And now sometimes there's also pain related, similar type of pain is pain that you get when you're really sick. And there you might wonder if that kind of pain is helpful, like you have cancer or something like that. Is that kind of pain helpful? I guess I would say my feeling would be, generally speaking, Without getting doctrinaire about it, yes. I think that one of the ways we figure out when it's time to die is when we have a lot of pain coming from our body. It's not the only reason to check out, but that's one of the ways you can tell that it's actually about time to start considering checking out and getting a new body. I would say even those kinds of pain that come from extreme illness is still helpful to give you some kind of guidance about how much longer you should keep breathing.

[01:05]

I'm still talking about the kind of pain I think is, generally speaking, normal, healthy pain. I stop now. Any questions or arguments? Any problems with what I said so far? No? Everything good? Okay. Next kind of pain is a pain that, sort of what you call, the pain which is the, what you call, I guess, true pain, or true suffering. And that's the kind of suffering that Buddhism's all about. And that kind of suffering is not, is also in a way good, because it tells you about something that you need to address. The other kind of pain is good, too, because it tells you about something you need to address, namely take your finger out of the fire, stop breathing, ask the mosquito to move, stop walking with your broken ankle, these kinds of things.

[02:21]

The kind of suffering that Buddhism is about is a suffering that comes from delusion. That suffering says, look at the delusion, understand it, and become free of it, and then the suffering will go away. That kind of suffering happens when mosquitoes are biting you, and happens when you sprain your ankle, and happens when you have cancer, and happens also when mosquitoes aren't biting you and you're having a really nice massage. It also happens to you because you don't want the massage to end. stop any questions they're saying that pleasure brings pain too not exactly pleasure no no pleasure doesn't bring pain and pain doesn't bring pain and neutral sensation doesn't bring pain no i say illusion brings pain this kind of thing and this kind of and since we're diluted ongoingly this is an ongoing pain so when you're in pain like if you have a mosquito bite

[03:26]

or it's really hot or really cold and you're really hungry or somebody slaps you in the face, that kind of pain, okay, I should say they slap you real hard, not a soft slap, real hard slap. That kind of pain is just normal. And it's good, because it tells you something about your environment and what you should do. But what we tend to do is, because we're deluded, we respond to that pain in an anxious, unskillful way, because we often want things that are happening to go away, which is ridiculous. Because they can't go away until they're done. So because we're deluded, when we're in pain, we have pain within the pain. When we have pleasure, because we're deluded, we also have pain. Because we're afraid it'll go away. Or when it does go away, we have problems. And when we have a neutral sensation, we have pain because we're anxious and confused and, you know, basically uncomfortable and wondering when some more pain's going to come and when some more pleasure's going to come.

[04:30]

Or what happened to the pain isn't going to come back and what happened to pleasure isn't going to come back. So whether we have positive, negative, or neutral sensations, in other words, no matter We're suffering as long as we're deluded. So both kinds of suffering, normal bodily suffering and suffering which comes from delusion, both of those kinds of suffering are good because they tell us that we should address something. In one case, we should take care of our body. In the other case, we should take care of our mind. We should look and find out what the delusion is, study it, and see that it's delusion rather than reality, which is what we usually think it is. Okay? Everything okay so far? Following it? Yeah. Well, if you're not following, you're following. Say the truth. Okay, so those... Pardon? Yeah. Well, I'm talking about a big time scene.

[05:42]

So I'm proposing that at the root of our irrationality, the root of our irrationality is a rational mistake, namely that we think we're separated. And based on that basic mistake, that basic intellectual mistake, then all kinds of irrational, emotional unskillfulness arise. You have to go under that and look at the root of that. That's the basic religion. When you see that, it actually clears up all the irrationality, and the irrationality turns into irrational love. You irrationally love things because you no longer think you're separate from things. So as long as you think you're separate from things, which is a mistake, actually, from the Buddhist point of view, from the enlightened point of view, it's a mistake to think you're separated, although we have a perception of separation. As long as you believe that perception as reality, you have irrational attachment and hate rather than irrational love emerging from seeing that we're not separate from each other or understanding we're not separate from each other.

