can you say something about, I mean, my experience is that there is also pain and then there's Yeah, and then getting so caught up and confused that there's not even a sense of what practice could be. So how do you decide? It sounds like, mostly, that's how, you know, it kind of helps us, but sometimes I find it's more in the woods, you know, and it's trapped, or we need to keep the water trapped in the river. While I'm seeing that I'm in the living water, then that's not in the woods, it's in the river.

[121:33]

But I'm also seeing that I'm not able to stay in the trap, Mm-hmm. Stated. Mm-hmm. So then you somehow, for some reason, you say that out loud. Yeah. You just said it. Yeah, I said it. And then I say that you didn't do the economy, you just told me. Mm-hmm. But you are studying, and then I say to you, That's good if you saw that. If you're discouraged, if you just saw how there's a pattern in which you suffered, you've had the suffering, and you responded to it in a certain way, and you got discouraged, but you still were there to see it and tell me, so then I can tell you. That's good. Now, if you couldn't tell me, kept it to yourself, that would be another story.

[122:36]

But you wouldn't know about that story. There's the stories of when you were in pain, you handled it the way you got discouraged, and you didn't even notice it. You couldn't tell somebody if you said, that's good. But we spend a lot of time, we spend a lot of time, all of us, being in pain, being discouraged, not even noticing it, and going down deeper. came up to the point where you noticed it, and you could tell me, and I can tell you, that's good. This is part of right view, what you just told me about. There's many stories of how it goes. This is wonderful. If you're in right view, if you are understanding something, the story of not just being encouraged by the vision of pain, but seeing pain and being discouraged by seeing it. but also notice if you're discouraged by something, and also if you need to be the teller of somebody, and you need to be able to tell them, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. It sounds different. That's another variety. I can't say all the varieties, but you and [...] you, everybody has these things.

[123:41]

Then we have the full variety, so I can say, oh, yeah, I didn't say that, but this is good, too, and that's good, too. Everybody's way of doing it is good, because every time you tell somebody about it, that shows you were there to see it, and you're practicing right to you. Every time you see one of your stories, you can become aware of it. Because your stories are basically mostly trauma stories. Is that enough for today? Oh, could the people in the workshop stay here for a second, please? This morning I talked about right speech, and I'd like to talk more about right speech, and then move into right actions. right speech or complete speech and right action or comprehensive complete action. So again, I think it's good to warm up and remember that we start with right view.

[124:42]

So that means, what does that mean? We start with mundane right view. So what's happening then? We're practicing right view. What? We're aware. We're meditating on how we experience ourselves acting in the world and how our thought, speech, and action come to proof of how it has the actions and the effects. Watch the actions and the effects. That's right. That's right view. We know what we're doing, supposedly. Then, as we see how we're behaving, and we see that one way leads to certain kinds of results, and behaving another way leads to certain kinds of results, our thinking, our intention, starts to change in accordance with what we see.

[125:52]

If we practice Right View long enough to see the basics, unwholesome actions lead to negative results, wholesome actions lead to positive results. If we start seeing that, then naturally our intentions start to adjust to that information. And so what's called Right Intention comes up. Comprehensive attention. Right thinking. What is it? Don't be shy. It's the intention of harmlessness. The intention of loving kindness. And the intention of thinking about renunciation. So thinking about renunciation. Thinking about loving kindness. Thinking about how to be harmless. Okay? Then, it's time to talk. what kind of talk we consider then, thinking this way, having a view of our life, thinking about how to be harmless, loving, and practice renunciation.

[127:12]

What kind of speech goes with that? So, on the negative side, the kind of speech that goes with that, is not lying, for example. And not hearing people. And not idle chatter. And not speaking harshly. Right intention does not go in that way. And on the positive side, right intention goes towards speaking the truth, speaking about things that are significant and related to the truth and practice and helping people, not average

[128:19]

not to hurt people, and speaking about others in a way that doesn't slander them, rather that praises them. So, speaking the truth is... On the ethical level, speaking the truth is very important for having good relationships, but it's the interpersonal mirror of what's going on inside of us. We're not committed to speaking the truth to others, and when we look inside ourselves, it's pretty hard for us to see what's going on with ourselves. If you lie outwardly, practicing telling the truth to other people and getting their feedback helps you then look inside and tell the truth about what you see there.

[129:29]

Looking inside and saying what you see, maybe somebody inside can tell you that you're lying. That's helpful. Talking outwardly, And having someone outside question you and ask whether that's the truth helps you. And that helps you when you turn around and look inside. So both sides help each other. But if you don't have an internal teacher who checks out whether you're telling the truth, it's very helpful to get an external teacher. If I tell the truth to somebody outside, they'll give you feedback. And then you can take that same kind of meditation inwardly. Some people say that it would be okay almost to break all ethical precepts except the commitment to speaking the truth.

[130:34]

In some ways it's the most important commitment. Because if you can speak the truth, you can gradually see the truth. And if you can see the truth, you will practice all the ethical precepts. But if you practice the ethical precepts, you're not committed to telling the truth. You just can kid yourself with your practice. And in fact, you won't practice them. So it's very important, this first aspect of right speech, telling the truth. So another meditation for you is think about, in terms of right speech, think about not lying. And then think about lying. And then see how lying goes with not right thinking. See how lying would go with attachment.

[131:41]

See how lying would go with ill will. See how lying would go with violence. Turn it around. Think of speaking the truth. See how speaking the truth goes with renunciation, loving kindness. Thinking of lying, meditate on how lying comes from delusion, greed, and ill will. So you can think of an example of where based on ill will you would lie and based on greed you would lie. So can you think of an example where based on greed you would lie? Yes? But if you already had dessert and you say no, so right next door.

[132:44]

Somebody asked you if you had dessert and you say no so you can get an extra one. Or, you know, somebody, you know, you get paid in cash rather than with a check and somebody asks you if you had dessert. No, not yet. Something like that. So that's in order to get some gain, personal gain. He might lie. How about he'll will? What he'll will might go with. What lies might go with he'll will. Obviously, you don't know which one to pick. You want a promotion. Huh? You want a promotion over somebody else. Yeah, so you tell people that so-and-so, you tell a lie about what somebody did. to lower someone's opinion. So you can imagine a lot of situations where in order to hurt people, well, in that case, the one you get is a double one, right?

[133:49]

You get a promotion for yourself and you hurt somebody else by lying about it. So you lie to lower people's opinions. So that's slander. So slander is also lying when you But even if the planter's not necessarily lying, you might tell the truth about the person in order to have people think less of you. But you also might lie about somebody in order to make people think less of you. And how about delusions? It's a little harder to tell because those are really common. I don't even know about those. Yes? That's a very basic lie, right? Say, I'm separate from all other beings. Right, that lie. There it is, right there. That's a lie which, you know, almost everybody tells, right?

[134:53]

I'm not you, is the basic lie. Based on delusion. Yeah. We almost don't have to say it anymore. And related to that is, based on that basic delusion, what kind of lies would come from that basic delusion? Your suffering comes from, but it's not a lie to say you're suffering. This is when you think you're suffering and you say you're not. So based on delusion, we tell lies to protect ourselves. But it would mean that someone would say, you know, someone would come in and maybe you broke a glass or something. Some big giant comes in and says, who broke the glass?

[135:55]

Not me. Not me. I didn't break the glass to protect yourself. You lie to protect yourself. Any other lies of delusion? Huh? Right. I'm talking about cases where you think it's a lie. Let's start with those first. At this level, at the first level of going through this, okay, lying means that you say something that's not true, that you think is not true. It's not true that you can act independently. It's not true that you're independent of other beings. And you say it's so. It's not lying. So I went along with Liz's lie. But strictly speaking, if you believe that you're separate from other beings, although it's not true, you're not intentionally lying. You're just misinformed. So at the first level of right speech, first level of lying, it's the intention to deceive.

[137:02]

If you think you're telling the truth, like if you say, somebody says, what day is it today? When you say Thursday, if you think it's Thursday, it's not a lie. It's wrong, but you don't mean it as a lie. So it's wrong that we're separate, and it's untrue that it's untrue. Saying we're separate is not true, but you don't necessarily mean it as a deception. So I think direct, intentional deception is what we're talking about here. Yeah? Sometimes we lie to other people because we think that they can't handle a certain group. But it's better for them. Yeah. Sometimes we lie because we think it's good for them. Are you lying to make a good impression? Lying to make a good impression, yes. This is saying you understand something when you don't understand. Yeah, right. Or saying you went to Harvard, where actually you went to.

[138:04]

What about omitting relevant information? What about omitting relevant information? Yeah, so like, you know, let's see. So, yeah, that's like you tell a story. And you tell part of the story and you leave out part of the story. That might, you know, that might, yeah, that would be lying. That would be not telling the truth. You could be telling a story which you didn't think is what really happened. And of course what we do is oftentimes we tell the story and when we get to the part we want to leave out, we just forgive that part. Because we don't want the person to notice that we're lying. And then also embellishing stories can make yourself a little bit more interesting.

[139:06]

Like you got a story to tell about something that actually happened. And lie for the sake of it. Is this all delusions? Is this all in the category of delusions? Were all those in the category of delusions? Lying to get along with people could be in the category of greed because you're trying to protect your position or hold on to your position in the community. But it could be delusion because you think that lying actually does promote harmony. And sometimes it looks like that, right? Because if you bring up certain truths, it seems to cause disturbance. But rather than lie, you can shut up. Hell, you can say something true that wouldn't cause harm. So sometimes it's true that sometimes it insults that if you speak what you think is the truth, it does cause harm.

[140:11]

So we talked about this morning. Sometimes you can say something that's true but that's harmful. Don't do it then. And then he said, sometimes you can say something that's true but that's not harmful. And then he said, In that case, where it's both truthful, it's the truth, and it's harmless, in that case, wait for the right time. Even then, don't do it necessarily right away, but wait for the right circumstances. If you think of something that might cause disturbance, you might say, well, for the sake of the community harmony, I won't bring that up. But it might be that there's another way to put it, or another truth that wouldn't be harmful. or another truth, the same truth wouldn't be caused dissension. So you watch for a time. In the meantime, you wouldn't, if there's harmony in the situation, you don't necessarily have to lie to maintain that harmony, even though telling the truth might cause dishonor.

[141:15]

But when we get scared or something, we might speak because we think we have to talk now. We forget that there's a amendment. which actually applies inside and outside of court. Right? Except when you're talking to your spouse or something. No, just kidding. Idle chatter is one that I think people have a problem with. I mean, people have a problem with it because have trouble understanding what it means, and then when they understand what it means, they have a problem with it, too. Idle chatter basically means talking in a way that's, again, usually idle chatter is not meant to be harmful talk, but more like waste of time type of talk.

[142:17]

If you're meeting somebody, some people you might meet them, and some people need some affectionate comments. You might see some very strict monk, you know, who among his fellow monks, or his sister monks, he won't talk about anything but Dharma. And most of the time, they don't need this person to talk about anything but Dharma. He always just talks about things related to Buddhism, or the truth, or practice. And he won't talk about baseball, hockey, he won't even talk about Michael Jordan. Except if somebody And then they can have a kind of like Dharma debate. Oh, no, he's not. Oh, yes, he is. What are his characteristics that you think he's a Buddha? And so on. Well, he has supernatural powers. He can read people's minds. Anyway, He saves all sentient beings except the outpouring of poison to you.

