Good evening, everybody. We started last time, we finished the sutta on the simile of the snake and we were starting on the sutta number 136, Mahakamavibhanga-sutta, the great karma exposition sutra. What page is it? Page 1058. And we, just like the simile of the snake sutra, this sutra has a little, kind of a little story in the beginning which explains

[01:08]

why it is that the Buddha decided to teach about karma. And it usually has to do with someone misunderstanding. Just as in the simile of the snake sutra, someone had heard the Buddha to teach and with all good intentions had misunderstood the teaching. And when the Buddha heard about it, he said, well, that isn't right. Let me set you straight. And that's the same story here. There were two religious wanderers, Samedi and Potaliputta, and they were having an exchange about karma. And they disagreed with one another. And

[02:15]

one of them, Samedi, went to Ananda. Basically, what Samedi, Potaliputta was saying that actions of the body and speech do not have karmic results. Only actions of the mind have karmic results. And then he would say, he said, there is a state of mind which is beyond feeling, beyond karmic retribution. And that's what Potaliputta thought. And then Samedi said, no, it's not true that actions of body and speech have no karmic results. Although the other part is true, that there is a state of mind where there is no karmic retribution, there is no feeling. So this is what, in other words, the main point of their remarks is questioning whether or not there's a loophole in the law of

[03:23]

karma. Is there some, like, little place there, or big place, where our actions don't necessarily have consequences? And both of them, in different ways, think so. And Samedi goes to Ananda and explains this exchange to Ananda. And Ananda says, this doesn't sound right. We better go tell this to the Buddha. They go to the Buddha, and the Buddha says, no, we should have them come over here, because it doesn't sound right to me either. Both of them are wrong. So let's have them come over here. And then they show up. And a third venerable is around. And the venerable says, perhaps the venerable Samedi spoke thus, referring to the principle that whatever is felt is suffering. And the Buddha said, you're all wrong. These two are wrong, and so is Udayana, who says that whatever is felt is suffering. So these views are very important. How one understands

[04:40]

these things is really important to these wandering seekers. As I made a remark last time, that mostly we don't even think about what reality is, let alone fight over it. But for these people, who devoted their whole lives to an exploration of how reality really works, and how one's conduct should be organized based on the way reality works, it was very consequential how one saw these things and how one thought about these things. It really mattered. And so when people spoke of reality in a way that was not in accord with the truth, it mattered, and it came to the Buddha's attention. He was concerned to discuss it with them. So he says, well, I can see that I better speak about karma. And the rest of the sutra,

[05:41]

from page 1060, number 8, begins the Buddha's great discourse on action, or karma. Now, although a lot of people are attracted to Buddhism because of meditation and higher states of mind and peace and calm of meditation, in reality, Buddhism is fundamentally an ethical tradition, in the sense that the deep insights of meditation and the nature of reality are important because they have implications for conduct. So in Buddhism, morality doesn't come from some sort of sense of absolute good or bad, but rather it comes from a sense of,

[06:44]

this is how reality is, this is what it is to act in accord with reality, this is what it is to act not in accord with reality. The results of acting not in accord with reality are suffering. Suffering is what people don't want. To reduce and even eliminate that kind of suffering, we need to have conduct based on reality, we need to understand reality and act on the basis of it. So truly, Buddha Dharma is a teaching about action, about morality. And one of the points that the Buddha makes over and over again, and we'll make here in this sutra, is that when there's action, there is a consequence. If the action is positive, the consequences are positive. If the action is negative, the consequences are negative. And this is really the truth, and it is infallible and indelible.

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Now, a person who understands this very deeply and who is dedicated to acting in accord with it, can be free within this law of karma. Not outside of it, because there's nothing outside of it, but inside of it, can be free and easy within it. But it's a very difficult thing to understand, and these people in the beginning of the sutra are misunderstanding it. And now the Buddha is going to set up this very... The point that he's making here is actually very, very simple, but it's quite a number of pages, and it's a little bit labored as he lays all this stuff out. But we'll see as we go along. I'm going to go through it without being too tedious about it, and then we can discuss it. So the Buddha now begins, Okay, Ananda, listen closely to what I'm going to say, because I'm now going to tell you some basic facts about karma.

[08:55]

And Ananda says, Yes, sir. Good, let's listen. We're ready. So the Buddha says, Ananda, there are four kinds of persons. It doesn't mean four kinds of persons, it means basically there's four possibilities, so logical possibilities in relation to action and results. There are four ways it could go. And he just uses this expression, there's four kinds of people. What are the four? Okay, number one. Here's a person who kills living beings, takes what's not given, misconducts himself in sensual pleasures and sexual matters, speaks falsehood, speaks maliciously, speaks harshly, gossips, is covetous, has ill will and holds wrong views. In other words, this is a list of the code of conduct of Buddhadharma, and this is a person who does the opposite of moral conduct. These are the precepts. So here's a person whose life

[10:02]

is the opposite of all the precepts. And this person, when he dies, is going to be reborn in a miserable state, maybe even in hell, some hell realm. So now this is assuming, and we can get into this later if necessary, but basically the assumption is that our life is not limited to the teensy little span between birth and death, that the implications of our lives are far greater than that, and that we are born with already tendencies, and when we pass away, these tendencies pass on, continue in the world with consequences, and they use the image of rebirth. Past lives, future lives, and all that. So you have to accept that as a given for now. We can

[11:04]

talk about it more later. But the idea is that after that, the person does, you know, breaks all the precepts, and as you would expect, right, just as you would expect, if bad actions lead to bad results, just as one would expect, the person is reborn in a bad situation, gets their just deserts for their activity. So that's one kind of a person, he says. But there are also a second kind of person, a person who kills living beings, etc., etc., etc., repeating the same thing. In other words, this second kind of person breaks all the rules, and after the death of that person, lo and behold, they're not born in evil states and bad karmic retributions. They're born into heavens and wonderful situations. So they break all the rules, but they're reborn in the wonderful situations. That's another possible, another kind of person. That happens. Buddha says that happens

[12:08]

sometimes. The third one, here is a person who abstains from killing living beings, abstains from taking what is not given, abstains from misconduct and sensual pleasures, abstains from false speech, malicious speech, harsh speech, abstains from gossip, is not covetous, doesn't possess ill will, has right views, and as we would expect, this person with such an unblemished life is reborn in happy states, because good action leads to good results. So that's understandable. We would expect that. That's the third kind of person. But the fourth kind of person also abstains from etc., etc., etc., lives an unblemished moral life, and this person, on the death, is reborn into miserable states and hells and so on.

