So maybe this is also a good time to say I'm going to make a suggestion for something to do after this class, in between now and the next class. And so if your name is not in the directory with your current email address, would you please be sure that you leave it either on the list where you signed in or to hand it to Ron as the class coordinator? And I will get out what I have in mind for you. I'll talk about it at the end here so that you will all have it. And if you don't do email, good for you. And let me know that and I can make a copy for you and leave it out for you on Saturday also. Okay, all right, well, I hope we have a little more discussion now, give you something concrete to react to. So how do we cultivate ethical conduct?

[01:03]

Kind of gave you the stepwise kind of maturation process, but how do you actually put the rubber to the road in practice with this Paramita? And the answer is that it goes hand in hand with meditation practice, that they are intimately and fundamentally related to each other. How is it that that happens? So ethical practice arises from the inside, organically from the inside in the field that's planted in, nourished and harvested for the field of meditation practice. the perfection of ethical conduct, that is the increasing awareness and freedom from our self-centered ideas about how the world is supposed to be and how it functions, even if our ideas are correct. Our freedom from that, you know, we're so, freedom from that comes through meditation practice.

[02:12]

Thank you. Let me put it up here. So let me say. Gosh, if I remember exactly what I said. So the freedom from our self-centered ideas about how the world is supposed to function, we all have them. We live in Berkeley. We have pretty strong ideas about what's happening in the world, most of us. But that's just an idea. It's just a perspective. It's based and it becomes concretized. So our freedom from that. Our ability to think in a more flexible, whole, responsive way to a situation comes through our meditation practice. It comes through attention to our thoughts, our speech, and our actions and how they arise. We all, most people in this room have been practicing for some period of time and have some experience of sitting in a long meditation retreat and noticing the ways in which certain themes will come up over and over again.

[03:29]

In my early years, I sat Theravadan practice. I sat with the spirit rock community. I sat 30 day retreats. several of them. I sat 10-day retreats. It's quite illuminating to be with your mind going over the same story over and over again, fueling the same ideas about a particular situation, a particular person, a particular way the world works, and to the point of exhaustion. Well, actually, to the point of finally recognizing that it's just an idea. that it's just my idea, but that in having those ideas and holding on to them, the stories that I would tell myself over and over again would necessarily mean that I had not just thoughts, but would say things, would imagine doing things, and sometimes could do things that were a natural outgrowth of those ideas which I came to believe were very true.

[04:43]

And I'm sure if we went around the room, we'd all have very easy stories about something like that. I thought, well, I'd give you one concrete idea that came to mind that was very humbling. Many years ago, I lent one of my volumes of the Shobo Genzo, Dogen's writings, which I was very, very in love with, to someone. I didn't remember who it was, and I really missed that volume. I referred to it often. I wanted it back. It wasn't easy to get it. You had to buy the four-volume set or you had to look for it online. It just wasn't an easy thing to do. Plus, I wanted it back. And I couldn't, I asked a bunch of people and I couldn't remember who I'd given it to. And then I was, I happened to be in a fellow practitioner's house and I noticed on that person's shelf there was this volume.

[05:53]

You know where this is going, right? This person and I had a thing. We had a thing with each other and we didn't get along all that well. And I had reason to believe this person had done other things that were a little bit mean. And so, I was really sure that was my book and I fumed about it. On some level, I fumed for probably three years about that book sitting on that shelf and I was really sure because that's the kind of person this person was. And then out of the blue, someone I had very fond feelings with that had been part of my first Buddhist study group, my first base group. wrote me from out of the area. She had moved away and she said, oh, I've got your book. I kept meaning to give it back to you, but I keep forgetting. What's your address now? Right?

[06:57]

I mean, it's kind of a coarse example, but I'm sure in our meditation practice that we're, you know, in the meantime, I've built up a whole story about that other poor person, right, over and over again, repeating that person's faults over and over again and magnifying them. So, in human life, having physical well-being isn't enough. You know, there's never enough. We're always gonna feel dissatisfaction. What we really want as people is we yearn for connection and we yearn for wholeness. And that's really the crux or turning to open us in our ethical conduct. Sometimes that connection or wholeness is with families, but sometimes if one has a feeling for religious life, which I'm defining as one's life is seen as a small part in a much larger piece that our life is dependent upon and we are responsible to.

