Since we introduced ourselves, could you tell us your name? Eric. Eric. Any questions about Meditation of the tranquility variety. This morning I talked about two types of meditation, one being tranquility, meditation which comes to fruit as tranquility, and meditation which comes to fruit as insight, wisdom. And I suggested that focusing the attention on giving up thinking, giving up discursive thought, comes to fruit as... And using the discursive thought or using your thinking

[01:26]

to be mindful of teachings about the nature of phenomena and applying phenomena as they occur comes to fruit as insight. That sound familiar? Another way I like to put it is the training which leads to training your mind to not move among objects, to not move among different objects. And training the mind in insight is to train your attention to be able to see that objects aren't different. there's a way that objects aren't different. And learning to see that is learning wisdom.

[02:37]

While we still think that objects are different, then we can train our mind to not move among them. And that will be training in tranquility. So like, for example, John and Deborah sitting next to each other, if I see them as different, if I train my mind to not move to the other, that will lead to tranquility. Even while I still think that Deborah and John are different, even while I still have that view of how they're different. One's a man, one's a woman, and so on. If I actually look at them, my mind doesn't really move from one to the other.

[03:45]

In other words, whichever one I'm looking at, or even if I'm looking at both at the same time, I just give up my thoughts about them. I give up my thoughts that they're different. I give up any preference between them. So in that way my mind is not moving. Even though I still think they're different, my mind doesn't get moved by that difference. Whereas in wisdom, I would be looking at them and seeing their nature, which is the same. When you see the nature is the same, then also you won't be like moving among objects, because different objects, you'll be looking at the way they are. So that frees you, when you see how they're the same, then just the way you see frees you from greed and hate

[04:54]

like wanting one more than the other, or disliking one more than the other, just by the way you see. So Buddha loves all of us. In Buddha's vision we love all beings, but we don't prefer. We can see, actually, each one, how they're unique, and yet we also basically see how they're the same. Now, one teaching about how they're the same is the teaching that all phenomena have three characteristics. So this is a teaching about the nature of phenomena. And so one characteristic that all phenomena have

[05:57]

kind of a merely conceptual character. That's one character, merely conceptual, that we have a concept of whatever we're experiencing, which is just a concept of it. It's just an idea. It's not what the object is. But an object has that character. One character of all phenomena is that they depend on things other than themselves. They have a nature that they're powered by things other They don't power themselves. They don't make themselves happen.

[07:04]

Other things make them happen. They arise in dependence on things other than themselves. So everything we experience has that, actually that basic nature. That's the way things exist, is that they exist in dependence on things other than themselves. The third character is that is that the way things exist, in dependence on things other than themselves, is that also any idea we have about them doesn't actually reach them. That in the way things are actually happening, there's an absence of all our imaginations about the thing. And things are always that way. This is also called emptiness, this third character.

[08:08]

I understand. So, it's very difficult to understand. Try to understand that that little bit that you don't understand may take you a long time to close that gap. It is difficult to understand, but I'll say it another way, in another way. So the way things The way things really are is that they are empty of any conception of how they are. No conception of what you are actually reaches what you are, how you are. That's how you really are. So you're basically existing moment by moment in dependence on things other than yourself. And the profound aspect of the way you are is that nobody's ideas, including yours, how you are existing, even the idea of that you exist in dependence on things other than yourself, reaches the way you are.

[09:28]

So another way to put this is that nature is that we arise as part of a causal process, but ultimately that causal process is not reached by any depiction of the causal process. Therefore the causal process is free. It's actually free of any kind of conception. And that's where our freedom lies, in the way we actually happen, being free of any kind of set way that we happen. The nature of phenomena that's being taught in the Buddhist tradition is that we are causal processes, but we are also not deterministically caused. And that's, so basic processes and the profound, more profound teaching is that the causal process is empty of any kind of conception of the causal process and therefore the causal process is a process of freedom.

[10:53]

So our freedom is the way we already are. However, because of our fantasies or mere concepts upon the way we are, we confuse or we apprehend the way things are as our conceptions. And then we can't see the way we are and we can't see our freedom. So the wisdom is to train ourselves by listening to these teachings over and over until we start to actually be convinced that the way things appear to us is not true. And we start to be convinced that the teaching we're hearing, but yet can't yet see, is true. Just like sometimes when you see smoke, you can't see the fire.