[143:31]

Does this have a shadow? Yeah, is it? Depends on your intention, right? It would also depend on your intention whether that's idle shadow or not. Yeah. So, in other cases, however, that same monk, if that monk met a child, that monk might talk about baseball and dollies and doggies and might be very in a way that, in that case anyway, would be necessary in order to encourage a child. The same monk might be very playful and seem to be just, you know,

[144:36]

talking about something not very deep. But it may not be appropriate, because to do otherwise it might frighten the child, or make the child uncomfortable, or make the child feel like, you know, monks are ogres, or whatever. On the other hand, sometimes it might be good for children to think monks are ogres, so that it would be up to the monk to figure out what is the beneficial way to treat a child. So, I think the point is, anyway, the speech is not vain, and Most of the time it's intentional and it has some purpose. Sometimes light talk can have the purpose of relaxing people. Once they get relaxed, you can talk about something more helpful and not distracting. Sometimes title chatter at first starts out quite light and nice and gradually gets people quite riled up and distracted and can lead into then quite easily It's a more serious type of speech.

[145:41]

Harsh speech is speech where you're actually speaking in such a way that you're trying to hurt the listener. Slander is not usually applied to talking directly to the person about their problems. Slander is usually talking about the third party with the intention of making this person think less of the other person and causing division to separate people or to lower people's opinion of something, even if it's true. In American law, I guess, slander means to falsely state something. You can sue somebody for falsely stating things about yourself, but if they say the truth about you, I don't think it's necessarily slander. But in Buddhism, to say something that hurts somebody's reputation and makes people think less of you is not recommended here for us.

[146:42]

If somebody's practicing or even teaching in a way that we feel is misleading people concerning the Dharma, then if we wanted to criticize the way they're teaching the truth because we wanted to protect the Dharma and clarify things, we'd have to be very careful to make sure that we really were criticizing what they were teaching, not to lower people's opinion but to help people understand what was incorrect about what they were teaching. Without the intention of hurting this person, we just wanted to correct it. We'd also have to be careful that we weren't really trying to be positive with them. So it's very difficult if you're in the same line of work as somebody and you see them teaching something that's interfering with this work that you think is very important, to criticize that in such a way as to not be you know, actually trying to make people think of less of the other person and more of you. Very likely to happen. So how do you do that?

[147:44]

I guess you might, what you might do is, I guess, praise the person in some way and say, but I have a problem with this. You might also tell some pretty bad stories about yourself along the process, too. I don't think you have anything. And so, the harsh speech is not for me to say something bad about you to somebody else. Harsh speech is for me to say something mean to you so you feel pain when I say it. So, it does not go with loving-kindness or harmlessness. Slander does not go with loving-kindness or harmlessness. And, of course, none of these go with renunciation either. So, I just want to say those few other things before I forget, and that is a number of people in hearing about the practice of Right View have, well, I don't know, because they heard about me talking about it, but anyway, a number of people came and talked to me about their practice, and I could tell them, hearing what they're observing about their practice, that they're practicing Right View, the mundane Right View, because a number of people are actually noticing what they're doing, and some of the people who are noticing what they're doing are

[149:06]

uncomfortable about what they're seeing, their own karma, and they're uncomfortable because they're seeing how their mind works this way, or their mind works that way, or they do this, or they do that, and they're seeing tremendous pain in their own thought processes, in their own speech, in their own action. And I then say, you know, well, this is very painful, what you're seeing is very painful, you're seeing pain, but you're actually practicing right view. You're actually meditating on your karma. So, you know, good work, actually. But one thing I haven't mentioned, which I could talk about a lot, but I'm not going to, and that is that a collateral practice with right view, with mundane right view, is patience. You have to take care of the pain you're going to feel when you do this practice. This is going to be a painful practice of ours, very painful. And you need to understand that it's necessary work It's work that you can deny and try to dissent yourself from temporarily, but you can try.

[150:17]

But when you actually get into the work, it is painful sometimes to stay in there. Someone said, it's not like just taking a hot bath. It's like being a hot bath for a long time. Many, many years sometimes. in this kind of meditation. So you need to practice patience with it. It's not a bad sign that it's painful in the moment. It's also not a bad sign that it's not painful. But one time I was having an easy time and I went to Siddharth Ganesha and told him so because I thought something was wrong. All of a sudden it wasn't any difficult. He said, you know, it's for you for a little while to not have a heart attack. So I said, Check it out, but it might not be bad. Having a hard time with this kind of meditation is not a bad sign. But still, if you're not sure, check it out. See if somebody thinks that you're actually what you're doing, if you're seeing the grisly details of your karmic life, and that's not pleasant.

[151:19]

It's quite uncomfortable, etc. There's idle comments I could get fucked up. Yes? Isn't it weird to have a center where Isn't it good to have a sense of humor? A sense of humor is very good. And a real sense of humor, I think, thrives when you're doing this kind of work. Right. But I mean, it can go hand in hand. Yeah, I think sense of humor goes really well with, like, when I was a kid, there was a guy on TV who said, you know, somehow he's usually sitting in the bathroom. He said, you think you've got to start talking, start listing this list of problems. It just got funnier and funnier. Anyways, it gets to be funny after a while when you really get into it. It's like, we're just these common clowns. It gets funny after a while. But it's real funny because you're not just in the context of being grounded in yourself.

[152:23]

It's that kind of thing. I often, when I'm contemplating stuff, I often start laughing at people Okay. Are you ready? Now write action, okay? Same thing. Pronunciation. The same intention, right? Same kind of thinking. Thinking about renunciation, thinking about loving-kindness, thinking about harmlessness. Now, physical action. So what kind of physical action is renunciation, loving-kindness, and embodied loving-kindness, and embodied renunciation? That's the kind of thing you measure.

[153:25]

not killing, not stealing, and no sexual misconduct, which are the three basic areas of right action, three basic kinds of right action. But positively, protecting life, treasuring life, nurturing life, being generous, and having appropriate sexual relationships that bring happiness to people, that promote health, and that encourage marital harmony and union, that encourage other people also to have healthy sexual relationships by demonstrating that it's possible. You can't necessarily demonstrate it in public, but they get the feeling that it's good people.

[154:39]

Because of what they don't see, you look happy, and you're not causing any trouble. So they figure, you know, must have it together, right? And if you're married yourself, they figure, well, that's good. So it's an encouragement to other people to try to figure out how they could be married and have appropriate sexual relationships. But you may have to do a lot of work on yourself in all these areas internally in order to actually not kill, right? So, we have a lot of opportunities to kill, right? Right now, it's not that difficult to toss a hog because we have, you know, not much bugs, right? But a lot of times here in this nice little Buddhist monastery, we... We have people who are confronted with a life-and-death situation of insects, where insects are wantonly and dangerously sucking our blood, gouging our flesh, entering our mucous membrane, and we have nerves all around that stuff, so, you know.

[155:43]

We have difficulty about how to practice loving kindness with these insects, and how to be harmless, right? Don't we have problems with that sometimes? Now we don't have that much problem because they're not bothering us, are they? Tomorrow we'll have that problem again. So then we have to, like, you know, meditate on karma. And just try to, you know, meditate on karma about what happens when you kill things. You get, you can get in big trouble for killing things. You get in big trouble for killing insects. Well, There are stories about people who got in big trouble for killing insects. Like what? Going to hell. This is one. Even the great Nagarjuna accidentally, but not, didn't on purpose, you know, with full, you know, venomous intent, did not kill an ant.

[156:46]

But he accidentally killed an ant. But he accidentally killed it in the process of being careless. What do you call it? Involuntary manslaughter, right? It counts, huh? Manslaughter, right. So, we count it against people if they're driving recklessly, if they hurt somebody, don't we? It's worse if you're under the influence of alcohol, right? But you don't have to intentionally try to kill the person. If you're not taking care of driving the car, we consider that to be To get in a car drunk is not loving kindness. So anyway, to kill an ant by being in a hurry, he was actually, I think he was reading a scripture or something, I'm not sure, and he was kind of in a hurry turning the pages and killed an ant in the process. And because of that, the great Nagarjuna, his spiritual progress was significantly blocked for a really long time. This is one of the greatest figures in Buddhist history, who was, you know, I don't know, permanently, but almost permanently disabled spiritually because of that sloppiness.

[157:50]

That's a story. You know? It's a story. But that's the kind of story. That's one. And other people have gotten into big problems from harming small creatures. Of course, you get in more trouble if you harm them with enjoyment and you're glad that you've killed them. If you kill them, like if you're sorry to kill them, it's not quite as bad as if you're happy to kill them. It's better not to kill them. That's why I recommend when the bugs come to wear long-sleeved clothes. It makes it a lot easier. And hats are good, too. Then they're mostly on your hands and face. If you're bare around the back, you know, sometimes when something's fighting from the back, you don't know what it is. You think it might be, like, a huge monster. You push it out of the way really fast. Anyway, you have to work on yourself, not kill things. Most people, it's not Except for really, really developed people, really, really enlightened people, this comes naturally next year. So for most of us, we've got to be careful.

[158:51]

Also, stealing is quite difficult because, again, we can get confused about that. We can think, oh, because I'm angry at so-and-so, I can take this. Not that it's stealing, it's just I'm paying him back. We can get quite confused about stealing. So you need to go back to right intention. Do you have right intention? Do you have right intention? It's how you practice the renunciation. So in your own mind, you have to practice renunciation in order to not steal and not use your sexuality. You have to practice the renunciation all the time. In your meditation, when you're sitting, but also in your daily life, you're practicing renunciation. You're letting go of all these tendencies to harm How far do you carry this non-killing to the level, say, bacteria, viruses? You know, when you have surgery, you do wipe yourself with alcohol and stuff like that. You do kill stuff.

[159:52]

Yes, so I guess in that case, if you're aware, if you notice that you're killing some kind of bacteria, then you have to stop and think beforehand, I guess. Okay, now, is it beneficial to do this? Well, you know, it's beneficial to you, you think. So is it beneficial to the bacteria? No. So then, what are you going to do? So maybe you do kill the bacteria by cleaning your wound. But then what did you do? Did you recognize that you did that? Yeah. You don't feel sorry about it? You don't feel sorry about it? You've got to maintain your boundaries? Well, isn't it possible to... Huh? What? Well, you don't have to, but you think you don't have to do it.

[160:57]

But if you think it's a good thing to do it, then you might. And I would say that all the people in this room, as far as I know, I think it's a good thing for you to take care of your bodies. And if I had to choose, if I had to choose between living or dying, certainly, over lots of bacteria that are dying, I guess I would go with the choice. But I wouldn't be happy about it. And I'd actually be a little sorry. And if I could choose, that whether to put some kind of medicine on which kills the bacteria or not, I would choose not. I'd rather be alright without it. Right? And actually, to some extent, isn't that what some people do? They have a sickness and they're trying to choose whether to have antibiotics or not. And some people choose not to have the antibiotics because it also harms you in some ways to have them, right? But sometimes you say, well, I think I'm not going to make it if I don't have the antibiotics.

[161:59]

Maybe you say, excuse me, but whatever I'm killing here, I'm going to make that choice. Every time you take a shower and you soak, you're killing bacteria. Every time you brush your teeth, you're killing bacteria. Every time you basically clean yourself, you're killing bacteria. Yeah, and maybe are you killing anything else when you wash yourself? Probably. Are you like, when you wash yourself, do you rub off cells? Do the cells come off? Huh? Some cells come off? And are there living beings in those cells? Or are they like... Is that happening? Huh? There's no living beings in those cells that are coming off. And so it's kind of a difficult situation. We're having a problem here with this. It's kind of a problem. So, you're not having a problem, Joe? Okay. I mean, I think you can share it.

[163:04]

Do you drive a car? Do I? Yeah. Well, you know when you drive a car, you've got to kill lots of bugs and lots of things that are problems. Right. So why do you drive a car? Yeah, so... I drive a car, I guess, like I'm going to drive a car as I go back. I want to get to San Francisco, you know, in less than whatever number of weeks it would take me to walk. Yeah, my point is there's a practical side to this, and you're making a practical decision to drive a car for convenience as opposed to not feeling it. Right, right. But we carry too far. Well, I think everybody has their side for themselves. And I would really respect it if you said, no, I know it's a false. I don't want to kill the bugs that are flying and the things that are falling on the ground. I would respect that as your decision and being very mindful and very concerned with right action. But I also wouldn't criticize someone else who chose to clean their wound or, you know.

