I vow to chase the truth that does worse. Morning. Morning. It's always nice to give a talk on the day of a Bodhisattva ceremony because I get my repentance done in advance, you know, for whatever's about to happen. But the other thing is, too, that the Bodhisattva ceremony always gives me a little something to think about, maybe to talk about, just a little bit. I'm not going to talk about that this morning, but just a little bit. You know, it starts off with a line that I just really think is wonderful.

[01:04]

It's, all my ancient twisted karma. That seems pretty descriptive, you know, that's a really good line. And it's one of the things that sort of talks about something that's been on my mind, or a little bit on my mind, that I've been thinking about lately. And this has been sort of the scandal years. There have been quite a few of them, and some of them pretty awful. Then I was reading a piece in the paper about Halloween in San Francisco. I haven't experienced that, and I'm not so sure I want to, but I was thinking about all my ancient twisted karma, all the things that go on, all the things we do, all the ways we act. Trying to make a little sense out of that. How do we make sense out of our actions? How do we live our lives in a pretty good way?

[02:06]

And this obviously leads right into the topic of what does Buddhist doctrine say about this? Can't miss that. We've had scandals in the Zen community lately. We've had teachers that have drunk too much. Actually, one teacher died of it. We've had people who've had affairs with their students. We've had one teacher who actually gave some of his students AIDS. Some pretty terrible things. And one has to be, you know, one looks at this and makes one think. What's happening here? Where did things go astray? How does this not happen to us, you know, each one of us, and collectively? And in San Francisco, I read an article in the paper about... some ministers who were going to exorcise the demons in San Francisco. Then they described some of the demons.

[03:08]

I have to admit, I had to laugh, you know, when they talk about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. And I've never seen these people, but apparently these are men who dress in nuns' habits with mesh stockings, bouffant hairdos and lots of makeup. It sounds pretty grim, you know. And then on the other hand, we have these evangelists who are going to exorcise the demons. It sounds like theater of some sort to me. It's sort of like the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. I think there's a problem there. I think that's one side of the problem. I don't think these people... I think these people are suffering. I think there's something... They're doing a number of things. It's pretty obvious. They dress as nuns. They don't really think much of religion. And Perpetual Indulgence is talking about something that Most of us are not so sure it's a good idea, you know, indulgence.

[04:12]

So, while it's funny on one hand, there's something serious there. And on the other hand, the evangelists who, I have to assume, are well-meaning men, in many ways, because of what happens in these kinds of situations and the circus that it seems to become, they sort of give morality a bad name. So, what I want to do today, you know, is talk a little bit about that. And because I want to keep it right, I hope, you know, I've got some pretty extensive notes here. They're not really notes, this is pretty much my talk. To understand, you know, for those of you, there's people of all different, you know, have all different kinds of understanding of Buddhism and have just looked at it for the first time today, maybe, and other people have been doing this for years. So, all of you kind of bear with me. One of the basic tenets of Buddhism is the Noble Eightfold Path. And this is the means to end suffering.

[05:19]

The four Noble Truths are, first, that life is suffering. Secondly, that there is a cause of this suffering. Thirdly, that there is a way to stop the suffering. Then the fourth is the way that you stop suffering, and that's the Noble Eightfold Path. And the Noble Eightfold Path consists of Right View, or Right Understanding, Right Thought, or Right Aspiration, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Meditation. The first two, Right View and Right Thought, are considered to be wisdom. Those deal with wisdom, those parts of the path. Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood deal with morality. And right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditation deal with meditation, concentration, samadhi. And the way it's usually thought is that we start with morality, and then that leads us to meditation, which then leads us to wisdom.

[06:23]

But that's not quite right. Actually, we have to start with wisdom. And we all do, on a couple of levels. First of all, as Buddhism always tells us, we've got it all already. but somehow we don't quite know that. But we start with a kind of wisdom which is simply the understanding of the fact that maybe that life is suffering, perhaps that. And then that awakens in us the aspiration to find a path, maybe to find a way out of suffering or at least just deal with it in a more equitable manner. So that's where we start from that kind of wisdom. Then we practice morality because that leads us to wanting to live our lives in a positive way, for lack of a better word, in a full way, a good way, meaningful, that's another word. So we practice, or we try to practice, or we start practicing right speech, right action.

