So I talked about a homework assignment, right? Do you remember? Did you do your homework? What was it? What was the homework? Feel. I have some new people here this week. So you didn't feel last week? Please start now. Also, there's three piles of paper over here, which you can come and help yourself to, one of each. They're reading lists. You can get them after class. Reading lists, and they're lists of elements of analysis that the Buddhist ancestors have found helpful. in terms of the goal of the project here.

[01:07]

So as I mentioned last week, for me the point of Buddhist psychology is to be happy, to be free from suffering. in the Mahayana tradition to be free from any kind of obstruction to working for the happiness and enlightenment of others. So not being enlightened ourself is an obstruction to working for the welfare of others. Any personal delusion will will be dropped if we really want to help others. And when we drop our personal delusion or, in other words, understand ourself, and thus drop misunderstandings of ourself, then it's easy for us, natural for us, and we have the skill to work for the welfare of others.

[02:23]

So the basic work, I said feel, but actually I probably should have said feel and experience your body, settle into bodily experience, which could also be called mindfulness of the body and mindfulness of feeling. Yes? What I meant by feeling was particularly feel pain. It's okay to also feel pleasure, but especially open to and feel any pain. So the feeling I'm referring to is feeling that comes in these three basic forms, feelings of pain, feelings of pleasure, and feelings of indeterminate feelings, which are sometimes called neutral feelings.

[03:42]

pleasant sensation, painful sensation, and unclear sensation in terms of whether it's pleasurable or painful. So we say painful sensation or pleasant sensation, but actually the feeling is not the sensation exactly itself, but the feeling in a sense is an evaluation of whatever sensation you're having. And it has been taught that in Buddhist psychology, it has been taught that in every moment of our life, in every moment of our experience, we always judge the quality of our experience. And we always judge it as positive, negative, or we're confused about which it is, and our judgment is shaky in that way.

[04:49]

We always come up with a judgment in that way. We are not necessarily conscious of the judgment, and the judgment is not necessarily an object of our awareness, but we do it anyway. This is proposed to us. And I don't know if I did say this or not, but I might have said, after feeling, or not after feeling, but while feeling something, whatever it is, then there's another practice which is highly recommended.

[05:52]

and is practiced on the occasion of feeling pain, and that is the practice of patience. you may be able to tell, and it also has been taught, that even when we're having so-called pleasant sensations, like, for example, a pleasant warm summer breeze, feeling that happen, that might feel positive. But even in that positive sensation, there is some anxiety, some pain, which I discussed with you last time, which is the pain around, what if this ends, or what if a cold wind comes now, and so on.

[07:05]

So when it's a pleasant sensation, actually there is for many of us, most of the time, also some pain or anxiety, even while having a pleasant sensation or a pleasant judgment of what's happening. If it's a painful sensation, then there's the pain of the pain, and there can be additional pain, like, for example, worrying about whether it will last or not, which then gives us fear on top of the sensation, so it can get worse. And then in neutral sensation, we're often annoyed just by and uncomfortable just by the fact of the conditionality of our experience, which we sense to some extent by the very fact that we're having trouble figuring out whether the conditions for the judgment of pain are present or whether the conditions for the judgment of pleasure are present. On some level, we sense our

[08:14]

conditionality and it's irritating and difficult for us. We're anxious about it. We feel threatened and harassed by just being a conditioned being. So actually there always is, almost always there is, there is almost always an opportunity to practice patience. You can't practice patience just with pleasure itself. Now if you can feel something in the moment and be patient with it, that means you can be present with the feeling. Not only do you feel it, but you're present with the feeling. And if you can be present with what you're feeling, then you will have more energy available to your to your awareness than usual because usually we're not

[09:28]

fully feeling what we're feeling and we're also not patient with that basically constant anxiety and pain that accompanies our experience. And the energy which we usually use in diverting ourselves from what we're experiencing is now available for being alive. And being alive and being more alive, we also feel more pain, which again, feeling more pain gives us a chance to deepen our feelings and deepen our patience, which releases deeper layers of energy, which makes us more alive and more aware. And we gradually start to see more and more clearly the situation in which this pain is arising. we get to see more and more clearly the conditions within which discomfort arises.

[10:55]

As we start to see more and more clearly the conditions within which, or with which, I hesitate to say out of which I mean I hesitate to say it but I just did say it but now I retract it because I don't want to say out of which as though the conditions cause the pain but rather the pain depends on certain conditions and without those conditions you will not have the pain However, to say that the pain comes out of the conditions doesn't emphasize that the conditions arise with the pain. So it's all one kind of like interrelated network that one starts to become enlightened about. The all-pervasive pain of the human situation

[12:01]

is one of the conditions for it, the primary condition for it, you might say, is our lack of understanding of ourself. That's a very important condition, but there's many other conditions too. But before I start unfolding this mess, I say it's a mess, but it's only a mess if you're not totally enlightened. If you're enlightened, it's like a very clearly articulated, very vividly and sharply presented jewel canopy.

[13:12]

which completely surrounds you. But backing up again, and now before diving into this, the process is be aware that you have bodily experiences. And bodily experiences are on the gross level, like, you know, I have a man's body or a woman's body. I have arms and legs and so on. That's a gross level. The more subtle level is be aware of sounds, smells, tangible experience, colors and tastes. Be aware of this. Experience these physicalities and then be mindful of and pay attention to the feelings. Feeling the feelings as much as you can. Be patient with the pain. whenever the pain comes up, also be patient with the pleasure.

[14:13]

But again, pleasure isn't exactly something you're painful with, but patient with. So in that case, you're patient with the pain that comes with the pleasure. Being patient with the pain that comes with whatever kind of sensation, we settle into and start becoming clear about the conditions around this experience of pain, And we'll start to notice that the pain has something to do with our idea of our self, our idea of our individuality. These ideas of self, of individuality, and other conditions around it start to become uncovered. we start to notice the kind of self we imagine we have.