[164:10]

Right. Well, so far, I don't think you've heard any recommendations for criticizing people unless the thing they're doing is really, you know, really undermining the situation. And some people feel like driving cars is that kind of thing, so they are fighting against that. But I'm saying just that you have, again, come back to right intention. You're intending to be harmless. You're intending to practice loving-kindness towards all beings, and you're intending renunciation. So, intending renunciation, some people feel like that would go with, okay, I'm going to renounce internal combustion of transportation. I think that the renunciation would be for some people. But those of us who continue to do that, maybe it would be good for us to be mindful of what's involved there,

[165:11]

And then maybe feel something about that. Maybe have some problem with that. I think I personally do have problems riding in cars. And I try, you know, if I'm going to go from Greenwich to San Francisco, and my wife's going too, I try to go at the same time as her. And sometimes it's just really hard to sort of like, sometimes I have to spend time in San Francisco. And I only need to be there for half the day in order to ride in with them. But sometimes I do that because I'd rather not have two cars going in. But still, even one car, I can say it's a lot. Maybe we should ride bicycles. Which actually, sometimes I do. Which is actually kind of nice. And it doesn't take that long to ride a bicycle. But it takes a lot. It takes five times as long. But it's actually good exercise, too. However, it's also very dangerous for me to ride a bicycle on that road because cars almost knock me off the road all the time. You know, it's, you know, especially at night in the rains, the question is whether it's worth it to do it.

[166:19]

I think the point is you consider carefully your actions and some people say, well, you're just, you have a luxury to do that. And I say, well, if you have a luxury to do it, if you have leisure time so that you can pay attention to what you're doing, then yes, do that. And while you're driving, you can use the time you're driving maybe to think about things like statue driving and what's involved with it. Anyway, this kind of meditation is intended to help us go deeper into the meditation on what we're doing. And the more intimate we get with the comments, the more intimate we get of the world of where we do things and causes effect and has effects caught to kind of entrap us and force us to do other things, I did the chrono coming to toss up hard. Now I'm kind of implicated. Here I am. Now how did I get back to green function? So now I've got to go back or what?

[167:21]

And so on. So everything we do has effects. We watch this and now we're talking about what we do with our body, right? In terms of just doing things with our body. Yes, you can see what's hopeful about being mindful of the effects of everything we do, including taking a shower and other forms of life. I can't see what's hopeful about then wanting to be sorry about it. Oh, I'm not telling you to want to be sorry. Well, what's particularly wholesome about being sorry? Well, to recognize any point in... I'll tell you. For me, when I'm sorry about beings being killed, I feel happier.

[168:25]

Okay? I feel happier when I'm sorry that beings are killed. That's what's good about it for me. Now, maybe when you feel sorry about beings being killed, you feel... I feel happier when I'm sorry that beings are killed. And when beings are killed and I don't feel sorry, I feel sick when I don't feel sorry. But sometimes I don't feel sorry when I feel sick. That's the way it is. In the movie. I went to, you know, some people here in the room. We went to San Quentin a while ago. Remember? We went there and we stood outside in the rain before they killed, before they executed. What's his name? Robert. Robert Alton Harris. We stood out in the rain and we did this service. These pitiful little Buddhists all soaked in the rain. I was tripped to death getting soaked, you know.

[169:29]

An easy little chant against the wind and everything. And one of the people who helped organize afterwards, you know, he said, you know, how hopeless you thought it was. And, you know, we did that. We stood up and we all got it together and we said, you know, We care about life. We don't want this guy to get killed. And we have compassion for him, for the people that he killed. We have compassion for the governor of California, and we have compassion for the people, the person, who's going to kill him on behalf of the state. We have compassion for all these people. We're not blaming anybody. We just would rather not have people killing each other anymore, including executions of opposition, in the ring. We ended our service, and we went home. But after that service was over, I don't know, I just felt tremendous love all over the place, and kindness, and it seemed that that futile effort to protest this murder generated a lot of love.

[170:35]

So, being sorry that he's going to be killed by our society helped me. So, if you feel sorry in a way that doesn't make you feel healthy with your life, then maybe you can work on that. Maybe there's another way to feel sorry that makes you feel more alive and human. Not human, but loving. I find that if someone I love has an answer, it makes me feel sorry. I have a very hard time imagining being sorry. You do? Okay. Have a hard time. But if I imagine myself, you know, being sorry that the cancer was killed, and very happy that my loved one is going to live longer, especially if it's going to be a happy life. I can imagine being very happy about that, and somewhat sad about that.

[171:38]

I can imagine being sorry that I had to lose my kidney for somebody else to live. I can imagine saying, yeah, I kind of miss my kidney. having trouble adapting to it. But that's different, actually, than me actually killing somebody's kidney to get somebody to see me. That's not a good example. That would be sorry. For what? One thinks that saying stupid things is not a comprehensive process. Stupid things are very deep. You want me to just discuss an abortion? My basic thing is if, I don't know what, you know, it's a big topic, right? So the way I usually run into it in practice is people ask me about it, like you asked me, and also sometimes people, usually women, come to me who are pregnant, and they ask me about, you know, what to do.

[172:51]

And I usually encourage them to have a baby. But I also tell them, you know, I'll help them. No one has ever come to me with, like, an actual illness. They found out that the baby has, you know, genetic defects and stuff like that, or that one or both of them are going to die in the process. But usually, I'm usually confronted myself with a healthy situation. But the person is not sure that the world will support her to have the baby. So I am going to say, I will try to help you with the baby. I'll try to get other people to help you with the baby. You can support. Now, if the person doesn't want to have the baby because they think it would be a bad mother, then I might say, then you could have the baby and give me the baby. And I'll find a good home for it. That's another thing I say. Because I know a lot of people who want to have babies. Now, I don't know. It takes a while for me to get the baby and give it to somebody.

[173:53]

I know, I personally know a lot of people want babies. And the adoption process is going to be really expensive and blah, blah, blah. So that's what I usually say. I do not think that it's proper to have a law that could convince somebody to have an abortion, to have a healthy abortion. I think it might be good to have a law that prevents people from having an abortion. Not to let people walk into situations where basically the mother being killed along with the baby. I don't think that's good. There's good laws against that, I think. But I don't think persons should be stopped. If there's a service available for them to do, I think they should be able to decide. But I usually recommend to have a baby because, again, most of the people who come and talk to me are my friends. And one time, both husband and wife came, and I said, my god, these two are the best people I know. This baby is like, you know, my god, give me the baby.

[174:55]

This is going to be a fantastic baby. I didn't tell him, so I said, please have the baby and give it to me, and I'll take care of it, and if you want it back later, I'll get back to you. And every time I do this, I tell my wife, and she says, okay, but you have to take care of it. And nobody gave me the baby yet, and nobody had the abortion yet. But I don't tell them not to do it. I tell them to give me the baby. Now, some people don't even want to go through the pregnancy. But I haven't run into that person yet. It's mostly that our society is to have the baby, but not giving them support afterwards. I say there's a lot of good things about a fetus. A fetus has got a lot going for it, in my opinion. Especially a healthy one. And I think it's a precious life form.

[175:57]

That's my feeling. But I think that... So it isn't like deliver the baby and then forget about the infant. That's how I feel about it. So, if the mother doesn't want to be a mother, or doesn't feel like she can be a mother, then I would take it on for the sake of this creature, to try to find somebody who would take care of it, or who would take care of it. And so far it's worked out. The people who I told you about, that one couple, only one time did a couple come. Usually it's a single mother. But one time a couple came, and after I talked to them, they decided to have the baby, but then they had a miscarriage. And then right after that, they got pregnant again, and that time they didn't come back. They had the baby, and now they're having a first-time custody again. If the kid was sick, the other one probably would have been. I don't know. That's how I feel about abortion. I would encourage people to go ahead We don't feel they have support, but the baby will get the support.

[177:01]

If they don't want to be a mother, then I would tell them to have a baby and take the baby away. Again, like I say, it's easy for me because most of the boys that are coming to me are people working on a healthy baby. They're not crybabies. and so on and so forth. But even crack addicts, um, they still might advise you to do it because some people want you to take care of crack addicts, really. And I think we have a good example now of people who take care of a crack addict who's become adolescent, like me, for example. So, I just think it's much more interesting, well, it's much more interesting going through the trouble of not coming. It's very inconvenient sometimes, but It's really a challenge, right? Not killing is really, killing is pretty easy. We're, you know, human beings are excellent killers. We're the best. Right? On the planet, you know. So we're good killers.

[178:04]

But not killing really challenges us. We're not so good at that. That's kind of our growth area. And we grow, we grow in wisdom. The precepts are not killing. Not killing. Life. Nurtures. The seed of Buddhist wisdom. Try to figure out how to live a life without sin. You have to become wise to figure out how to do that. So, if our wisdom is not fully developed, not coming sometimes seems really, really difficult. Yes, John? The process of not being a human being, you know? Yes. Could you talk about that a little bit and about your philosophy with that? You know, that's a wonderful question, but I kind of feel like we've been going on enough. And maybe you could bring that up in our next session. Because I think this is kind of enough, isn't it?

[179:10]

I mean, for now. But I'll talk about this. I'm not I'm not stealing. The next thing is right livelihood, right? I'm not stealing it. It's very closely related to right livelihood. This morning I talked about right speech and I'd like to say a little bit more about right speech. And then moving to right action. Right speech or complete speech and right action. comprehensive, complete action. So again, I think it's good to warm up and remember that we start with right view, right? What does that mean? We start with mundane right view. So what's happening then? When you're practicing right view, what?

[180:15]

You're aware of karma, right? You're meditating. on how we experience ourself acting in the world, and how our thought, speech, and action come to proof of how it has effects. We watch the actions and the effects. That's right view. We know what we're doing, supposedly. Then, as we see how we're behaving, and we see how behaving one way leads to certain kinds of results, our thinking, our intention, starts to change in accordance with what we see. And if we practice right view long enough to see the basics, like understanding the

[181:21]

negative results, wholesome actions lead to positive results, if we start seeing that, then naturally our intentions start to adjust to that information. And so what's called right intention comes up. And right intention is what? Right intention? Or comprehensive attention? Right thinking, what is it? Don't be shy. it's the intention of harmlessness, the intention of loving kindness, and the intention of thinking about renunciation. So thinking about renunciation, thinking about loving kindness, thinking about how to be harmless. Okay? Then, it's time to talk. What kind of talk do we consider then? Thinking this way, looking at our life, having a view of our life, thinking about How to be harmless, loving, and practice renunciation.

[182:29]

What kind of speech goes with that? We talked about that. So, on the negative side, the kind of speech that goes with that is, not lying, resentful. And not slandering people. And not idle chatter. And not speaking harshly. Right intention does not go in that way. And positive intention goes towards speaking the truth. speaking about things that are significant and related to, you know, the truth and practice and helping people, speaking gently not to hurt people, others in a way that doesn't slander them, rather that praises them,

[183:44]

So, speaking the truth is, on the ethical level, speaking the truth is very important for having good relationships, but it's the interpersonal mirror of what's going on inside of us. We're not speaking the truth to others, and when we look inside ourselves, it's pretty hard for us to see what's going on with ourselves. If you lie outwardly, you lie to yourself, too. Telling the truth to other people and getting their feedback helps you then look inside and tell the truth about what you see there. Looking inside and saying what you see, maybe somebody inside can tell you that you're lying.

[184:57]

That's helpful. Talking outwardly And having someone outside question you and ask whether that's the truth helps you. And that helps you when you turn around and look inside. So both sides help each other. But if you don't have an internal teacher who checks out whether you're telling the truth, it's very helpful to get an external teacher. If I tell the truth to somebody outside, to give you feedback on that. And then you can take that same kind of meditation inwardly. Some people say that it would be okay almost to break all ethical precepts except the commitment to speaking the truth. In some ways it's the most important commitment of all. Because if you can speak the truth, you can gradually see the truth.