[07:28]

We try to get a job that gives us right livelihood. And then this does indeed, as we meditate, as we sit Zazen, this does indeed begin to percolate, something begins to happen. And then we revisit wisdom again, you know, right view, right thought, understanding, we visit those in a little different place, not quite where we started, we're somewhere else now. And that keeps happening to us, you know, we just keep changing, we just keep going through this circle all the time. So these precepts really aren't, are the precepts. This eightfold path is not a thing you go through by the numbers. It's something that happens, all of them happen simultaneously. And we keep learning more all the time. We also fall back all the time, you know. But we pick ourselves up, we step forward. And that's why we have a Bodhisattva ceremony. Because we never quite get it right. But we keep trying. So today, I'd like to talk about right action.

[08:34]

And I'd like to use just the first part of a koan. This is a two-part koan, and I'll only read the first half of it. It's all we need to read now. And you've heard this before, I think. This is Yakujo's Fox. And it goes like this. When Hyakujo Osho delivered a certain series of sermons, an old man always followed the monks to the main hall and listened to him. When the monks left the hall, the old man would also leave. One day, however, he remained behind and Hyakujo asked him, who are you standing here before me? The old man replied, I'm not a human being. In the old days of Kshapa Buddha, I was a head monk living here on this mountain. One day a student asked me, does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not? I answered, no, he does not. Since then I have been doomed to undergo 500 rebirths as a fox.

[09:44]

I beg you now to give the turning word to release me from my life as a fox. Tell me, does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not? Yakujo answered, He does not ignore Ka-Zhigishim. No sooner had the old man heard these words than he was enlightened. Making his bows, he said, I am emancipated from my life as a fox. I shall remain on this mountain. I have a favor to ask of you. Would you please bury my body as that of a dead monk? That's all the further I want to go with this. There's another half to it. To get some idea of this, When this old man was the head monk in this monastery, in Kasyapa Buddha, that was the Buddha before Shakyamuni. So what this story is really saying is, once upon a time, we're going way back, and he was the head monk, and somebody asked him, does a man of enlightenment fall into the yoke of causation or not? And he said, no, he does not.

[10:45]

A man of enlightenment does not bear the burden of causation. The idea of causation in Buddhism is that everything is conditioned. One way of looking at it is because that exists, this exists. And because this does not exist, that does not exist. In other words, everything is tied to everything else. Everything is conditioned and caused. And so what the student asked the old head monk was, if you're enlightened, Do you have to worry about karma? Do you have to worry about cause and effect anymore? And the old monk said, no, you're free of that. Immediately, 500 lives is a fox, bang, just like that, not even 30 blows, that was, you know, not good. So when he came to Hyakujo, he asked Hyakujo the same thing. Now this puts Hyakujo in a pretty bad place because, you know, he might become a fox if he's not careful, but he was pretty foxy.

[11:48]

And so what he said was, No. He does not ignore causation. Little difference. Little difference. In fact, it's a great big difference. But if you think that the old man was wrong, you've missed a point here. And if you think Yakujo was right, you've missed the same point. Because phenomena arise in dependence on conditions, psychologically the same thing happens. Personality also arises just like phenomena. It's just a long string of little infinitesimal thoughts strung out in a long interrupted time. So there's really no personal identity, just this uninterrupted procession of mental states, all little tiny duration.

[12:51]

And we have no word for these little durations of thought, but in the East they do. They've had a lot more time to think about this in this particular way, so they've come up with this. It's called NEM. And NEM is a thought unit, pretty small. I don't know how fast it is, but I don't think we can get there. It's just really slow, really small. And the first NEN, the first thought unit, is pure cognition. That's when we see something and we directly perceive it and there's nothing between it. There's no subject, no object. It's just there. It's what's sometimes called bare attention. But that's the first NEN. The second NEN reflects the first NEN. It's pretty quick. These are pretty small little things, you know. Reflects the first NEN and that's when we become aware of our own thoughts. And then the third nen, and whatever nens are after that, are where reason and all of our other troubles begin. That's where we start to become really conscious of this stuff and start adding names and all the rest of it.

