So if it's okay, tonight we could study the second of the three cumulative pure precepts, the practice of all good. And in Sanskrit that's called, what is it? kusala-dharma-saṁgraha, assembling or gathering together all the wholesome dharmas, all the wholesome things. Here it's called the precept of fulfilling wholesome dharmas. And again that word, fulfilling, is one translation of that word Setsu, which I told you about, which means all these things, many, many things.

[01:04]

And the interpretation here of the word Setsu, which is translated on this text as fulfill, but remember some of the other words I used for Setsu? Nurture. Nurture. Assist. Assist. Respect. I don't know if that was one of them. Guide. Oversee. Oversee. Take. Take. Take? No, I think take responsibility for. Not just take. Oh, the radical that makes up the word. One part of the radical is the hand. The other part of the radical is three years. So... Anyway, the interpretation of it here is that in Japanese, the interpretation is the word which means to practice. But the word practice, the word they use for practice in Zen often is called shugyo.

[02:16]

And the shu of shugyo, it means to practice, but it means how you take care of your life. how you nurture and care for your life, how you conduct your life, how you organize your life. So, it has to do with how you practice. In this case, fulfill means how do you practice all wholesome things. And Dogen Zenji's comment here is, this is the teaching of anuttara-samyak-sambodhi. This precept is the teaching of anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, and it is the path of the practicer and what is practiced. And the previous...

[03:23]

pure precept of fulfilling or nurturing rules and laws. That was the abode of all the Buddhas. That is the source of all the Buddhas. Now, this is Dogen Zenji's interpretation of what these precepts mean. which is not the same as other possible interpretations. So other possible interpretations of this precept, maybe you might say, anyway, other possible interpretations of all good are, which is not different from what Dogen teaches other places, but Practicing good, the first element in practicing good, the first point in practicing good is to abandon attachment to the body.

[04:29]

And the second element in practicing good is to practice all virtue, all virtues. or to practice virtue by skillful means. So Dogen tells his monks some places, he says, well, the first thing you got to do in practice is give up all attachment.

[06:00]

And the first thing that we're attached to, and also the first thing to give up attachment to, is the body. And the way to give up attachment to the body is to study it. For example, he recommends examine, see if you can find the beginning or the end of the body. So one method like that will leave you, if you do it thoroughly, will leave you with the question exactly, what is it that you're attached to?

[07:13]

And at the extreme of that question, you will not be able to find anything. and therefore you will be free of your attachment. Now another way it's done sometimes is to analyze, instead of just look for the beginning and end, another not entirely different way is to analyze the body. And so one theory is if you look at all the different aspects of the body in detail, when you first look, you might say, well, it's kind of a cute face. And actually, the lips are pretty cute, too, and so are the eyes and so on.

[08:22]

But if you carry on the analysis long enough, it may be that you will find out that you actually can't find much that you really are that interested in being attached to. And I imagine we could have some discussion about that. Like if you think of some people's lips, Some people have got some pretty interesting lips, you might think. I don't know if I'd ever or not be interested in those lips. Isn't that getting away from just analyzing it? Pinpointing me, analyzing me. That's a sensation. It's quite different. We give sensation, not analyzing what lips are, what your lips are, but analyzing the sensations that lips are capable of.

[09:42]

Oh yeah, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about, first of all, look at your own body and see if there's any part of your body that you really think is worthwhile being attached to. or in some part of your body that you really think is you. Anyway, one of the ways this precept is interpreted is by that kind of analysis. If we're attached to our body, it interferes with our practicing good. On the other hand, you can't be too extreme on that and be so unattached to your body that you don't take care of it, and then you don't have a body that can help you do practice. So you take care of your body enough so it's available for practice, and you don't put energy into making your body... Uh-oh.

[10:53]

What? Like, for example, you wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to make your body beautiful. Like, you know, doing exercises so that it would be shaped nicely and so that it would be a nice color or something. This is California. Well, we have the best-looking people in the world, right? Or, not the best-looking people, but we have the people who spend probably the most time making themselves good.