[06:57]

We have to work down through all the irrationality. And just to see that we're deluded through the irrationality or in the midst of the irrationality isn't sufficient. You have to get down there and see it as it actually happens. then it uproots the whole process of delusion, which flowers into those kinds of irrational things. So when I say the pain signals that we're deluded and we should study the delusion, that process of study is very elaborate and complex. I'm just telling you very briefly that that's what needs to be done. But it's a complex story, which I will postpone to another time, maybe tomorrow. tell you how you actually go down and study the delusion. But now, since you understand what I've said pretty much so far, I'd like to now relate this to mindfulness, concentration, and nature. At the place, at the basic delusion where we separate ourselves, where we see ourselves as separately existing, then at that place we separate ourselves from our own experience,

[08:08]

and other humans and other animals and the mountains and the rivers and the trees and everything. So at that basic level, we separate ourselves from nature. And when we separate ourselves from nature, we suffer. When we separate ourselves from nature, nature makes us anxious. Now we kind of know that we love nature and that we come from nature. We kind of know that, rationally we know that, and aesthetically we know that, but we can barely stand it because also we think we're separate from it. And as long as we're separate from it, it might attack us any time. It threatens us. So we feel anxious in the face of nature. So again, we feel anxious and suffer in the face of our own experience. We feel anxious and suffer in the face of reality. our fellow humans, even our parents, even our children.

[09:15]

Can you imagine that parents are afraid of their children? Yes. Afraid of nothing more. And parents and children are afraid of their parents because we think we're separate. Mindfulness is what makes the way delusion occurs and the way delusion functions available to our awareness. So just awareness of delusion isn't sufficient. You need to be mindfully aware of delusion so that you can see delusion, not just see the delusion like, well, there's some delusion, but see the delusion as it is coming to be. So mindfulness is the kind of awareness that makes it possible to see how things are happening. If you see how the delusion is happening, and then you can become intimate with how the delusion is happening, you'll be liberated from the delusion. So concentration, then, is to use mindfulness to concentrate on certain topics of study, like delusion, and to sustain the mindfulness

[10:28]

Once you get tuned into the topic of delusion or pain or whatever you're concentrating on to stay focused on that, mindfulness helps you stay focused and mindfulness also is the way that the concentration works to bring what's happening available and the concentration also helps you stay tuned to the process of how things are happening. You tune in to the way things are. You tune in to the liberating way things are. In broad strokes, that's how mindfulness and concentration bring us back into rapport with other beings, with our own experience and nature, and also how delusion separates us from our own experience and nature and causes suffering. We suffer because we're separated from all of nature and because we're separated from parts of nature. We're also separated from our own experience, which is part of nature.

[11:31]

That's just a broad, general thing, but that's going to address the topic for starters. So if you have any questions about that or questions about anything else, please. Yes? It sounds like you had at least some mindfulness. There was something about the way you heard this information about the rattlesnakes and the poison oak and the Zen students that I told you about. You noticed that your mind separated yourself from these phenomena, from these images, from these words, and you notice some anxiety, and you notice that your hike would probably be undermined and your joy of hiking in nature would be undermined by your mind separating like that. Then it sounds like you were able to, at least on some level, notice that you could set that either you went into denial, you forgot about it, or you maybe noticed that there's another way to see that. such that you didn't feel isolated and separated from the things that you were warned could be dangerous.

[12:39]

So one of the key things that you can see is when you're in pain, in some ways your pain drew your attention, maybe I tell this story, that your pain drew your attention that you're separating yourself. When you notice you're separating yourself, you notice the separation is the problem. And noticing the separation is the problem, then you start watching separation and maybe you notice it closed. Because as a general principle, it's where we're separated from things that we connect with the things. So it's where we're separated from nature that we meet nature. If you look at separation, you're anxious. But if you admit the anxiety and notice the separation, you can realize there's joining. But also, whenever there's joining, there's separation. So we are both separated from nature and joined to nature. We're separated from nature by our perceptions. We're joined to nature, you could say, by our heart or by our true nature. There's both things going on.

[13:42]

If you forget about the separation and it becomes unconscious, then it destroys your rapport with things. If you bring the separation out in front and see how it's a source of anxiety and pay attention to it, then you can realize that separation is actually also the place of connection. terms from separation to connection, but then doesn't destroy the separation because there's no meaning of connection without separation. So we try to balance the separation and the connection. So that was a moment of insight there, which maybe we can concentrate on and de-think. And with other things that you want to meet and work with, or you notice that separation's causing anxiety, go and see the anxiety, settle with it, and maybe there will be connection.