[186:05]

And if you can see the truth, you will practice all the ethical precepts. But if you practice ethical precepts, you're not committed to telling the truth. You just can kid yourself that you're practicing it. So it's very important, this first aspect of right speech, telling the truth. So, another meditation for you is think about, you know, well, think about, in terms of right speech, think about not lying, okay? And then, think about lying. And then see how lying goes with not right thinking. See how lying would go with attachment. See how lying would go with ill will. See how lying would go with violence.

[187:06]

Turn it around. Think of speaking the truth. See how speaking the truth goes with renunciation, loving kindness, and harmlessness. Thinking of lying, meditate on how lying comes from Delusion, greed, and ill will. So you can think of an example of where based on delusion you would lie. Where based on ill will you would lie. And based on greed you would lie. So can you think of an example of where based on greed you would lie? Yes? Somebody asked you if you already had dessert. Somebody asks you if you had dessert, and you say no, so you can get an extra one. Or, you know, somebody, you know, you get paid in cash rather than a check, and somebody asks you if you've been paid, and you say, no, not yet.

[188:19]

Something like that. So that's, in order to get some gain, personal gain, you might want to talk about ill will, what ill will might go with. What lies might go with your will? It's so obvious you don't know which one to pick. You want a promotion. Huh? You want a promotion over somebody else. Yeah, so you tell people that so-and-so, you tell a lie about what somebody did to lower someone's opinion. situations where, in order to hurt people, well, in that case, the one you get is a double one, right? You get a promotion for yourself, and then you hurt somebody else by lying about them. So you lie to lower people's opinions. So that slips over into slander. So slander is also lying.

[189:23]

But even if slander is not necessarily lying, you might tell the truth about the person in order to have people think less of you. But you also might lie about somebody if you are to make people think less of you. And how about delusion? What kind of lies would come from delusions? A little harder to tell because those are really common. I don't even know about those. What? Yes? You can say you're a sufferer. Pardon? You can say you're a sufferer from everybody else. That's a very basic lie, right? Say, I'm separate from all other beings. Right, that lie. There it is, right there. That's a lie which, you know, almost everybody tells, right? I'm not you, is the basic lie. Based on delusion. Yeah. It's such a basic lie, we almost couldn't have to say it anymore. And related to that is, what are some things, based on that basic delusion, what kind of lies would come from that basic delusion?

[190:29]

No, your suffering comes from suffering. Well, you are, you know. No, this is when you think you're suffering and you say you're not. Jumping back to Herd, I can see how you say that. We try to tell lies to protect ourselves. But it would mean that someone would say, you know, Someone would come in and maybe you broke a glass or something. Some big giant comes in and says, who broke the glass? Not me. Not me. Not me. I didn't protect yourself, right? You lie to protect yourself. Any other lies of delusion? Huh? Right. I'm talking about cases where you think it's a lie. Let's start with those first. At this level, through this, lying means that you say something that's not true, that you think is not true.

[191:49]

It's not true that you can act independently. It's not true that you're independent of other beings. But if you think it's so, and you say it's so, So I went along with Liz's lie. But strictly speaking, if you believe that you're separate from other beings, although it's not true, you're not intentionally lying. You're just misinformed. So at the first level of right speech, the first level of lying is that it's the intention to do it. If you think you're telling the truth, like if you say, somebody says, what day is it today? And you say Thursday, but you think it's Thursday, it's not a lie. It's wrong, but you don't mean it as a lie. So it's wrong that we're separate, and it's untrue to say that we're separate. Saying we're separate is not true. We sort of mean it as a deception. So I think direct, intentional deception is what we're talking about. Yeah? Sometimes we lie to other people because we think that they can't handle a certain truth.

[192:57]

Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Sometimes we lie because we think it's good for them. Yes? Are you lying to make a good impression? Lying to make a good impression, right. Because it's saying you understand something when you don't understand it. Yeah, right. Or somewhere actually you went to. Yeah. What about omitting relevant information? When is that? What about relevant information? Yeah, so like, you know, let's see, so yeah, that's like you tell a story and you tell part of the story and you leave out part of the story that might, you know, that might not serve you.

[193:58]

Yeah, right. You're not telling the truth. You're telling a story which you didn't think is what really happened. And of course what we do is oftentimes we tell the story and when we get to the part we want to leave out, we just forget that part. Because we don't want the person to notice that we're wrong. And then also embellishing stories to make yourself a little bit more interesting. Like you got a story to tell about something that actually happened. You know? And lie for the sake of harmony. Were all those in the category of delusion? Lying to get along with people could be in the category of greed because you're trying to protect your position or hold on to your position in the community. But it could be

[194:59]

you know, that lying actually does promote harmony. Sometimes it looks like that, right? Because if you bring up certain truths, it seems to cause disturbance. But, rather than lie, you can shut up and wait until you can say something true that does cause harm. So sometimes it's true that, sometimes it insults that if you speak what you think is the truth, it does cause harm. So we talked about this morning. Sometimes you can say something that's true, but that's harmful. Buddha said, don't do it then. And then he said, sometimes you can say something that's true, but that's not harmful. And then he said, in that case, where it's both truthful, it's the truth, and it's harmless, in that case, wait for the right time. Even then, don't do it necessarily right away, but wait for the right circumstances. So if you think of something that might You might say, well, for the sake of the community harmony, I won't bring that up.

[196:06]

But it might be that there's another way to put it when it wouldn't be harmful. Or another truth that wouldn't be harmful. Or another time when that same truth wouldn't be harmful. So you watch for a time. In the meantime, if there's harmony in the situation, you don't necessarily have to lie to maintain that harmony. Even though telling The truth we might call dishonor. But when we get scared or something, we might speak a lie because we think we have to. We forget that there's a amendment. Which actually applies inside and outside of court. Right? Except when you're talking to your spouse or something. Idle chatter is one that I think people have a problem with.

[197:13]

People have a problem with it because they have a problem with it. And then when they understand what it means, they have a problem with it too. Idle chatter basically means talking in a way that's, again, that's... Usually idle chatter is not meant to be harmful talk, but more like waste of time type of talk. Meeting somebody, some people you might meet them, and some people need some affectionate comments. You might see some very strict monk, you know, who among his fellow monks, or his sister monks, he won't talk about anything but Dharma. And most of the time they don't need Anything but Dharma. He always just talks about things related to Buddhism, or the truth, or practice. And he won't talk about baseball, hockey, he won't even talk about Michael Jordan. Except if somebody points out that Michael Jordan is actually Shakyamuni Buddha.

[198:19]

And then they can have a kind of like Dharma debate, you know about that? Oh, no, he's not. Oh, yes, he is. But what are his characteristics that you think he's a Buddha? And so on. Well, he has supernatural powers. He can read people's minds. Anyway, he saves all sentient beings except the outpouring of tea. Is this title shadow? Is it? Depends on your intention, right? It would also depend on your intention whether that's title shadow or not. So, in other cases, however, that same monk, if that monk met a child, that monk might talk about baseball and dollies and doggies and might be very affectionate and chatty.

[199:38]

In that case, anyway, it would be necessary in order to encourage a child. The same monk might be very playful and seem to be just, you know, talking about something not very deep. But in that case, it might be appropriate because to do otherwise will make the child uncomfortable or make the child feel like, you know, monks are olders or whatever. On the other hand, sometimes it might be good for children to think monks are old. So it would be up to the monk to figure out what is a beneficial way to treat a child. So, I think the point is not vain and Most of the time it's intentional and it has some purpose. Sometimes light talk can have the purpose of relaxing people and once they get relaxed you can talk about something more and not distracting.

[200:42]

Sometimes title chatter at first starts out quite light and nice and gradually gets people quite riled up and distracted and can lead into then quite easily It's a more serious type of negative speech. Hardship is speech where you're actually speaking in such a way that you're trying to hurt the listener. Slander is not usually applied to talking directly to the person about their problems. Slander is usually talking to a third party about somebody with the intention of making this person think less of this other person and causing divisions to separate people, or to lower people's opinion of something, even if it's true. In American law, I guess, slander means to falsely state something. You can sue somebody for falsely stating something, but if they say the truth about you, I don't think it's necessarily slander.

[201:45]

But in Buddhism, to say something that hurts somebody's reputation and makes people think less of them is... is not recommended. And there's a difficulty here for us if somebody's practicing or even teaching in a way that we feel is misleading people concerning the Dharma, then if we wanted to criticize the way they're teaching the truth because we wanted to protect the Dharma and clarify things to people, we'd have to be very careful. We're criticizing what they're teaching not to lower people's opinion of but to help people understand what was incorrect about what they were teaching. Without the intention of hurting this person, we just wanted to correct it. We'd also have to be careful that we weren't really trying to elevate ourselves relative to them. So if you're in the same line of work as somebody, and you see them teaching something that's interfering with this work that you think is very important, to criticize that in such a way as to not be

[202:51]

you know, actually trying to make people think of less of the other person and more of you, which is very likely to happen. How do you do that? I guess you might, what you might do is, I guess, praise the person in some way and say, but I have a problem with this. You might also tell some bad stories about yourself along the process, too. And so, the harsh speech is not for me to say something bad about you to somebody else. Harsh speech is for me to say something mean to you so you feel pain when I say it. So, harsh speech does not go with loving-kindness and humbleness. Slander does not go with loving-kindness and humbleness. And, of course, none of this goes with renunciation either. So, um,

[203:53]

I just want to say those few other things. And one other thing I want to say before I forget, and that is, a number of people, in hearing about the practice of right view, have, well, I don't know, because they heard about me talking about it, but anyway, a number of people came and talked to me about their practice, and I could tell them, hearing what they're observing about their practice, that they're practicing right view, the mundane right view, because a number of people are actually noticing. And some of the people who are noticing what they're doing are uncomfortable about what they're seeing, their own karma, and they're uncomfortable because they're seeing how their mind works this way, or their mind works that way, or they do this, or they do that, and they're seeing tremendous pain as a result of their own thought processes and their own actions. And I then say, you know, well, this is very painful, what you're seeing is very painful, you're seeing pain, but you're actually practicing right view. You're actually meditating on your karma. So, you know, good work, actually.

[204:57]

But one thing I haven't mentioned, which I thought a lot, but I'm not going to, and that is that a collateral practice with right view, with mundane right view, is patience. You have to take care of the pain you're going to feel when you do this practice. This is going to be a painful practice of ours, very painful, and you need to understand it's necessary work It's work that you can deny and try to, you know, sit yourself down. Temporarily, at least, you can try. But when you actually get into the work, it is painful, so you have to practice patience and all to stay in there. To stay in there. Okay? As someone said, it's not like just taking a hot bath. It's like being in a hot bath for a long time. Many, many years sometimes. in this kind of meditation. So you need to practice patience with this. It's painful.

[206:01]

At the moment. It's also not a bad sign because it's not painful. But one time I was having an easy time and I went to Siddharth Ganesha and told him so because I thought something was wrong. All of a sudden it wasn't really difficult. He said, you know, it may be alright for you for a little while. So check it out, but it might not be bad. Having a hard time with this kind of meditation is not a bad sign. But still, if you're not sure, check it out. See if somebody thinks that you're actually what you're doing. If you're seeing the grisly details of your karmic life and that's not pleasant to look at, it's unthinkable, etc. Grace. Is it good to have a sense of humor? Isn't it good to have a sense of humor? A sense of humor, I think, is very good. A real sense of humor, I think, thrives when you're doing this kind of work.