[11:59]

yeah so there's a kind of a balance point there where you you learn what it means to take to maintain your body like you know maybe if you don't take care of your body your back will go out and you won't be able to sit so maybe you have to do a few sit-ups enough sit-ups so that your you know your back won't go out or Maybe you have to walk some so that your back won't go out or something like that. Yes? It sounds really cruel to me. It sounds like a really harsh behavior with the body. It sounds like it's only allowed if it's for use. It sounds to me like, you know... if you take care of your body just because if not you get sick or whatever it takes to just have it with yourself then it's kind of okay, but not more than that. And, I don't know, my idea is kind of like that

[13:09]

It's the same kind of respect that I do want to develop towards other beings and towards the whole universe. I want to develop also with my own body, so I'm going to honor my body. I'm going to be fully my body, and I do want to... I can relate to the idea of admitting my own clinging to it. You can relate to admitting your own clinging? That makes sense to you? Yeah, that makes sense. It doesn't really make sense to try to... I mean, the body is what gives me life in this realm, in this world, and so I'd rather feel something like a thankfulness towards it rather than trying to overcome it all the time with tears. I don't know, it's just what pops up in my mind when I hear you talking, man. But thank you for saying that, because I think that, well, I don't know, I think that some other people might have swung to that side that what I'm talking about is being disrespectful to your body.

[14:16]

So what is, what is the way to respect or honor your body? What would be the most respectful thing you could do with the body? Listen to it. Hm? Listen to it. Listen to it. Anything else? Take the middle way. Take the middle way would be, would be good, yeah. Anything else besides listening to it and taking the middle way? Nourishing it. Nourishing it. What's the most respectful way to nourish it? Feed it. Feed it. And what's the most respectful way to feed it? Sensibly. What? Sensibly. Sensibly. And how are you going to find out what's sensibly? Watch and listen. Watch and listen. So, watch and listen, we've heard, as fundamental to nurturing and feeding it sensibly, right?

[15:21]

Certainly it's good to feed it sensibly and nurture it sensibly, and then watching and listening. And I also think feeling it is very important too. How about smelling it? Smelling it? Using it. Using it. Using it. How do you mean using it? So exercise it and also exercise it in maybe the middle way exercising it. Sensible in maybe the middle way. Okay. Okay. Are you with sensible being the middle way, Sandra? Me? Yeah. Yeah. So the middle way to exercise it and to feed it would be come from studying it, from listening to it, smelling it, tasting it.

[16:29]

Tasting it? Can you dig tasting it? Touching it. Touching it. And looking at it. Actually, it's dangerous, isn't it? Well, touching it means sense, you know, use a sense of touch, like to tell, you know, whether you use a sense of touch partly to tell how you're sitting on your cushion and how your feet are on the ground, that kind of thing. Yes, you always have the sensation of touch. Touch is the most fundamental sensation. And what I would propose to you is that if you do listen to it and look at it and study it in all these dimensions, that as you do that thoroughly you will find out that most of what we think the body is does not exist.

[17:32]

So the first approach is actually verify for yourself that the body doesn't exist in any of the categories that we usually go around with. The Buddha never talked about a body with arms and legs and so on, except maybe in a narrative exposition. The body is fundamentally being hit in five ways. That's what the body is. The body is that which is hit in five ways, and it is the being hit in five ways. It's being hit by electromagnetic radiation, by mechanical waves, by chemical reaction, gaseous reaction, and pressure and thermal reactions. Those five sensitive modalities which I translated into those physical things. It's being hit by those by those physicalities And the body is sensitive to those things Most bodies are sent most human bodies are sensitive to those things then we have areas of concentration for those sensitivities Our whole body is sensitive to light, but particularly we're sensitive to light around this part of our body most of us some people are

[18:53]

no more sensitive here than they are in the back of their neck. Those are called blind people. And so on. That's what the body is, according to Buddha. It's that which is hit by that stuff. Our imagination that the body has a head on it and stuff like that, this is just our image or our concept of the body. It turns out that what we conceive of as the body and we have different concepts of it, but what we conceive of the body is, usually our conception is somewhere around the neighborhood where the actual body is being hit and actually living. But even if you analyze that, even seeing that or meditating on that, you've already lost the usual body that people think they have. And you can get around the world and function very nicely... with this new idea of body, but if you analyze that one, that one also won't hold up.