[11:59]

But you can gradually be convinced that every time you see smoke, there's been fire. The main fantasy that we want to understand is the fantasy that we are not causal processes, or rather that we are not self-caused. We don't make ourselves. We don't keep ourselves. So that we imagine actually that, and we all do this, we imagine that we exist independent of other things. And we project that imagination upon things that don't exist that way.

[13:07]

And wisdom practice is to use your thinking to think about that, to think about that teaching of the nature phenomena, to be mindful of that teaching and then apply it to what's happening. And it helps to to apply that teaching to what's happening. It helps if you're being compassionate with what's happening. That's why we start with compassion usually. Because if you're not compassionate with what's happening, you're not present with it enough. You're upset and agitated because of not being compassionate with what's happening. So it's hard to actually be applying the teaching to what's happening because you're sort of not really there with what's happening. But if you're compassionate with what's happening, if you're generously, patiently, diligently, and calmly being moment by moment with your experience, then you're in a good position to say, now, what did they say, the nature of these phenomena that I'm...

[14:38]

If you're that way with your experiences, if you're that way with your experience of yourself, if you're that way with your experience of other people, you're calm, you're present, you're relaxed, you're patient, you're generous, and then you can hear the teaching which is telling you about what you're with, what you were. And you can listen to it moment after moment. Whereas if you're being impatient with somebody, it makes it more difficult to listen to the teaching that this person you're being impatient with, either that person or this person. It makes it more difficult to listen to the teaching that this person that I'm being impatient with has a nature which is actually beyond this person that I'm being impatient with.

[15:43]

As a matter of fact, I'm being impatient because I think this person is my idea. But just to try to apply that teaching before you're already kind of accepting the situation, you won't be able to do it very well. A little bit, but not very well. So I suggest to you that, again, that you always work on patience, diligence, precepts, generosity, and tranquility to some extent. And when you're ready to enter into wisdom practice, that you initiate yourself into it by meditating on the second character, phenomena. Meditate, listen to the teaching, be mindful of the teaching, whatever you're looking at, whatever you're hearing, whatever you're touching, whatever you're smelling, whatever you're thinking, as in nature, depending on things other than itself for its existence.

[17:02]

Listen to that teaching over and over. And then you will start to be initiated into wisdom. Questions about this? As I think about it, it seems like the wisdom is a little lighter than the compassion practice. It's like the emptiness thing and the seeing that things are co-dependent.

[18:19]

And that's a question. Does that sound correct? Does what sound correct? Does it sound correct that the wisdom practice is kind of lighter than the compassion practice? What do you mean by lighter? Space and the empty. It's almost as if things become less real. I don't get that sense of compassion practice. It's almost as if things become less real? Yeah. I think that is, that kind of experience probably would be more often voiced. for someone who's meditating on wisdom and compassion. Because when you're practicing wisdom, you said things are less real, didn't you say?

[19:32]

It may seem like things are less real when you start to open to the... What you think is real is not real. In other words, what most people think is real is not real. So if you're open to teachings about the way things are, then what you usually have been considering to be real, you now suspect wasn't real. So the word spacey, the feeling of spaciness, clear eyes, in various ways. One way of spaciness is that you would be open to the possibility that what you've been thinking is true is not. So in that sense, I think one might feel like that.

[20:33]

If you're suspicious already of the way things appear, continuously practicing wisdom if you're suspicious that things aren't like they appear. If you hear these teachings, these teachings are saying, actually, that the way things appear is actually a combination of the way they actually are happening and a projection of fantasy upon them. So, the way things are actually happening is they really don't fall into the category of existence or non-existence. The way things are actually happening... But they don't fall into the category of existence or non-existence because, for example, the way Tim is happening is that he happens in dependence on things other than Tim.

[21:35]

The existence of Tim does not depend on the existence of . It depends on the existence of things other than the existence of Tim. But he actually is happening. So he doesn't not exist. It's just that he doesn't fall in the category of existence because he depends on things other than Tim. So he exists in this way. And everybody exists in the middle way. between actually existing and not existing. We do exist, in a sense, but we don't really belong in the category of existence because we, in a sense, there's no other than being independent of some things other than the self. That's the way things are actually, that's the way Tim is actually happening, that's the way you're actually happening. However, when we project the self, or essence onto a process that doesn't project something onto Tim, for example.