[14:46]

And then that moment's over, and then something else happens, and maybe you notice again you're separating from it. Go there and notice the separation. The anxiety tells you where it is. Find the separation, pay attention to it, and notice, oh, these are separated, they're connected. And even things that are separated like this are connected by what separates them. See, this is separated by three or four feet, right? That three or four feet is what connects these hands. So these hands are connected, and these hands are connected. But these hands are also separated, and these hands are also separated. This is one event. This is another event. In both cases, there's separation and connection. Separation and connection. Across the room, we're separated. Across the room, we're connected. When you see it one way, you feel anxious and pain. You see it another way, you feel relaxed and ready to live. And it's changing all the time, so you've got to stay on your mindfulness.

[15:53]

Because as soon as you lose track of that dynamic, anxiety crops up because the perception keeps going on. And there's a tendency to attribute reality to the perception, and the anxiety comes up. And the anxiety can accumulate, and if you're not paying attention, it can accumulate and you find yourself driven all over the place by the anxiety without even noticing that that's happening. So mindfulness is what brings the anxiety out in front, and then you're basically continue mindfulness, it starts to show the causes of the mental disease. So, if you're working with people, like, are you still doing hospice work? So, if you're working with people who are suffering greatly physically and kind of like contemplating whether they're going to keep living or not, these are suffering people. And other people who are, they're not so much getting physical pain, so you're not necessarily thinking of dying, although sometimes they think of suicide when they have mental pain.

[17:02]

But anyway, when you work with people who are suffering from either of these kinds of suffering, then you feel separated from them in their suffering, and you feel anxiety, and you work on facing your suffering, and you teach them how to face their suffering. You don't necessarily tell them what you're doing, but they can pick it up. Because on some level, I think we do understand that we're all suffering. People in the hospital know that people they're helping are suffering, too. At least suffering because they're suffering. At least unhappy that they're unhappy. So if you work with your unhappiness in that way, you help them. You show them what What would be helpful for them to do? Sometimes, of course, they're working with their suffering really well and they teach you. Doesn't that sometimes happen? If you're spaced out and they are with their pain and they show you that you're running away from your pain.

[18:05]

Anything else about this? I'm a little curious about knowing that it's time to stop breathing. Anything more you want to say about that? No. That's what you said was something similar to that, and so I'm just a little curious about whether that means a conscious decision can be made to stop breathing. Yeah, a conscious decision can be made. I think actually it's You know, the kind of consciousness it is might be quite subtle, but I think that at a certain point, unless we get drugged or go into shock, we have a good chance of realizing that when we die, that it's a conscious decision, that we go like this. Or the other option is, there are several other options.

[19:22]

One option is you take an inhale. I think it's better to do it the other way. I think exhalation and not taking an inhalation is a little bit more natural. Expiration, exhalation, expire. So you do. You exhale, and then you say, that's it. Or you might say, that's it. And you might say, I changed my mind. And then you might do it again. But at a certain point, maybe several in a row, you think, I think this is the last one. And maybe you change your mind. I think that's the last one. Did you ever know anybody who did that? And then came back? Yeah. Well, I just changed my mind. I do it all the time myself. I do it quite frequently. It's very good.

[20:22]

I recommend it to anybody, actually, unless you're driving a car full of passengers in oncoming traffic or something. But if you're just sitting in meditation, I think it's good just to exhale. Just exhale. Just exhale. And just let it all the way out. And just don't take an inhale. And then see what that's like, and see if you want to take another inhale. Some people don't know. Some people think, oh, I want to die, I want to die. I say, I don't know. And people commit suicide. What? If you really want to commit suicide, just exhale. We'll see if you want to commit suicide. Go ahead. If you don't want to take another one, it's up to you. Really. If you exhale and your body doesn't say, come on, air, air, air. Most people's body will, most of the time. They say, come on, take an inhale, man. And you say, no, I don't want to. It's too much trouble. It's too painful. My heart hurts too much. I just lost all my family, blah, blah, blah. I don't want to live anymore. Okay, if you really don't want to, even though your body's saying, come on, air.

