I'm in the last row there, but if people want to come in front here, it's fine with me. If you feel that you're obscure... Because sometimes my voice doesn't reach all the way over there, so anytime you want to move, it's okay. Given that today's a public lecture, I'm going to deviate a little from what I've been talking about. yesterday. It seems like I was talking all day. But I'm going to... yesterday in my talk I mentioned about the wheel of life, the Tibetan wheel of life, and the six worlds, and I want to talk about that some more, elaborate on that a little bit.

[01:05]

I want to talk about it in the sense of Buddhist ethics or Buddhist values. It's important, I think, for us to bring Buddhist values, be aware of Buddhist values, and bring that into the world. Actually, Buddhist values and Christian values overlap. And when you come down to it, they're not so different. And I think that Buddhist values can help reinforce Christian values. Sometimes our values become misunderstood or distorted or used for the wrong purposes. I think it's important to establish what our values are and

[02:25]

stay with that and teach people. So when we look at six worlds in the Tibetan wheel, the hub of this wheel has three roots. called Greed, Ill Will and Delusion, which are characterized by the pig for greed, the snake for ill will, and the rooster for delusion. And this is the hub that the whole wheel turns on. And on the outside, the tire, The 12-fold chain of causation conditioned, I don't want to go through the whole thing, but conditioned on desire is grasping, and conditioned on grasping is clinging, and conditioned on clinging is attachment, and so forth.

[03:53]

And the whole wheel keeps turning. due to these karma-producing acts. Karma is a word that means, strictly speaking, volitional action. When we have an action which comes out of our desire and volition, it creates a cause for the next act. So every cause produces a new act, which is a cause for the next act, which is a cause for the next act. And in this way, the karmic action has a result.

[04:55]

Every action, every karmic action has a result. So, this is called the fruit. Karma is the action, and phala is the fruit, or the result of this action. And every time we do something willfully, there are cooperating causes as well, because No, nothing is produced by itself. It's produced through accompanying causes as well. So, it's very complex how dharmas arise. So, Buddha's teaching is that through our In volitional actions, we create karma, which is both wholesome and karma, which is unwholesome.

[06:04]

And when we do unwholesome acts, then it produces unwholesome results. And when we do wholesome acts, it produces wholesome results. And then there's neutral karma, isn't either good or bad, and then there are other subtle differences as well, but basically speaking, you know, we talk about good karma, we're talking about bad karma, but the karma itself means the act of doing something, and then what we usually think of as karma is the result, but the result is called follow-up, which is the result of karmic activity or karmic actions. So this is the wheel of life. Once the karma becomes established, karma is bound up with our habit patterns.

[07:15]

Through karmic activity we create habit patterns. then the habit patterns keep perpetuating themselves. And it's really hard to get out of the habit patterns. When we establish wholesome or good habit patterns, then our life takes that direction. When we establish unwholesome habit patterns, our life takes that direction. But the results of our karma belong to us alone, even though our activity may have an effect on millions of people. Sometimes we talk about collective karma, which is not... that's a kind of deviation, but it does have some validity, like when a nation

[08:19]

does something, that if a nation goes to war, then there's a karma which is kind of collective and comes back to the populace in some way. So everything has a result according to its action. You don't always know what the result will be, but there's a logic to it. So when we talk about retribution in Buddhism, we're not talking about a god that deals out punishment. Simply, the results of our actions is what comes back to us as retribution. Sometimes the result is called retributive karma.

[09:22]

We don't have to depend on some outside force to mete out some punishment or reward. Our actions themselves produce both punishment and reward. So that's why we have to be very careful of what we do. When we do things hastily or without thinking or through ego or self-centered desire, there's always a result according to the pattern. We don't always know what that logic is. Sometimes the result comes much later and we don't even remember the reason or the act that produced that result.

[10:36]

Gosh, how come this happened to me? But there are results which are not karmic. It doesn't mean that everything that happens to me happens to be because of my karma. through your volitional action. Karma is only the result of your volitional action. So if you walk down the street and a loose brick from a building falls on your head, that's not duty or karma. That's an accident. Because you were there at the time, you may say, well, it's my karma because I was there, but you didn't cause the brick to fall. There was nothing you did that caused the brick to fall. So, not all activity or things that happen to you is because of your karma.

[11:37]

But our human actions, our volitional actions, create karma. That's why we say, when there's no self, self comes through. Grasping arises in Buddhist terms. Self arises through grasping, clinging, and attachment, and through desire. And when desire is not directed toward activity that causes clinging and attachment, then there's no self. our actions don't create karma. There is karma created, but it's not strong, it's not retributive karma, because there's no self that's creating something that returns to it.

