Now, whenever I give a lecture, there's almost always something I don't get to or something I'd like to speak about but don't reach the opportunity. Yeah, it doesn't come up. And what happens when we start to do this lecture thing? And that's been trying to speak about karma. Yeah. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha and Karma.

[01:02]

Maybe we should be the Dharma-Karma group. And because we live in our accumulated experience, that is our memories, our mental and physical habits, and our assumptions about the world. Our world view, in other words, is part of our karma. As I said last time, this imagined object or imagined subject we call the world Continuing to reproduce that world is our karma.

[02:07]

And we keep the world alive. And it's a question these days when the world is changing so fast. And in this time when the world is changing so quickly, is this a question? That new generation both is, you know, while they're entering the new, do they continue the culture? Can we do both? But if we know we're... reproducing our culture each moment, can we reproduce a Dharma culture each moment?

[03:25]

Can we reproduce a Sangha culture each moment? This is the work and life of bodhisattva practice. Sukersi used to speak about the scientific model of the world we have. And since it was the 60s, the LSD model we had of the world. And speaking about karma, I would add the medical model we have of the world.

[04:42]

Now while it's in many ways the most difficult part of practice, To see the model we have of the world. And that how that continuously reifies our karma and shapes our new karma. I'm not saying we don't want to live in this world. and develop the skills of living in this world.

[05:53]

But we also want to see that it is a world that we are reproducing. And perhaps to know that we can have the choice to reproduce a world in which our karma functions differently. Now, Now, because the model of the world is what you see, it's very hard to see that, you know, it's very hard... How does the eye see the eye? So the way to enter into this is...

[06:55]

is in the particularity of your experience. To really know the particularity of your experience. And to find some pace of being in the world where you do notice the particularity of your experience. Maybe it's helpful to use some phrase again, like, just this, just this, just this. Find a pace like that. I mean the words are I mean, when you do dance steps, they're the pace that your feet can do.

[08:20]

When you use words, they're in a way the pace that the mind can do. And when you say the words, not just think the words, but say the words or feel them, Think them at a pace at which you could say them. Then you're finding a kind of body-mind pace. Or breath-mind pace. Okay. That doesn't mean you don't think fast or think imaginatively or something like that.

[09:30]

That doesn't mean you don't think fast or think imaginatively or something like that. Or think in a very wide way. But it means that somehow you're the foundation of your living in this world is a pace that includes breath, mind, body and world. You can experiment, say, doing the oriochi. You do the oriochi. Each little item, opening the cloth, the napkin, You say, just this.

[10:45]

And spreading it all away, just this. Putting it on your lap, just this. Lifting your hands to the next thing you do, just this. See if the just this helps you not have any other thoughts. I think if you do that, you'll find The o-yoki goes quite smoothly. And will go more quickly than you're used to doing it.

[11:49]

And it's a little experiment to find a pace, a pace with mind and the world. And the model here is to complete your experience. Now, a kind of simplistic medical model we have, which I hear in people's thinking all the time, They want to heal their suffering or heal some situation.

[12:55]

It's okay. It's just a word. If you confront somebody, they say, oh, well, I'm just using that word. But the word you use is already late in the process of what your body-mind is doing. The word you use is always late in the process of what's really going on in the mind and body. And it, again, reifies and calls forth a lot. Any word calls forth a lot. It reifies, it makes more concrete and specific, and it calls forth a lot of things.

[14:02]

So maybe you could try, I'd like to complete this situation. Now, if you get a physical cut, say, you'd like it to heal. And you'd like it to, the scar to disappear. But in terms of Psychic wounds or karmic wounds, shall we say. You don't want the scar to disappear. I would say you don't even want the wound to heal over. You want to just complete it or something like that. I'm trying to find a word. We could say that karma is how our experience accumulates.

[15:30]

And dharma is how our experience is completed. Yeah, and the center of this is again this simple thing of the four marks. And when something appears, You just recognize it. In its particularity. If it's a negative feeling or thought, you notice it. This is negative. And you don't start arguing with yourself. This isn't really negative or something like that. Das ist negativ, und ihr fangt nicht an, mit euch selbst zu argumentieren. Das ist ja gar nicht wirklich negativ. Whatever it is, you just let it be. Das ist also negativ oder positiv.

[16:38]

Was immer es ist, ihr lasst es so sein. Letting it be and recognizing it, we can say, is completing it. Es so zu lassen und es zu erkennen, könnten wir sagen, ist ein Vervollständigen. And really completing it is to return it to emptiness. Now, when you develop a habit in your present mind, present activity, of completing that which appears, you're changing the way karma accumulates in the present moment. And you're also changing the way your accumulated karma accumulates. functions in your present lived life.