[207:05]

Right. But I mean, it can go hand in hand. Yeah, I think sense of humor goes really well with... When I was a kid, there was a guy on TV who said, you know, somehow he's usually sitting in the bathroom. He said, you think you've got problems? And he started talking, started listening. It just got funnier and funnier. Anyways, it gets to be funny after a while when you really get into it. You know, it's like, we're just this common clown. It gets funny after a while. But it's real funny because you're not just, you know, it's in the context of suffering. it's that kind of humor. I often, when I'm contemplating stuff, I often start laughing and people continue laughing in the middle of this conversation. It's kind of a devilish laugh. Okay.

[208:11]

Are you ready? Now write action, okay? Same thing. Renunciation. Same kind of thinking. Thinking about renunciation, thinking about loving-kindness, thinking about harmlessness. Now physical action. So what kind of physical action is renunciation, loving-kindness, and... embodied loving-kindness, embodied harmlessness. The raw categories are not killing, not stealing, and no sexual misconduct. These are the three basic areas of right action, three basic kinds of right action. positively, protecting life, treasuring life, nurturing life, being generous, and appropriate sexual relationships, sexual relationships that bring happiness to people, that promote health, and that encourage marital harmony and union.

[209:36]

that encourage people, other people also, to healthy sexual relationships by demonstrating that it's possible. You know, you can't necessarily demonstrate in public, but they get the feeling that it's good people because of what they don't see you doing, right? And you look happy, and you're not causing any trouble, so they figure, you know, must have it together, right? And if you're married yourself, they figure, well, that's good. So it's an encouragement to other people to try to figure out how they could be married and have appropriate sexual relationships. You have to do a lot of work on yourself in all these areas internally in order to actually not kill, right? So we have a lot of opportunities to kill, right? Right now, it's not that difficult to tell someone because we have not much bugs, right? But a lot of times here in this area, we have people who are confronted with a life-and-death situation of insects where insects are wantonly and dangerously sucking our blood, gouging our flesh, entering our mucous membranes, and we have nerves all around us.

[211:01]

We have difficulty about how to practice loving kindness with these insects and how to be harmless, right? Don't we have problems with that sometimes? Now we don't have that much problem because they're not bothering us, are they? If they come back tomorrow, we'll have that problem again. Meditate on karma. Meditate on karma about what happens when we kill things. You can get in big trouble for killing insects. You can get in big trouble for killing insects? There are stories about people who got in big trouble for killing insects. Like what? Going to hell. This is one. Even the great Nagarjuna accidentally, but not on purpose, you know, venomous intent, did not kill an ant

[212:04]

But he accidentally killed an animal. He accidentally killed it in the process of being careless. What do you call it? Involuntary manslaughter, right? It counts, huh? Manslaughter, right. So, if they're driving recklessly, if they hurt somebody, don't. It's worse if you're under the influence of alcohol, right? But you don't have to intentionally try to kill the person. If you're not taking care of driving the car, we consider that to be That's not loving kindness. To get in a car with... So anyway, to kill an ant by being in a hurry, he was actually, I think he was reading a scripture or something, I'm not sure, and he was kind of in a hurry turning the pages and killing an ant in the process. And because of that, the great Nagarjuna, his spiritual progress was significantly blocked for a really long time. And this is when the great... was, you know, I don't know, permanently, but almost permanently disabled spiritually because of that sloppiness.

[213:07]

That's a story. You know? It's a story. But that's the kind of story. That's one. And other people have gotten into big problems from harming small people. Of course, you get in more trouble if you harm them with enjoyment and you're glad that you killed them. If you kill them because you're sorry to kill them, it's not quite as bad as if you're happy to kill them. It's better enough to kill them. That's why I recommend when the bugs come to wear long-sleeved clothes. It makes it a lot easier not to kill them. And hats are good, too. Then they're mostly on your hands and face. If you're bare around the back, you know, sometimes when something's biting you from the back, you don't know what it is. You think it might be, like, a huge monster. You push it out of the way really fast. Anyway, you have to work on yourself not to kill things. Most people do. for really, really developed people, really, really enlightened people, this comes naturally. So for most of us, we've got to be careful.

[214:09]

Also, stealing is quite difficult because, again, we can get confused about that. We can think, oh, because I'm angry at so-and-so, I can take this. So it's not really stealing, it's just I'm paying him. We can get quite confused about stealing. So you need to go back to right intention. Do you have right intention? Do you have right intention? It's how you practice the renunciation. So in your own mind, you have to practice renunciation in order to not kill, not steal. You have to practice the renunciation all the time. In your meditation, when you're sitting, but also in your daily life, you're practicing renunciation. You're letting go of all these tendencies to harm, How far do you care about killing bacteria, viruses? You know, when you have surgery, you do wipe yourself with alcohol and stuff like that. You do kill stuff.

[215:10]

Yes, so I guess in that case, if you're aware, if you notice that you're killing some kind of bacteria beforehand, I guess... Okay, now, is it beneficial to do this? Well, you know, it's beneficial to you, you think. So is it beneficial to the bacteria? No. So then... So maybe you do kill the bacteria by cleaning your wound. But then do you recognize that you did that? Yes. And do you feel sorry about it? You don't feel sorry about it? You've got to maintain your boundaries? Well, isn't it possible to... What? Well, you don't have to, but you think you don't have to do it.

[216:14]

But if you think it's a good thing to do it, then you might decide to do it. And I would say... I would say that all the people in this room, as far as I know, I think it's a good thing for you to take care of your bodies. And if I had to choose, if I had to choose between living or dying, certainly, over lots of bacteria that are dying, I guess I would go with the choice of yes, I guess so. I wouldn't be happy about it. And I'd actually be a little sorry. And if I could choose whether to put some kind of medicine on which kills the bacteria or not, I would choose not. Right? And actually, isn't that what some people do? They have a sickness and they're trying to choose whether to have antibiotics or not. And some people choose not to have the antibiotics because it also harms you in some ways to have them, right? Mm-hmm. But sometimes you say, well, I think I'm not going to make it if I don't have the antibiotics.

[217:17]

So, you know, maybe you say, excuse me, but whatever I'm killing here, I'm going to make that choice. Every time you take a shower and you soak, you're killing bacteria. Every time you brush your teeth, you know. And every time you basically clean yourself, you're killing bacteria. Yeah, and maybe are you killing, are you killing, are you killing anything else when you wash yourself? When you wash yourself, do you rub off cells? Some cells come off? And are the living beings in those cells being deported? There's no living beings in those cells that are coming off. And so it's kind of a difficult situation. We're having a problem here with this. It's kind of a problem. So, you're not having a problem, Joe?

[218:19]

No. Okay. Do you drive a car? Do I? Yeah. Well, you know when you drive a car, you're going to kill lots of bugs and lots of things that are problems. Right. So why do you drive a car? Yeah, so I drive a car, I guess, like I'm going to drive a car as I go back to San Francisco because I want to get to San Francisco in less than whatever number of weeks it would take me to go. Yeah, my point is there's a practical side to this, and you're making a practical decision to drive a car for convenience as opposed to not feeling it. Right, right. But what does it mean to carry too far? Okay. Everybody has to decide for themselves. And I would really respect it if you said, no, I know it's a false. I don't want to kill the bugs that are flying and the things that are falling on the ground. I would respect that as your decision and being very mindful and very concerned with right action.

[219:19]

If you criticize someone else, if you chose to clean their room or, you know, Well, so far, I don't think you've heard any recommendations for criticizing people unless the thing they're doing is really undermining the situation. And some people feel like driving cars is that kind of thing, so they are fighting against that. But I'm saying just that you have, again, come back to right intention. You're intending, you're intending You're intending to practice loving-kindness towards all beings, and you're intending renunciation. So, intending renunciation, some people feel like that would go with, okay, I'm going to renounce internal combustion of transportation. I'm going to renounce that. Some people think that's renunciation.

[220:23]

But those of us who continue to do that, maybe it would be good for us to be mindful of what's involved with it. And then maybe feel something about that. Maybe have some problem with that. I think I personally do have problems with that. And I try, you know, if I'm going to go from Greenville to San Francisco, and my wife's going too, I try to go at the same time as her. And sometimes it's just really hard to sort of like, sometimes I have to spend the whole day in San Francisco. I need to be there for half the day in order to ride in with her. But sometimes I do that because I'd rather not have two cars going in. But still, even one car, I can say it's a lot. Maybe she'd ride bicycles. Which actually, sometimes I do. Which is actually kind of nice. And it doesn't take that long to ride a bicycle. But it takes a lot. It's actually a good exercise, too. However, it's also very dangerous for me to ride a bicycle on that road because cars almost knock me off the road all the time.

[221:29]

You know, especially at night in the rain, the question is whether it's good to do it. So I think the point is you consider and some people say, well, you have a luxury to do that. And I say, well, if you have a luxury to do it, if you have leisure time so that you can pay attention to what you're doing, then yes, do that. And while you're driving, you can use the time you're driving think about things like statue driving and what's involved with it. Anyway, this kind of meditation is intended to help us go deeper into the meditation on what we're doing, on your karma. And the more you do karma, the more intimate we get of the world of where we do things and causes effect and those effects kind of entrap us and force us to do other things, I did the chronic coming to toss up hard.

[222:33]

Now I'm kind of implicated. Here I am. Now how do I get back to green motion? So now I got, am I going to walk back or what? So everything we do has effects. We watch this and now we're talking about what we do with our body, right? In terms of just doing things with our body. Yes, I can see what's hopeful about being mindful of the effects of everything we do, including taking a shower and other forms of life. I can't see what's hopeful of wanting to be sorry about it. Oh, I'm not telling you to want to be sorry. Well, what's particularly awesome about being sorry? Well, to recognize it is one thing.

[223:34]

I'll tell you. For me, when I'm sorry, when I'm sorry for being killed, I feel happier. Okay? I feel happier when I'm sorry that things are killed. That's what's good about it for me. Now maybe when you feel sorry about being killed, you feel terrible. But I feel, I when I'm sorry that beings are killed. And when beings are killed and I don't feel sorry, I feel sick when I don't feel sorry. But sometimes I don't feel sorry when I feel sick. That's the way it is. In the movie. I went to, you know, with some people here in the room. We went to San Quentin a while ago. Remember? We went there and we stood outside in the rain before they killed, before they, you know, executed, what's his name? Robert?

[224:35]

Robert? Robert Alton Harris. When we did this service, these pitiful little Buddhists all soaked in the rain with our scripture cards getting soaked, you know, an easy little chant against the wind and everything, and the people driving by honking horns against the guards there. And one of the people who helped organize afterwards, you know, he said, you know, how impotent and hopeless you thought it was. And, you know, we did that. We stood up there and we all got it together and we said, you know, we care about life We don't want this guy to get killed, and we have compassion for him, for the people that he killed, for the family that he killed, and we have compassion for California, and we have compassion for the people the person is going to kill you on behalf of the state. We have compassion for all these people. We're not blaming anybody. We just would rather not have people killing each other anymore, including executions. That's our position in the ring.

[225:37]

We ended our service, and we... After that service was over, I don't know, I just felt tremendous love from all over the place, and kindness, and it really, it seemed to have, that futile effort to protest this murder generated a lot of love. So, being sorry that he's going to be killed by us, by our society, by me. So, if you feel sorry in a way that doesn't make you feel healthy, with your life, then maybe it's a, maybe you can work on that. Maybe there's another way to decide that makes you feel more alive and human. Not human, but loving. I have a great time applying that with someone I love as an artist in the future. I have a very hard time, I have a very hard time imagining myself. You do? You think? I have a hard time. But you could also, I could imagine myself being sorry that the cancer was built, and very happy that my loved one is going to live longer.

[226:48]

Especially if it's going to be a happy life. I can imagine being very happy about that, and somewhat sad about that. I can imagine being a little sorry My kidney is where somebody wants to live. I can imagine saying, yeah, I kind of miss my kidney. I'm having trouble adjusting to it. But that's different, actually, than me actually killing somebody's kidney to get somebody's kidney. That's not a good example. That would be sorry to have to kill somebody's kidney. One thinks saying stupid things is not offensive prisoners. Stupid things are very deep. All right? What about abortion? What about abortion? You want me to get just a discourse on abortion? My basic thing is if, I don't know what, you know, it's a big topic, right?