[13:08]

And that's the fourth kind of person. And that happens. Now, of course, right away you think, well, wait a minute. I thought good actions lead to good results, and bad actions lead to bad results. So how come? Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't. What kind of a law of karma is that? What's the percentage for me in acting good and not acting bad, if acting bad is more fun and I could either may or may not work out well? In either case, what's the point? And the Buddha says, yeah, that's right. It may or may not work out. So now we're wondering, what's going on here? What's the Buddha trying to tell us? So then, in the next part, we run through these same four possibilities, only now we are introduced to a hypothetical seer. Now, again, you have to understand, this is India,

[14:14]

India, 500 B.C., and just as the idea of future lives and past lives is just accepted, it's also accepted that there are, I mean, the whole world of meditation, trance states, clairvoyance, clairaudience, and so on and so on and so on, is accepted. I mean, these people did not have anything like science. They also didn't have television, cell phones, anything like that. So all of their fun and all of their creativity went into this sort of thing, and they were really good at it. And so there probably were people who could enter into trance states through practicing various sorts of austerities. These are not Buddhist pundits. This is just anybody who was, there's a million people, you know, in Buddhist time. Buddha was one of many, many religious leaders of the day, each of whom had his or her

[15:20]

own approach. And so there were a lot of people who had these kind of powers. It was not unusual. So here is a hypothetical person who can enter into trance states and who can actually see past lives and future lives, who can see beings through trance states who were reborn here and born there and so on. That's how they knew that these things were really true, because they could see it from their trance state, just like the Tibetans do these, you know, one can read, even in modern times of Tibetans who figure out, you know, this is the rebirth of that person over there, because I saw it in a vision and I gave them the Vajra and they picked it up and they knew it and so on. It seems unbelievable, but somehow these things happen. Anyway, these people could actually see these things going on. So what do they see in relation to these four possibilities? So here, Ananda, by means of ardor, endeavor, devotion, diligence and right attention,

[16:23]

some recluse or brahman attains such a concentration of mind that when his mind is concentrated with the divine eye, which is purified and surpasses the human, he sees that person here, the first person, who kills living beings, holds the wrong view, etc., etc., you know, breaks all the precepts, and he sees on the dissolution of the body that that person reappears in a state of deprivation, unhappy destination, in perdition, even in hell. So he actually sees that. So it's not a question of speculation. This person sees that that really happened. Having seen that, he then says, yes, indeed, it's true, there are evil actions and there is a result of evil actions, for I saw a person here who killed living beings and held wrong views, etc., etc., and I see that on the dissolution of the body after death, this being reappeared in a state of deprivation, even in hell. And then he says, therefore, I know from

[17:30]

seeing that, that on the dissolution of the body after death, everyone who kills living beings will receive that kind of just deserts. And those who agree with me are right, and those who disagree with me are wrong, because I saw this and I understand. And thus he obstinately adheres to what he sees and what he has known and discovered, and he says, this is the truth and everything else is false. Okay? So he sees that first kind of person and he says, yeah, okay, that makes sense. But now, of course, the second kind of person is a little problematic, right? Because now he sees the same person enters into concentration state, you know, gets his clairvoyance, seeing beyond the veil of birth and death, sees a person who kills living beings, etc., and this person is reborn into heaven. And he sees that, and he knows that's really what happened, there's no question about it.

[18:34]

Then he says, okay, I saw that, so now I know that there are no evil actions, and there is no result of misconduct. And I can see that this person who did all these evil actions is reborn in a state of happiness. So he says, on the dissolution of the body, after death, everyone who kills living beings, etc., etc., etc., reappears in a happy destination. So he's generalizing from the case that he saw. He says, well, then, if you do bad things, it must be that you get a good reward. And those who see that are right, and those who don't see it are wrong. The third one enters into trance, etc., etc., sees a person who is very good and abstains from wrong conduct, etc., etc., that person reappears in a happy destination, etc., etc.,

[19:40]

and he says, oh, and indeed there are good actions and good results, and so on. Anybody who doesn't see this is wrong, anybody who sees it is right. Then this is all very, it's like very mathematical. Then you go through the fourth one, seeing someone who is, moral conduct is unstained, and despite that, reappears in an unhappy destination. And he says, there are no good actions. I see, having seen that, now I know that there are no good actions, and there is no result of good conduct. For I saw a person here who did good conduct and received bad results, so there cannot, it must be that this whole thing about karma and results is not really true, because I saw the opposite of that happen. Okay? So then the Buddha says, well, Ananda, when that seer says,

[20:51]

indeed there are evil actions, there is result of misconduct, I grant him this. When he says, I saw a person here who killed living beings, etc., etc., and he reappeared, appeared in a bad state, I grant him this. But when he says, on the dissolution of the body after death, everyone who kills living beings, breaks the precepts, etc., etc., reappears in a state of deprivation, blah, blah, even in hell, I do not grant him this. In other words, yes, it's true, bad action leads to bad result. Yes, it's true, he saw that it was effective in that case, but he made a mistake in generalizing from that one condition to all conditions, to say that everyone would be, because it's not true that everyone who does bad will be reborn in bad states. So, in other words, meditative trance skill doesn't go far enough. You have to have a real

[22:06]

understanding of how things are beyond the artistic accomplishment of meditation practice, because these people are powerful meditators, and they see things that we can't see, and their meditation is really true, and the things that they're seeing is really true. The only thing is that they don't understand properly what they're seeing. They're making generalizations and philosophy, you know, based on what they've seen that's actually erroneous. So they did see what they saw, yes, but when they say, because I saw this one thing, it's true for everybody, they're wrong. It's more complicated than that. And when he says, those who know thus know rightly, those who think otherwise are mistaken, I also do not grant him this. And when he obstinately adheres to what he himself has known, seen and discovered, insisting only this is true, anything else is wrong, I also do not grant him this. Why is that? Because my great exposition of action is different from this, it's otherwise.