[08:06]

We call that recognition bodhicitta. We call that recognition the thought of enlightenment. It's a source of beneficence, generosity, creativity, and idealism that helps us turn towards all of these ucky places in ourself that we really don't want to look at, but is the core of the hard work that we have to do. So the intention or aspiration sets the tone for our meditation practice. And it's also the encouragement at times when we have doubts about our capacities, especially when we're seeing the shadow side of our being head on. And most of us in this room have had times when we've really come up against the places where we are. fill in the blank for yourself, where we seem like we are just the kind of person who is always irritable, judging, fearful. anxious, whatever it is for you.

[09:11]

And we have that idea if we arouse the thought of really wanting to wake up, really believing in taking refuge in the possibility that we really are Buddha nature. that reality really is so much bigger than our idea of who we think we are, and that we have a whole community to support within, that that helps us have the stability to turn back towards in our meditation. an awareness of those tendencies of the mind, how they come up, how we keep creating a self, how we create other people as having a self that actually is not who they are. So there's a direct correlation between acting in a more straightforward and kind way and the ease of our sittings. The more we sit, the more we evaluate, the less physical holding there is, the more openness there is we have to ourself and to others.

[10:19]

When there's less twitching of the mind and body, the mind is calm and less reactive. it sees more clearly it's more equanimous we can see the way in which things occur and how one thing leads to another we can see how um that's enough I couldn't remember this example well enough, but I think it's an important one. I remember being at Tassajara at my very first practice period, and I was sitting next to someone who was rather like me. She was kind of a reactive, edgy person. We were well-matched, sitting next to each other, having our little sparks fly. And there was something about how we were handling the Gamaccio, and we were both irritated.

[11:22]

I remember handing it back to the server, and as the server walked away, the spoon fell off. And I thought immediately, cause and effect. the kind of irritation and turmoil, somehow things were not settled and the spoon fell out. You wouldn't think that way ordinarily, but when you've been sitting quietly in meditation for a number of days, you get it. And it's kind of like that. It's kind of humbling to realize how how far the waves of our practice actually spread beyond our thoughts. We think it just stays in here, but actually it doesn't. And that That really is an incentive to want to see that more clearly, to get out of the way, to not create those waves.

[12:24]

So Aiken says there are multiple ways in which meditation helps support our ethical practice. It helps develop the morality of our everyday life. So as I was first really working in a group of people in meditation practice and in Buddhism, I was part of a base, a Buddhist Alliance for Social Engagement group that the Buddhist Peace Fellowship did at one point in time. And we would get together twice a week and read something and talk about our practices, and we'd all had socially engaged work in the world. And one of the people, we were talking about precepts, we were talking about ethical practice, and he was talking about how on a meditation retreat, The kind of walking meditation that's done in a Theravadan retreat tends to be a solitary walking back and forth in one place.

[13:27]

And it had been raining there and there were a lot of worms that were out in the middle of his path. And he would walk and he would move a worm, he would take another step and he would move another worm or two and he would take another step. But there were so many of them, there was no way to actually move and clear a path without stepping on them. And what he noticed that was interesting for him was the point at which his compassion was no longer so strong and he was made the choice to step on the worm. You know, that's the edge of a kind of examination of the quality of mind and what arises when you're really paying attention, when you're practicing meditation with mindfulness, whether it's walking meditation or working meditation or whatever, sitting meditation. Another way in which meditation supports our ethical practice is it helps develop sensitivity to others.