[15:14]

We might notice that we think we have an individual, independently existing self which is separate from others. And around this belief there arise feelings of pride and esteem, self-pride and self-esteem, and feelings of self-contempt, and feelings of anxiety and feelings of despair. If you can't see what concept you have of yourself, if you can see feelings of self-pride, what you're proud of, that gives you an idea of what your self is. If you feel self-contempt or hatred of yourself, some idea of yourself is somewhere around there, although sometimes many people might know that they hate themselves but not be clear about what self is they hate. or that they're proud of themselves and love themselves, but not clear about what that self, what that cute little guy is.

[16:18]

But the contempt or pride will help you locate and perceive more clearly what this thing is that you think is yourself. Also, anxiety, which is more subtle and harder to feel, will also help you even more, anxiety is more subtle, but it would also help you more subtly and more precisely experience what you think yourself is. And despair also will help you more clearly envision your self-concept, which you believe in. And if you didn't believe in it, you would not have any anxiety. or despair or pride or hatred of yourself. So these feelings that come up around your feelings, these particular qualities of feeling which come up around the general feeling of pain and pleasure and neutral feelings, they will help you find this image, this idea, this percept of self.

[17:31]

I don't recommend that you go looking for yourself. The self you go look for is not totally worthless, but it's not the self that you really think is yourself. The self that you really think is yourself is the one that you feel is threatened. It's the one that you're proud of. So rather than going looking for yourself, try to find out what it is that you're proud of, what it is that you hate, what it is that's threatened around here, what it is that you're concerned about being threatened. There's some other things that are threatened that you don't care about or that they're threatened. But what are you worried about? What you feel and care is threatened. And what are you in despair of? If you just feel these things, the self will be revealed to you. And this is, what do you call it?

[18:43]

This is the true deluded self. Or this is the true core of your ignorance. the real one, I mean, the one you actually are holding onto, basically almost equivalently to the life which you cherish. In other words, we hold onto life, we cling to life through this self. It is the most important thing to deluded beings, to deluded humans. And the feeling that arises with this concern with this concern is pain and so on so again it going over it again feels that you pay attention to become aware of your body become aware of your feelings be present with them and be patient with them and this this natural spontaneous analysis can occur

[19:51]

You can also, some people do, I don't recommend it, but some people do intentionally apply the analysis to the experience. Like I said, go look for the self or go look for the elements. I think if you just stay present with this, the stuff will be revealed to you. However, I do mention these things to you so that although it may be spontaneous, still the effects of listening to this talk will then guide your meditation spontaneously though. Now, here comes, now we start getting, I'm on the verge of getting into like the really good news. The good news is if you can face this bad news, it may not be bad news for you, some of you may already know about this, but in a sense it's bad news, it's like not just today's bad news, it's this moment's bad news. this moment's bad news about our delusion.

[20:55]

And now that's gone and now this moment's bad news about the constantly delivered news of your delusion about who you are and the constantly delivered news about how much you love yourself and how much trouble that causes you and maybe other people too. It's kind of bad news. But if you can face this bad news and listen to it and read it, if you can sit quietly again and feel how bad this news is, not how bad it is, not like how bad it is, but just precisely how bad it is. Sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's just bad. What is the particular quality of this bad news right now to feel it just as it is? without indulging in it or leaning or avoiding it. Just feel it as it is. What is the bad news? What is the delusion now? How is it coming on? What does it feel like now?

[22:02]

So again, the good news is that if you can face this bad news in this upright fashion, you will start to understand the conditions for the bad news, and you will gradually start to open up to and see the dependent core rising of the bad news. When you understand, when you see the dependent core rising of this bad news, you start to see what we call the truth, the dharma. First of all, you see the truth that you're in pain. And that is a kind of dharma, but to see the dependent core rising of your pain is to see the truth which will set you free from your pain. And not only will it set you free by the truth and free of the pain, but it will, if you're a bodhisattva, enable you to work to help others free themselves.

[23:14]

But we must face the pain in order to actually directly experience and realize its dependent core arising. In a sense, we must love the pain. Not like the pain, but love the pain. Take good care of it. Respect the pain. Respect our deluded ideas of what we are. Respect our clinging. Love our clinging. Love the very thing which is the condition for your misery.

[24:20]

Not like it. Love it. Take good care of it. Become as intimate with the conditions for your misery as you would be with the conditions for your liberation. In fact, becoming intimate with the conditions for your bondage is the main condition for your liberation. Those who are unwilling to face up to their delusions are trapped in delusion forever. Those who do not respect and honor and become intimate with their delusions will be always possessed by them. Liking your delusions, you'll be possessed by them. Liking your delusions is not intimacy with them.

[25:22]

Hating your delusions, you'll be possessed by them. Hating them is not intimate with them. Being intimate with them is just to be present with them and clearly observe them and be patient with them and look again and again as to what they are. This, what I just described, actually is not the whole story, but it's a slight compression of the whole story. And I'll unfold the next layer of it later, but I will now stop and see if anybody's in the room here with me. You may now speak if you wish. You could have before too, but I appreciate you waiting. Yes? What's your name? Joe. Joe. Hey, Joe.

[26:25]

You were talking, I think, about watching the dependent co-arising. Well, it isn't so much watching the dependent co-arising. You watch something. And if you watch it with this presence, and balanced attitude, the dependent co-arising will unfold itself and you will realize it. And then you'll be okay. Because when you see dependent co-arising, you see the Buddhadharma, you see the Buddha. Dependent co-arising is what we would think of as pain and the conditions for pain, they come up together? Yeah, how pain and the conditions for the pain come up together. Turns out you don't ever have the conditions for pain without pain. So pain, the conditions for pain need pain too, just like pain needs the conditions for pain. But some of the conditions for pain we wouldn't mind if they weren't painful.