[22:46]

And so there's a core there to which the conditions other than Tim adhere to make Tim. There really is something there. And you get these conditions together, and you get Tim. onto him, which he doesn't have, and then we use words like Tim and man and so on, and then he comes into conventional existence, and then he falls into the category of existence. So in conventional existence, things that actually exist or appear exist, and things that don't exist, that's conventional existence. But the foundation of conventional existence is a way that we are that doesn't fall into existence or non-existence. So when you've listened to that teaching, you might start to feel what you have been, how things appear to you is not self. You start first to become suspicious and doubt the world.

[23:52]

That's why it's good to practice compassion with this, because compassion is oriented towards the conventional world. oriented towards beings who appear to exist. And we practice compassion with the appearances. We don't practice compassion with the appearances like, you're just an appearance, so I don't care about you. You actually give attention to these appearances because you do give attention to appearances. You confess that you are noticing appearances and you're patient with them, generous with them, ethical with them, diligent with them, and calm with them. You give them this kind of compassion. So compassion is honoring the way things appear in the conventional sense.

[24:55]

But for that appearance to occur, onto what's happening of something that's not there. A self. Without the projection of self, the conventional world disintegrates. The way things actually happen. be able to see all of our ideas about the way things are happening are not reaching anything. They're just flying around. The actual which is happening. And the way it happens is in this other dependent way. So that kind of like that practice, you might feel things are less real.

[26:02]

You might say light. However, that practice is, when you say light, generally speaking, my experience is that people have more difficulty practicing wisdom than compassion. Because compassion, you don't have to, you can practice compassion without overthrowing your sense of reality. Whereas when you start to practice Buddhism, you start to lose your sense of reality to some extent, which is difficult. Because then how do you proceed when your sense of reality is being challenged and evolving? I was wondering about the question, should we be grateful to this phenomenon? I mean, should we have the attitude of gratefulness as well as compassion? I think gratefulness is kind of part of compassion. I think gratefulness is But it's more of an acknowledgement of their being when you're grateful and then you go and sometimes do something to show that you're grateful. You know what I'm saying?

[27:05]

It's different. Can you feel compassion more with gentlemen? Gratefulness is you say thank you and you act in such a way that you show that to that phenomenon. I mean, is it important to do that or is it just something that's just... I think gratefulness is part of compassion. And also, actually, I have trouble now saying thank you to people. Because when you say thank you to somebody, you're not really saying thank you to exactly just them. Because you're saying, like, I meet people and I feel grateful to meet them. Thank the person. for the meeting of them, but I know that they didn't actually make the meeting happen, so I just want to say thanks. Thank you. Thanks to whatever made you appear. So it's like, it's not really you that offered to meet you, even though I'm grateful to meet you. Thank you is quite right.

[28:06]

So you want to go, thanks. Gracias is nice, though. It's just gracias. It's more like a gift. Yay. Right? Gracias, señorita. Nice is kind of antithetical to teaching. So when you meditate on wisdom, that tends to make you feel more grateful for things and more grateful for the good things that you do. grateful rather than proud. When you don't have wisdom, you tend to be ashamed of the things, unskillful behaviors that you like to manifest, and proud for the skillful ones. When you meditate on dependent core rising, you feel more grateful for any rather than you made it happen. And it isn't that you're ungrateful exactly, when unskillfulness happens, but you're more grateful that you have a teaching to apply to this unskillfulness.

[29:13]

Beginner's mind, like being a beginner is, I used to do that in context of being, you start something to learn a new skill. Well, I was just, back when you were speaking before Corinne spoke, you know, I was curious as to how you do go through that period because The period where you start to see the connectedness and that the reality doesn't always add up the way it used to. And it's kind of a struggle because you're kind of between two things. You feel like you are. Yeah, it's kind of a struggle. So I mean, I kind of just try to relax, but it's... Humbly, and I was very humble about it, because it's not a clear thing. Relaxing, that's a good thing to do when you're practicing this way, when you're feeling humbled or humiliated or destabilized to some extent, by opening to new possible ways of seeing what's happening.