[13:55]

So, if someone is liberated, we're told that their actions leave no trace. That is, no karmic consequences. It's called karma of the pocket. That's the term for it. So, if that's true, if a liberated being, enlightened man, woman, leaves no trace, then the old monk is right. The liberated person is not under the yoke of karma, or the yoke of causation, because there's no trace. There's nothing there for the yoke to hang on. But at the same time, present thoughts and actions are based on past thoughts and actions. And what's going to come after these present actions is some kind of a result.

[15:02]

Your present thoughts and actions are also causes. So they produce, maybe, future karma of the pocket. So therefore, one can't ignore causation either. So even if you are really liberated, and I don't think any of us are. Raise your hand if you are. Then you can come up here. But if you're completely liberated, you still have to pay attention to this. You still have to pay attention to what you're doing. So, both answers are correct. The only possible way to give new direction to karma of a pocket, to the fruits of your actions, is through present thoughts and actions. And that's why I decided today to talk just about right action. There's other things involved in this too, but right action is a big one. So, through right action, among all the other things that I've talked to you about in A Full Path, these all lead to right meditation.

[16:13]

And slowly, slowly, the trend of your old mind gets changed. You start to move someplace. Always changing anyway. So why not change in the direction you want to go? So the old priest could enjoy his 500 fox lives, you know, so long as he became the precepts as a fox. As long as he was really a fox. really a fox, didn't want to be something else, didn't want to be somewhere else, and paid attention to being a fox, he'd have a good time for those 500 lives. So it wasn't something awful. He probably did, he probably had a very good time as a fox for 500 lives. Might be even like that better. So what this leads us to is another sort of cliche, which is that Buddhism is an ethics of intention. And what that means is that, just like in a chemical equation, if you have thought and you have action, you can have an arrow going both ways.

[17:17]

So, thoughts lead to actions, and actions lead to thoughts. For example, if I want to hit something, I might pick up a stick. Conversely, if I pick up a stick, I'll probably want to hit something. So it works both ways. So actions are kind of the condensations of thought, just like water beads on the outside of a cold glass. Just like that. And we can't ignore causation because we're doing it all the time with either our thoughts or our actions. Well, the Buddhists are great. I've already gone through a few lists. I try not to do lists, but sometimes you just can't help it. I wind up always up here with lists. But now, this isn't a list. This is just another way of looking at actions.

[18:20]

You can look at actions and you can say, well, are they wholesome actions or are they unwholesome actions? And I think most of us would like to have our lives be pretty much full of wholesome actions if we can. If you know the wheel of life, it's got a little hub, and inside it's got a rooster and a snake and a pig, and these are greed, hate, or anger, and delusion. That's kind of the hub around which the wheel of life revolves. This is what we all have to work with all the time. So unwholesome actions come from those three poisons they're called. Greed, hate and delusion. So it seems obvious that wholesome actions come from their opposite. And that would be things like instead of greed would be giving or non-attachment, you know, not hanging on to something. Hatred or anger, the opposite of that would be compassion. And the opposite of delusion is pretty obviously wisdom.

[19:24]

So we try to live our lives more in line with the wholesome side, with these wholesome actions. For example, you know, we can't commit a murder with a good heart. It's one of those things that sometimes gets mixed up, I think. It's always said, you know, well, the liberated being can do anything and there's no problem. And that's been used unfortunately by some students to justify some things that their teachers have done that haven't been really all that hot. And they also justify us in a lot of things we do in our daily life. You know, we can get away with a lot of stuff this way. So can other people. But it's not really so. Because murder, for example, can't be committed with a loving heart because it's coming from a state of mind that's based on anger. Now, we can kill things, and we do every day, but murder is murder.

[20:32]

That sort of premeditated killing, and it comes out of anger. It's not like a mercy killing. I'd like to make that kind of clear. There's all kinds of deaths, but just talking about murder. We just have to look at these things and say, it's really difficult, because they're not always that easy. Mercy killings aren't that easy, because according to the law, they're murder. Another way of looking at it, maybe they're not. But basically, what we can do by understanding wholesome and unwholesome acts and thoughts is that we now have a way of strengthening our right action, our way to do things in a wholesome way. That is simply by strengthening our wholesome thoughts and weakening our unwholesome thoughts and acts. And so that brings us right exactly to the three pure precepts, which are cease to do evil, strive to do good, and strive for the benefit of all beings.