[14:36]

We begin to see our self-centered tendencies. We begin to see the way in which We see the world from our perspective that totally misses someone else. We see the ideas and emotions that we don't want to let go of, that we're just so sure about some things about ourselves or someone else. And those sticky ones are the ones that we really have to turn towards and examine because they're saying something about where we're holding on to some concept. something that's so valuable with ourself. We have access to a fuller range of our perceptions and our sense experiences. world so much bigger and so much more interesting than what we normally think when we're focused and busy. Think about what it's like to go out in nature and walk there where you're cleared, you don't have your devices, you don't have a lot of extra noises going on, but you're fully surrounded by a slow-moving

[15:50]

Very alive, very unencumbered. There's not a lot of consciousness in the way they're honking on horns or reacting to you. It's just being. Think about how much more alert our perceptions are. Think of how much better food tastes during Sashin. Our senses are so much more open, not just because everyone's a really good cook. Who cooks here? Right. Another way in which meditation practice helps us see our thoughts as we see the unfolding of effects of our thoughts and actions more clearly and objectively, that's the gamacho spoon falling and recognizing somehow that had to have been related to the way that spoon was put there in the cup or something. It also helps us keep our ideal or intention in view. For example, I find that planting my meditation vow, my intention, planting my vow at the beginning of meditation helps me settle my meditation and helps me let go when my mind is wandering.

[17:02]

This is why I'm here. Right, this is why I'm here. This is what I'm committed to. And it shows us our regret and enables us to feel like we can choose to change. I really want to talk about this. This is a favorite theme of mine. Karma and regret. In the next 15 minutes. You bet you can. Yeah, please. Part of our meditation is a body-mind. and how much in meditation you get to see your body and what happens in your body and recognize when certain thoughts happen your solar plexus gets tense or your neck gets stiff and that that's also a way to notice, once you start to notice it Oh, I think that's a wonderful point. Yeah, it's hard to put everything in the talk, but I think that's a really wonderful point that what helps us be aware, it's not just mindfulness of thought, it's mindfulness of the body first and foremost.

[18:15]

And I actually do think the body is one of the most important teachers. As the mind settles, the body's more open. As the body's tense, there's something going on that you're not aware of. And I find that's often my first awareness is that there's something happening in the body and that lets me know, oh, wait a minute, I'm anxious. Oh, wait a minute, I'm ruminating or holding on to something. Yeah, thank you. Let me see if I can condense some of this because I really would like to talk about guilt and shame a little bit. Yes. Please. That's what he would have said.

[19:18]

Yes. I understood compassion is suffering with and I'm wondering if a thought could be positive that there was a feeling of suffering with the fact that I cannot tend to call everyone on this path and some have to die and there is still compassion. I think that's a beautiful dimension of it. Yes, I think very much so. When he was talking about that, there was clearly suffering. I recognize that I've come to a limit of what I have to offer here, and it pains me deeply to recognize that I have that limit. That recognition that we all have limits, that we all have limits in what we do, we all are going to mess up, we all do things that we feel ashamed of, we feel ashamed for, and that actually is

[20:29]

In Buddhist practice, in the Abhidharma, Buddhist psychology, it's one of the, I think, eight wholesome states of mind, is the shame that it takes to practice. And that's the place where you turn and you say, I just don't have it in me, or I forgot, or I just was limited here. And so that turns me back towards my practice. That turns me back towards my commitment. Yeah, thank you. Let me just think of how I wanna. So I've touched on, I think I've touched on the idea of of karma in the sense that our volitional actions create more volitional actions. So karma really is not an idea about fatalism that went out with the Greeks and the Hindus, but it's actually an idea that it's the concept that our volitional activities set in motion other

[21:47]

set in motion other volitional activities that they continue to prime the prompt, if you will, in the same direction as the quality, wholesome or unwholesome of the activity that we've done. That didn't feel very clear, but maybe one of you would say it a little clearer than I have. That's right. So that's karma and that creates more of the same. So when we do wholesome activity, it tends to create more wholesome activity. It doesn't always, but it tends to. When we do unwholesome activity, it tends to create more unwholesome activity, but it doesn't always. When we act wholesomely, we feel good and so we're more apt to do the same. If we act mean or irritably, we tend to rev up and move in the opposite direction.