[30:22]

That's why you need to practice this with compassion. In other words, go back and start relaxing with the situation. If you start getting too wrought up in the process of wisdom, you should take a break and go calm down. Go back and start practicing compassion again for a while. And then when you're more settled, you can go back and look at this more awesome aspect of what's happening. What kind of just happens? You can't predict when it happens. It just happens in certain situations. You can't predict when... This shifting of understandings. Right. So your understanding shifts, but then, and you can't predict that. Right. But when the shift happens, if you feel too destabilized or too shaken up or frightened even. I get a sense of humor sometimes from it. Well, a sense of humor is not so much. No. But. It's. It's what?

[31:24]

It's like that kind of, just like a wow kind of thing. You feel kind of wow. Well, I thought you said earlier that you're having a struggle. No, it wasn't a struggle. I apologize. It wasn't a struggle. It's not a struggle. It's just the sense of... It's the sense of just... The world is not, as you said, it's not specifically... The world is not stable. So that's one of the things you start to see when you listen to this teaching about the pentacle rising. It starts to impact you. And when it impacts you, it's not... But sometimes it starts to impact you, and then you start to see, because it's impacting you, because the consequence of this teaching is the realization that things are not stable. So if you listen to it, and listen to it, and listen to it, and even if you reason about it, like sense that if things arise in dependence on things other than themselves, they won't be stable.

[32:25]

If you make yourself happen, then you'd be stable. But since you arise, since the way you are, moment by moment, arises in dependence on things other than yourself, you can't be stable. I'm telling you that, and that makes sense to you. But still, sometimes that just will strike you. This teaching sinks into you. Not that it won't be that somebody told you things are unstable. You will actually get it, that things are unstable. And you'll get it. You really see that thing you were saying about the perception is so random. All of our perceptions are so random and formless. They're not exactly random. Well, they're not random. They are contingent. They are contingent. They're random in the sense that that you can't put a coherent conceptual framework on how they are arising contingently.

[33:32]

They are contingent. The way we are is contingent, but it's beyond the way they're contingent. That realization is more profound and more advanced than the first realization, which will come to you of how unstable things are and how impermanent they are. And how unreliable they are. And how you can't have confidence in things. This is sometimes hard for people. Because you're supposed to be able to be confident in things. I have confidence in my teacher. I have confidence in my husband, in my wife. But I often use the example of my grandson. When I tell people about my grandson, they're not surprised to hear that he's unstable, that he's impermanent, and that he's not worthy of confidence.

[34:39]

To grandchildren, that's not considered to be an insult, right? But you can see they're not worthy of confidence. You cannot... Be confident that they'll like you the next time they see you. The problem of being a mother or a father is that you're not so open to the possibility that your kids are not going to like you the next time they see you. Children are not reliably affectionate towards their parents. But parents have more trouble accepting that than grandparents do. So I know I can't have confidence that he's going to like me the next time I see him. He might. I can't have, I don't have confidence that he, I don't, he's not worthy of confidence that he won't like me either. Like one minute he says, I go to see him, you know, and he says, go away, close the door on me.

[35:46]

A minute later he says, I won't grant it. And when it's bath time, it's kind of like, well, who do you want to give you a bath? Mother? Grandmother? Grandfather? Which one is he going to choose? You can't depend on this kid. He's unstable. He's impermanent. But you can love him. that's unstable, impermanent, and not worthy of confidence. You can love such things. And what are things that they're like that? All phenomena are like that. All things, not all phenomena, all compounded phenomena. There's some uncompounded phenomena. The way things really are is uncompounded. The fact that your dreams do not reach

[36:48]

the nature of what you're experiencing. That's not compounded. So it's not impermanent, unstable, unworthy of confidence. But every person you know is impermanent, unstable, and unworthy of confidence, and that includes you. But you can still love all these beings who are this way. You can love impermanent, unstable, unstable beings. As a matter of fact, you can love them better when you keep that in mind because then when they slam the door in your face, you won't be shocked by it so much. Because you know that that could happen any minute if they could close the door on you. And the next minute they say, give me a bath. I want you. You're the best. You won't stay shut. You can't even depend on that. You can't even depend on change. Just when you say, okay, at least I can depend on change, then they'll say, okay, I'm the same.