[21:38]

And they're in that order on purpose. Because first, you have to cease to do evil. You have to at least stop some of it. Stop a little bit of it, and make some room to do some good. And then with a little bit of luck, A little bit of attention. Keep crying. You'll be doing more good and less evil. And we hope one day that there will be hardly any emphasis on the evil side and a lot of emphasis on the good side. And if this happens, then we will be striving for the good of all. Anyway, that sounds to me a lot like moral conduct, trying to do that. Because I said that morality was getting a bad name, and sometimes it does, sometimes when you say morality or morals, there's kind of a twinge on the part of people because they're used to some sort of prescribed code.

[22:45]

You know, do this or a proscribed code, don't do that. And it's just, you know, just rules. And you follow the rules and that's all you need to do. And a lot of people don't like that. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense because there isn't much to that. It's not really yours. It's just what somebody told you to do. So... The definition of the Sanskrit word for morality is, that's sila, is nature, character, habit, or behavior. And for Latin, which comes from moralis or moralis, I don't speak Latin, so you'll have to forgive my pronunciation. The Latin word for morals is manner, custom, habit, way of life, and conduct. The two are virtually identical. And that's kind of nice, because it gives us an idea that we're talking about a way of life. We're not talking about something imposed from outside, we're talking about what's coming from us. So moral behavior, if it's truly moral behavior, does not come from outside, it comes from within.

[23:50]

It's something we raise up within us. So conventional morality, which is kind of watching a list and making sure we don't step on somebody's toes or get ourselves put in jail or something like that, is karmically neutral. Neither good, neither bad. It's sort of the white bread of practice. And that's where we all start. And it's okay. That's pretty good. Sometimes it's really helpful to have a rule around. You kind of grab it and say, oh yeah, oh yeah, I didn't know that. I haven't figured that one out yet, so I've got a rule for it. That's okay. Providing you don't always lean on it. And these things come up after a while. And what rises up within us is kind of a spontaneous morality. This is the Dharma. This is living the Dharma. This is the kind of action that ideally should come from that first net, you know, that pure cognition, that situation.

[24:52]

We see it and we respond to it right there and there's nothing in the way of it. And that response will always be appropriate. At that point, one has probably become the three precepts, three pure precepts. Now we come to right action. You know, I've sort of mentioned right action, but I haven't really talked about what right action is because all of these paths, the Eightfold Noble Paths, each one of those little right something or others has a lot of definition that goes along with it. So right action, specifically in Buddhism, talks about three of the 10 great precepts. And these are don't kill, don't steal, And don't misuse the senses, or sometimes don't commit adultery, or don't misuse sex, or no illicit sex, or no unlawful sex. That one is all over the lot. That gets kind of big. One of the reasons that gets big, by the way, is that the Ten Great Precepts were originally laid down for monks, you know, and then it was a modification for laypeople.

[26:07]

Obviously, householders have children, so they can't say, no sex. Monks was no sex. And that's still true for most Buddhist groups. Zen, Japanese Buddhism is a little different. It was like that for a long time, and then a couple hundred years ago, Because the monks were getting too powerful in a very practical, everyday, military way and political way, one of the emperors forced them to marry. and sort of broke up a lot of the temples. So Japanese monks and Zen monks, Zen priests, are a little different. We marry. The Theravadans down the street don't. So that's why that precept gets a little bit tough to deal with sometimes, because it's, you know, it's meant to be looked at in a certain way. And in this place, we're a little different, so we have to watch out. At any rate, these are three pretty important precepts.

[27:11]

And it's also interesting to know that when you talk about these, before I get into what's interesting to know, that when you talk about these three precepts, don't kill, don't steal, don't misuse the senses, they imply their opposites. And so everything we say, you know, we say this, but we should try and find out what the other side is. Not just one side, the other side too. So the opposites of don't kill, don't steal, and don't misuse the senses are cultivating compassion, taking only things that are given, and living conscientiously or as purely as possible, living our life well. So it's interesting that in the monastic rules, there's about 220 monastic rules. It varies from place to place, but basically about 220 monastic rules.