[12:44]

There's no self to receive the karma. This is what Buddha means by getting off the wheel of karma. Human beings are caught by the wheel of karma. And it's very hard for them to get off. And one easy way to see that is through addiction. and through obsessions. So hard to get off of addiction, so hard to get off of obsession. And so we say, well those people are addicted, they have obsessions, but then we fail to look at our own, which doesn't look like addiction, it doesn't look like obsession, but we have them.

[13:44]

And they can be very subtle. So, the wheel of life is like the wheel of creating karma, and it just keeps perpetuating itself. And then inside the wheel, in between the hub and the tire, are the six worlds, the spokes, the world of the heavenly world, the world of the gods, so to speak. And then there's the fighting demon world, the world of warlike aggression. And then there's the world of animals, the animal world. Then there's the hell realm on the bottom.

[14:48]

Heaven realms on top, the Hell realms on the bottom. Of course, it's a wheel, you know. A wheel doesn't have a top and a bottom, but for this purpose it does. And then there's the realm of the hungry ghosts. And then there's the realm of human beings. Of course, it's all realms. All these realms are the realms of human beings, but the human being is a special realm. So in the heavenly realm, we can say the realm of the gods, but it's also the realm of people who are so comfortable in their kind of heavenly realms, their wealth and their comfort and protection and so forth, and they feel so secure in that that they don't have any desire to go any further.

[16:02]

They don't have any desire to find, there's no impetus for them to look for the way, look for the Dharma. I just want to say that in each one of these worlds, as I said yesterday, there's a Bodhisattva. In each one of these worlds, people are caught in these positions. And in each world, there's a Bodhisattva. And the Bodhisattva teaches people in each of these worlds a way to find, get out of suffering. The people in the heavenly realm don't know their suffering.

[17:04]

They just don't know it. You can't see it because everything is so secure, comfortable. So the Bodhisattva in the heavenly realm teaches meditation to people. It seems like people in that realm are have an affinity with meditation and can be influenced or taught, released through meditation. And the next world is the world of the fighting demon, the Asuras, who are very warlike and aggressive and

[18:12]

take delight in mayhem and blowing the trumpet and raising the sword and galloping on to glory. So the Bodhisattva in this realm teaches the precepts, teaches ethics like not killing, not taking our life willfully. And, you know, like the question comes up about is war murder? Of course, war is murder, but we have rules

[19:15]

of war that take it out of the realm of murder. One person murders somebody, and then it's a big story. Thousands of people get murdered in a war, and there's nobody to point to. And it all gets taken care of under the heading of, well, it's just war, and that's what happens in war. that thousands and thousands of people get killed. Well, it's a big question. There are times when maybe it's justified, but whether it's justified or not, in the realm of karma, this result.

[20:16]

Some people, you know, right now war is a kind of like a computer, a video game, removed. Now we're seeing that it's not, but for the public it is. And for the pilots, I was listening to a interview with pilots from an aircraft carrier when they dropped the big bombs. And the interviewer said, what do you think about when you're dropping those bombs? He said, how did you feel about this big, you know, blast? Oh, it was awesome. It was awesome. What did you feel? Well, I'll never forget it. Well, but what did you feel? And then he had to think a minute. And what the interviewer was kind of getting at is, well, what do you feel about that?

[21:31]

About what's underneath you? And he couldn't say. And then there was another interview of another pilot. What did you feel about that? Oh, it was awesome. But what did you feel? I don't know. Programmed to not feel anything. And the karma, still, from those ads, will come back to haunt those people. The result. All of this will come back to haunt us. Min is not lying, not stealing. Lying, we'll come back to haunt.

[22:36]

Stealing, taking what's not offered. not harboring ill will, not abusing the Three Treasures, or I would say not abandoning the Three Treasures, or not perverting the Three Treasures. Whatever religious affiliation we have, maybe it's not Buddhist, but we shouldn't use or pervert on the ethics of our religion to suit our means, to suit our purposes. That's the worst thing you can do. And that karma will certainly come back to haunt.

[23:41]

And not dwelling on the faults of others, but looking at our own, looking at the moat in our own eyes. So, these are not just Buddhist values, these are Buddhist precepts, these are universal values, which the whole world has to come up to. This kind of leans over toward the human world, you know. I'm not there yet, but in the human world, the human world and the animal world kind of, you know, work together. The human world has potential for human beings to be human. It's like, I kind of see it,

[24:44]

People are like models of human beings, but they're not necessarily yet human, fully human. There has to be some kind of switch turned on before human beings can operate as full human beings. some kind of conversion or, you know, some light that turns on that makes us into a mature human being. So, there's a lot of immaturity in the world, in the human world. And to educate people to become fully human, and maturely human is the Bodhisattva's task in the human world.