[38:03]

But this teaching is telling you beforehand that this is going to happen. If you listen to it, You're going to start seeing things this way, and that's a sign of progress in wisdom. You hear about this, but when you actually start feeling that way, and still, even though you open up because you're starting to feel that people are unreliable and unstable, you don't take it personally. And not taking it personally means you don't make any exceptions. You don't say, well, most people are unstable, but not my wife. Most people don't trust my teacher. Even your teacher is impermanent, not worthy of confidence. But you can still love your teacher and be devoted to your teacher, even though the teacher is that way. That's why you have to keep practicing compassion. side of this wisdom practice as it starts to develop, as your vision of things starts to change, you keep practicing generosity and precepts and patience with the situation.

[39:13]

If you don't have those practices going, you might think, well, if she's impermanent and not worthy of confidence, I don't care about her anymore. If he's going to slam the door on me, I'm out of here. No more granddaddy for you. You just lost your granddaddy. No, no. You keep practicing generosity with this person who's slamming the door on your face. You like it. It just means you keep practicing patience and generosity and precepts and so on. So you have to keep practicing compassion, especially as wisdom starts really developing. Otherwise, you might become unethical. And again, as I said this morning, great wisdom is founded on ethical commitment, which is the basic dimension of compassion.

[40:22]

So as you're doing this practice, you need to keep practicing compassion alongside it. Yes? I'm trying to get out of it, but it's kind of dependent on our concepts. Yeah. It seems that it's hard to keep the world stable. Yeah, right. But the other one, I guess I'll say this now. The other way to put it is that if our ethics aren't based on enlightenment, we tend to make our ethics .. So the true understanding of ethics should be based on enlightenment, and true enlightenment is based on ethics.

[41:32]

So we really don't understand the precepts until we're enlightened. But as we start to become initiated into wisdom, it starts to crack our version of precepts, too. We start to realize that the precepts also Our practice of the precepts and our understanding of the precepts is also unstable, impermanent, and not worthy of confidence. You have to use your understanding. Just like you have to relate to the people you're meeting, you have to relate to what they appear to be. But your understanding of them are not really worthy of confidence. But you still have to work with something that's not worthy of confidence. So you have to be diligent and care for your understanding even though it's starting to appear to be somewhat faulty or incomplete. And it's a different ground, a less self-righteous ground upon precepts.

[42:41]

Again, we said this morning, somebody said something about to be really sure about something. This is I think it was Lisa, was it you? Somebody said, it was you. We say things are good. This is definitely good and this is definitely bad. This definitely bad. That's the way we, that's the way children feel once they get the hang of it. First they say, you know, like again, my grandson would say, maybe say, that's not good, right? And you say, right. And he says, why? I said, that's good, right? So they gradually find out what's good and what's not good. They test it out. At first, it's just a game. Gradually, it starts to get more and more solidified. As a matter of fact, first they're playing. First he says, that's a poppy, right? They say, yes, that's a poppy.

[43:46]

Then he goes over to the roses and says, that's a poppy, right? Then he goes over to the sunflower and says, that's a poppy, right? He knows it's not poppy, but he's going to check out now to see, to verify. And then he goes over to the roses and says, they are poppies. And we say, yes, they are. He said, no. So when first you learn right and wrong, first you're playing, you know, to learn what the conventional way of working with these words are. how we play at the beginning, and then we start thinking and reading that way. And then when we reverse the process through wisdom, it kind of allows us to enter into a more playful space, but also it's different when you're used to it. It's been years about some of these things, so we may feel a little bit insecure, unsettled.

[44:47]

So it is possible to practice Ethics in a relaxed way. Matter of fact, some of the most ethical people that I've met are kind of relaxed about it. Like Suzuki Roshi, I often said about him, he showed me that moral authority is not the same as moral superiority. He wasn't exactly superior to other people morally, yet he had a lot of moral authority. I don't think he really was, but he had a lot of authority. He was kind of playful about ethics, and yet quite ethical. Not because he was better than other people, but because he thought he was better, and actually not because we thought he was better either.

[45:49]

It was more the way he worked with them that was neat. When you look at reality in a different way, you see it in a new way. She said, when you look at reality in another word, that's one way to say it, when you look at reality, but it's really when you look at phenomena. At phenomena, yes. See, we usually look at phenomena, and then we have some sense of what's real and what's not real, right? Right. And what you used to think was reality, you realize is not. You start to realize that what you used to think was reality is suspect. It doesn't mean there's no reality to it. It's just really that way. So you start to suspect that, yes? Right. My experience with that is a sense of disconnection with what I thought was my world.