[19:56]

So one mode of giving up attachment to the body, there are many modes of giving up attachment to the body. One mode is by analysis and finding out that there isn't any such thing. The other one is by actually looking at what is sensible. how much exercise is actually appropriate considering what is most important to you. Oftentimes we forget when we're taking care of our body what's most important to us in life. Have you noticed that? You know what I'm talking about? Like pumping iron in the gym for hours a day? Yeah, that would be one example. Yes, what's most important in life?

[21:05]

This is a Buddhist precept, right? This one about giving up attachments to the body. So it's in the context of some value system. So in that value system, what is most important? Awakening for all sentient beings. So sometimes we lose track of that, and then we use our body after having forgotten that, becoming distracted from that. This body is the opportunity for awakening. Attachment to the body, which is the opportunity for freedom from attachment. So attachment to the body is antithetical to the process of being free from attachment to it. Yes.

[22:06]

It sounds like the body has its own life. Pardon? It sounds like the body has its own life. Has its own life? Yeah, but I don't actually feel that way. It's like more... It seems like we're attached to the body, as if the body is something out there that we are not it. It sounds like that. Yeah, but... That's what it's like when you're attached to your body. That's exactly what it's like. And that way of thinking about things is what we're supposed to, like... That's the first example of practicing good, is to get over that one. Yeah, but why in the way of abandoning it rather than just taking it really in, making the body just living in that body, really being with it? Right, right, exactly. Be in the body so much so that you don't have any attachment to it. Why shouldn't I have attachment? I didn't say you shouldn't. I'm just talking about how to become free of it.

[23:09]

I'm not saying you shouldn't have attachment. I'm just saying that the first practice of good that I'm bringing up, the first wholesome practice is becoming free of attachment. I'm not saying you shouldn't be attached. I'm telling you how to be free of attachment. I think I just wonder... If your car is parked in the parking lot, I don't tell you your car shouldn't be parked in the parking lot, okay? When I give you instruction about how to drive your car out of the parking lot. I don't say it shouldn't be there. But if you want to drive your car, I'm telling you how to drive the car. So if I say, go get in the car and start it and drive it out of the parking lot, it doesn't mean I'm telling you that the car shouldn't be in the parking lot. So... If you have attachment to your body, I'm not telling you you shouldn't be attached to your body. I'm telling you now that the practice of good, one of the practices of good, is to become free of your attachment. Now, if you don't see any advantage of being free of attachment, then we can talk about that.

[24:13]

What's your question? In the way of getting free of the attachment of the body, it's very easy to kind of try to get rid of the body. Yeah, but that's attachment. Yeah, but that's attachment to the body. You wouldn't try to get rid of the body. Nobody who is free of the body tries to get rid of the body. The only people who try to get rid of the body are people who are attached to the body. People who aren't attached to the body just enjoy it as a launching pad for compassion. Well, maybe it is a question of language which triggers this feeling of you abandoning attachment of body, you know, it feels like... Yeah, right. And what comes up there is exactly what I'm talking about, that stuff.

[25:16]

that you think if you're going to abandon something that that's disrespectful to it. For example, abandoning life, you might think that that would be disrespectful to life. But actually, abandoning life is the way to live as a Buddha. Buddhas abandon life in order to save all life. You abandon the body in order to save the body. You abandon the body in order to become free of your attachments to it. Your attachments to things are the way you... By being attached to things, you can be cruel to them.

[26:29]

You can't be cruel to things if you're not attached to them. Yes? Am I correct in interpreting your comments saying that the real problem is having a subject-object division between yourself and your body, yourself and whatever you're attached to, versus having a unity in that perception? Yeah, that's the basic problem, right. So it's actually by being one with your body and being close with your body that you remove your attachment to the body? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Except the way that you were describing it before, actually the method that you were describing was more the way I understood it, exploring that sense of division, exploring how you feel suddenly from your body and different parts of your body that you like or you don't like, the different sensations, rather than sort of... Rather than what?