[25:52]

So then when we get down to the animal world, there are animals who are more human than some humans. When we say animal world, I don't think the animal world is bad. I'm sure we all know animals are who they are. But this idea of animal means not yet at the human level, not at the mature human level. So the Bodhisattva in the animal world teaches people prajnaparamita. teaches intuitive wisdom or makes people aware of intuitive wisdom. Intuition means directly touching beyond thinking.

[27:00]

It bypasses the thinking mind to not distort through thinking. can directly touch. So Prajnaparamita is called the perfection of wisdom. Perfection of wisdom is intuition, not just knowledge. And it's allowing the universal wisdom to work itself through you. That's called the transmission of light, actually. So, then, in the hell realm, the hell realm is the realm of great suffering, of course.

[28:05]

And we all know that one. We go there from time to time. Sometimes we're stuck there. And the Bodhisattva in that realm teaches patience. So, you know, the hell realm is very close to us at this point. People say, what can we do? There's no one to represent us. Things are out of hand. then the hell realm is really arising. We have to have great patience. And this is what the Bodhisattva teaches, patience. Patience means not waiting for something. That is one sort of patience. But true patience, in a dharma sense, means

[29:09]

being able to be exactly where you are without anticipation, without anticipating and without regressing. You just be there completely. The basis of the character for patience is the person with the sword, the person kneeling down with the sword resting against the head. So, a good metaphor for us at the moment. And then in the hungry ghost realm, the prey does.

[30:19]

Prey does are, you know, beings with big bellies and voracious appetites and very narrow necks. And they keep eating and eating, but they can't get it down, you know, so they're always hungry, always eating more and more. And of course, we're all to some extent, pray to us. But pray to us, it's the realm of addiction. Addiction, you know, we think of addictions as maybe to drink or to smoke or various obvious habits. There's addiction to war, there's addiction to guns, there's addiction to wealth, there's addiction to everything.

[31:29]

And those habits are really hard to break. There's addiction to power. Addiction to power is the hardest one. to come off of, because it takes utter humility to get off of that addiction to power. And it's very rare that someone can do that. Even in the Buddhist world, people are often vying for power and working to get into power positions. And when that happens, that's the hardest thing, the hardest barrier to get over. So we can see it in our world today, the Kratos are just voraciously eating everything in sight and never being satisfied.

[32:35]

hungry goat. And no matter how much they have, no matter how much wealth or power, it's not enough. The wealthiest people are actually the people who are content with very little. That's the true wealth. I know people who are very wealthy, but they have almost nothing. And I know people who are wealthy but are totally in poverty because they need more. So poverty is neediness and wealth is contentment. It has nothing to do with money or status. Men is the human world.

[33:39]

And human world, as I said, we all have the potential to be mature humans. And everyone is in a different place on that level. I wanted to say though, as the Preta is, Bodhisattva in that room teaches generosity. In the human world, the Bodhisattva teaches the path, the Tao, the way-seeking mind. You know, way-seeking mind is the desire for enlightenment, or the desire for understanding, the desire to get out of the karma, the suffering caused by our karma.

[34:58]

And sometimes people say, well, isn't that desire a desire? Yes, there's nothing wrong with desire. If we didn't have desire, we'd just be kind of floppy. When desire is turned toward way-seeking mind, it's no longer called desire. called lucid mind. It's the mind that seeks something beyond self-centeredness. So what we call desire, in Buddhist terms, is that desire for self-centered satisfaction, which creates karma.

[36:07]

the basis for karmic action. So that's why Buddha says in the second Noble Truth, the cause of suffering is inordinate desire. There's desire which is necessary, and then there's desire which is for more than what's necessary. So the more we get and the more we perpetuate this inordinate desire, the less value we see in the simplicity of our life. The simple satisfactions in our life get obscured, and they don't seem sufficient anymore. And then we want more, and a bigger experience, a greater experience.

[37:12]

It's not enough to, you know, we want to jump off a mountain, bridge it, get a bigger and bigger experience. So, I mean, I won't knock those experiences, but No, not true. Horse races are interesting, but so are cricket races. So to speak. So, we have various... you tell us of various things, you know, when we want to do something. Like if we want to start a war, you know, we say, well, we have these reasons. But there's a difference between a reason and an excuse. A reason is something that's reasoned out and has a basis.

[38:18]

An excuse is a kind of reason that's a substitute for a reason. So we have lots of excuses, but no real reasons. And it's very frustrating. We say killing is liberation. We say war is peace. And that's right out of the Orwell book. Things are happening right out of, Orwell is a handbook. What I heard, the last thing I heard was, those people that are defending themselves are doing atrocities.