[23:07]

Then he goes on to go through the other possibilities in exactly the same way. I grant him, you know, that he saw a person who broke the precepts and was reborn in a happy destination. He did see that. It's true. But when he extrapolates from that and says, there are no such thing, therefore, as evil actions and evil results, and that everyone who goes around breaking precepts is going to be reborn in a happy situation, I don't agree. My understanding is not like that. And then, I don't have to go through the other ones, you get the picture, right? It's the same thing, repeated through the other ones. So, we're still perplexed, right? We're still not sure, so what's the story then, you know? What about this? And this is an interesting point, because this is one of the biggest problems of

[24:18]

theistic religion, right? God is good, God is just, God says, you know, do this, don't do that. But I follow the laws and the rules of God, and I was a good person, and look what happened to me. My children were all killed, I had boils all over my body, all my cattle were destroyed, I'm wasting away, and yet there's no reason for that. So, what about it, God? I'm really losing my faith in you. This is the story of Job, right? And this is a big problem in theistic religion. So, the same thing was noticed by Buddhist practitioners. So, this is Buddhist discussion of that question. So, now the Buddha says, now here on number 17 on page 1064, there in Ananda, and here's the explanation, maybe you don't like it, but this is what it is.

[25:27]

There in Ananda, as to the person here who kills living beings, etc., [...] and on the dissolution of the body after death, reappears in a state of deprivation even in hell. Either earlier he did an evil action to be felt as painful, or later he did an evil action to be felt as painful, or at the time of death he acquired and undertook wrong view. In other words, the point is that we saw the person do evil actions. We saw evil results. But there may have been evil actions, in other words, immoral conduct before the time that we saw, or after the time that we saw. It's more complicated than what a person does right now. So, yes, what happens right now has

[26:31]

results, but we don't know. When we see a result, we can't tell whether the result is the result of something that happened that we saw, or whether it was the result of something that happened before that. Do you understand? It might have been in another life, in the past, that the person... So, we mistakenly, we see evil conduct, evil result. We think, oh, evil conduct leads to this evil result. But the evil result might have been the result of evil conduct over here, or over there, or way over there. We don't know that it's connected like that in that simple-minded way. Now, it's true that this evil conduct will bear evil results, and it could be that the evil result that we're seeing is the result of that evil karma, but we actually don't know for sure. It could be like leapfrogging, right? Like this evil result over here comes from this evil action way over there, and this evil action over here has an evil result over there somewhere. Do you understand? You can't tell. It's not so simple as, you know, AB and black and white,

[27:34]

just like that. Since he has here broken the precepts and been immoral, etc., etc., he will experience the result of that conduct, either here and now. It might be right here now, or it might be later. We just don't know when, for sure. So he will experience the result of that evil conduct, either here and now, or in the next rebirth, or in subsequent existence. But one thing is for sure. There will be the experience of that, there will be a result of that action that will be in accord with the nature of that action, even though we can't predict it or know when it will arise. And when we see an evil result, we can't know exactly what action led to that evil result. All we can know is that there has been evil actions in the past, or the reverse, good results,

[28:34]

there has been good action in the past. This we know, even though we can't make a one-to-one correspondence. So that's what he's saying. And then, of course, he goes through all the same ones before, again. You hear a person who holds wrong views, etc., etc., and ends up in a happy destination, or we would say, maybe, happy in this life. Somebody who is a really nasty person, and somehow they don't lose their children and their cattle and all this stuff. They actually do real well, and they're real happy, and everything's going fine, which doesn't seem right. How could that be? Well, it must be that either earlier he did a good action to be felt as pleasant, or later on, in other words, earlier or later he did it, or at the time of death he acquired and undertook right view. Because, as in, very similar to, I know it's very famous in Catholicism, where at the moment of death, if you can turn your heart, that has

[29:37]

powerful consequences for your future life. The same in Buddhism. If at the end of your life you can really let go and understand and absolve yourself, you know, by letting go of your crimes, this has a powerful effect. That's why they whisper in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, in people's ears and stuff like that, is hoping that they'll be inspired in the last moments to really let go of their holding on and their graspiness and nastiness and stuff. So when you see a person who did nasty things, you know that in the past, somewhere along the line, that person must have deserved it, must have done activity to have given this consequence, and then so on with the other ones. So, thus and on, there is action that is incapable of good result, but, and, incapable of good result, and appears to be incapable of good result,

[30:40]

like when it's bad, bad result. Looks like this action is going to get bad results, and it looks like it does. Then there's action that is incapable of a good result, but it appears to be capable. In other words, bad action seems to have good result, it appears that way, but it's not really so, because of this complicating factor that he mentioned. And then the other two, there is action that is capable of good result and appears capable of good result, and there is action that is capable of good result and appears incapable. So, just let me just finish up, and then we may discuss this, because there's many implications to this. It's a very simple-minded thing in a way, you know, but actually it's very profound, and we have to, by the dialogue here, see if we can bring out the implications of it. So, the point here is that, and this is something that I think we appreciate, in practice, as our mind becomes more subtle, and we see that karmic consequences are not