[27:39]

than try to make yourself one with your body. But if you try to make yourself one with your body, you're doing exactly the same thing. You're feeling separate by trying to make yourself one. Right. There's no way for a human being to experience oneness except through separation. So there's millions of ways to do that, but you have to... That's why we start with repentance in this class. You have to start with repentance. You have to admit that you think you're separate from things. There's nothing you're aware of that you don't think you're separate from, because you can't be aware of things unless you're separate. So what the body that you think you have is the body you feel separate from. So you have to admit that you feel separate in order to achieve oneness. But another way to achieve oneness is to just, instead of trying to make yourself one with it, just study anything. And if you study anything, you'll fall through the separation.

[28:40]

Pretty soon there won't be anything out there to be separate from. Or another way is to study the separation. But I'm starting with just this one. Maybe we shouldn't spend the whole time on this. I'm not recommending, and I have not heard of recommendations in Buddhism of trying to make yourself one with things. Making yourself one is not your job. That's already established. That's the way things are. Things are already one. But we have separated them. So we have to undo what we've done. So rather than try to make yourself one, which is already established, what you need to do is admit that you've made things two. If you admit that you've made two things two, you will see that your activity won't hold up and you'll fall back to your original state, which is oneness. And you say, we haven't really successfully made things two, even though we think we have.

[29:50]

We've only made things two in our mind. We've only separated ourselves from our body in our mind. Our body has no way... Our body doesn't think it's separate from us. Our body doesn't think it's... Our body doesn't even think we're attached to it. It just, as a matter of fact, our body is so responsive, you know, and so stupid, it just changes shape according to what we do based on our attachment. It doesn't say, okay, I don't want more to eat. It doesn't say, I'm not going to get fat. It doesn't say, I'm not going to get sick. It behaves very lawfully. Feed it poison, it does all these neat tricks. Feed it too much food, it does all this stuff. It passes stuff off, there's all these pores and stuff. It's very responsive. It doesn't have any agenda. It's just a servant of our mind. It's a wonderful servant. And it gives us great feedback all the time. So we should honor it. And we should honor it is to pay complete attention to it because we are aware of it.

[30:55]

Just be aware of how we're aware of it. But the good way to be aware of it is summarized under abandon attachment to it. Give it up. Because we're misusing the body. The body's offered to us because of... Excuse the expression. I don't want to get into this, but I'll say it anyway. Because of all the virtue we've done in innumerable past lives, we've got this human body, which is an opportunity to become Buddha. We have this body which is an opportunity to become someone who is free of attachment. So it's kind of unfortunate that then when you get a body which is an opportunity to become free of attachment, that we use it as something to attach to. So we don't actually abandon the body, we abandon the idea of it, right? We abandon attachment to the body, we abandon attachment to the idea of body.

[32:00]

then the body can do this wonderful service to us. Namely, it can provide a biological base for this event called unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment. Which is what this precept's about. It's about unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment. And it's the path of the practitioner and it's what's practiced. It's all this one thing. Now, It's somewhat confusing. You seem to, you change. It's almost like you have weird contexts. You talk about a biological basis for enlightenment. Well, since the body is not what we think it is, in other words, you know, it's not. We have this idea of having a head and stuff, but you're saying, that's just our imagination. It's not really that way. You don't have the head, you don't have the ordinal blades. So we have this other kind of body, which is what is hip. Yes. So, you know, why do we need a biological basis for life?

[33:15]

And I realize this is a little bit theoretical, but, you know, if we're just something, if we're just an opportunity to be hip, or that which is hip, then biology is totally something else. Biology is about, you know, blood and bone and things like that. Yeah. Well, consciousness is a biological event. Okay? You could call it that, but I don't see why. You don't see... Well, anyway, we have living beings. Living beings are conscious. And When you have this thing that can be hit and you have things hitting it, this interaction between the hit and the hitting gives rise to consciousness. Consciousness is born from this interaction of materiality. This consciousness then is there if you have a living being.

[34:17]

And living being sometimes suffers. If the living being has evolved to the level of being a human being, the living being has a consciousness which can imagine things as separate from itself, or it can imagine things as external. And in relationship to that, for example, it can imagine death as external and therefore a self is born. And then we have basically a human being. And then we have basically a miserable creature because it feels separate from that which it's born from, and it feels anxiety of various degrees and misery of various degrees. This misery evokes, brings up out of the situation what's called awakening, to set the being free of the misery which arises from its biological processes, its conscious processes.