[46:57]

But then it gets again when I say, then practice. And is this connection really enough to make... No, it's not enough. It's just what you can... You may not be able to get attention. You may not be able to get... the kind of instruction you need vis-a-vis your wisdom work in order to antidote that sense of disconnection. Usually you, I shouldn't say usually, but you may have to, you may either have to develop more skillfully in order to know how to take care of yourself when you feel disconnect. In other words, to know what teachings to apply at the time of disconnection. too quickly to antidote the disconnection feeling. But what you can do more easily is practice compassion, which tends to reconnect you with your belief, not your belief so much, but with the appearance of the conventional world.

[47:59]

Now, if you want to talk about the type of disconnection, any particular type of disconnection, you can bring that up. Before we get into it, I just say, remember compassion. Now, if you want to get into some kind of disconnection, we can talk about that now, but how you would address that within wisdom. Does anyone want to do that? Is that clear? No? I guess my question about the disconnection is that... I guess where I get muddled with it is that... In terms of to connect the interdependency involved phenomenon in the work that we saw, the interdependency, but once I get to that point, I feel disconnected in this. Pina's children talked about being in the boat in the middle of the lake and it has holes in it and you can't see either side.

[49:08]

It's kind of like that feeling. I understand that's supposed to be where we are. We're supposed to enjoy that. Yeah, well, one contradiction I heard, I don't know if you meant it, was that when you meditate on In your dependence, when you meditate on other dependence, other dependent nature of your experience, that you start to lose track of the dependence. I start to feel disconnected. Disconnected. So when you start to meditate on how you're existing just because of the support of other things... I knew you were going to ask me something. I'm not asking I'm not asking I'm doing my vision of this as you start to meditate on how you exist in dependence on things other than yourself in other words as you start to realize that you're nothing but a bunch of connections you start to feel disconnected that can happen it's sort of

[50:19]

But meditating on how you're nothing but connections, you feel disconnected. What's feeling disconnected is the person who's not connected is starting to feel disconnected. Unconnected person, the person who didn't exist in dependence, that person feels disconnected. because there never was that person. So you, the independent person, is going to start feeling less connected. That's one aspect that can happen, because there never was such a person. As you open to the person you actually are, the person who you never were starts to feel . Because that person, the person who you usually are, is the person who's not connected. So when you hear about connection, the person who's not connected starts to feel unconnected. This is part of the, what you can get into. That's why that time I said practice compassion.

[51:24]

I said, it's okay. There's something there, it's just not you. It's not independent you, that's not there. That's under, that's as an illusion. That's why you have to be nice to this person. There is a person there. But this person's been like going along with this little friend here that doesn't really exist. And we're starting to say, well, can we have your friend? Can we take your friend away? Yikes, will I be all right without this little independent person? Yeah, you will be because actually there never was that person anyway. You're actually being supported by a whole other process. You're not actually being supported by this independent person. This independent person is part of how you need to have it in order to get a date in high school.

[52:25]

This is very important. But it's an illusion. And as you start to open to it, you start to feel bereft of this source of your problems. So anyway, that's why you have to be kind to yourself and gentle with yourself and supportive of yourself and get help and ask somebody to hold your hand as you go through this process. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadows, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff will comfort me. The teaching will help you as you go into this realm where the independent self is going to drop off the edge of the world. If you keep the teachings with you, they keep saying, yeah, right, that's But you are being supported.

[53:28]

But you have to keep listening to teaching that says, yes, you're supported, but not in the way you used to think you are. When you start to feel that way, it's a good sign. It's a sign that the teaching is having an impact. If you never get scared this way, it hasn't really registered deeply enough yet, because the consequences around the shift are that there's nobody there. It's not really true, it's just there's no independent person there. It gets to almost be like nobody's there, which is like too much. Okay? Yes. In a sense, doesn't everybody at some level suspect that things aren't what they are, that things are impermanent, and that this is the source of fear?

[54:37]

I think so. And being threatened. Yeah. So really, in a sense, how this illusory, independent person lives his or her life really comes from how one reacts to that awareness, right? Because at a certain level, I can see this. To actually think of everything happening in a chaotic way, but in a way that doesn't necessarily have any meaning, I put my understanding. So you can see the potential for freedom there. Oh, absolutely. But I can see also how threatening and frightening it can be. And it makes me understand a lot of my behaviors. When my wife doesn't behave the way I think she should have. She pulled up a 75-pound dog.