[27:29]

For example, selfishness we wouldn't mind if it wasn't painful. Matter of fact, we... Okay, yes? You want to say more? That's enough? Anything else right now? Right now? I would like a Buddhist view of what depression is. Buddhist view of depression? It is... If I may ask, what did you say the other day? What is depression? What did you say? It was good. You forgot? Depression is... It's kind of like depression is when you... The problem is I'm trying to remember what she said. But anyway, depression is basically a routinized rejection of pain. Routinized rejection of pain.

[28:31]

To reject pain not just once. but over and over in a routine or like a ritual, repetitive way. If you reject pain in a variety of ways, it doesn't turn into depression. If you mix your forms of rejecting pain, you don't get so depressed as if you do the same style over and over. Like, for example, why me? Why [...] me? Or why her? Why her? Why her? Why her? Or it isn't fair, it isn't fair, it isn't fair, it isn't fair. This kind of thing, this kind of losing your mind over and over, like in a certain rut, particularly in rejecting pain or loss, pain and the loss of pain. I mean, the loss of something that causes you pain. This repetitive throws your whole brain chemistry off so that you get this actual psychochemical imbalance in addition to using your mind in this way.

[29:39]

Sadness is different from pain. Sadness is a way to feel pain. Sadness is to feel the pain. In particular, sadness is what you feel for something you lost that you couldn't feel fully the loss of at the time you lost it. So your psyche, a healthy psyche, will upchuck sadness to give you another chance. Although you don't know what it is that you lost and didn't let go of when you lost it, feeling sadness is a substitute for the original experience of loss. Depression is a continual fighting, distancing yourself from the pain over and over in a number of fairly repetitive ways. So the rejection of the pain is bad in itself. Every time you do it, it distances yourself from liberating itself through the pain.

[30:44]

See, the pain is what keys the system into that something's being held, that something's being constricted, that something's being fighting, that you're not going with what's happening. The pain's a signal of that. If you reject the pain, you're missing a chance. And then if you reject it in a systematic, repetitive way, then the body tells you, you know, you're really off now. So you get the depression. That's why if you're depressed, it's good to try to, what do you call it? What do they have? Diversify. Diversify your rejection plans. try different forms of rejection, and keep active and moving, keep your body moving in symmetrical and complex ways. That helps counterbalance the chemical effects of repetitive rejection of discomfort. Could somebody help me with this?

[31:45]

I guess, can you handle a tilted blackboard? Huh? Huh? Because then I can just leave it like that, tilted. Okay, anything else right now? There was somebody over there. Well, who was it? Yes? Pardon? You spoke or I perceive you to speaking about almost two different kinds of love. What I perceive was a love before the delusion of no self is realized and then the love that comes after the actualization, the realization of no self. Is there any possible way to articulate it? a kind of love, unconditional love, and love that comes from, or, let's say, enlightenment? Well, that's it. It's unconditional. After enlightenment, your love's unconditional. Before, it's conditional. Afterwards, whatever comes up, you give it your full attention, your full upright attention, right off, immediately you give it, you know.

[32:50]

You give your... For example, after enlightenment, you give... Well, not only after enlightenment, but after getting liberated from enlightenment. First you get enlightened, and most people when they first get enlightened get a little stuck. That's called Zen sickness. You can't get Zen sickness unless you're successful. Before Zen sickness, you have non-Zen sickness, which in some ways is better because a lot of people can help you with it. Whereas Zen sickness, you kind of need somebody else, another Zen sick person to help you. When you first get enlightened, most people when they first get enlightened are similar to people before they get enlightened. Before people get enlightened, before people experience liberation, they have a preference for liberation over bondage. And then right away after you get some liberation and some enlightenment, there's a tendency to prefer the enlightenment over the delusion which you have just transcended.

[33:56]

Then when you get over that, which we call zazen, you don't prefer enlightenment over delusion. You see them simultaneously. Very clearly they're simultaneous and you don't have a preference for one over the other. That's unconditional love. Now, prior to that, you do your best to give everything your utmost respect and your utmost attention. You try to pay as much attention to the people who don't like you as the people who do like you. Now, some people actually don't pay much attention to the people who do like them. They take them for granted. And they give the people who hate them a lot of attention. But anyway, whatever your patterns are, you try to develop a sense of giving everything your utmost attention, your utmost respect, your full presence, your full experience. And there's probably...

[34:59]

you know prior to awakening it may be that you have to specialize for a while on those things which you can give your full attention to and then give your full attention to those things and then later you may be able to give your full attention and full respect to everything yes Physical pain? Physical pain is fine. So you have physical pain? So you feel the physical pain. And you feel where it is, okay? And then wherever it is, even though it's someplace, my experience is that even though it may be like in my thigh or in my knee or in my neck, it still has kind of like a center. Try to find the center of it. And also it happens in time. Try to find the present of it and go sit there in the middle of that physical pain.

[36:08]

Sit there means sit there in time and space at the center. Is this concrete or is this abstract? Do you have any pain right now? Well, then it's abstract to you. Do you have any mental pain? Huh? Well, if you don't have any pain, then my conversation will be abstract to you. I personally have pain right now, so it's not abstract to me. So you have to feel something in order for this to be concrete. If you can't identify an actual feeling, then my conversation will be abstract. But if you can hear it now, maybe then when you have pain... I mean, we could induce some pain now. But, you know... You may not want to do that. Would you want to? Want to do it? Pardon? We could do it if you want to. Anybody want to volunteer?