[23:00]

And then the other interesting podcast I heard this week was on Hidden Brain. Did anyone hear that podcast this week about how the whole idea of how social media is working, how the kind of social discourse that fuels anger and divisiveness actually feeds a pleasure center in the brain. And so it causes us to do more of that, to the point of people becoming more and more divided along the lines of their ideas. So that is a kind of karmic retribution, if you will, of this kind of thinking or activity that goes on. So it makes really good sense if we study our minds and practice when we hear that kind of dialogue instead of continuing to speak for myself, shake my fist and think, how can that be?

[24:00]

And isn't that terrible to turn it off? I already know what's happening. I don't need to fuel my mind to think in that way, which is just about creating more division, which I guess on a biological basis, that's part of where that comes from. I wonder, do you have any reaction to the whole idea that it takes shame and remorse to practice? I figured I'd get a rise out of people with that. No one wants to think of that as being a wholesome or positive thing. I can explain why it is, but Ron? Yeah, as soon as you say that, the feeling is that the word shame, especially the word shame on you.

[25:05]

And to feel shame just without all that baggage, just feel bad about having done something that you know is not right and you wish you hadn't done. Not that kind of bad shame on you quality. Right, I think the way, if you look up the dictionary definition of shame, it means humiliation or distressed caused by the consciousness, your own recognition of doing wrong. So it's really not about other people point, we use it in that way. But that's really not the meaning of the word, not how it's meant, I think, in Buddhist psychology. It's meant this, oh, I recognize, it's me at Highland back 25, 30 plus years ago, recognizing, oh my God, I did something that was really awful for this person without even realizing it. I was just irritable and inattentive. But that wasn't a just, that really was hurtful.

[26:08]

That shame was what got me started in practice, yeah. Both of them, they're two, it's both shame and remorse. I think they're considered separate, yeah. Yeah, so the shame is the recognition and the remorse is the response. Okay, out of this feeling of shame, I will respond and apply myself to understand better, to make other choices in the future. That's how I understood it, but we'll talk again about it. Yeah, please, Jerry. Just, I guess what's coming up for me is that, you know, the other thing is that there are people who don't have that character.

[27:14]

And that's really a defect, people who don't feel remorse or shame. And sometimes that's a character disorder, you know, where people are not able to do that. And if that's gone, it's really characterful. That's really well said. A common way of using the word shameless is to refer to someone who's outside of the usual social norms. Yeah, please. To bring up what you were kind of pointing to when you wondered why we weren't reacting, I mean, I think that we use the word in a number of different ways and people experience it in a number of different ways and some of them are not in line with the Abhidharma version. Yes. So you can feel shame when you haven't done anything wrong because of societal pressures.

[28:21]

And we feel, I mean, you know, I'm doing this internal, I'm learning about internal family systems. People often feel a kind of shame that they couldn't make things come out better when they were children. You know, like, they feel ashamed that their parents mistreated them or not even mistreated them, that they couldn't have done, that a child couldn't have done. So there's a confusion around the self and what it can do, and it can get balled up Right, right. So thank you very much for that clarification. It says that we use, that the shame in this instance is used very specifically in response to volitional conscious, your own conscious activities. That's right. And just to say guilt, guilt is really about

[29:22]

getting caught at something and feeling bad about being caught at something. So that's an external thing that's not related to the kind of wholesome mind state that recognizes basically I didn't do what I, I wasn't aligned with the direction that I wanted to go here. I think we're just about out of time. So, uh, Maybe I'll do my concluding comments. I feel like we just barely scratched the surface really. I want to point us to some exercises that Diane Rizzotto has in her book that I think are really wonderful because she takes each of the precepts, each of the eight as she defines them, and she helps us walk through the way in which we can understand how we're relating to different situations that can be problematic.

[30:24]

like with speech, and speaking kindly or using false speech, looking at the ways of holding or non-recognition and how to open to them. So I want to suggest to you that you might actually really enjoy working with the practice of Sila this week by taking her instructions and working with them. And if you don't have the book, I will email you. I've photoed the instructions and I'll email them to you to do that. And I think, as I say, we're out of time. The time went quickly. I really appreciate you bumping along with me through this talk and hope that we've launched our evaluation or our examination of the Paramita as a good style. Look forward to continuing it with you.

[31:26]

Thank you.

[31:28]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