[55:39]

I'm sure she's telling me, you know, this dog is wonderful. It's a great dog. Yes? Can you talk a little bit about how karma fits into this thing? Yeah, karma is part of what isn't us that gives rise to us. Our past actions are not really us. but we arise in dependence on them. So karma is... Our past karma is part of what gives rise to us. Does that make any sense?

[56:44]

It looked like it didn't. Yeah. Karma is a very important condition of something that's not a... Karma is not a person. It's the activity of a person. And then the consequences of the activities of the person. Karma means those things which you do, your activities which are conjoined with the belief of your independent existence. So, you know, you nod your head. Sometimes you nod your head and you don't think you did it. Other times you nod your head and you think, the independent person nodded my head. So when your head just nods and you don't think that you did it, even unconsciously, it's not karma. And it has quite a different consequence than when you think that you . You think you're doing things based on thinking that you did them by your own power has consequences that in the future

[57:50]

the kind of person you'll be will be somebody who thinks that way again. So part of who we are, which is dependent not on us, other than us, is that we're beings who imagine that we do things on our own. We don't make ourselves. think that way. We think that way because we thought that way in the past. So that's an example of things other than ourselves for us being the way we are, including that the way we are is that we imagine that we're not the way I just said we were. We think we actually make ourselves exist right now. We know that's nonsense, but that's still what we think. Or we somewhat know. To admit it, like, the idea that I lifted this cup all by myself, like most people could fall for that one, right? And now I put the cup down all by myself.

[58:53]

So this teaching is saying that that activity did not arise on me only. Many, many factors other than me gave rise to this action which they say was mine. It wasn't really my action. And not only that, but any story I tell or you tell about how this activity arose doesn't actually happen. So... Let's start talking about how karma plays into our lives, causing us in our present way of seeing things, and because of the way we see things, how we feel, and what we want to do. Like some people like a certain type of person,

[59:59]

And because they like a certain type of person rather than another type of person, that becomes a condition for them liking or disliking other people. Those are conditions which contribute. Well, particularly, I should elaborate that a little bit. You like certain people. You think you're independent. Doing things with regard to those people you like based on your own power and that type of activity which you didn't make happen all by yourself but which you thought you made happen all by yourself tends to make you, has consequences for how you will be in the future. So the person you become depends on your preferences and the activities which you thought you did in relationship to your preferences. But you can't sit here and make yourself have a preference. Like if some of you prefer men or women under certain circumstances, you can't just flip those preferences. And you can also look back in your history, probably, and see that you didn't always have those preferences.

[61:07]

You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. You can actually see that at a certain place you didn't have a preference, and you can see that later you did have a preference. It's particularly easy to watch it around, you know, when you're a kid or when you're a teenager, you know. Like, you can watch how society and your own activity came together to create. You can see how that happened. Even though the way it happened was more complex than that, you do know that you don't know exactly how it happened. There wasn't a preference, and then there was. And you can see how you didn't make it. And then you can see, based on the preference which arose, which wasn't there before... that then you thought of doing things by your own power, and then those things you did in relationship to those things you think you did by your own power, references which you can see weren't under your own power. You can see how now those have set the conditions for you being the way you are today. This is a way you could think about this.

[62:12]

It's not the whole story. really, but it starts to open to you to how karma works in your evolution of being who you are. So who you are is a consequence of your moral evolution. You know, like they say, when a thief goes out in the street, the thief is like scared of where the police are. Whereas a non-thief isn't so afraid of the police. It's not theft control police. And if you're speeder, you feel a certain way about highway patrol. So because of the way you think you drive and the actions you think you did, that conditions you for how you see certain people. And then how you see certain people conditions you if you still believe in independent existence to act in a certain way. And this process keeps perpetuating itself and makes us who we are. But you can kind of undo that or work with that.

[63:13]

I have a question. Yes, questioning it, but also listen to this teaching and apply this teaching to everything. This teaching is definitely about undoing it. And although the teaching is that you can't reverse karma, you can't avoid the consequences, still the consequences are determined. See, there are consequences. That's the law. but the way they're going to unfold is not determined. And the way they unfold varies according to whether you're practicing or not. So the practice changes the way the consequences happen, but the consequences will happen, but they're not fixed at the time of the initiation of the activity. Could they be? There's so many factors entering into this.