[35:22]

Practice of good is that which benefits beings, in other words, helps beings become free of the misery which arises in conjunction with their functioning. And one of the miseries we have is we suffer a lot because we're attached to our body. And we suffer because we imagine separation between what isn't separated and we imagine separation from our death, which is actually what causes us to be. Without our death, and without being able to imagine it and be separate from it, there wouldn't be a self. There's no sense of self among creatures who don't imagine their death as external to themselves. That's just biological reality, which is fine, but those beings do not suffer the way beings that have a sense of self suffer. However, They're connected to the beings that have a sense of self, therefore they share in the suffering.

[36:25]

Just like the body shares in the suffering of the person, the imagined person who brutalizes it. And so do our dogs and cats share in our suffering, even though they don't create it quite the way we do. Especially the dogs are very empathic. So when they see us miserable, and also when they see us kicking them, they feel bad. And we kick them because we kick ourselves. So in that way we're very, you know, fair. We are cruel to other people just like we're cruel to ourselves. So basically, in that way human beings are generally fair. I generally find that. And you may see some people, you think, oh, they're really mean to other people, really nice to themselves. But when you get to know them, you realize they do the same thing to other people. They do it themselves. What about the other way around? You mean to yourself, but you're not mean to people. I haven't seen that myself.

[37:27]

Have you? I've never seen it myself. I've never seen a person who is mean to themselves and not mean to people outside. I've never seen somebody who's mean to herself and not mean to people outside. I know there's that idea, you know, like, I don't know what... I know there's that... Self-deprecating person. Yeah, the self-deprecating person who's, you know, or maybe you imagine the mother, you know, the mother who's really nice, really cruel to herself, self-deprecating, hating herself, and really nice to her kids. I don't see that. But maybe some of you have seen that. I have myself. I see people mean to themselves and mean to their kids. And then they're mean to the kids, and the kids learn how to be mean with aid of that. And then they learn how to be mean to themselves and they're mean to their kids. That's what I see. And this teaching of practicing good is to reverse that process.

[38:31]

It's to start being nice to yourself. I mean, like, really nice. Like, you know, like... Be so nice to yourself that you could even let go of your attachment to yourself. That you would know that you're so nice to yourself, you don't have to be attached to yourself to prove it. That you could just take care of yourself, you could just take care of your body, moment by moment, by mindfulness and intelligence. which you're going to apply in a very consistent, steadfast way, rather than just once in a while, and then do sort of unmindful, disrespectful things most of the time. No, that you actually care so much about taking care of all things, your own life, your own life situation, and particularly your life situation which you see as an opportunity to become free and happy and kind,

[39:33]

that you really do take good care of yourself without going over into overdoing it and becoming attached to it and trying to build it up as though it's going to last a long time. Use this body as a launching pad for enlightenment. Yes. When I think about how to take care of myself, I have some feeling that I have an innate sense of what that is. But I also have a feeling that much of what I might identify as taking care of myself is really socialized. So let me think of working up a big sweat. Like I could see myself saying, well, yeah, working up a big sweat's good because, you know, that's the normal way a human body cools itself when it's overheated. And I could see myself saying, well, if you've overheated your body, maybe you're doing something to your body that's maybe more stressful than it really should be.

[40:39]

And I could see maybe having been socialized that sweating is like really overworking. So I'm Is it sort of, there is an innate sense there, and if I just look close enough, I'll know when it's right to sweat and when I'm sweating too much, or, you know, I'm just using this as an example, but is there sort of this innate sense the body will give you a clear message, this has been okay, that other thing was not okay? I don't think so. I think it's more like you listen to your body. There isn't like a final message that you've done the right thing and that's it. It's just you get feedback all the time from your body. If you listen to it all the time, you get some feedback. The idea that it's good to build up a sweat is a concept you have. That's not really listening to your body. But it's also good to realize, I've got this concept, but this kind of exercise is good. Or this kind of food is good. But listen to your body. Smell your body. Taste your body. Feel your body. Look at your body. Study your body. That's the way to find out.