[28:12]

And these are broken down into eight sections. And there's four rules in the first section that have the stiffest penalty. And then there's, in the other sections, the penalties are not given. decrease. One group has, they have to call a meeting of the Sangha, which in the case of the old rules was the group of monks. Then there's a big one where you have to do expiation, penance, and that's the biggest bunch. And then there's another one that, I forget what the other punishments are. But the first group that has the four acts that merit the worst punishment in monastic rules, and this is expulsion from the Sangha. You're just chucked out. The first one is boasting about supernormal powers. Well, not too many of us do that, so I'm not going to worry about that.

[29:16]

But the other three are interesting, because the other three are don't kill, don't steal, and don't misuse sexuality or the senses. All right action, all three of those. are right there, and they are punished. Breaking those are punished harder than anything else. So they're looked upon as pretty important, and it makes right action fairly important to us. If we look at these, you know, there's a pretty straightforward way of looking at don't kill, and that means don't kill anything. But as soon as you look at that, you know you can't keep it. There's no way you can keep that precept. You drink a glass of water, and you're going to kill at least some of the little animals that live in water, you know, rotifers, paramecium, amoeba, pevis, all those things that, you know, I think those names are right. So we can't really keep that precept, but we do our best. One long mistake, but we do our best. Try to keep that precept in a very, very

[30:20]

as much of a literal way as we can. So some of us become vegetarians. And what that amounts to is, I've talked about this before, what that amounts to is just drawing a line someplace. I won't kill cows, but I'll kill carrots. I won't kill chickens, but I'll eat eggs, maybe, I don't know. It goes back and forth. Each of us draws the line someplace. But as we look at don't kill, we realize that this is a very difficult preset. And maybe there's more to it than just don't kill, in the sense we usually think of it. Don't steal is pretty straightforward. Don't take what is not given. If it's not yours or it's not given to you, then don't take it. And don't misuse the senses. I've already talked about that a little bit. Basically, I think probably here, maybe a good way of looking at this is don't objectify people. Don't make people into things or don't even make things into things.

[31:22]

Don't do harmful action. Don't harm things. Try to make sure that whatever happens, you're helping or at least you're not harming. That may be a good way to look at that one. There are some other ways, too. There's sort of a larger way to view these precepts. In Don't Kill, a way of looking at this is not having a view of extinction. And the Buddha was very careful to explain to people that Buddhism does not believe in nihilism, you know, annihilation, that when something dies it just stops there's nothing left he never said that was so some people misunderstood it that way but also made sure that people knew he did wasn't talking about eternalism some unchanging entity that would go on forever that wasn't what he talked about either so there's a denial of the soul in the way we usually think of it

[32:36]

So when we say, don't kill, don't nurse this view of extinction. Don't think that things are going to be annihilated. And don't steal. Don't have a thought of attainment. You know, trying to attain something is like trying to steal something. And don't misuse the senses. Don't yield to attachment. Don't try and grab things. So, looking at the precepts in this larger way, we see that if we view everything as doomed to annihilation, we'll kill our lives by leading a life that's based only on the senses, you know, sex, food, and so forth. Sort of the playboy philosophy. I guess that's what it is. I saw that once. It was a big, huge thing, and it wasn't very well written. That was many years ago. At any rate, I think we all know that we don't want to live our lives that way. We drop into that trap, of course, but we know it's a trap when we're in there.

[33:40]

And on the other hand, if we think that we're something eternally unchanging, we're also going to waste our life because we'll probably fall into some kind of asceticism. That's usually where it leads, you know. The idea of annihilation or extinction usually leads to hedonism. And the idea of an unchanging eternal soul usually leads to asceticism. And the reason it leads to asceticism is that we usually feel that we have to be really good. We really have to pay attention to what we're doing. We really can't get out of line because we have a chance to keep going forever. And if we don't get it right, we won't. That's a pretty tough life. And so when we do that, you know, what that degenerates into a lot of times is something like the law of contract. I will perform this if you will perform that. I'll give you this, you give me that. I'll do this, give me a reward. And that's not a very good way to lead our lives either.