[21:24]

If you really don't want to, it's okay. It comes to that point where you say, I'm not going to. Okay. Now, if your body's really weak and really in a lot of pain, the pain of not taking an inhale can be quite a bit less than the pain of, I don't know what, bone cancer or something. And then it's not a matter of the body saying, come on, take some more air. It's not like, oh, that pain's so much, I guess I better do it. It's more like, this is nothing compared to that. This pain in my chest is nothing compared to the pain in my elbow. I don't know if I want to take another breath. When a kid is sitting by your bed or something, say, hey, Dad, take another breath. All right. But really, they say it's okay to go. If you want to go, Dad, we can see your suffering. If you don't want to stop breathing, it's okay. We're not asking you to keep suffering through this. It's not bothering them.

[22:25]

And your wife says you can go. Your husband says you can go. She has grandchildren, so you can go, you know. For a long time, you're sitting there suffering, and they say, no, don't die, don't die, don't die, you know. Okay, you know, okay. Huh? What? Well, you do, but eventually, you know, when you first, like you first have an accident, you know, like you get shot or something, you know, a car accident, then the kids or the husband or the wife, they say, don't die, don't die, don't die, live, you know. They don't want you to go right now. They want a little time to get used to it, right? So in those shock situations, they really don't, they want you to live, they don't want you to die from shock. But if you've been suffering for like weeks or months, you know, most reasonable relatives will tell you, you know, especially if you ask and say, you know, look, is it okay if I stop breathing? Would it be all right with you if I, and they tell you at some point, hopefully they tell you,

[23:28]

Yes, it's OK. Now, some people are confused, and they think that they're disloyal to their parents if they say yes. And that makes the parents go crazy, that they really do feel OK about them going, but they don't feel that they should say that they feel that way. This is not good. But let's say, anyway, a reasonable situation. You've been suffering. You think you've had enough of it. Everybody seems to be fine. and they said you can go, and then you exhale and you just consciously do not take an inhale. Yes. And it's usually a little bit painful. Your body does give you some... Well, try it. You know. You can find out easily how painful it is when you have a normal body or even a sick body to exhale and resist that inhale. There is a pain, and you know the pain is the pain saying, inhale. But at a certain point, you say, it's not that important. I think it's unheard of. and you consciously don't take another breath. But you can be very, very gentle, though, because you can be very, very weak in situations like that.

[24:36]

That's why some people stop eating, cut down their intake of food towards the end, because the more food you have in you, I think, generally speaking, the more painful it is not to take an inhale. Because the more metabolism is going on, the more pressure is to process the stuff If you're not processing quite as much food, there's not quite as much carbon dioxide in you. In this case, there's not quite so much need for oxygen calling upon you if you just exhale. It's a little easier. The pain's not quite so hard. Now, what some people do, of course, is they take medication that also softens the pain and it's easier not to take another inhale. I'm not talking about that. I'm saying right now, let's say you're quite alert. You feel, you know, you're in various kinds of bodily dysfunction and deterioration and putrefaction or whatever, but you still have some pain from not breathing, and you just decide not to do it.

[25:40]

I think that's the way it is for a lot of people. What a lot of other people do is they're in shock or in a coma, and then it's not a conscious decision. The body just decides not to inhale again. But there are other examples, I think, from Zen stories of where people are not in a lot of pain and their body's still pretty functional, but they feel that their work is done and actually maybe they're even getting in the way. I think some Zen masters get in a situation where they have a whole bevy of disciples. The disciples are all doing really well. There's basically no more teaching to do. and the students are taught and they don't have to start teaching a whole new generation of kids because the disciples are taking care of the next generation of young monks or young students. There's really no work to do. There's still some interesting things to do.

[26:42]

Some teachers, after that happens, they paint pictures or write poems or something for a while. There's still some entertainment, but some of them feel like, I don't know what they feel. But anyway, apparently it's not worth it to hang around anymore. And they check out in good health. They often announce it before. In these stories, they often announce it. They say, tomorrow, one of the monks is going to die. Sometimes they tell him, sometimes they don't tell him who it is. Then the monks say, well, it's going to be me. Then he sits up or stands up and then dies. So there are stories like that, and it's very clear that they say, no, it's not going to happen. They do it. Now, when I say die, of course, technically speaking, when you stop breathing, it doesn't kill you. So what really happens is you stop breathing, you exhale, and you don't inhale. And then the process of dying starts to set in.