[31:50]

on a gross level, like, you know, I said my prayers, and so how come I don't have a Cadillac? You know, I mean, obviously that's a kind of gross level, but on a more subtle level, we see, you know, I took care of my mind and heart, and I worked with my afflictive emotions and my, you know, issues, and I didn't get a Cadillac, but I feel some more spaciousness in my life, or decrease in my suffering. We can see that. And the opposite we can see. Oh, I became angry, and I shouted at someone, and I badmouthed them to all my friends, and I see, you know, if I look, through my meditation practice and my awareness practice, I'm seeing that the truth of the matter is that because I did that, my heart is not at rest. I'm actually unhappy. I can feel the effects of that activity in myself. So we get to see, by observing our own conduct, that it's really true

[32:56]

that when we act in a positive and wholesome way, the result is a positive and wholesome mind, and when we act in an unwholesome way, the result is a dis-ease and unrest in our own hearts. So that we can see. And we know that. We have some faith that positive action leads to positive result, negative action leads to negative result. But this is also telling us that beyond that, there's dimension to our positive and negative activity that we can't see. That's beyond what appears to us in our own mind stream. And that bad and good actions definitely reap the appropriate rewards, regardless of how it appears, and that karmic results are richly complicated, and it has to do with the quality of our being,

[33:59]

and the many factors that go into activity. So we develop a kind of faith in this, so that we feel that positive action we should do, and we want to do, negative action or thought we want to avoid, and we don't really know, you see. We can't really control or depend on how the next moment is going to be, because we might receive in the next moment some karma from some other sphere. But even so, we have faith in the truth of this law of karma, so that we might, for example, something bad might happen to us. You know, we practice very hard and we work on our mind and our heart, something bad might happen. Somebody might get sick or something. This doesn't make us feel as if karma is not real.

[34:59]

It just makes us feel like, oh, well, I only see this much. In the bigger picture, there are reasons for this. If I now meet this condition with a positive mind, I have a chance to increase the good. If I get disgruntled because this condition came to me because of forces that I can't see, and then I begin to become negative behind this condition, then I'm creating bad factors in my mind for now and for the future. So that's the idea. Now we have to explore this myth. What did you want to say? I was just wondering if you've ever seen anything that describes the mechanism of how some karma will bear fruit this life, and some will bear fruit later, and some in several lives. Yes, well, you know, the Abhidharmakosha that we've been studying goes into this. And it says that there's different kinds of actions. Some actions they call determinate,

[36:10]

that certain kinds of actions will receive karmic results in this lifetime. Other kinds of actions will receive karmic results either in this lifetime or in et cetera, et cetera. They have all these different classifications and categories. Myself, personally, I feel like these things are attempts to explain the unexplainable. I don't think it's quite so cut and dry to know myself. That's my personal belief. I think the main point is, in a way, quite obvious, which is we only see so far. And reality is more complicated than what we see. And our lives are caused by a rich tapestry of causes involving the past and the present, our conduct, the conduct of others, and so on and so on. And we know for sure that within the sphere

[37:13]

of our own activity, we can choose positive results or not. But we can't predict what's going to happen because causality is more complicated than that. So I think no matter how much we study the Abhidharmakosha, we're still going to feel that we can never know exactly how things go. I mean, one of the most beautiful descriptions of the Buddha's enlightenment has to do with the Buddha, at the time of his enlightenment, looking and seeing the vast sea of causality, and all the different causes and conditions, and all the beings, and how lives go, almost like the pattern, the mandala of all the karma of all the universes he saw. And this is something like the mind of God or something, a mind that could not be a human mind, but the totality of causality the Buddha supposedly saw. But this is the Buddha in his

[38:20]

aspect as Buddha, not as human being, some sort of absolute mind that no individual actually has. So we always only see partially. Akhen Roshi in the original Dwelling Place talks about, I'm not misquoting or misleading anyone in my interpretation of this, but he talks about how in enduring the pain and suffering in any part of our life, it's sort of, we're sort of paying karmic dues, and then we free ourselves from to shift into a better karma plane, the same life. So it isn't like when we have a life, it's going to be all bad, because that's the karma we've incurred from the previous life, or all good, and be a mixture. And I've seen my own life shifting

[39:25]

from the really suffering part to the much more joyous part. And I'm not sure if I'm misreading what he's stating because of how my life is turning out, or because there's really some truth in that. Yeah, no, I think that what you said is, to me, is completely in accord with this that the Buddha's given here. Yeah. Because the realm of choice is how we will relate to the conditions that arise now. The conditions that arise now are the result of many things from the past. And it arrives now, and this is what it is. I'm miserable, or I'm sick, or whatever it is. But how will I relate to that? What will I do now? If I'm deathly ill, how will I handle it? How will I relate to it? And if I relate to it in a negative way, I'll create

[40:27]

consequences of negativity. If I relate to it in a positive way, I'll increase my ease of joy. Yeah. And mostly, this world is characterized by mixed results. That is the nature of the world that we live in. Among all the different possible worlds, this is the world in which the results are always mixed. No, really. That's the Buddhist cosmology. And that's good, you see, because there are worlds in which the results are not mixed, in which the results are entirely positive, and other worlds in which the results are entirely negative. And both those conditions are not as good as the one that we are in. The reason why is because in worlds where the results are entirely positive, people have no incentive to practice. Because everything's positive, so why worry? Why should we make effort and practice? Everybody's living the life of Riley. Everybody goofs off. And the result is that when the energy of the positive results wears off,

[41:31]

they enter another realm which is not so cushy. And they have wasted all that time, see? On the other hand, people in realms that are entirely negative are so beset by negativity that they can't even practice at all. It's too hard. And we can understand these things, actually, as psychological states, these realms, right? Sometimes we're in a realm where everything's going really great, you know what I mean? We're really happy, and things are going really well for us, and we think, oh, I need to practice. Get up early, forget it. Who needs that? Things are going really well. I'm really happy. I've got a great boyfriend or girlfriend. I've got plenty of money. I love my job and everything. No problem. What am I worried about? But then, of course, that usually doesn't last that long. Even if it lasts 50 years, how long is that? Not that long. At the end of 50 years, then you say, oh no, it's all gone. Now what am I going to do? Then you're totally miserable, and you're in despair, and you can't sleep at night, and you can't practice then, because your misery