[41:41]

And it isn't an innate sense. You know, like, this is the right thing. The body isn't that kind of thing that has got a message like that for you. It gives you all kinds of feedback. But somewhere in there, there's a... It sounds like there's got to be this judging function that says, you know, that thing I've been doing in my body... I'm starting to get the message that it's not right and that I shouldn't do it anymore. You do get, I think you do get messages from your body that something is, maybe not not right, but your body gives you strong sensations sometimes that makes you question what you're doing. Like it gives you a strong sense of pain or your body starts to smell rotten or something like that. You get this feedback. and then that probably makes you think hmm i wonder or your body you know or you or your or you stop doing something for a while and you feel really good you think hmm that's interesting i don't think there's an innate anything including an innate sense but there is feedback from your body that something's wrong pain

[42:45]

and other kinds of sensations make you question what you're doing. Like zazen. I'm saying that because right now I'm feeling some pain and then maybe my mind is telling my body, well, stillness is okay too. When I'm sitting zazen, maybe not right now, but when I'm sitting zazen, on one hand I'm feeling pain and to just listen to my body, if that was my practice, then I would probably not sit Zazen, like I said, every time I felt pain, I would possibly say, well, this is a message from the body saying that, you know... No. That's your mind saying that if your body says pain, that you should do something. Your body's not telling you that. Your body's giving you nice information all the time. But the idea that you get pain, that you should do something, is not your body telling you that. The body does not tell you to move your leg. Your body has no idea of a leg. Well, but doesn't the body, like, if I put my finger against a hot stove, I don't know that I say, wow, that's hot.

[43:48]

I'd probably burn my finger. I mean, my body seems to take over and jerk away from that pain. Well, you're not talking about that. We're talking about you sitting on a sofa thinking very complicated things. We're not talking about you taking your finger away from it. Okay, but now I'm thinking that if I'm... Nobody's got any problem with that kind of stuff. I never bring anything about that. What you're talking about is a very complicated mental thing. You're not talking about the body. This is not the body you're talking about. I'm thinking, though, that... You're thinking. This is not body stat. Stop it. You're talking about decision making. Right. But I'm trying to give an example here, and the only way I know how to give examples is to think. And that example is that... When maybe I'm not being entirely aware of the way my body is acting, if I'm feeling an uncomfortable sensation, I might move without having thought about it. In other words, the body seems to have the sensation. No, you always think before you do anything. Whether you're aware or not. Your thought comes first. Your body doesn't go around doing stuff.

[44:49]

You think first, and then the body gets animated by that thought. And a lot of things we think of are in response to body sensations that get translated into concepts. We play with the concepts, and then we think by the way we play with the concept, that creates a thought. And that thought then motivates, in some cases, a physical gesture or a vocalization or more thought. And given the sensations we get from our body, which we then interpret in terms of concepts and then forms thoughts, then we do more physical things. And by studying this process, the physical things we enact from our thinking become more and more wholesome. But that could only be as a result of having thought about what our body is telling us. All wholesome action and unwholesome action are nothing but thinking about what our body is telling us. or what our mind's telling our mind.

[45:50]

Our mind tells our mind things and our body tells our mind things. Our mind conveys concepts to the mind which are concepts. The body conveys information which gets converted into concepts and we think about it. That's always happening, whether it's wholesome or unwholesome. Studying this process leads to more and more wholesome things until actually things get so wholesome that you actually start practicing and understanding. And then your behavior, the thought patterns which are forming in your mind, are so well understood that the postures that come out of the body are compassion. The shape of your body then becomes a vehicle of compassion because the mind that leads to these body postures is a mind of love and peace and understanding. But always, everything you do with your body is coming from how you think about things. Yes, definitely. But the decision about what to do about this stuff, these actions, are thinking.