[27:49]

And it varies from person to person how long it takes after you stop breathing before your heart will stop and other things start happening. But then that's the part, the start of the process of dying starts then. And then if you don't come back pretty soon from that, you will then be sort of called dead. But there are stories where they literally, they stop breathing for a long time so that people think they're dead. First they stop breathing, people think, you know, just holding his breath, right? But then it goes on long enough so they can see, you know, this is beyond how long a person can hold their breath. They've stopped breathing. But they haven't really completely died. And then sometimes the students start talking to them or crying or something and they come back. They're not completely checked up. And then they take another inhale and come back and say, you know, can't you be quiet? There are stories of going back and forth across the line a couple times, but it's basically that's what it is, just stop breathing.

[28:56]

Some people may turn their heart off, too. Stop breathing, stop the heart. And they can start the breathing and stop the heart. This is a little bit of Zen show-off. So I think that's what happens consciously. Unless you're drugged or in shock or in coma, it can be conscious. And I don't know what percentage of people is conscious. But you can check out the space you want any time. Just exhale, see what that's like, and you could die right then if you just didn't take an inhale. Just don't do it for a while and you'll die. Pretty soon the pain will go away. you'll conk out. The brain will lose it. Things will happen. You can't... Well, except if you know how to... Except for dying people, they don't do that.

[29:59]

Well, or no. Or the body's kind of in cooperation with it. So there's some kind of bodily cooperation with the process, I guess. The body doesn't, like, snap you out of it. Because some of these people are like, you know, they're in a position where they either don't fall over or they're comfortably reclining. So it isn't like they stop breathing and then they're shocked by that and then the shock wakes them back up or something. I don't know, has anybody seen an example of somebody where they actually held their breath and passed out and then snapped back? You did that? No, but my friend was, you know, and he got really mad and he was a little scared and he was laughing and then he passed out. You got a good son there. It would be terrific. I thought he was genetic or something.

[31:06]

He was bad, but he was like, I can do it. Yeah, but what was he doing in the book? Was he trying to kill himself or was he defying you? Yeah, that's a little bit different. I think he was trying to, I think in that case, he was not really trying to die, but he was trying to get his mom, right? Yeah, yeah. So he wasn't saying, let's die here. He also wasn't saying, I'm dying. He was saying, I'm going to get you. Right. That's a little different. So it's a different point. The other, this way I'm talking about is a real relaxed kind of like, it's really, it's not an angry thing. It's kind of like, I'm done with anger. This is not an anger thing. This is, I'm actually going to let go here. That's different than the son showing off to his mom, which is a good way. It shows your son has some willpower. And your husband, too, I guess. Yeah, and so maybe when people are dying, it's the width of consciousness.

[32:07]

Right. I think you have to stay conscious of the whole process. past that point. Or when people, these normal people who aren't necessarily yogis, somehow the body cooperates with it, I guess, and tells the gland not to do that. But anyway, don't take this too seriously, but in Buddhist psychology, there's a special state of mind, which is a mind which terminates life. It's a state of consciousness, and there's another state of mind which takes conception. So there's a consciousness that causes conception in the womb, and there's a consciousness which causes at least the beginning of the process of death. And I'm not sure if that consciousness is the one where you stop breathing, or if it's the one where you actually check out, where the conscious actually checks out of the body entirely. I'm not sure about the theory of that. Do you mind me asking, then, in Buddhist philosophy,

[33:10]

What happens to whatever it is that checks out of the body in Buddhist philosophy? I don't know if it's Buddhist philosophy or if it's Buddhist psychology. What happens to whatever checks out? Well, at the checkout time, the usual psychological, psychophysical complex is dispersed. So at that time, there isn't like awareness and feelings and ideas and emotions anymore. around the body, and there's not an association between the body and the consciousness. Usually, for a human being, there's an association between body, consciousness, feelings, emotions, thinking, perception. They all work together. That's what makes a moment of experience. that packaging disperses, and you have body sitting there, but it's not connected to that, and also you don't have the consciousness connected to feelings, emotions, ideas, and so on.