[42:38]

is so great that you can't even find your way to the cushion. You sit down in the cushion, and demons beset your mind, and you're going crazy. It's too horrible. Your mind is so agitated, you can't even sit there. So there are extreme states of mind that maybe we know about. In either one of those extremes, you don't practice, because, like I say, in one case, it's too hard, and in the other case, it's too easy. But in our situation, where we have mixed results, we have just enough suffering to give us the incentive to practice, so that we can reduce our suffering, but not enough suffering to make it impossible to do so. So this is called the realm of the saha world, which means the world of patience, meaning there are things that we need to be patient about. There are difficulties, but not so many difficulties that we cannot be patient. So think about that. This is the advantage of our realm. There must be a certain amount of suffering, actually, in order for there to be practice. Suffering is like the fuel, like the coal they throw in the

[43:51]

boiler that fuels the engine. If you don't have a certain amount of suffering, you don't go anywhere. If we can't use mind to give rise to way-seeking mind, can we use mind to consciously choose to turn our karma around by following the precepts in the hopes of changing our karma? Yes, we have to use our intelligence to try to understand our conduct and understand how we can live. Definitely. You're talking about the relationship between action and liberation, between karma and liberation. Karma. But liberation is impossible unless the mind is calm and the tools for liberation are

[44:54]

present. So that takes good karma. That takes clearing up. It's almost like you could say liberation is like walking through a path in the woods and coming out to a place where there's no clearing. But when the woods are so overgrown that you can't even find the path, you're not going to be able to get out of it. So you have to work on clearing that path sort of meticulously. Not because the path is, in and of itself, important or necessary, but because it's the way out. So that's good and bad karma. You need to trim and cut and find that path and do the walking, and then you're in the clear. And then when you're in the clear, you don't have to walk on that path anymore. So there's no doubt that from an ultimate perspective, once you're in the clearing and you have walked the path, you could say, well, it doesn't matter whether the path is there or not. Now that I know the way, I could go through a tangled path.

[46:00]

So in other words, good and bad karma are not fundamentally different, actually. And there's nothing to condemn and nothing to congratulate oneself or others for. But practically speaking, if we don't distinguish between positive and negative karma and wholesome and unwholesome activity, and make the effort to do the wholesome, because we say, oh, it's all the same anyway, it doesn't matter anyway, then we're kidding ourselves. If we say it doesn't matter and look at it as though it doesn't matter from the standpoint of self, then we're kidding ourselves and we're only going to get in trouble. Ultimately, one looks at, just as the Buddha does, an enlightenment night and sees the range of causality, positive and negative, accepts it all, doesn't say, these are the bad people over here who do the bad karma, these are the good guys over here who do the good karma. As the Buddha, I really like these guys and I don't like those guys.

[47:02]

The Buddha doesn't see things that way. The Buddha sees the network of causality. It's all interconnected, right? The bad and the good is completely interconnected. There's no separating them, and there's no better and worse. But practically speaking, if we're going to clear up our lives and become free and become happy, we have to pay attention to that and work with it. It's very practical in a way, you know? Misery does not help, and it can be. We can work with it and reduce it. When I read this, I get a little, I stumble a little bit on some of the things about future lives. And so I've been trying to reinterpret that in a way that makes some sense to me. And one of the ways I do that is, if action has consequences, if positive action has positive consequences, and negative action has negative consequences, if it's going to have that

[48:05]

consequence at some point, it seems to me that it already has that consequence right now. And that maybe it's just that it's buried right now, or that it takes really close looking and takes a good deal of effort to eventually see it. So that if you have faith in this law of cause and effect, you know that the effect to some extent is already happening right now, that it's inescapable. I was just wondering if that sounds right to you. That's one way that I can think about some of the things in the Sutra about future lives that's also applying right now to each of us. Oh, absolutely. Not only that, but even in the most oldest traditional texts, it's clear that when future lives are referred to, it doesn't only mean, it simultaneously means,

[49:06]

you know, the sort of literal, simple-minded, somebody dies and some other being is born. But it also means, moment by moment, moment by moment, there's birth and death and rebirth and so on. So it definitely does mean that, yes. Yes, that the seeds of, when there's negative activity, the seeds are the result. This is in Yogacara thought, you know, the seeds, the seed, there's a shadow, you know, to that action, which then appears, just like you said, as a latent seed within the consciousness. And so it's there, right away. When it erupts into our conscious life, we don't know, but it's actually there the whole time. And, you know, the more subtle one could be,

[50:07]

the more one could appreciate that and understand that. And it may, basically reincarnation, it just means down the line. Not right now, down the line, later, we don't know when. But in a sense, it is right now, too. Yeah, in a sense, in that sense, yeah. And in fact, that's really important to me, that if I'm, the only way that I can have some kind of faith in cause and effect is to feel like it really is inescapable. I can't, I can't get away from it. That it's not like, it's not as easy as saying, if I don't believe in future lives, then I don't have to worry about it. And I think that the future life teaching has many aspects to it, but one aspect to it has a folk religion aspect to it. The idea that for a person who does not cultivate the mind in this detailed way, the consequences of actions would not be noticed now. And so then you bring up the idea that,

[51:14]

well, even though you may never, later on, you're going to suffer, so you've got to be good. It's a kind of a folk religion aspect to it. But in reality, again, it's clear from the text that people who cultivate the mind and practice meditation and really work on these things really see that this is so. They see for themselves that this is so. It's not a matter of some life later on. They see clearly. And I think we all see that, you know, we meditate, we work on our mind. We do see in subtle ways, just like you say. So in other words, I mean, maybe what you're driving at is like a kind of example like, yeah, even I don't even say anything mean to you, but I have a negative thought about you. And if I am looking at my mind, I can see already, from then on, the consequences of that in my own mind. I don't need to wait for another lifetime, you know, to have a word on my head or something, because I had that bad thought about you. I can just see that now that it's true.