[37:12]

You don't have to. Yeah, you can spin yourself, right. Are there some people here who are experiencing pain? That's good. You're starting to understand the first truth of Buddhism. Yes? Pardon? You're sitting there, you're feeling the pain. Yes. You feel the pain, okay? Feel the pain, then you feel the pain, then you start to practice patience with the pain.

[38:18]

In other words, you try to make yourself comfortable with the pain. It's not like you feel the pain and then start banging your head against it. If it's pain, you know, it's good. It's actually good to make yourself comfortable with the pain. And the way you make yourself comfortable with pain is by practicing patience. Okay? And then as you get more comfortable with the pain through the practice of patience, your body relaxes. And some of the energy which we normally use to ward off pain, which we're not usually even aware that we spend some time warding off our experience of pain, that energy then is freed up and you feel more alive. And when you feel more alive, the pain gets more vivid. I went into a room one time at Tassajara in the summertime.

[39:20]

It was a room. I was visiting one of the students there in her room. It was the summer, and she smoked. And I went into her room to visit her, and she had the window shut, and then she closed the door. And I was in the room with her. I could barely breathe. But this woman was so sick that she was perfectly comfortable in a room with almost no air in it, from my point of view. But for me, this system could barely function at the level of oxygen in the room. So as you become more alive, you become more aware of your constriction around your life. Any kind of holding you have, you feel more. So as you feel the pain, when you feel the pain more, you're more alive. You're more like going out there to meet what it is that's pushing on you and squeezing you. which is actually not so much necessarily the pain.

[40:22]

The pain is actually arising with what that is that's pushing on you. But you go and you meet it and you feel it. Because to feel what's pushing on you hurts. The pushing hurts you, so when you feel the pain, you feel what's pushing. This is the beginning of feeling dependent core arising. Are you there with me? Are you following this at all? When you come up to feel your pain, you feel what it is that's the condition for the pain. You meet the conditions as you meet the pain. The condition is this constriction, this attachment. As you meet it, you may again shrink back or cringe, and that again reduces your life or your energy. In a sense, you feel like you're moving away from the conditions for the pain. your patience has temporarily caved in. You still feel some pain. As you practice patience with this pain, you sort of come upright again and feel it again.

[41:27]

When you feel fairly settled with it, actually pretty comfortable with the present level of awareness of pain, some of that resistance to it drops away because you're coming to meet it, and that resists its energy, and you feel more energy, so then now you can meet it more fully. then meeting it more fully means feeling more pain in a way, but also getting more intimate with what it is that's pressing on you, choking you, which is the mirror image of choking yourself. And again, practicing patience with that and so on until you pretty much start to feel more and more you're meeting, you're coming right up to the conditions for the pain and you're more and more fully feeling it. And the more fully you feel it, And the more energy you have and the more alive and awake you are, you start to see more clearly what it is that's pressing in on you. You start to see the qualities and the conditions that surround this pain. And you will notice that it has something to do with self.

[42:35]

As you start to see that, you start to see the interplay between the type of view you have and the type of pain. And as you start to see the interplay, you start to see the dependent core arising of the pain and the self. Then you start to see the conditions for the arising, the dependent core arising of the self and how that also depends on various things besides the pain. So you start to see the dependent core arising of the self and the pain, the pain and the self, and the self and other things. You start to see the dependent core arising of how it is that you constrict and narrow your sense of yourself and how you then use your sense of self to constrict and narrow the sense of your life. You start to see this. It starts to unfold to you. When you see the whole picture, and the whole picture is not the whole picture of the entire universe, by the way, you don't have to see that. You see the whole picture of your little picture. Because it's the fact that you're telling a little story, a small size, a pint-sized version of your life that's the reason.

[43:46]

What is the little story we tell by which we separate ourselves from other beings? What's that story? You can see that story because it is a relatively short story in comparison to the total causation and conditionality of the entire cosmos. You can see this. You can see, in other words, what you're up to, because what you're basically discovering is how you delude yourself. You're discovering your own delusion. You start to see the dependent core rising of your delusion about self. And the pain brings you into the workshop where you make this little, tiny, narrow self. When you understand the dependent core arising of it, you see the dharma of yourself. You see the dharma of your limited self. The dharma of your limited self is that it's not really a limited self, because it depends on something. And the things that it depends on depend on things.

[44:50]

You get released from this limited story. You get released from the pain. And then, funny thing happens, is you understand everything in the universe then. Then you understand the causation of the universe. But you don't do that by your own power. It's given to you by fully admitting and taking responsibility for the delusion of your own personal power. Are you following this? If you're not, it's not surprising. Because it's hard to stay present with me talking to you like this because you're in a lot of pain. It's hard to stay present with what's happening to you, which you have to do, and also follow what I'm saying, which is also causing your mind trying to grasp it. You're trying to be a good student and understand all this. It's hard to stay present with this. I'm not surprised, but I'm willing to go over it an infinite number of times. Yes?

[45:54]

Yes? You have a question about a tiny aspect of this complex? Yes? Like, when I look into my pain, what I always find, or seem to find, is it always comes with an ideology, or, in other words, another way of saying it to me is always sensation, totally linked, not a cyclical, wrong story I construct. When you look into your pain, you see that it arises in dependence upon an ideology. And what else did you say? What else did you say? A constructed story, yeah. He sees it's related to a constructed story. He said constructed story, but he didn't have to say constructed story. Stories are constructed.

[46:54]

They don't come from, you know, oozing out of rocks. They're constructed by human minds. So he sees, and that is good. That is good. That is good. Please keep up that work. And then if you watch that, you'll see the story. And if you see the story, pretty soon you'll be able to see that the story is actually just a story. The story about ourself is just a story. That's all it is. That's correct. That's enlightenment. There are gaps.