[34:45]

So we have to watch out. We don't fall into either one of these sides. The middle way is somewhere else. Not either one of those. And it's not fatalism either. Your fate is not written on your forehead. I don't know of any religion. write your fate on your forehead. I've heard that, but I don't know if that's so. So, you know, when we look at all this stuff, what is right action? Well, basically, we're right back where we started from. It's morality plus mindfulness. If we try to practice wholesome actions, wholesome thoughts, they'll probably lead us to do those, more of them than we did before. And it may just grow that way. And, excuse me, That way we'll sort of restrain our senses by observation and vigilance. Not asceticism, just paying attention. Not going out and just doing things because we feel like it, but not doing things because we think we're going to be in trouble if we do.

[35:52]

It's paying attention. And so one of the things this leads to is sort of a wise and thoughtful use of material things, just the stuff that's around you. That's one thing. But more importantly, when we use observation and some restraint, then morality merges with our meditation, merges with our zazen and our zazen mind, and then we come to realization. Maybe, you know, sudden realization, but it takes a little while to get ready for that. So, realization comes from leading a wholesome life, paying attention, watching what we're doing, This is what we're doing all the time. You know, nobody ever tells you how to do the Bodhisattva ceremony. You come here, and a lot of people come here, you know, for the first time, and bingo, they're right in the Bodhisattva ceremony. You know, it's aerobic bowing, there's all these bells, people are saying all these things, there's a piece of paper that you're trying to read, and it's pretty awful, and nobody ever tells you how to do that.

[36:57]

Nobody ever tells you that. There's a reason. Pay attention, you know? Just look at it. Just watch. It's okay if you make mistakes. We all started that way, you know? And in fact, we all continue that way. But, you know, just... Don't leave. Just go ahead and do it. Just watch what you're doing. Pay attention to your life. It's just one place. You're in the Zendo. Very clear that you have to pay attention here. Not so clear when you go out the gate. Not so clear when you go somewhere else. You've got to pay attention. Just pay attention. And then things will start to get a little clearer for you. So, I have a little homely example. This has been pretty dry stuff. This is a book that I picked up a long time ago. It was written in 1955 by an author I like very much, Rhonda Hartog. He used to be a tugboat captain. He stopped being a tugboat captain, and he's written a lot of books. Some of them are really quite good.

[37:58]

And this one is just, it's sort of like how to be a captain. And he talks about bosuns. And I don't know, there's one chapter in here, a little chapter on bosuns. So I don't know if everybody knows what a bosun is. So I'll read his definition of a bosun, and then I'll go on to what I want to read. The bosun is the petty officer in charge of the folksal. That's where the crew lives. And his personality determines the mood of the sailors. If the bosun is happy in his job, there's a fair chance that the seaman will be, too. If he's not, there is sure to be trouble during the trip. Life in the fo'c'sle is like life anywhere, either enjoyed or born like a cross. Sound familiar? A narrow bunk on board an old-fashioned ship can either be wonderfully snug or a coffin with one side missing. It depends on the mood of the man who lies in it, and that man's mood depends on the bosun's. This is a pretty good Zen book in places. So he says, the young sailor, if he comes across the right kind of bosun, should watch him carefully and listen to what he has to say.

[39:02]

All the sullen, relaxed craftsmanship of sailing a ship is there under his very eyes. And then he gives a really gross definition, which I won't give you. Then he goes on to say, A good bosun is as important to a ship as a good captain, if not more so. For the captain is the mind of the ship, and it is commonly known that the mind is a feeble thing of fairly recent date. Bosuns will give advice on anything, if asked or forced by circumstances. Their advice, which comes out after an impressive prelude of chin rubbing and nose pulling, usually runs sleep on it, if the problem is personal. And I'll show you. if it's practical. Now that's what hit me when I first read this, was this idea that, you know, it's pretty good advice, sleep on it. You know, the Boson will look at the young man and say, well, why don't you sleep on that? And, you know, what does that say, but observe it, take a look, you know, meditate on it.