[227:55]

So, you know, the way I usually run into it in practical situations is, like you asked me, and also sometimes people, usually women come to me who are pregnant, and they ask me about, you know, what to do. And I usually encourage them to have a baby. But I also tell them, you know, I'll help them. No one has ever come to me with... They found out that the baby has genetic defects and stuff like that. One or both of them are going to die in the process. I'm usually confronted myself with a healthy situation. but the person's not, usually it's a case where the person's not sure who will support her to have the baby. So I, in that case, say, I will try to help you with the baby. I'll try to get other people to help me with the baby. You can support, you know. Now, if the person doesn't want to have the baby because they think they'll be a bad mother, then I might say, well, one, maybe then you could have the baby, and I'll find a good home for it.

[229:02]

That's another thing I say. Because I know a lot of people who want to have babies. Now, I don't know if it's against the law for me to get a baby and give it to someone else. I personally know a lot of people want babies. And the adoption process is really expensive and blah, blah, blah. So that's what I usually say. I do not think that it's proper to have a law that would convince somebody to have an abortion. I think it might be good to have a law that prevents people from having board meetings if they're unhappy. And that's good. People walk into situations where basically the mother being killed along with the baby. I don't think that's good. There's good laws against that. But I don't think purses should be stopped. If there's a service available for the day, I think the woman should be able to decide. But I usually recommend to have a baby in case you want to come and talk to me or my friends. And one time, both husband and wife came and I said, my God, these two are the best people I know.

[230:08]

This baby is like, you know, my God, give me the baby. This is going to be a fantastic baby. How can you, you know, not have it? I didn't tell them. So I said, please have the baby and give it to me. and I'll take care of it, and if you want it back later, I'll get back to you. And every time I do this, I tell my wife, and she says, okay, but you have to take care of it. And I've done this quite a few times, and nobody had the abortion yet. But I don't tell them not to do it, I tell them to give me the baby. Now, some people don't even want to go through the pregnancy, but I haven't run into that person yet. It's mostly that our society is pushing people now to have the baby, but not giving them support afterwards. I say there's a lot of good things about a fetus. A fetus has got a lot going for it, in my opinion, especially a healthy one.

[231:12]

And I think it's a precious life form, that's my feeling. But I think that the infant is also precious. So it isn't easy to forget about the infant. That's how I feel about it. So if the mother doesn't want to be a mother, or doesn't feel like she can be a mother, then I would take it on for the sake of this creature to try to find somebody who would be a good creature. And so far it's worked out. I've got that one couple. Only one time did a couple come. Usually it's a single mother. But one time a couple came, and after I talked to them, they decided to have the baby, but then they had a miscarriage. And then right after that, they got pregnant again, and that time they didn't come back to talk to me. They had the baby, and now they're having a first-time test with one of the kids, and that's how I feel about abortion. I would encourage people to go ahead.

[232:13]

We don't feel they have support, but we go ahead and have the baby and get the support. If they don't want to be a mother, then I would tell them to have the baby and give the baby away. Again, like I say, it's easy for me because most people that are coming to me are people who are going to have really healthy babies. They're not side-daddies who are going to have newborn babies and so on and so forth. But even crack addicts, they still might advise you to do it because some people want you to take care of crack building for them. And now that we have that as an example, now we can take care of the crack building. It seems to become a blessing for our community, right? So, that's much more interesting than going through the trouble of not coming. It's very inconvenient sometimes, but... really a challenge, but not killing is really, killing is pretty easy. We're, you know, human beings are excellent killers. We're the best.

[233:15]

We can kill anything on the planet, you know. So we're good killers, but not killing really challenges us. We're not so good at that. That's a kind of our growth area. And we grow, we grow in wisdom. The precepts are not killing. Not killing. Not killing life nurtures the Buddha's wisdom. Try to figure out how to live a life without killing. You have to become wise to figure out how to do that. So, if our wisdom is not fully developed, not killing sometimes seems really, really difficult. Yes? Yes. Yes. You know, that's a wonderful question, but I kind of feel like we've been going on now for about an hour, and maybe a few more seconds, okay?

[234:21]

Because I think this is kind of enough, isn't it? For now? Okay. But I'll talk about this. Not stealing. Not stealing. The next thing is not stealing. Not stealing is very closely related to that. How many people were not here this afternoon? You were here this afternoon. You left? Yeah, because I couldn't see him. How many people weren't here besides Salvi? Well, most people weren't here. What? You weren't? Did you raise your hand? Somebody got liberated this afternoon during class.

[235:45]

It's too bad you missed it. Now we've been going this week about the eight-fold path. Now we've got this far, in a sense, right after we covered... Now we have two... two big topics for tonight. Plus, after they're set, we'll go back to Right View again. And we'll see what happens after incorporating all these practices and then practicing Right View again with part of the other practices. So, again, the basic starting point of this process is that the right view is to suggest to us that we begin by paying attention, meditating on our life, our dualistic karmic activity.

[236:47]

When we study that, we become aware of how we're involved in dualistic thinking of ourself, separate from others, and how we think we can do things on our own. and watch how that world of common cause and effect works. While skillful action leads to wholesome results, good results, and unskillful action leads to trouble, as we meditate on this, our thinking gradually starts to shift somewhat and it becomes more and more directed towards renunciation loving-kindness, and harmlessness. Practicing right view, we start to see how things work in the world of delusion by seeing how we start to overcome delusion. Overcoming delusion, we start to also transform our thinking in the direction of reason pending to go the other direction from attachment and aversion.

[237:59]

to start to move in such a new way as to start to lean into a deeper study of delusion, hatred, and greed, and to try to develop an alternative approach. Then, still meditating on dualistic karmic activity we direct our attention towards our speech and again try to enter into speech with the right intention born of right view so we try to speak again with harmlessness renunciation and loving kindness then moving into our bodily activity we try to act in that way according to renunciation which means we avoid conduct for killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct.

[239:10]

Then applying speech and bodily postures to our actual work, our livelihood. We try to practice right livelihood with the same intention that we developed out of meditation on the laws of karma. and actually how we see karma working. We move into speaking and acting rightly and practicing a livelihood, realizing a livelihood. Legal, peaceful, harmless, and honest. And now that we've applied our study of karma, applied our right intention to all the different realms of karma, thinking karma, speaking karma, acting karma. Now we're ready now to go look in deeper into our mind, as we did this afternoon, and notice that there's a way to have our mind, although it's still involved at this level, it's still involved in karma.

[240:27]

It is definitely still involved in karma. It is possible that we can observe karma without any negative states serving our vision of the karma. So we've been watching karma all through this time and learning something about it and hopefully trying to do better and better karma. And the better our karma is and the more wholesome our karma, the easier it is for us to study the karma. But still, even a more stable vision of karma can be realized. And I could write efforts about it. So once again, we're still in the dualistic world of personal action, which is still bondage and still misery, but it's possible to study this field with no states of mind impinging on the scene of dualistic action. Of course, it's also possible to try to meditate on dualistic karmic activity with lots of negative states.

[241:36]

It's just that if there's negative states, it's difficult to see how it works. As a matter of fact, it's really hard to see in detail the law. So right effort is about developing an attitude, which we say in Zen is a mind like a wall. It does not react to phenomena presented. And that non-reactive, stable presence of the phenomena as they arise prevents the arising of disturbing mental functions. And we can develop a clearer and clearer vision of actually how the world of bondage And as I mentioned this afternoon, if we slip from that kind of presence that doesn't meddle with what's happening, then these negative, disturbing states, particularly in this case, they're negative, particularly if they're disturbing our vision now, because we're starting to get close to being able to actually see exactly how things work.

[242:46]

Our mind's getting pretty well organized, pretty clear. Hopefully, if you mess around at all with what happens, a lot of negativity can come in and stir it up. We have this kind of presence, this kind of mind which does not add anything to what's coming up. These states don't arise. If they do arise, we talked about antidotes, we get back to the simple situation again. So, now, if we've done our work up to this point, we have now fairly clear vision of the world of bondage and cyclic birth and death. There's more work to do, though. Because there's still behind this story of personal action, there still is a belief in personal existence and or we don't yet understand the self.

[243:52]

Because we don't understand the self, we're still in pain, still. And in response to that pain, we try to cope on some deep level. We have these coping mechanisms of greed, hatred, and confusion. So there's a basic ignorance of us looking away from the true nature of our self, of how it acts. Not an independent thing, but an interdependent we look away from what the self is, we see this narrowed vision of the self, and we feel anxiety and pain. And in response to that, in addition to the basic ignorance, greed, hate, and delusion, the basic strategy is to deal with the pain, which drives the process around. So that's still going on at this stage. I'll write it. We haven't yet gone down to the bottom and reworked our dualistic thinking.

[245:02]

But we can see pretty clearly what's going on here. The next step is to practice mindfulness in this fairly clear field. Now, mindfulness is not particularly different because it doesn't mess with things. Mindfulness doesn't mess with things either. But mindfulness is emphasizing a, I would say, maybe brings in a slight, brings in the dynamic, starts to open up to the dynamic quality of the process. We're seeing how things work. And now we develop an awareness with things so that the truth or the dharmic working of the dharma in this karma, the dharma starts coming forth out of the karma. A mind is a kind of presence that allows an interactive, interdependent quality, which is hidden inside of the karma, to gradually start to surface.

[246:11]

We're going to get a little bit more dynamic now. So we're seeing karma still. But now we start, and we're getting quite stable watching the karmic process. But we start to now see some relationships that we didn't see before. We start to see some dynamism, ordinary change. We start to see inner relationships. We start to see conditions and causes that are determining this dance, this stream. of karmic accumulation, this cycle. And we continue to be present with that and try not to get excited or depressed or anything. We leave it alone. We continue to practice right after. We continue to meditate on karma. We're now getting more and more kind of like purely present more and more sensitive to the dynamism of the situation.

[247:23]

Until, basically, this proposal of Buddhism is that you finally will see, in the midst of the world of delusion and duality, there shines forth the truth. the Dharma, which has always been there, and now we have, through this discipline, made ourselves able to receive it. We see that in this dark, stuck, mechanical world of lawful cause and effect, there is actually a great light, and this light is completely free, and the whole situation is And without disturbing the karmic pattern at all, we see that at the same time, there is complete freedom and liberation right in that situation.

[248:32]

In other words, we have an awakening to the Dharma in the middle of it. Or, in the middle of the suffering, we see the cause of the suffering, which is this delusion. And then we see in the delusion, we see in the middle of the delusion, the end of the delusion. So we realize the cessation. Then the concentration is to then be absorbed in this vision of dharma. So now that we have this clear vision of the truth of the world of consciousness, Karma is an illusion, which we believe in, which makes it an illusion, based on the basic misunderstanding of our self as something which could do something by itself.

[249:34]

We see the emptiness of that story. We see the interdependence, which is a story of independence. We see the interdependence of the story of independence. And we're freed from this belief in the independent self. And then, in the concentration, we absorb, our life becomes absorbed into this new vision, which is still the vision of karma, but now karma which is the law of liberation at the same time. Until we're completely steady in that. And then, We're steady in this light. This light is shining in the middle of the world of karma. We're stable in that. And then we come around to right here again. This time, right here, you can see this is suffering.

[250:37]

This is how suffering arises. This is the end of suffering. This is the path of suffering. Now, from now, it's right here. You can understand this whole thing. It's not this different state. It's but as one process of liberation. Indivisible. You like the mind. You can see that. You realize it. And then you come around again. Now practicing right thinking, right spirit, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. You're still practicing it, but this time you practice them without you practicing them. They have to spontaneously arise from your stabilized visions. It's no longer even a personal intention, a karmic intention, to be a renunciate, to be lovingly kind, and to be harmless. You are harmless, you are loving, you are a renunciate, you don't have a passion, but you no longer are that way.