[64:14]

Exactly. And each factor, it has other dependent character. Factors also depend on things other than themselves. So there's no fixed identity in the process. Therefore, there's actually freedom. There's actually freedom in the way things are happening already. We need to undo our rigidities in the process and open our eyes to realize what this teaching is trying to do. But ironically, you have to sort of be practicing compassion in the form of ethics in order to authentically open to this freedom. So you kind of have to discipline yourself around ethics to open to causation. Ethics are very closely related to causation because we're talking about how what you do has consequence. If you do skillful things, you evolve. If you do unskillful things, you get blocked. That's the rule. That's a set rule.

[65:19]

However, rule, and you can make commitment to that causal process, that's the basis of entering the realm where there's freedom from those rules. Well, those rules don't work anymore. But in order to enter that realm of freedom, That's spiritual freedom. You have to say, okay, in the non-spiritual, mechanical world of karma, I'm going to totally commit to good. And I'm really going to do this thoroughly and skillfully. But I'm going to accept that in the conventional level, I'm really going to be thorough with the rules here. And I also know that there's also teaching that the other dependent character of all these rules includes the possibility of freedom. Yes, Nancy. Well, is this exactly what the Heart Sutra is speaking about?

[66:21]

Yeah, except that the Heart Sutra is not telling you as much as the teaching that I'm telling you. It's more like just telling you, basically, when it says form is emptiness, it's saying that forms, the way they're actually happening, is empty of any idea you have about the form. And that also is saying that that emptiness is always about something, like form. But this teaching is kind of like fleshing out what Buddha had in mind when he taught that form is emptiness. So the ultimate teaching is, the way things really are, is that the way they are, is that they're empty. Any idea you have of how they are, So the teaching of emptiness is like an elucidation of the teaching of dependent co-origination.

[67:32]

So the basic teaching of dependent co-origination and the teaching of emptiness in the Heart Sutra is the profound aspect of causation. I'm going to ask if when we say that things are empty, do we mean that they're unreliable, unstable, and impermanent? We mean that unreliable, unstable, impermanent phenomena, okay, which are that way because they rely on things other than themselves, that these dependently co-arisen phenomena, regular things that happen, impermanent phenomena, Everything we're dealing with, like people and feelings and plants and animals, all this stuff is unreliable, unstable, impermanent, and so on. Okay? The teaching of emptiness is that any idea you have of any kind of essence to this process is actually not there.

[68:42]

The actual causal processes of impermanent things and everything where basically our life is an impermanent, constantly changing, unreliable event, that any idea we have about it is actually absent. That's the teaching of emptiness. But in order to apply that teaching, we must be well grounded in the impermanence, the instability, the unreliability, the dependent core rising teaching, you need to be well established in that. And again, when you listen to that teaching and it impacts on you, not only you start to see things differently and understand them differently, but your behavior starts to change. You actually become more virtuous because you don't tend to be so greedy or angry that are impermanent, that you can see are impermanent. It's when you think things are permanent that you try to get them.

[69:48]

You see a permanent, you see a beautiful person and you think they're permanent, so then you try to get them. If you can really understand that they're impermanent, enjoy the beauty or the pleasant appearance But you know, well, it's going to be gone. So that tempers your involvement with them. You tend to not care too much about whether you ever see them again. You lift the enchantment off your relationship. I shouldn't say you do, but this meditation lifts the enchantment off the relationship. So you start behaving in a disingenuous way. In other words, you're no longer believing the way the person falsely appears as permanent. And similar to someone who's really obnoxious, when you realize they're impermanent, you tend not to try to get rid of them so vigorously.

[70:57]

So you start behaving more appropriately towards them, too. Then you stop trying to hold on to the attractive people and eliminate the unattractive. In other words, you start acting more virtuously. Because we really don't think it's so virtuous, do we, to try to get all the attractive people over here and the unattractive ones away? That's not virtue. That's just greed and hate. And then what the problem is, is you may have noticed, even if you could pull it off, sometimes after you get rid of all the unattractive people, that the attractive people sometimes become more unattractive than anybody. You manage to like, the most attractive person you finally got a hold of, and now you say, but now this has become actually the worst person I could have possibly chosen. How strange. Amazing. This person is way above average .. Most of the murders in the United States are committed in the home.

[72:14]

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