[40:05]

Now the fact that the Boson doesn't want to get involved in the guy's personal problems is neither here nor there, it's still good advice. You know, sleep on it, take a look at things, Pay attention to what's going on. See if you can figure it out. And the other one I really love, and it's the best advice, is, oh, I'll show you. Here, I'll show you. The bosun will just show you how to do it. And that's something we all can do all the time, and really ought to do for each other. We can do this. We can encourage each other by our own actions. If we have right actions, it's a big encouragement. Just to see, oh, everybody coming here. It's a big encouragement. Big encouragement. It makes one feel pretty good about the fact that, oh yeah, I do this too, and look at all the other people who do it. Big encouragement. So, I'll show you. This is how we do it. It's how we do the Bodhisattva ceremony. We bow a lot, I'll tell you that much. That's good advice. Now there is one more homely example that this bosun has, which I kind of like.

[41:09]

Boatswains traditionally leave sinking ships together with the captains, but, in contrast with the latter, they rarely drown. Owing to their intimate knowledge of the order and the chaos of the ships' insides, they always get a hold of something suitable that will float. The young sailor will probably come across the story of the bosun who, while treading water after a shipwreck, was invited to climb onto an already overloaded lifeboat and answered, no thank you, I'll wait for the doghouse to come up. And he was the only one washed ashore alive. Now what I like about that particular little story is that This person obviously took his own advice, you know, he's done some meditation, he's practiced a lot, he's taken a look at things, and so he saw the situation the way it really was, and he acted accordingly, and it paid off for him, you know, it worked.

[42:15]

So I kind of saved that little bit at the last because I had to do something to wake you up, you know. That's really about all I have to say about Right Action. So if you have comments, statements, questions? Yes? Could you say some more about cultivating compassion? Me? Cultivating compassion? Well, you know, there's actually in some practices, in the preposterous practice, there's a loving-kindness meditation where you just, you know, meditate on dispensing loving kindness to all. And so thinking about compassion a lot, just paying attention to it, trying to understand what it really is, what it feels like, you know, thinking about it in situations is probably the best way to cultivate it. Just try and do it. Yeah, a comment.

[43:23]

You said that the second precept, do not take what is not given, is fairly clear. And I don't think it is. I think that the whole ecology movement is around that. People are taking what is not given. In fact, if you look at 128, 95% of our trees have been taken. And I think it really fits in with fits in actually with the first precept. And I don't think it's that clear. I think in an everyday thing, you know, we believe we own things and other people shouldn't take them and we shouldn't take them from other people. But I think in a larger sense, every time we drive our cars down the street, we're taking something that's not given. And I think it's a really big question about how we're going to continue to live if we continue to take what is not given. Yeah, I think that's so. Maybe it's just because I've read the Tragedy of the Commons many years ago, it looks pretty clear to me.

[44:26]

Maybe it's not so clear. Maybe you're right. Yeah. Maybe that's not so clear. Marilyn. Let me just take that one so far and say, I don't think any of them are clear. I think they're all terribly problematic. I mean, if you look, for instance, at the one we just recited, Saki sits on your table. So every one of them can only be valued by intention. It's all difficult. We certainly talked about don't killing. Every one of them is like that. Yeah, that's true. If they weren't difficult, I wouldn't be sitting up here trying to talk about it. And you guys wouldn't come all the time and sit because we'd already know it all. I won't say that again. Yes.

[45:30]

You mentioned the ethics of intention. I'd like you to go into that a little bit more in terms of maybe some kind of example. You know, how the thought maybe begins and what ... Are you talking about, you know, what you were intending to do from the outset or what actually happens out here? Or intertwined, yeah. Buddhism feels that a thought is a cause. And that's enough right there. You don't need to really have an act for some sort of consequence to flow. So it's quality of thought. It's your intention. It's just what Meryl said. Yes. It's intention. And if you have wholesome intentions, you might turn out bad. But if you really had wholesome intentions, then probably, you know, the cause won't be quite so awful. Or at least maybe what you read downstream won't be so awful. Hard to say sometimes without, you know, looking at each individual situation.