[47:56]

You see gaps in what? Gaps in what? Gaps in the story? Or gaps in the... I would say the complex of pain and story surrounding the pain. Yeah, there's gaps. You mean gaps in the total picture? Yeah, there's gaps in your story. So these seem to be very important to me because they liquefy this entire complex. It doesn't seem so rigid and harsh anymore. Uh-huh. Yes. Well, that's okay if that happens, but it's kind of, what do you call it, it's kind of unfortunate when that happens, in a way. It's kind of unfortunate when that happens because what liberates you is not when the story dissolves, because if it dissolves,

[49:00]

It just comes back later. Anyway, you're not going to get kicked out of Buddha's family if the story of yourself dissolves. It's okay to take vacations. However, it's unfortunate sometimes to do so because what liberates you is not that your story dissolves, but that you see the story when it's in all of its hardness. and sharpness and pain, when you see it just as it is and feel it just as it is, when it's at its worst, sharp, acute, worst part of the story, when that's happening and you feel that completely and you see the dependent core rising of that, it doesn't dissolve. You just understand that it's a very sharp, painful story, and that's it.

[50:04]

Then you're liberated. And so if it comes back again in even a sharper, more painful form, you can work with that too. But if it dissolves, you've got to sort of just sit there and wait for it to come back again because you haven't become enlightened. You've just experienced what we call, you know, in a sense, I don't know what you want to call it, oneness or something. But the oneness is dependent on on the dissolving of your story. And a lot of people confuse that with something which would be conducive to liberation from suffering. And it's not that bad, but it's a little unfortunate because just before it dissolved, you were on the case. You were just about ready to, if you could just settle more completely with it just before it dissolved, then you could have been liberated rather than getting a break, basically, from your meditation. And some people get such great breaks that they really do think that, you know, it's enlightenment.

[51:10]

This is, what do you call it, in Zen they call that makkyo. And one meaning of makkyo is delusion, but another meaning of makkyo is wonderful, you know, marvelous, miraculous. sensation or, you know, imagery that's kind of like, hey, just dissolve. My problems are gone. Rather than understanding right when your problems are at their most intense, that by the very fact that they're intensely painful is exactly, precisely the reason why they're not happening at all. The conditions by which you create extreme pain Those conditions are exactly the reason why that pain is totally ungraspable and totally, infinitely, vast and miraculously free of anything, of itself. But if things are approximately the way they are, then they're sort of dependent on something.

[52:13]

And they still can kind of be something because they're not so dependent. But when they're specifically exactly something, then the way you make them exact is by these particular things that they depend on. And because they're dependent on those things, the thing has no inherent existence. And whatever it is, when it doesn't have any inherent existence, is called, you know, the liberating principle. And particularly that can be yourself. That's the place you break through first. Later you do it with other things too, which I told you I'll tell you more about, but first you start with the personality. It's the first level of breakthrough is realizing the selflessness of the person. Al, did you want to say something? Did you say, isn't seeing the pain's potential non-existence tantamount to something?

[53:19]

Yeah, potential of not existing tantamount to seeing... It is not tantamount to seeing as emptiness. No, it's definitely not tantamount. It is tantamount to what we call nihilism. If you would see it and like slip into that a little bit, then you're a nihilist. Okay? But you're seeing it only potentially. Seeing it potentially, you're still slipping. And then to get into that... If you see it potentially and just feel good about it as a potential, that's called hearing the third noble truth. The third noble truth is, potentially, you people are free of suffering. And the reason why you're free of suffering is that suffering arises. Since suffering arises, it can cease.

[54:21]

Since it arises, it depends on something. Suffering is not like, you know, an ultimate, unchanging, permanent reality. It is something that arises in dependence on other things. And when those things are there, suffering appears. When those things are not there, suffering goes away. So there is freedom from suffering. There is freedom from suffering. And it is connected to seeing how suffering arises. If you get into, you know, if you start believing in your potential freedom from suffering because of the non-existence of suffering, was it? If you start feeling good about, if you start getting some psychological relief by hearing about the non-existence of suffering, okay, that's nihilism.

[55:26]

The difference is that when you're confused and you feel the confusion, and if you would say, oh, that confusion just doesn't really exist, so I'm fine. Okay, that's nihilism. Huh? No, not indifference. It's indifference. No, it's not indifference. You do feel bothered by the pain. Okay, it's bothering you. Then somebody tells you pain doesn't exist, and you go, oh, what a relief. You know, I guess I can take drugs then. Because, you know, since it doesn't exist, what's the problem with taking something to make it go away, for example? Or since it doesn't exist, what's the matter with punching people in the nose? Because that would make me feel good. That's nihilism. Buddhism is more like, you're suffering, you're confused, you're miserable, right? Right? Okay. And it's not about hearing that suffering doesn't exist. and then using that piece of information to give yourself some kind of like little massage.

[56:38]

Buddhism's about, even though you hear the teaching that there's an end to suffering, even though you hear that, you still practice patience. Even with hearing that kind of message, you don't then say, oh, what a relief. Because it doesn't relieve your suffering. it just throws a little twist and excites you a little bit, like, ooh, grace, you know, whatever. I don't know. Various things can happen. It can intoxicate you, in other words. Let me get... Huh? What doesn't work with you, for you? You don't? Oh, you don't believe it. Well, if you don't believe it, then you're a lousy nihilist. but there are some people you go up to them you know and they're suffering and you tell them about that suffering is empty and they go oh that's cool you know they feel better they relax you know but really what they did is they just intoxicated themselves by that very interesting idea don't you think that's an interesting idea that suffering is empty of inherent existence now some of you do the ones who think it's interesting are potential nihilists those of you who doesn't reach you're lucky in a way

[57:50]

But even hearing that, if you hear that and get intoxicated, intoxicated means you get numb. You get excited. And by getting excited and speeded up on that great Buddhist emptiness stuff, you know, you get wonked up and stuff, then you can't feel the pain and how angry you are about other people causing it and stuff like that. If you slow down and feel the pain, then even when you hear this wonderful news that all dharmas are empty, including your suffering, You don't then get excited about that and intoxicated by it. You still feel, yeah, that's great, that's interesting news, but I'm still suffering. In other words, when you hear the news that you can get liberated from suffering, you don't forget the fourth truth. And that is that the fourth truth is not that you hear about the end of suffering and you get liberated just by thinking of that. You get liberated from suffering by practicing the path. And practicing the path is you keep feeling your pain. And not just feeling it and screaming about it, but feeling it and practicing patience with it.