[52:18]

But that takes a certain amount of mindfulness practice and self-awareness. But it's true, we can confirm and verify these things for sure. And you don't even have to wait until it arises in some kind of negative interaction with me. It's already taken. It's already there in my own mind. Because it's there in your mind. That's right. That's right. Yeah, Lee. So I understand the future lives, as you say, in a folk religion aspect. No, that's one aspect. The other aspect, and this is, I always say this, you must have heard me say this many times, but the other aspect is that the teaching about past and future lives brings up the mystery of this life, which you can appreciate when you witness birth and death. So if you witness birth and death, you know by experience that it's a

[53:20]

phenomenon. Nobody dispassionately witnesses birth and death. You don't walk into a birth, I mean, I suppose like physicians maybe inure themselves to feeling what's going on in a birth or a death. But a regular person with a relatively reasonable emotional state walking into a birth is shocked by the inexplicability of what's going on there. You know, like because you see a being coming out of, first of all, the idea of one being comes out of another one is like bizarre. But that happens. And then the being that comes out of the other one, who has never seen the light of day before this moment, you know, already has an enormous personality, an enormous bundle of tendencies, an entire approach to life, you know. And if you know somebody, like you see somebody born and you

[54:23]

know them for 20 or 30 years after that, you see that they're basically working on the same idea that they came for a very minute. Now how could that be? It makes no sense, you know. Now I don't have the explanation for that. And I don't say that past and future lives explains the whole thing. But it does, I do feel, having seen such things, that this doesn't quite, this little picture that we have of we're born, we do this, we go to school, and we go here, we go there, we have lunch, you know, and so forth. This is not the whole story. And the same thing when you see somebody die. Somebody's there, they're a person, they're suffering and so on. And then they're gone, you know. When did they go? Now? Was it then? Was it later on? Where did they go? How come, where are they? And how could it be that somebody was there and then they're gone, and their body is there? What is going on here, you know? You can't really tell. You don't really, and if you open yourself to that experience, you say, wow, you know, I don't really know what's

[55:26]

going on here. Actually, I don't understand this. This is really something that actually does not fit into my intellectual categories, my whole way of understanding life, and so on and so forth. All these things that I think and do and so forth, it does not fit into that. Something else is going on. Now, the way that our Buddhist ancestors express that is they talk about past and future lives. And there are many reasons and why, and they use that kind of expression. And it's very complicated. There's much we can say about it. But that's another dimension to it, besides the folk religion dimension. Anyway. And, you know, other traditions besides Buddhism has felt this stuff about past and future lives. And, of course, I'm not up on this myself, but many people tell me that you can read all these books about, you know, like Ripley's Believe It or Not kind of stuff, you know, amazing, I mean, you know, stuff that really is documented about this and that, you know.

[56:31]

So, who knows? I mean, I don't believe anybody knows. This is just mythic terms to try to get you to be good or bad. Well, as far as I'm concerned, you can do is take care of your mind. Yeah. Yeah. You can't see that. Truthfully, anybody that could see this, they always call it text or something. People that I've actually believed in. Yeah. Well, it would appear that it's your karma not to believe in past and future lives. And as long as you have some serious faith in, you know, causality itself, then it doesn't matter if you believe it. If you were to say, actually, I don't believe in past and future lives, plus, as far as I can tell, it doesn't make any difference what I do or don't do for my life. If you thought that, then you would have a hard time practicing.

[57:31]

You know, then it would just be like, this is a great place for a free lunch. And so that's why I'm here. You would have a hard time on that basis. But it's true. You don't need to, as you yourself know, you don't need to believe in future lives and past lives in order to believe, by your own experience, that there's a way of working with your mind that's effective, and there's a way of being totally oblivious to what's going on, and that that causes suffering to be oblivious, and that working with your mind and heart can bring greater awareness and happiness and truthfulness into your life, and that's positive. So that's all you need. You really, you do need that kind of faith. I mean, it takes, based on experience, you know, your own experience. But yeah, I mean, then I always tell the story of Guishan, right? You've heard about that. Yeah, I tell it many times. This is the Zen approach to, I'll tell it again for those who

[58:33]

haven't yet heard me tell this. This is the true story of Guishan, one of our Zen ancestors, who announced to his assembled disciples that on his death, which was coming soon, he would be reborn as an ox, which in itself is remarkable because it's a step down to be reborn as an animal, according to them. So Guishan, to be reborn as an animal, this already was like astonishing. But beyond that, he said, and how you'll know that it's me is because the animal will have carved into its side the characters, Chinese characters, Guishan. And when you see the ox, after I'm dead and you see an ox that has the characters Guishan on it, that's how you'll know that it's me. He said, no, if you say it's an ox, you're wrong. But if you say it's Guishan,

[59:45]

you're also wrong. What is it? So that's the Zen view of reincarnation. In Zen thought, the literalness of reincarnation is not at all relevant. But the mystery of life, as I'm mentioning, the aroma of that pervades the Zen literature and the Zen understanding of our life. But to get stuck on, is it rebirth, or is it not rebirth, or what is it, and so on and so forth, is not important. What's important is, what is it? Well, we don't know what it is. We don't know exactly. And we always have to ask. That's the important thing, that we know that we don't know and that we always try to ask. That's how we understand in Zen about reincarnation. So in Zen, we don't say, there's no such thing as reincarnation. It's not true. And we don't say it's really true.