[251:42]

You're kind of like fully homogenized with everything, interdependent, and it's no longer a dualistic operation. You no longer have to refer to the program. It spontaneously emerges from your practice. And again, as I said today, I'll say again, all of this is what we mean by Zazen. This is just like, what do you call it, a whole movie about Zazen. And I told people this story, but I think it's an apropos story here. It's about this wonderful story. There's a story about... His name is Jacques Mousson. Some people know him. He's an old, now old Frenchman. I think he's still alive. Anyway, he was blinded... In the 30s, in Paris, he accidentally got blind.

[252:57]

After he was blind for a while, he realized that he couldn't see like, you know, apple trees and wine bottles and stuff like that anymore, but he could see a light, a great light. And by that light, when he looked at that light, he already knew exactly what to do. except if he got angry or scared, then let it go away. He was just as confused as the next guy. He didn't say he became angry, confused, or attached, but I believe that was the case. So all of us have this life all the time. It's just that we can't see it if we're angry, confused, attached, or afraid. lost their life. But when you see this life, you don't have to figure out what's loving-kindness, what's gentleness, and what's attachment.

[254:04]

Just everything you do and everything you say comes from your life. If you come from your life, everything will be in accordance with this path. And this path is actually to tune us back into this life as we already all have. Because of karma which we don't understand, it blocks our vision, and of course all the negative states, the karma spurs up. So we have to, like, get intimate with all these negative states so that they're no longer obstructing our vision of this life. And so that's a one-week course, a five-day course on the Noble Faithful Noble Path. Okay? We have just concluded the tour mindfulness once the field is clear enough so you can like you got a clear you got a clear vision of how it works okay you can see now works without all these negative states kind of like shaping up the picture and

[255:24]

You have a basically kind of problematical situation, namely you have dualistic karmic bondage, right? You have karma, which gives rise to pain. Pain, which we cope with by delusion, and then we try to do something about it by karma. This is the scene you're starting to see, which you saw up here, which is why we wanted to start the course in the first place. But now you can see it really clearly. Then, mindfulness is by this clear vision and this still upright presence, you start entering into the dynamics of the situation. You start to see how you cause me and I cause you. You start to see how you cause karma and the karma causes you. You start to see how there's no you without the karma. So really, there isn't some you that does the karma or some karma done by the you. And how there's no you aside from me who you do the karma to. Interactive, as this mindfulness starts to bring in the dynamism and interdependence of this dualistic picture.

[256:30]

So we have, you know, we have this, what do you call it, we have one sort of scripture called the self-fulfilling samadhi, the concentration on self-fulfillment. And in that samadhi it says that the upright sitting is the way you enter into the samadhi, the self-fulfilling samadhi. The self-fulfilling samadhi is the mindfulness of how to build. The mindfulness of how all the grasses and trees and mountains and rivers and tiles and pebbles teach us and how we teach all them. This resonance back and forth between all beings you start to enter into by this right effort. So in the mindfulness state you start to see how all And this is the gate, this mindfulness of interdependence, this mindfulness of dependent polarizing, is the gate that all Buddha used. So once you see that, then you enter into a one-pointed absorption in that vision of interdependence.

[257:38]

So it becomes... The concentration is the absorption in this vision of interdependence. You also... Some were concentrated here, but here concentrated on the field of activity in life, which has now been cleared up. If you don't yet see it this way, the pendants, the pendants are arising of the elements in the field. If you have a clear vision of them, because you, like a wall, the disturbing negative states are not blurring your vision of what's going on. Up until this point, you saw something, but you couldn't see it really clearly. Now you can see it really clearly. At this you're into the dynamic inner workings, and you realize that all these elements are interdependent. None of them exist by themselves, including your karmic, your delusion, and your self. Now basically you can see. But your seeing is not necessarily continuous. Like we say in the Jomir Samadhi, it says, basically telling you the story of this vision.

[258:44]

You read the Jomir Samadhi now, what's being told you there You're being told about the mindfulness. This mindfulness. You are not it. It actually is you. That's about here. You can't stand up by yourself. You can't go or come. Or rise or fall. That's what this is about here. The mindfulness of this interdependent world. And it says, If you can achieve continuity, that's this. You can be absorbed and be continuous in this mindfulness of interdependence, which you can now see because it's clear. When you're clear, and you're just continuously mindful of this clear seeing, you start to see that none of the elements exist by themselves, and then you develop continuity. And then you have what's affected right here, and what's affected right here is what is visible.

[259:47]

I couldn't briefly do it. It's really complicated. But if you want me to go through and not briefly do it, go ahead. Okay. There's five types. ways to respond to the situation. If you don't, if you don't have this wall-like mind, or if you have this wall-like mind and you break the concept, if you break the presence there, then this negative stuff will come up. And the basic and negative stuff, negative stuff in meditation are derived from greed over delusion. So from greed arises a sensual desire. It's sexual or just any kind of sensation.

[260:54]

From hate comes ill will. From delusion comes loneliness, drowsiness, restlessness, fidgetiness, worry, doubt. The antidote these states, once they arise, become evil. Which I said, you might be able to go back to the practice you should have been doing if it was stopping for you. I agree with Bruce. They may just have a wall like mine that doesn't mess with things. And maybe that's what was done when they arrived. And if they're not, they were risen again to that kind of presence that had dropped away. If they don't, because sometimes you set off a change. And you stay present with them. They just keep coming and coming. You might not know how long they'll go on. You might wait for a while. You've got to bring in some of the gross things that you've been present with. Although, it might work, just the presence might work, but here, while our presence might work, we might want to try these antidotes.

[261:59]

So the one-to-one antidote is, I see people learning today, okay? The one-to-one antidote, the one-on-one antidote is for three to what? Meditation on impermanence? Meditation on impermanence. After annunciation, we meditate on impermanence, some version of impermanence. Stop nursing, right? Feel a little. Feel a little loving kindness. And for drowsiness and bones. Good posture. Sit up straight. Put more effort in your posture. What else? Your forehead. Huh? Your forehead. Meditate on the spot here in your forehead. What else? Exercise. Or running. What else?

[263:02]

Golf. And coffee maybe should be inserted in the scripture somewhere. I don't know about that. What else? No, the breath is not so great. When you're drunk, you mention the breath sometimes makes you feel so good. Thank you. Anyway, these are kind of ways to stimulate yourself. Sometimes you should take a nap. Okay, then for worry and restlessness. Yeah. That tends to calm down. It's something to do anyway. If you're having problems, it's nothing to do. It's like you're worried and stuff. These are substitutes. It's a non-educating substance. You'll get to do something. So, here. Better than work. Then, what about the doubt?

[264:04]

Read the scriptures. Bring it up for discussion. Argue about it. Make a case for how the diamond really works. Because somebody would like to talk to you about it. Without you saying it. all the time. Maybe, yeah, yeah, yeah, for a while, and then nothing else. Okay, so that's it. That's the antidotes for the one-on-one antidotes. And what's another antidote? Looking away. Looking away. Look the other way. Look and respect and depart. I didn't say that much about it. We're just doing the great work. I know. I agree. We're doing the green part now. Except you're not either. Yeah. And I said I'm not going to know.

[265:05]

No, I'm not. I'm just going to go cover the ground now. If I get into that, I won't get into the other ones. I'm testing you to see what you're doing. So self-respect and decorum also will result in the rest of these things. ill will, attachment, restlessness, worry, doubt, illness, and stress. What's another one? What? What? Look right at it. Which is similar to, don't want to stop it from coming in the first place. But it's different because stopping it from coming in the first place is not the same as after it's coming in. Stopping the truck from coming in the first place is different than after it's coming in. But sometimes the thing that stops it once it's coming in is the stop.

[266:09]

Sit there and look at it. That can stop it now, even though it's coming in. But it's not the same as it was before. It's easier before. So it's recommended to do this one first, meaning you don't have to do this one. If you didn't do the first one, And you've got to do the second one. And here comes the third one. So sit there. Sometimes sit in there and just look at it. And watch very carefully. It's a pen word. No, it's a map. You know, if you really put yourself in it, these things will not mow you over. It's a great study. And when you get closer, instead of getting more and more scared, study more. That's what I'm talking about here. I wish you looked away when the truck was coming. I mean, if it's a truck and you're looking away. If you look away, this is not denial, I said. This is looking away in a way the truck is going by. It doesn't usually hit you when you look away. It doesn't usually make it worse when you're just looking away. If you try this out, let me know. I'm just wondering.

[267:09]

We can argue about it. So, looking at it, which is similar to this, similar way of looking to the way of the same attitude of a wall-like mind that just lets phenomena be what they are. Let sense phenomena be just the kind of sense phenomena it is. Let imagine things be just the imagined things. Let cognitive things just be the cognitive things. And be what they are. And then you and you start cutting through it as you go out with it. Just by doing it. And the last one is, you know, fashion. You suppress it. You try to control it. You tie up and knot it. And that can be used sometimes, but none of the other ones work. It works for a while, and then maybe you can plug it up and try something, and you go back, you know, and just do the basic one. So that's the, that's Mickey.

[268:11]

Very nice. and hopefully you'll never forget that because you will be surprised. Does that do something to your business by now and all of it? Okay, now somebody want to talk about self-respect and perform? Okay, what part? Do you have any idea how they would operate? The context is, for example, sleepiness. That's the context. You're sleepy. You know how to practice self-respect and define the coming of sleepiness. Huh? No idea? No? I think that's the Zen one. I won't say what they have to do with it, but anyway. Zen people, Zen monks would know self-respect.

[269:11]

Self-respect in the quorum would apply to sleepiness. It's like one of the big agendas in here. Zen monks all over the world embarrassed. They're embarrassed to fall asleep. They're not like, generally, they're not proud to fall asleep. They're not kind of like, They do sometimes fall asleep, but even the Zen masters are ashamed to fall asleep, you know. In that movie about the situation, they're saying sometimes during meditation we should keep our eyes open. And they made a movie of them sleeping while they were sleeping. So, Zen monks do sometimes not get much sleep, you know, keep us up really late at night and make us get up early in the morning, and then we're supposed to stay awake all So we have a hard time staying awake. Sometimes we get drowsy, you know.

[270:13]

So we have a good excuse anyway. Sometimes we get drowsy. But we're ashamed. Some people are not ashamed. If they're not ashamed, that's fine. If you're a Zen monk, you should be ashamed. If you're a Zen master, you should be ashamed. No problem. You're ashamed. Also, decorum. You're not supposed to sleep in the hall. The others would say, don't do that. And they even sometimes used to hit people for it. So monks used to be like, decorum means you're concerned with what's up to you if you do something. However, in Japan, monks are still very concerned with what will be done to them if they go to sleep. That keeps them awake. They follow the decorum of the hall, which is you don't sleep during meditation. is a strong encouragement stick called the encouragement stick, which is used to remind them that it's not peccarist to snooze and be curious.

[271:15]

That's how you use it. But you could also use it for, you could also be, say, I'm hating this person, and that's really not up to par for me. I'm actually not happy to be hating this person. This is not cool. I'm kind of ashamed of myself and my petty little nasty little thing I've got here. Lust. You know, you go around in the monastery and you're not going out. You know, you don't think it's that cool. You don't think it's that cool. You're doing that. This is not like, this is not like Buddha. Buddha doesn't go retching over Looking under those screens at the baths. Can you imagine that? Shakyamuni Buddha was under there. He wouldn't do that. You're his disciple. You don't do that. You're ashamed. This is beneath you. This is low class monk's life. Also, you're afraid that they'll catch you.