[58:57]

And by practicing patience with it, your eyes open and you see the dependent core arising of the pain and then you experience and realize liberation from suffering. But hearing about it and saying that tantamount to emptiness is, I would say, be careful of that. Sounds like nihilism to me. It's similar to dissolving, yes. Uh-huh. And sometimes you can't help it. Sometimes some stuff dissolves. It's okay. It's just kind of unfortunate. If you were like right up there with your suffering, feeling it and being patient with it, it's kind of unfortunate. You lose track of your, the ground. In other words, it's kind of like, it's kind of like you got this, you got this, you know, you take your, you hear about Buddhism, you know, which says feel your pain. Okay. Feel your pain requires compassion. All right. When you feel your pain, that means you open your heart to your pain.

[60:00]

That means you're listening to your suffering. That means you're Avalokiteshvara. Listening to suffering. And doing Avalokiteshvara, listening to suffering, you might even think, I'm going to keep listening to suffering. I'm going to keep listening to suffering until all beings are liberated. And then you start to sink down into that suffering. You plant the seeds for great enlightenment by that listening to your suffering. You put the seed of enlightenment down in the mud. When you hear about the liberation from suffering and you get excited about it, you take the seed up in the air, the lotus seed, and you hang it in the air. It dries out and blows away in the wind. That's why it's kind of sad. You've got to keep that seed down in the mud until it germinates by the conditions of the mud. It germinates. It's open. The seed's open to the mud. It's open to the suffering. It listens to the suffering. It opens to the suffering. It feels the moisture, and it starts to sprout and come up.

[61:03]

The sprouting is, it starts to grow on not just the suffering and listening to the suffering, but starts to grow by opening up to the conditions for the suffering. And when it sees the full conditions of suffering, it blooms. And that's not the end of the story, but that's the blooming part. Bruce... Yes? Can you hear him? He has a question about dependent co-arising. Yes. Did you hear what he said? Huh? Yes. Did it penetrate your heart? No. No. You've got to scream, Bruce, these things.

[62:08]

I'll say it for you. I've got a microphone. He said that he was thinking about dependent co-arising in terms of the conditionality of subject to object or awareness and objects, right? And that seems to be different from what I'm saying. It's another third in the process, but it's basically what I'm trying to do is connect with what you're saying, but I'm trying to ground that kind of psychological discussion, I'm trying to ground it in feeling. So I'm trying to practice compassion before we get into that meditation practice. Because what I'm talking about is, in fact, the relationship, part of the conditionality here, part of dependent co-arising is the relationship between the self and the other. the self and the other, the consciousness and its objects. That's what I'm talking about. But I want you to first of all feel the pain which you already feel. If you feel the pain and you start sinking down into your pain, you will start to notice that the conditions for that pain are partly the sense of self and having other as object.

[63:15]

It's the other out there, which is not just out there, but all around you, which is globally surrounding you as not you, is pressing on you and causing you pain. So the self-other, subject-object thing is there, but I want you to feel first, and then start to notice the subject-object thing arises in that pain context, and that the pain depends on the subject-object understanding, and the subject-object and the pain are interdependent. You can't have one without the other. You never have this subject-object with the belief in the separation. You do not have that without anxiety. As soon as you have that, you have pain of anxiety. That's the way we're built. Since we're enlightened beings fundamentally, when we believe that we're separate from other people, we feel pain. Our system is set up such that when we believe in delusion, a little red light goes off and says, anxiety, [...] anxiety. Somebody's cuckoo around here. Somebody's crazy. But I want you to feel the pain first.

[64:17]

And then by settling with the pain and being patient with the pain, this little story of self-other will start to come out and dance in front of you. And you'll watch and see how it works. This is a very subtle thing to watch, this subject-object thing. It's very subtle. If you don't settle with your body and your pain first, and you start looking at that, either it's just going to be abstract, or you're not going to be able to stay with it because you're not stable enough. Most of the time, we're wiggling around because we're trying to get comfortable with this pain. So even if we started to study this subject-object thing, we wouldn't be able to see it because we're wiggling too much. We have to sit still first. And sitting still, you start to feel the pain. And then when you feel the pain, you have to sit still with the pain. And if you sit still with the pain, you'll hear more pain. Hearing more pain, you sit still with the pain until finally you're pretty much open to it and not running away and not moving anymore.

[65:18]

Then when you look out, you'll start to see clearly the subject-object dance, the self and other dance. But you're settled now. You're not going to put all around and wiggling and twisting at the same time that you're trying to look. Because you're not settled with this discomfort, which is caused by the very thing you're looking at. Okay? This is all the full story of the Pentacle of Rising. Yeah. I understand. So you, that's why you, that's why, you know, that's why, you know, please come do this thing. called sitting, you know, and then you'll be able to tell whose pain is whose.