[60:48]

We don't know. Akin Roshi always says, we don't know what it is. Sometimes, he had a retirement ceremony. We always go back and forth on this point. He had a retirement ceremony, and in the retirement ceremony, there was a mando. And I forget how it went exactly, but some people were challenged to go up and ask a question of him. And he said something like, I forget how it went, but I said something like, anyway, somewhere along the line, I'll see you later. I'll see you later. Like in other words, when we're dead, we'll see each other. And he's an agnostic on this point of reincarnation, and I'm more positive on it. And so I said, I'll see you later. And he said, are you sure? And I said, yes. He said, don't be so sure.

[61:55]

So I hit him on the head and left. Anyway, according to the logic of ordinary life, since he's a lot older than me, you would think that he would be closer to knowing about this than I. But who knows? I could certainly... He also has Hodgkin's disease, and he's 81 years old, but it doesn't mean that I can't enter rebirth before him. So we'll see. See who the joke's on him or me. Yes. So is it a good thing then that suffering never ends, if it leads to a greater understanding, a greater awareness? It would seem that it always helps to lead to that. So is it beneficial then that it may not ever end? Well, when suffering ends,

[62:59]

that's liberation, right? It's the end of suffering. But it seems to end and then return. Well, this is an important point. And we have to distinguish. Maybe we talked about this in one other class, I think, about the difference between suffering, the technical idea of suffering, dukkha, you know, in Buddhism, the difference between that and pain or unpleasant sensations. As long as you're alive and you're embodied, there will be pain, some pain, sometime, in unpleasant sensations. But you can accept pain and unpleasant sensations with equanimity. And if you can accept pain and unpleasant sensations with equanimity, without attachment and aversion and all that, then it's not dukkha, it's not suffering. And there is a big difference. I mean, to us, it's unimaginable. For us, if there's pain,

[64:08]

there's always dukkha and there's always aversion and there's always anguish, because we hate pain. We're trying to get away from pain. We want to get rid of pain. But if you don't hate pain and you don't want to get rid of pain and you are willing, willing to accept physical pain or negative sensations in the mind with equanimity and truly cherish these things, then there isn't dukkha. And that is what the goal of the path is, in a sense, is to be free of the clinging and the messes that we make in relation to the pain that arises in our lives. So, you see, in a sense of dukkha as resistance and making messes, that can really end. I mean, now, I admit that it's rare. Seldom do any of us achieve that achievement of complete liberation, so that whatever befalls us, we won't

[65:16]

fall back into those patterns of aversion and so on. However, on the other hand, it really is true that many of us go a long way on that road and to a tremendous extent do alleviate the dukkha in our lives. And I think all of us, to some extent, do that. Otherwise, we would be wasting our time doing all this stuff. If we reflect on our lives, we say, yeah, well, the truth is that I was worse off. I really did make a mess of things before, and although I'm far from perfect now, and I often repeat the same patterns and so on and so on, much less in a way. I'm less stupid than I used to be about that stuff. So, in that sense, we all have a measure of enlightenment. And although we may not be, like I say, perfect in that regard, we are certainly getting it. So, it's not at all the case that we cannot

[66:17]

clear up a lot of our suffering. We can, and we can even get to a place where it will never arise, like a Buddha or an Arhat is one from the suffering never will arise, that kind of suffering. And really, this is one of the advantages, like in zazen, of pain. If you have painful legs and so on, painful back, in zazen, you can experience this very clearly and concretely, of seeing that when there's a pain that arises in the body, and you don't resist it, and you accept it, in some funny way, it doesn't hurt. I mean, it's an odd thing. How could pain not hurt? Well, you realize that the hurt is mental. Pain is physical, and the hurt is mental. The hurt is complaining and grumbling, and sometimes you literally, because of your grumbling, try to crawl out of your own body to escape the

[67:18]

pain, which causes more pain, you know what I mean? And you get to see, oh, well, pain is there, but so what? It's not that bad. I don't even mind. In fact, I can hardly feel it, even though I know it's there. And that's true of all things that arise in our lives that are difficult or unpleasant. When we really don't grumble, avert, and so forth, it can be all right. Pain is mixed in with many things. It can even be pleasant. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. I just want to ask a couple of quick questions. One is, is the wheel of becoming the same thing as karma? The chain is kind of correct? Yeah. And then the second question is, is letting go karmic, not attachment karmic? No, if I understand you correctly. So that's what you mean when you say there's not something you can do. Yes, right. All that you can do is karmic. Yeah, letting go is liberation. So any time that

[68:26]

one lets go, truly lets go, that's a moment of liberation. And a Buddha is someone who's let's go, let's go, let's go. Every moment is a letting go, so there's no suffering. And all the activity is non-karmic activity, traceless activity. But isn't that in zazen as well? Just letting go. That's why we say, if you sit one minute in zazen, that's one minute of being Buddha. Because, yeah, ideally, zazen is just letting go, making that effort to allow experience to be there without holding on, letting go of it. So that even though there's experience, positive, negative, and so on, the letting go of it, moment after moment, makes it free, experience free, and liberating, liberated experience. But I feel like this guy intentionally couldn't do that. I mean, I go into this window, right, get in the posture, and then thoughts come, I let go,

[69:30]

and it seems like it's something that I do intentionally. Well, it's a trick point, right? Because, yes, you make effort. You make effort and you stop. You make an effort to let go of all the things that you do that inhibit letting go. It's sort of like falling off a cliff, right? You get yourself to the edge of the cliff, and you take one more step, and then somebody else falls. Something like that. Well, I think I'm going to go for it, in the sense of the effort. If you're doing it, then that's just more doing. Yeah, trying to control, manipulate.