[272:32]

If those women on the other side see you doing that, they don't like it. They'll feel offended. Looking the other way isn't quite as bad, though. Why? But it's not that cool from the women's side, either. Okay? Look on the list. All those things I self-respect. If you're like, I want to be, I'm Buddha's child. I have, I possess Buddha nature just like all Buddhists. I'm trying to develop that. I'm trying to realize enlightenment for the sake of all beings. These activities are not in that relationship. They're not like that. I'm ashamed to do those. I'm caught by them, but I don't like them. I'm ashamed. I'd like to quit. Other people catch me and tell me, I don't want that either. They think they can get right on me and put me. It's just not that pleasant. Okay. One could go on.

[273:38]

Anything else? Yes? I wanted to ask about concentration. Okay. You brought up the the the song that Achieving continuity. I think it's really a practice of concentration. And I think it can be useful for a number of people. The meditation practice is a good one. Can you say anything about that? I have pretty frequent experience of

[274:41]

of having a making of what we call right effort, but being distracted from simply how to left field. And then having to bring myself... What kind of left field distraction are you referring to? Well, you know, left field is a good place. And can be emotional states that arise. What kind of emotional states can you have? Sadness, anger. Those are kind of easier, though. Actually, the left field ones that I'd rather ask you about are ideas, fantasies. concerns, replaying memories of things that have happened, they seem to just pop up and I find it then difficult to return to simply paying attention to what's arising.

[276:23]

Did you say fantasies? images from the past, like you said, or plans, fantasy. So that's an example. Those are examples of magic. So it isn't that those distract you from right effort. Those are the things that you practice. It isn't a fantasy, it's the imagination. So it's not that the imagination is distracting you, or the scene is distracting you, or the bird is distracting you. It's just that when the imagination comes up, in fact, the effort with that is you let the plan be a point. You let the fantasy be a fantasy. You let the imagination come back to you. If it's not a distraction, if it's a phenomenon, if it is an object, you need to let it be itself.

[277:27]

Then, And then you can see that perfectly clearly. This is this plant. This is this plant. It's just what it is. You're fine. You're quite right. But the thing with the magic is that unlike other sorts of things, unlike the scene or the earth or emotional states or even some It seems to, it's almost like it captures my reality. Let the imagined be the imagined. If you don't let the imagined be the imagined, that's what happens. You get captured by it. In other words, you react to it. In other words, your wall-like mind, or like, you know, I don't know what, a car hopper. It gets reactive. You start coughing and sighing at the imagined.

[278:29]

So if you're telling me that the imagined is more difficult, I think for a lot of people it is. For other people, the cognizant is more difficult. Objects of knowledge. Things like that. For other people, the sense stuff is more difficult. Anyway, we all have some difficulties with these, and we all have some of the same difficulties with all of them. But the practice is, in this case, I'm suggesting, is to let the imagined be the imagined. It's not a distraction. It is an object of awareness. It's not a distraction. Distraction is when you react. That's a distraction. When you activate the mind around that object. And this is not exactly concentration practice. This is actually the sense that we feel. This is disciplining your mind's reaction to sensitivity. And that... clears the field of conflicting, disturbing emotional reactions or blurring of vision.

[279:33]

There's some concentration all the way around here, but it's not disturbing speaking concentration practice. Or you could say this is the beginning of concentration practice. It doesn't do any good to do concentration practice on the mess. First of all, it clears the mess. Now, since this concentration here is a concentration practice, which culminates the path of enlightenment. It's not an ordinary concentration practice. It's a concentration practice of dharma. So here, when these phenomena of imagination, plans, blah, blah, blah, happen, when you let them be what they are, the field gets clearer. You can see them very sharply. When you can see them very sharply, then you move up into studying their dependent core rising. When you see their dependent core rising, then you move into continuity. So, this kind of makes it possible for you to start to see the contents of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi. Or rather, this kind of effort starts to show you the images in the Jewel Mirror.

[280:38]

The Jewel Mirror shows the pinnacle arising of the images in the mirror. Once the story in the Jewel Mirror Samadhi or the song or the jewel in their samadhi. It's not a samadhi yet until you have continuity. So, the words of that text are telling you what the dynamic world of interdependence is like, what the world of freedom looks like. At that point, you see what it's like. That's a sample from the world of dharma. Then, if you can achieve continuity, in other words, if you can concentrate in that field, that's when you find concentration. The good news is that concentration practice here, I say, It's a lot easier than it is before that because you see the truth. The truth's working for you. So all this stuff which used to be distraction is not distraction anymore. All you've got to do is just enjoy this wonderful night. So you don't have the struggles that you have up from here.

[281:41]

It wouldn't be nice if all the work you do didn't get to this point. But still, you do have to find this concentration so that you have continuity in your mindfulness with what you're in here. Or put it another way, here's a nice quick clip. In this stage, you expose the jewels. And you see the jewels very clearly. What are the jewels? The scene, the herd, the imagined, colors, smells, touches, tastes, all concepts, all emotions, all opinions, all objects of knowledge. Those are the jewels. The mindfulness becomes a jewel mirror. In other words, you don't just see jewels, you see them reflecting each other. You see that each jewel, all the other jewels are there. So then, mindfulness goes through the jewels, the jewel mirror. This, however, they're not really jewels, they look dirty. These jewels are still muddiness.

[282:47]

So here at this level, you start to tune in the jewels. Here, the interdependence starts happening, the mirror happens. So the jewel mirror, and then you concentrate, and then you go. Easy as pie. I don't know who it's announced. Who is that? Who? You were last. Yes, please, Kendra. Okay, this is a little bit of a question. We don't want to act on imagination. We want to see the United Nations. And then... I think that what you're saying is that when you see it as tools, it's when you see it as an animation. Because I think it's difficult to not act on animations what is, right?

[284:02]

That in some sense, all of our reality are totally unique. All of our reality what? Are totally unique. What I experience is exactly what I'm experiencing, right? But it might not be the general consensus reality of that particular motive. No, it's not. It's just yours, right? Right, but it's also true, right? So it could be imagination, but it's also what we experience. It's true that when you're imagining something, that's the truth that imagination happens. That is true. But when I experience it, that is reality. Right, that's the mistake. See, it's reality that we imagine things. But our imagination is not a reality. So my question is, how do you begin to figure out what is reality?

[285:07]

Well, when you can start seeing that imagination is imagination, you just sort it out. Where does that end up? I don't know, maybe I'm not being clear, but sometimes Most people think their imaginations are reality. That's the usual thing for people. That's what most people do all day long, is they have imaginations, and they think the imaginations are true. So, what does it mean to begin to do an appraisal of reality? What's his step? Yeah. Well, there's many steps, but if you're at this stage of the test, here, you have the ability to say, oh, that's my imagination. When you see your imagination as imagination, you're right. You're correct. And sometimes you can see your imagination as imagination.

[286:15]

It's told once in a while. Yeah, so then you're right. Most of the time when you think, oh, that's my imagination, Most of the time, I guess, almost all the time, probably you're right. I mean, sometimes you say, that's my imagination. Some other people say, that's mine too, therefore you're right. They think theirs is true, so if yours is the same as theirs, then yours is reality. You're saying, well, that's just my imagination. They say, oh no, it's not, because that's the same as mine, and mine is true, so yours is true too. But actually, you're somewhat enlightened there by seeing that your imagination is just that. So, I know that people have a lot of experience at 59 years of age, and they're able to talk about how to be negotiated, how to be taken into your life, what to do in your life, and everything that's going on in your life. And so, it's like I can see that in my life, and that's what that means.

[287:17]

And so, I guess when people come to me and talk about this, it comes to their mind, See, up here, right view at the beginning, okay? Up at this stage of right view, you do not think that you're, you do not see that you're interdependent. Up here, you think you're not interdependent. In other words, you admit that you're delusional. So what is it when your head goes, okay, after I'm here, can you continue? Well, that means you grew up in Zen centers. And in California, where it's common knowledge that we're all interdependent. In Northern California, nobody's going to say that. Everybody's going to say, yeah, I'm interdependent. I'm into interconnectedness and ecology. But actually, we don't believe that. We think we are independent. We think we are separate. That's our deep human programming. Right view is not to start to say, it's not saying, okay, it's all interdependent.

[288:18]

I'm not doing any karma. No. That's not true. We think we are independent. We think we do things on our own. And if you watch that, you do good things and you do bad things. You do good things. I do bad things. You know, like that. That's the way we see. That's the world we live in. Okay? Yeah, I'm a Buddhist. It's all interdependent. Blah, blah, blah. Yes. That's not true. Buddhists don't believe that in, generally speaking, any more than non-Buddhists. It makes sense to us. We think it's a good idea. We heard Buddha said that. But Buddha actually saw it that way. But before Buddha saw it that way, Buddha saw it the other way. Buddha saw it separate from other beings. That's the way I see it. I'm miserable. You can see that right today for yourself and most of you have already seen it. But that way of seeing is miserable. That's the way you do see And then if you get down here and start looking at the workings of your mind, you'll start to notice you have imaginations, and then you can notice, I believe my imaginations.

[289:19]

Or I don't. One of my famous stories, I'm making it famous by telling it enough times. I stood in that garden over there one day, and I jumped up and down, and I was talking to some woman, and I said, I do not believe my imagination of what you are. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. Actually, I did. I was telling myself, don't believe it. Don't believe it. Don't believe it. imagination of what she was. I won't tell you what I thought she was, but I better not believe it, because I believe that I would get in big trouble what I would do if I believed what I thought she was. So finally, you know, when she saw me jumping up and down like that, she stopped doing anything to support my fantasies. I could drop it. But anyway, We have to learn that our fantasies are not reality. We have to see that. We have to learn to see, this is what I think you are. I think you're wonderful.

[290:22]

I think you're gorgeous. I think you're not wonderful. I think you're not gorgeous. I think you're a lousy Zen student. I think you're a good Zen student. This is not what you are. This is my fantasy. It's just fantasy. No big deal. When the fantasy is a fantasy, My fantasies are reality, they're trouble. But if you can see, if you think your fantasies are true, they're not just fantasies, they're realities, then you know she's suffering. And you know she's separating herself. And then you look at here and there, and blah, blah, blah. So then, you investigate, you start doing these practices. And if you get around here, then you can start to have a chance to see, oh, it's a fantasy. And you're not fooled by your fantasies, but your fantasies are unique, but they're just fantasies. Now, once you learn your fantasies, you can start to see they don't come from nowhere. And then you start to see how they're interdependent.

[291:25]

And then you start to become, not just see that they're fantasies, but actually that they're the truth. Not the fantasies are true, the truth is how they come to be. A fantasy, the way a fantasy happens, is no more or less true than a color, a smell, or a mind-up. All things are equally real in the sense that everything can be co-arised. That's the dharma of all things shared. And if you can see how something is, you can see how it happens. But if you can make something into a reality, you can't see how a reality is made. Because realities don't exist. Only fantasies and ideas and sense objects exist, but they don't exist either. And that's what you can see by mindfulness. And you're free. You should absorb yourself.

[292:27]

Anyway, Kendra, we say that we're independent, but we don't really think we are. That's our problem. We don't even know for sure we are. We don't believe. And we act like we don't know it all the time. Which is fine, because that makes sense. This is an antidote to what we actually do. To revolutionize our attitude by admitting to God going now. No, no. You finally start acting as though we're interdependent because you start actually seeing that you are. But the way you see that you're interdependent is by meditating on how you think you're separate. Get very clear. There's me. I'm doing... That's what I see. And you see it really clearly and you start to see, oh, that's not true. I can't do anything to him without him doing something to me.

[293:28]

It's all interdependent. But you start with that you think you're separate. and independence. And if you look at that carefully, you realize that independence. You have to start where you are. And where you are, you have to start here. And where you are is here, not there. If you're stuck here being this, you have to admit that. If you admit that, you realize freedom from here and freedom from being this. Okay? Is there time to stop? Is there time to stop? Thank you very much.

[294:03]

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