[34:14]

But there is something, like consciousness, but it's not ordinary consciousness because it's not conscious of anything. So it's kind of like, it's not really a function in consciousness, but some kind of invisible residue or after effect of the living being still goes on. And that goes on and that happens and then it goes away. That tends to cause another one of its own kind to happen and go away. Another one of its own kind. So you have a situation of a normal living human. You have a body and this mental stuff associated with it. The package, the coordination between these things disperses But some aspect of that whole process, something like the consciousness aspect of that process, it's not consciousness from a normal sense, is the result of that population. So it isn't like this continues, but after this disperses, that dispersion causes a consciousness, a new kind of consciousness.

[35:18]

Not like the old kind. And then that changes, and that causes another one. And there's a series of connected series of causation of consciousnesses. And that spiritual momentum of a living being can actually come to a place at some point by various causes and conditions. It comes to a point, and that point can be an egg that's been fertilized in a womb, and when it touches that place, there's conception. That's the story. There's no person there. because it takes all five to make a person. It takes form, consciousness, perception, various complexes of emotions and mental factors, and feeling. It takes all that to make a normal human experience. You don't have that, but you have some kind of consciousness principle or life-creating principle that emanates from a dying person and can cause another birth.

[36:29]

That's one way to tell the story. Kind of like a radio wave or something, except you can measure radio waves by radios. This is a rebirth wave, and the only way to measure it is by a rebirth. So when the radio wave hits a radio, the radio calls you. When the rebirth hits a fertilized egg, thing happens, you know, and this life process starts, and this consciousness starts. Is there any difference between what radio waves come from one person and what radio waves come from the other? Yeah. The radio waves from highly trained practitioners will usually somehow tune into humans. They usually go to humans. And they go to a human that will give them a birth which will be supportive of practice in relationship to how mindful and sincere their practice was.

[37:42]

If you have a mindful, sincere, compassionate, wise practice, you have an enlightened practice, it tends to give you a rebirth so that you would be able to again be able to practice. If your practice is weak, then that will tend to give you a birth where you're going to have a hard time practicing. Well, it depends. For all practical purposes, being completely enlightened and not going anywhere anymore, you don't have to worry about that too much. The main thing is that if you practice really sincerely and your practice gets more and more concentrated and more and more developed, what it tends to do is it tends to produce a succession of lives of practice.

[38:43]

And if it's upward gradient, you produce better and better practitioners over time. And every practitioner produces another good practitioner, but also those practitioners help a lot of other people practice. And the better your practice gets, the more people you help and the better you help people. And it isn't necessarily the more people. Sometimes you help a smaller number better. Sometimes you help a greater number, not so great. But anyway, the point is, as your practice gets better, you're more helpful to people. So every time you go through this process, as you concentrate and develop your practice, even within this life, of course, you're more helpful to beings. And the more helpful you are to beings, the happier you are, the happier they are. So you become more skillful in your practice, you're more skillful, more helpful, and then you produce better and better future beings. So the idea is that you get more and more enlightenment, more and more study, more and more practice, more and more happiness. Now, if you ever got to the point where everybody was completely okay, then you'd have no more work to do.

[39:50]

Maybe you'd say, well, I'll just sort of evaporate then. But there seems to be quite a bit of work to do, so don't quit. It sounds like from what they're saying that we are getting more and more involved. I think it's viral. I don't think we're continually evolving. I didn't hear what you said. It sounds like we're constantly evolving. What do you think? What's your story? That we don't... We don't continue on the upward spiral. We sometimes go back into darkness and then come back into the light. So there are periods of darkness when there aren't that enlightened among human beings. Yeah, that's right. But every time you're born, it's a big challenge. Because most beings aren't born already remembering all the practices they learned.

[40:55]

So you kind of, to some extent, have to go through rough times for a while before you find the teaching again. So that's a dark time. You have to be really, really, really evolved not to sort of have a hard time when you go through a birth. Because you're in the dark down there. It's tough to practice that. Not too many people can. So there are these real tough times to go through. So it is a kind of going into the dark. The thing is that being itself is dark. Being has a little bit of a problem to it because it's emphasizing being over non-being. It's a little off. To exist is a little off. That's our problem. We're alive. Being alive is a little bit of a bias. Being dead is also a little bit of a bias. So to bring light into life, into being, is the point of life.

[41:59]

But also, bring light into death. That's really hard. So there are these dark sides, yes. But I'm saying you can evolve in the way you deal with the darkness. And it's always possible to slip. Susan? Thank you.

[42:21]

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