[39:24]

I think they're terrorists. Yeah, they're terrorists. A terrorist attack on the Marines and the... Well, that's going to be, although, you know, well, it's already creating hidden karma. So, when greed and avarice and power become too strong, then ethics and morality are ignored. They just become irrelevant. And people say, well, what can we do? People feel very helpless. But I think by bringing these teachings into the world and not abandoning them, we can help to make people aware.

[40:30]

Especially the law of karma. You know, this is what people mostly ignore. They don't understand the law of karma, how it works, how what you do comes back to you in one form or another as either benefit or create suffering. Sir, do you have a question? Let's see, there's the six worlds and there's also the six paramitas and... Paramita, yeah. There are also ten paramitas, but six, yeah. Okay, so is there a sort of... Correlation.

[41:33]

Or, yeah, a correspondence between, say, like a particular realm, like say, like the predo realm and dana paramita? I don't think there's a correspondence, but they all, I mean, you can apply them to each other, but I don't think there's a direct correspondence. Okay. A literal correspondence. Okay. Well, it seemed that a lot of the paramitas showed up in what you said. Absolutely. The bodhisattvas teach. That's right. precepts, energy, or the path, and prajnaparamita, and generosity, and patience. There are lists, you know, and the Buddhist lists, you know, all overlap.

[42:37]

In every large list you find the same Dharma, you find the same qualities. I've always been confused about karma, and I understand it as cause and effect. It makes a lot of sense to me. But as only volitional action, I get confused about that because, well partly because traditionally with the idea of reincarnation people would say, I remember this, I think it's in Transmission of Light where they say, Well, you know, just because you have a horrible illness and are tortured and all of this thing, that's very light karmic thing, retribution for what you did in your past lives, so you should be happy about this.

[43:43]

Something like that. So the thing is, I mean, there's this idea of karmic retribution for the past lives, which explains stuff like the brick falling on your head. There's one theory in Buddhism which was put forth, which is this current retribution through the three lives. Three lives. Well, three. Maybe three stands for innumerable. Often that happens in Buddhism, but three lives. But that's just one theory, right? And then there's karmic retribution in this life. In other words, every moment is a life. This moment is this life. The next moment is this moment's life. So when you say past life, past life, it can refer to five years ago.

[44:52]

I've done many things in my past life. But, I guess, like, if something, you know, the stuff that isn't the result of volitional action in this Latin American way of speaking, like, I guess I'm looking for an understanding of what that would be, and, you know, what... Well, it's a law of cause and effect. Which is different than karma. Yeah, which is not necessarily the same as karma. Karma is cause and effect, but it's cause and effect through volitional action. And also through thinking. Thinking is also karmic. We have certain thoughts, and by repeating them, it creates a kind of karmic consequences that are not hit. I understood karma to be more the intent behind the action rather than the action itself.

[46:11]

It is the action as well as the intent. A person might intend to do one thing and yet his action pans out to be another. The effect of the idea may be minimal, but the effect of the action can be maximal. Even though it wasn't intended. Well, it wasn't intended. Someone intended to do something. That's just slippery. Because the action itself was intended. Or you mean he thought, you're thinking like, I want to kill somebody, But then, instead, you did some other act, don't you think? Well, I wasn't thinking of a particular example. Maybe, I don't know, you wanted to stretch and hitch, and you ended up killing something. I don't know. Your intention did not pan out.

[47:17]

Your intention and your action were not in line. I can't think of an example right off the shirt. It seems to me that the karma is the intention. For some reason you had a hiccup or a spasmodic attack or something and you did something else than what you intended. Wouldn't that be more of a neutral karma? Well, it could be. I don't know. I'm not the master of karmic complications. This is the most difficult thing to understand in the realm of dharma. But, you know, we're always killing something. Everything is feeding off of everything else.

[48:20]

Everything is killing everything else. So, you know, when I do this, when I scratch my head, I am killing beings. killing something and destroying something. And then something else grows. So that's life. Something is destroyed and something else grows. So it has two sides. But the volitional action is when you do something on purpose. I am in my name. Yes, absolutely. And I'm part of that happening. If there's a teaching that... Well, but you're not. Because you're objecting to that.

[49:26]

You're not driving it. You might be. Well, as you were speaking, I was thinking about we have been so cushioned and privileged way beyond, even though in balance with the rest of the world. Yeah. Well, there is some karma in that, yes. Because, you know, volitionally, you've been driving your SUV, or whatever it is. So we all contribute, we've all been contributing to this. So by making a stand against it, you cannot If you make a stand against it, and do something, that means you're turning your karma.