[66:23]

Well, yes, but that's not my question. No, but that's my reason. You didn't even ask your question yet. You just said you're having trouble. I'm having trouble. In other words, I'm not having trouble with you, but the trouble comes isn't that with income when you don't know whether... That would be... If I didn't know if my pain was my pain or everybody's pain, I'm sure that would be very painful. But even if I know whose pain it is, it's still painful. So I think it's much worse. I mean, having pain is pretty bad, but not even knowing whose pain it would be, that would be even more painful. So that... Well, check it out. Ask me, for example. Tell me about it, and I'll tell you about it. Check it out. Yes.

[67:24]

Yes. Yeah. and then all of a sudden I'm getting worse pain, worse pain. And I mean, if I were in that extreme, I would be in so much pain, and then I am in so much pain listening to it. Yeah. And I'm feeling, boy, and if people are laughing at me, God, I would feel terrible if I would be talked to like that. But I'm not being talked to like that. But you know what I'm saying? But maybe if I was talking to you, you might feel terrible. Right. So that, yeah. Well, that was your pain, not his. He may... Yeah. Well, then... No, everybody has their own. Other people were having pain at the time, but they weren't having yours. Was anybody having hers?

[68:29]

No, that was yours, so you can go on that from now on. And the gentleman, what's your name? Jason. Jason was temporarily not doing too badly in the pain department, right? Not physical, or mentally? Oh, you didn't hear me ask about that? Yeah, but I said, yeah, but I was also asking if you had any mental pain. Did you have mental pain? Well, that's what you would use then to ground the conversation is to practice patience with that. If you don't have any physical or mental pain, then this conversation is temporarily beyond practical application. Okay? I don't know. I don't know who was next. It was you. Yeah, it's true. It was quite a while ago. I'm coming to a blank when you talk about practicing patience. And I want to know, is this something that has to do with investigating, like getting into the quality of the particular pain?

[69:36]

No. Or is this something else? It's something else. Patience is not analysis. Patience is not getting into anything. Patience is just being present, in the present, with what you're feeling. In particular, with the pain that you're feeling. It's not any kind of getting into it. No. Noticing things about it is wisdom. Once you're, if you can feel what you're feeling, some people can't even feel what they're feeling or be aware of the thing. If you can feel and be aware of your feeling and then be present with that feeling, that will be the most comfortable way to be there. Or put it the other way, the most comfortable way to be with your pain, that's called patience. That's called well-developed patience. Now, again, although that's, at the given moment, the best, the most comfortable way you can be with your pain is not the end of your patience practice, it's just the end of your patience practice in that moment that you found the most comfortable way at the moment to be with that pain.

[70:48]

That's patience. Okay? The most enduring way to be with it, the way you could be with it for closest to ever. Your best bet to live with the pain for the rest of your, for eternity, that would be patience. Now, it turns out if you practice that in one moment, which is all you've got, then in the next moment, your body feels better. Your body feels better with the pain of your existence under the circumstances of belief in independent existence of yourself. So you get another pain, but you're more open to it because you feel more confidence. When you practice patience, you feel more confidence that you can survive what it's like to be alive. So your system says, okay, let's have it a little bit more. Because if your system wants to be alive, so then your patients get pressed a little harder because now the pain is more intense. So in order for the pain, if the pain is more intense, your presence has to be a little bit more well-developed, a little bit more gentle, perhaps a little bit more present than before until gradually you get more and more skillful until finally you can open up to the full extent and still be present.

[72:00]

Then when you start to notice things, This is called, from the beginning you actually start noticing, this is the wisdom eye opening because right there now that you're present with your pain instead of wiggling, you start to open up and see. And not only do you see, but you start to see clearly because you're not wiggling anymore. And you start to see the conditions and the characteristics and the qualities. But this isn't that you're delving into it. You just naturally, your eye opens and you start to see. This is the beginning of the liberation from the pain. But patience is... in the end almost exactly the same as ultimate patience and ultimate wisdom actually converge. But before that time, they're different. The wisdom's emphasizing the discernment of the conditions. The patience is allowing you to have the seat in the middle of the pain of existence as a separate individual. The patience is giving you a good and quiet seat in the middle of the pain of believing that you're separate from other beings.

[73:06]

Believing that you're separate from other beings is extremely painful. But one of the terrible things about it is that it's also extremely subtle. So it's easy to ignore. Just like your true nature is easy to ignore, you can also ignore the extremity of the pain. Patience is helpful. Yes. No, excuse me. You're next, Barbara. Sorry. I have a question. It's one of the biggest in the way. The pain that you're looking at, rather than a synthetic, is really easier to suffer. It's not that it's a belief. Well, you know, I would suggest that you try to stay with the original part of your question about the wiggling before you get into dependent co-arising.

[74:17]

Let's hear about the wiggling. You're looking at a belief. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Just a second. Are you settling your pain? Or have you wiggled away from the pain already? Yes, so there's some discomfort in the fast vibration of thoughts. You feel some discomfort about it? Yes, it is. It's sometimes hard to identify. Excuse me. See how she slips from identify the pain to identify what's going on. You don't have to identify what's going on yet. All you have to do is identify something simpler, and that is that you feel uncomfortable with what's going on.

[75:23]

See, that's very good. Notice the difference between identifying what's going on and noticing that you feel uncomfortable with whatever it is. If you try to figure out what's going on before you notice that you're uncomfortable with it, you will not be able to see what's going on. So it's like this, something's going on, you know, and between whatever that is, between whatever that is and me is I'm uncomfortable with it. Conditionality is annoying. It's change, it's all kind of crap, you know, from the point of view of me being this nice, stable identity. The stuff's happening. Between me and Mary is something not too difficult to spot, namely discomfort. If you try to look over there at what's happening without looking at the discomfort, it's just going to be in your way. The discomfort is going to block you from seeing it. You want to see it because you know something about it is bothering you. Something's threatening you. I would like to see what it is, you know. But you can't because you're not worth it this, which is pain. If you would just forget about that for a second, even though you can't forget about it because it's annoying you, but feel the pain and the consequence of it.