[70:30]

That's why this point that's made in the Sutra, that we can't really predict karmic results, even though we know that they're going to come about, is so important, because it has to do with control. One has to go forward, making this kind of effort, with an open attitude. Because if you say, I'm making this effort because I'm expecting that this and this is going to happen, then there's a lot of control in that sort of situation. You have to make the effort knowing that fundamentally, although you feel confidence in the goodness of what you're doing and the positive aspect of it, in any given moment, you can't really predict what's going to happen. And you have to be willing to walk forward, not knowing where you're going in that sense. Because if you're not willing to practice in that way, and you're kind of grabbing the results of the practice, then that's going to be a lot of attachment

[71:33]

involved in the practice, and that's going to impede the arising of the letting go. So you have to face each moment with a mind of, I don't know what will happen. I have faith in my activity of practice, but I really don't know what will happen now. And so I'm not attached to what happens. I'm open to what happens. And that way you can let go moment after moment. Can you say something about merit in the context of all this? What is merit? Merit is the storehouse of positive results that we're building up because of our good actions. Usually when we think of good actions, we think of moral conduct. Moral conduct creates merit, but also things like veneration of Buddhas.

[72:36]

This is a merit, usually it's a term that's associated with liturgy and religious acts that on one level seem like, what does this have to do with anything? Putting a stick of incense in a bowl, how is that doing good? Chanting a sutra, how is that doing good? Making a vow, how is that doing good? But the idea is that, remember we were saying that life is mysterious, there's some big realms outside of our experience. In those realms, those activities are positive actions, just like a kind word and a helping hand is a positive action. So is offering a stick of incense and chanting a sutra and vowing. And those things build up storehouses of merit, positive tendencies in the mind that help us along the way. That's the idea. So then, it's a little bit mysterious, to me at least,

[73:40]

how we can give away our merit to somebody else. And I think that the idea of giving away merit is a later development in these early teachings. There isn't any such idea. But in later Buddhism, the Mahayana Buddhism, which had such a tremendous warm heart for creatures and beings and really wanted to see all of Buddhist practice as an altruistic offering to others, I think the Mahayanas could not contain themselves. They just had to feel that there was a way of my good activity benefiting you. There must be a way for me to give some of my good karma to you, even though it's clear from early teachings about karma that this is impossible. Nevertheless, they were convinced that there must be a way of doing that. And they figured out all kinds of trick ways, basically having to do with the fact that since, when you really get down to it,

[74:43]

there is no fundamental difference between you and me anyway. I mean, like there's no container over here where I'm keeping my merit and no container over there where you're keeping your merit. So maybe the merit can mix up a little bit. Maybe we can somehow get it mixed up so that some of my merit can go over to you somehow. So that, in other words, because of the emptiness of phenomena, somehow, I don't know, I want to study this and figure it out, because I can hardly wait to see how they work this out. But basically you can see the impulse of it, wanting to benefit others. So there's this idea of we can chant a sutra, as we do every single day, right? Chant a sutra and give it away, the merit of it, so that even though we're chanting all these sutras, it's not doing us any good at all, except we're giving all the merit away. Of course, giving merit away is very meritorious. So you get merit by giving merit away.

[75:46]

You know, the economics of merit is... If only the economics of the world worked in exactly the same way as the economics of merit, we would all be wealthy and there would be no problem. Well, this is what we're talking about. There's no one, fundamentally, to receive the karmic results. Of course, you and I don't experience it that way, right? So given who we are, we have to worry about it. Right? Because the reality is that when bad things happen to you, you don't like it. And I don't like it either. And I also don't like it when bad things happen to me. So if I didn't mind, if I really didn't mind at all,

[76:47]

then I wouldn't mind and it would be fine. But actually, I do mind. And even if I say I don't mind and I believe I don't mind, when it comes down to it, I mind. And because of that, I have to practice, right? When I really don't mind, then I want to practice. So... Would you say it's better practicing as well, not minding at the time? Say that again, I'm not sure I got that. When something bad happens, is it beneficial to practice not minding that it happens to you at the time as well? Or is it better to be honest and say, I'm really angry this car ran over my foot? Well, if you are really angry that the car ran over your foot, what choice is there? Well, you don't want to, if the driver of the car is there,

[77:52]

and you put that out on the driver, you know, give that to the driver, it's something that isn't necessarily going to be beneficial. Yeah, yeah, right. So you try to, you know, like minimize the damages, right? By not beating up the driver. But if the driver weren't there, is it beneficial to allow that to arise in a way? The best thing, of course, is not to mind, right? But we have to just be with what actually arises. What I'm trying to say is, if something happens and we feel a certain way about it, we can't say, let's not feel that way about it. Because we feel the way we feel, right? Then, as you point out, the next thing is, what do we do about that? Do we pick that up and shake it all around and run with it? If it's a negative emotion, afflictive emotion, or do we upturn and say, this is an afflictive emotion arising, this is how I feel.

[78:53]

I feel this, you know, and I'm just going to breathe with that, be with that and not make more of it than I need to. That's the way we practice with it. And yes, if we could have equanimity and when something like that happens, not just receive it as another moment of our lives, that's wonderful, right? That would be wonderful. But mostly it doesn't happen that way, actually. Mostly we're human and we don't like it when bad things happen. Well, how foolish I am. I thought we were going to read the entirely, read the next sutra. But we're not going to do that, I guess. So next time, there's actually two sutras in here. This is an interesting sutra on the removal of distracting thoughts,

[79:54]

how you can work with your mind in the case of having afflictive emotions and thoughts that distract you from your practice. This is not exactly the instructions that we use in our practice for how to work with obstructing thoughts. But I thought it would be interesting to study this and to kind of compare our own methods. And then the next short sutra is called, translation here is One Fortunate Attachment. It's a hard word to translate. I've read, Thich Nhat Hanh translates it as, just to show you how the range of translations of something like this. Instead of one fortunate attachment, he translates it as, the better way to live alone.

[80:56]

And they both, both translators have good reasons why they were translated in that way. So we'll read that short sutra. Maybe we can do both of them. Not next week though. The week after that, because next week is the time that I'm going to be gone. But don't come next week. Come two weeks from now and we'll read those two sutras. I think we have two more classes. That one two weeks from today and then one more after that.

[81:27]

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