[50:35]

You're turning away from that karma. And so, you're stopping the creation by willfully stopping the creation of those actions in retrospect. doing it, you're stopping or slowing down the karma. But the past karma, the past result, is still there, and you'll feel that. So, you know, we get it in the back, even though we're stopping it in the front. We still have to feel that we have to take that, you know, take our, pay our dues. Yeah, we have to do that. And I thought about it, and I didn't really know.

[51:59]

And I know that there's an idea of being against the war, and then there's the idea of what to do about it. And I tend to be very active in opposing it, but I tend to completely lose my mind from the minute I start. That's the hard part. Yeah. And I end up just feeling so much tremendous anger, even when you were just speaking about you know, this idea of killing people to liberate them, just like hearing that, and turning on the mute, it's just like tremendous, tremendous anger, and not really knowing what to do with it, and then expressing it, and like you're saying, creating a karmic seed for something else. Well, I think that, you know, anger itself is important. I think, you know, anger arises for a reason, and then when anger arises, You have to say, well, what will I do with it? So that's like stepping back.

[53:02]

You make a choice. Either anger turns you, or you turn the anger. So when you simply remain in the anger, then you're just being pulled around by it. So anger is a very strong force. And so how do you transform the anger so that it becomes a driving force or a constructive force for what you want to accomplish? That's the trick. But we can say, well, I won't have any anger because I'm a Buddhist. I have a calm mind. It's true, you should have those things. You should have equanimity and a calm mind. And how do I use this anger? How do I use the power of this anger for constructive work?

[54:08]

And how do I channel that anger into something that will be effective? So you may not know the answer, but I think you have to keep thinking about the solution. Those energies are really strong and anger can be very useful and help to drive in the right direction. I remember when there were times when I was first beginning to sit, one time I was very And so I went and I sat Zazen. And I put all that anger into the energy of sitting up. You know, this is wonderful, you know. The period of Zazen is just so attentive and strong and full of energy.

[55:16]

And then after Zazen, I felt, you know, equanimity, calmness, that I was totally energized. When you say something about the human realm, being fully human and being content, somehow That brings up an image for me of comfort, which takes me right back to... That's different than being content with whatever. Being able to appreciate every moment, no matter what it is. Could you say a little bit more about the activity of patience?

[56:28]

Because I think I had the wrong idea about patience. What's your idea? Well, I can't remember exactly what you said, but I think that when I... I think when I... Usually I think that I sort of remind myself, you know, I should be patient now. It's more like, you know, I need to be patient. But I think it's more of a kind of a feeling of grit in my teeth. and wait for this to end because there's something that feels really wrong about it. And it's very hard because I just want to do something about it. And I feel like I'd be more effective if I could back off and just stay with the discomfort. But I also... It seems like it's easy to confuse patience with permissiveness. So if you just don't do anything about a situation, it seems like you're giving permission to something to happen that maybe you don't think should happen.

[57:33]

You should take care of what... you should respond and take care of that which you can do. And that which you can't do something about at the moment, you just settle with where you are. Just to be able to settle, it's exactly as I've been. When you can't get up, and you can't change your position, and you can't stay there. So patience is a big koan. You just settle. Just open up and settle. Let go. and breathe one thousand times without anxiety.

[58:33]

But, you know, there's no one thing that anybody can say that covers every situation. So... I wonder if you could say something about Love goes beyond love and hate. We have to have, no matter what's going on, compassion in Aishito. is a kind of combative dueling with your partner.

[59:37]

And you're always taking care of your partner, even though you're tossing them all over the place. But you use your partner's energy to do that. You don't do anything. respond to the aggressive behavior and then you use that aggressive behavior to turn the partner. And you're taking care of the partner so you don't hurt them. But they wake up in some way or other. So this is how you teach someone with compassion. So No matter how we feel about a person, like or dislike or hate or love or whatever, behind it is just a general sense of compassionate behavior. Because you don't want to lose your own humanity when you're dealing with anyone.

[60:43]

That's the bottom line. And that humanity, or that maturity, is your compassion. So you always treat everybody with compassion, even though you may argue or fight or whatever. Well, the hardest thing for me with that is Bush. I mean, I am so serious. And it's so hard for me to connect with my compassion for him and for the members of the administration. I understand that. You're all trying very hard. And what do you mean trying very hard? What is your process of trying very hard? Well, when my anger comes up, I don't dwell on it any longer than I need to.

[61:58]

And how do you know how long it is? I don't measure it. But, when I think about my compassion, it helps me

[62:17]

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