[17:48]

So as I say, you don't want to actually get rid of any Hurts that have been done to you. Yeah, or lost loves. Lost loves can still be present. The way your parents treated you, or whatever's happened to you, can still be present. But it's completed.

[18:52]

It's not universalized. It doesn't color all of your activity. It exists in its particularity. And it doesn't predict your future. Yeah. So when you start the process of completing each moment, karmic moment, it begins to affect how your accumulated karma appears as well in the present moment. We see. We can say that was that and that was then.

[19:54]

It's part of the person I am, whatever that is. Das ist Teil von der Person, die ich bin, was immer das ist. But it doesn't shape my immediate experience. Aber es formt nicht meine gegenwärtige, meine unmittelbare Erfahrung. Now, Sukhiroshi would say the true self is the... is... is... I find the words, the true self is not the self that knows the world as repetitive, nor the self which keeps repeating itself.

[20:56]

So it's a particular kind of idea of self, an experience of self in reality. Buddhist and Zen practice. You know, as I say, you either cook your karma or get cooked by your karma. Now, if your karma keeps reappearing in usual consciousness, repetitive consciousness, Yeah, it cooks you.

[21:59]

But if your karma appears in zazen mind, or in a mind in which your experience is continuously returned to emptiness. And we could say that's a mind without before and after or here and there. As Yuan Wu says, create a mind that has neither before or after nor here or there. That's your problem. There's a problem for you in practice. Yeah, you can take that as an intention and see if you can discover and notice when your mind touches or comes close to neither here nor there or before or after.

[23:18]

While your karma works differently, karma functions differently in such a mind. And that's also to review a bit, to go back to anchoring yourself Locating yourself or defining yourself through breath, mind, let's say, body, world. Yeah, again, if you... If you identify yourself through the self, which is a function of consciousness, if you believe you're thinking in that way,

[24:31]

Yeah, there's always some irrationality. Or, yeah, or you're out of step with the world. Or your karma has too much power. So, again, one of the things each of us should try to do in practice, is at least every day, at least in some sort of little opportunity you have, find yourself located in a breath, mind, body, world. So that if you see a tree, a plant, something, it feels like it's part of your body.

[25:56]

Or both bodies or butterflies or Buddhas in the same world. Mm-hmm. And this again is a mind without before and after, here and there. So the way our habits work again, mental and physical habits, in our memory, and our worldview which carries our karma begin to change and get unstuck in the particularity of your experience.

[26:57]

Which is your experience, not anyone else's. It belongs to you. You know, Sukhirashi, after I've been practicing with him, I don't know, a year, a year and a half or something, He called me into his office. And he said, now I can see you're taking care of your life pretty well. I don't remember exactly what he said, but basically he said, your life has taken some kind of order and clarity. So now, and he said, so now I can start teaching you. He was waiting many times, various things like that, for the moment where I was open to teaching.

[28:01]

And that openness is often found through coming into our own particularity and accepting our own particularity just as it is. That incredible dynamic of accepting just as it is. Now, Sukhirashi was worried about this LSD model with which people practiced. He said the hermit types and the LSD types who come to Zen centers. One really wants to get out of this busy world and they really want a cave.

[29:17]

And they want Zen Center to be as much like a cave as possible. And the other type is looking, it's very similar though, he said, looking for some special experience, some trance-like or special mind. And then he said, people with a simplistic scientific model of the world are looking for some universal truth that someone can lead them to. Or that's like somebody else's experience.

[30:34]

But Suzuki Roshi would always emphasize, your experience is your experience. Don't assume others' Share your experience. As if there's some universal truth from culture to culture. Practice brings us into the particularity of each of our experience. Which is not repeatable. Like a scientific experiment, you can repeat it and prove that this is probably true. But when you really enter into the particularity of your experience, you have to deal, I mean, in a way you have to deal first with a kind of aloneness.

[31:36]

You're alone in this experience. And it has a kind of... It's not measurable. It's not repeatable. It's not going to happen again. You can't reach the boundaries of it. And yet it has a center that moves, that is your experience, that you can have a feeling of completing. And release him. and that they can be let go.

[32:40]

Now, Sashin that's coming up. Much of Sashin, particularly the Sashins of the first few years, our chances to really enter into our accumulated experience. And to begin to cook it in a different kind of mind. And without any idea of trying to heal anything, just to be aware and be clear.

[33:33]

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