[46:33]

But that's basically it. There is a lot of weight given to thought. And sometimes equal amounts of thought and action. Sometimes not. Karma, when you get into the doctrine of it, you know, the scholastic stuff, they have rules. There's 32 different ways to classify karma, you know. It gets a little bit unwieldy. But basically, the ethics of intention, what you're asking about, says your thought counts, not just your actions, but your thought. Well, you know, sometimes I think that it's what precedes a thought that really counts, because there's all kinds of thoughts in a way that you have no I mean, it's just, they're just marching across the landscape, so to speak, and you don't want to attach yourself to the thought anyway. So, you know, it's maybe what precedes the thought and what comes after the thought out in the field of action more so than maybe the thought itself. I see. Yeah, that's a good point. Because you're really talking about karma in a way.

[47:34]

I think that's what you're really asking about, ultimately. And that means volition. That means it's a volitional thought. There's all kinds of thoughts you have no volition. You know, they're not volitional. Those things make no difference to you at all, personally. They still have effects, but, and in that sense you're right, yeah. Anything that, you know, all of these things that preach to you all have effects, and one of the effects is the thought that you experience, even if you do nothing with it. So that's true. I'm sorry, I was thinking more in terms of karma there. Back there. Yeah. I'm very new to this practice, and I found them quite overwhelming, and I had this sense of dread about vowing that to end delusion or whatever, and the sense of putting myself in for billions of years of trying.

[48:35]

Pretty heavy load, isn't it? Maybe you ought to go out and try some intoxicants. Don't worry about it. Just take a look at them. Try and get a handle on these. There's an old saying, one mistake after another, one long mistake. We do that all the time. You can't help it. but we keep trying because it is intentional. So what you're talking about with those vows is your intention and that's important. Yes Virginia? And what I hear you saying is process. That it's the process that's important rather than any arrival. Oh sure. And if we just watch our process whatever imagery we entertain that allows the thought to emerge It can be organic and it can be dynamic. And so it doesn't have to be, it's all relevant then.

[49:42]

It's in the now, but it's also dynamic and not to get hung up too much on the karma, the effect, as initiating the cause, which is the process. Everything changes. Yeah. And we're always moving. It is process. It's all process. I don't know where we're going to get and I don't know who's going to get there. So what you've got is what you've got right now. Zip. Sore knees and all. It's what you got. There was another hand someplace. Yeah. I want to ask more about this relational thought versus other kind of thoughts. That's what I was afraid of. You know, I can understand once these thoughts go through and you sit with them and you try to arrive at a conscious intention that's wholesome.

[50:45]

That I can sort of envision, but there's an awful lot of unwholesome stuff that goes through before you choose that conscious intention. Does that leave a footprint? Probably some place, but not necessarily anything to do with you. Might, might not. There's, you know, when you get into karma, you get into this business about weighty karma and not weighty karma, and so on and so forth, and if you really, you really act on something, there's more, more weight given. You know, that will have more effect on you. This is volitional things. On the other hand, if you just think something once, probably not much weight. If you think something and you keep on thinking about it, Then a little more weight. But there's all kinds of different things going on. That's just your own stuff. But that's your karma of a pocket. You reap the benefits of that. But there's all kinds of other things happening. There's a universal karma.

[51:49]

There's cause and effect outside of you all the time. And the thoughts that just go parading by, you don't do anything with, and you don't even pay too much attention to, they're not volitional. They're just popping up. that don't really belong to you, in that sense. It may have an effect, it may not. And it may be that things just drop off the end. You know, they get outweighed by other ones. It gets to be almost... See, when you get into this, the problem with this is it starts to sound like celestial bookkeeping. And, you know, that's what I don't like about it. But, you know, basically, if you will something, if you're really trying to do something, you really think about it, you really act on it, then that's yours. And that's what you have to pay attention to. But if something happens to you, you can't just out of hand say, oh, I've got such bad karma, or oh, I've got such good karma. Big mistake to say that, because you have to eliminate all the other things that come out. What's the universe doing? What's happening with birds flying through the air, and trees growing, and everything else? And all of the effects that come from everything else and everyone else.

[52:52]

Almost impossible to do that, so you really have trouble. isolating your own stuff. You can sometimes, but it's pretty difficult. It's actually called, I think there's a name for it, called something like the theory of residues. Save us from that today. But you get the idea? If you really do something, if you really will something, that's yours. Otherwise, don't get too excited. Although it may have effects, they're at least not your personal ones. Yeah, I know it is. Okay. It is time. I think to some people it's been time for quite a while. Thank you.

[53:41]

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