[76:30]

Something's happening. Pretty soon, if you watch this, you can start to see what's happening out there. I can see them in my head much better, you know. But if I don't look at this and I try to look, if I try to look beyond my hand, you know, and beyond this pain and try to see what it is, I will not be successful. But if you get very familiar with this thing, you can see through it. It's like putting a piece of gauze up in front of your face. When you first put it up, you think it blocks your vision. But if you just stay present, after a while, you can see through it. Very clearly. It's different than if it wasn't there. It's true, the world is different. Since we have feelings, and it would be if we didn't have them, but we do have them, we look at what's happening through feelings. And these feelings are telling us that something's happening over there, and what's happening over there is we're screwing up out there, we're messing around. But you can see through this gauze, and you can see that you're messing around, but it has to be through this gauze. And if you don't notice the gauze, and you keep moving around all the time, then the gauze is really going to get in your way.

[77:34]

Try to see over it. It's not going to be able to. So don't try to see what's going on. Don't try to practice wisdom before you start practicing compassion with your feelings. And that's hard. It would be neat to just sort of like jump out there and have some wisdom and see through it and be free. But you've got to do this dirt work first. Get down in the dirt and stop wiggling. Sit still and listen to this and feel it. And gradually you'll be settled and you'll be still and also you'll be able to see through what is now obstructing your vision. The next layer, then, that also obstructs things, but you get to that later. First of all, I want this to be, you know, practical. Well, yeah, sure. That was a good one. Give them a second choice now. Second chance. For me, sometimes the wiggling is not self-judgment. It's not compassion. The wiggling is not self-judgment.

[78:49]

The wiggling is not self-judgment. No. The wiggling is not facing the self-judgment, which is painful. The wiggling is not facing the pain around the self-judgment. Self-judgment is not wiggling. Something's happening. What we're talking about right here is face the pain of your self-judgment, and then you'll see how the self-judgment dependently co-arises. But self-judgment itself is not wiggling. Self-judgment is synonymous with pain, but it's not wiggling. Wiggling is this impatience, unwillingness to feel your pain. That's what the wiggling is. Wiggling is impatience. Wiggling is chickening out from being a courageous, present, suffering person. Wiggling is lack of compassion for your own experience and for other people's suffering.

[79:55]

That's what wiggling is. We've all got pain. We've all got pain. Now, let's gradually sit still and be present with it. That's called not wiggling. Then you can start to notice this self-contempt, self-judgment, blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah. Yes, sir? What's your name? Mort? Some of us have spent our lives running away from pain. Some? Yes? No. It won't suddenly fall away. Some of it will keep happening. The big one is going to keep happening.

[80:57]

The great compulsion of believing and making yourself separate from others. That will keep happening. But If you practice patience with your pain, the compulsiveness and obsessiveness and rigidity and routinizedness of these compulsions will start to come up and dance in front of you. You'll start to see. And you'll start to see the dependent core rising of the compulsions. And you'll start to see, eventually, that compulsions are not compulsions. That compulsions are actually life. Wonderful, glorious, brilliant, happy life. But the price of seeing how beautiful compulsiveness is is practicing patience with the results of the compulsiveness which is not understood and which is believed in, particularly the compulsiveness of believing that we are independently existent separate beings. That's the big compulsiveness. All the other ones are just little sprouts on that one. But then when you see it,

[82:01]

then in a sense it drops away. But not because you did anything, but it wasn't really there all that much in the first place because it depended on other things. What was there before was the dependent core arising of the compulsiveness. But because we don't see the dependent, we look away from the brilliance of the dependent core arising of our compulsions, we let them be like rocks. But we have to do this hard work first, right? You understand? Same homework, except that now the librarian has been so kind as to put some of the books on reserve. There's two full shelves, she said, of books that you can go and distract yourself from the homework by reading. But if you do read those books, try to keep doing the homework while you're doing it. Because, in fact, the challenge is to be able to do this homework and feel this pain while you're talking to yourself and others and while you're reading and writing.

[83:06]

That's the ultimate test. It's easier to do it when you're quiet. So part of the time, please practice being present with what's happening in silence. It's easiest when you sit still and be quiet. That's easiest. But try to practice it also when you get up and start moving and talking to people. and people are talking to you, try to keep doing it then. But it's hardest then, so you'll be probably less successful doing it in conversations and reading and writing than when you're sitting silently. And you'll be less successful when you're moving than when you're sitting still. So do it when you're sitting still, do it when you're back to being quiet, but also try to do it throughout the day, throughout all activities, and you'll start to start the process of liberation of the universe will begin with your effort. OK? Will you do your homework, please? What? Thank you. It's also my homework, OK? I do the same practice.

[84:07]

This is a do as I do kind of thing. Yes? Oh, yes. Remind me about if there's somebody here from Berkeley I have a floppy disk. What is it? Is that what it is? I have a disk that would like to go to Berkeley, if someone would be willing to take it. And also, what? No, tomorrow, until Saturday. If somebody can deliver it, can somebody in Berkeley, anybody in Berkeley that can deliver it on Friday? Can deliver on Friday? Okay. Friday is better, I think, a little bit better. The other thing is, if anybody's ever listened to any of the tapes that they sell of my talks, I'd like to hear which you think is the best ones because they're going to distribute them. They want to know which ones to distribute because there's several. So if you give me feedback on that, I'd appreciate it. Huh?

[85:10]

I'm talking to people who have already listened to them. If anybody hasn't listened to them, I wouldn't recommend you start now. Just do your homework. But in the past, when anybody who listened to the tapes in the past, I'd like to hear which you think are the best, okay? From now on, no more lectures. Just do your homework, okay? They are intention.

[85:45]

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