[46:52]

They're not the body. The body is just dealing you cards all the time. I guess I still don't see the foundation or the basis on which those thoughts get turned into judgments which lead to wholesome rather than... ...involve judgment. They're always judging. It's a, what do you call it? What's the foundation for the decision, the final decision that says wholesome or unwholesome? If the foundation is not an innate sense of what is good or right or wholesome for the body, if that's not an innate sense, then where's the foundation for that judgment? The foundation for the judgment is not innate. It is historical. Okay. So like today, you might think it would be a good thing to be, you know, called cute. But maybe 20 years ago, you might have thought it was an insult.

[47:53]

The things that lead to what you consider to be beneficial or good for your life, those are wholesome things. The things you think don't lead to that are unwholesome. But wholesomeness and unwholesomeness are not innate or fundamental things. They're conditioned things. They vary according to circumstances. There's no fixed good that we can judge. However, there is freedom from whatever seems to be happening at any time in history. There's always a possibility of freedom from whatever the setup is. And the freedom comes from the way things are, which we don't have to make. The way things are already is that everything's one and everything by its own nature is spontaneously liberated from itself. All we need to do is check into Reality Hotel and we'll find out that's the case.

[48:57]

What are our realities? Our realities are body and mind. Our realities are body, speech, and mental karma, physical, vocal, and mental karma. These are the things we can work with. If we study them thoroughly, we'll become liberated from them. And if you're attached to your body, that means you do not study your body thoroughly. You can only be attached to an inner, completely studied body. And if you don't study your body and don't understand your body, and therefore, because you don't understand your body, you think you can be attached to your body and use your body in a dualistic way, then you can cause harm to your body and you can cause harm to other people's bodies and you can use your body to harm other bodies. You can use your voice to harm other bodies. You can use your thinking to harm other bodies because your thinking gets transmitted into words and actions which harm.

[50:02]

If you study the body and realize it has no beginning or end, then that kind of understanding leads to bodily and vocal expressions which are helpful, which encourage other people to do the same. which encourage other people to practice and study and become free of their attachments to body. But freedom from attachment to body means freedom from your ideas about your body. Doesn't mean you don't have any ideas anymore about your body. It isn't like your imagination gets flattened out. You can't like see shoulders and kneecaps anymore. You can still do that. You understand what's going on. You understand what's going on. And because you understand what's going on, you become a harmless and even beneficial creature. I think in the first class in this series, I wrote down something you said, where I interpreted what you said was wholesomeness is contingent.

[51:09]

Yeah. That's what I wrote down. And that seems to be, you know, you said the basis for these judgments of wholesomeness is historical. And that seems to be saying the same thing. But I recall having read somewhere that... Some teacher said something along the lines, if you do an action that creates an unwholesome situation, even though you weren't able to foresee that situation, I shouldn't say you were unable to, you didn't foresee that situation, but that still was an unwholesome action. Because it's not just your job to do good and avoid evil, but to know what it is that's going to be good and what it is that's going to be evil. And so you're still sort of responsible. But it seems to me now that what you've said is if you really thought you were doing good, it's good even if like, you know, if you thought it was the toaster button but it was the nuclear war button. No, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that to think you're doing good is good. I don't think that. Well, when I think of wholesomeness as historical or contingent, it's sort of like, says to me, use what you've known from your own personal past history and make a judgment about whether or not something is wholesome.

[52:19]

And if I really looked at what I have as my history and I make that judgment that something is wholesome, then that would be a wholesome action. If you think, for example, if you think that coming into a room quietly... would, you know, be a nice way to enter the room, and then you open the door quietly and come in the room quietly, okay? And then you get in trouble for that, for some reason. Then you learn that, you know, you're in a different historical period than you thought you were. But when you open the door quietly, you don't have to think, this is good. Because, you see, the thing is, because you're in a particular historical situation, you have a sense of it. You kind of know, to some extent, what's appropriate at this time in history. You're not necessarily for sure right. It's an experimental thing.

[53:21]

And I think more often than knowing what's right, you have a sense of what's wrong. You have a feeling that this is kind of wrong. You have a sense of it because you are part of the history of the present time. But you said thinking is the basis of all those actions. Yeah. So you must have thought about whether or not that was good or bad on some level, even if it wasn't a very aware sort of thinking. Because you said, I don't even move my hurt leg without thinking about it on some level. When you open a door, you think about it before you open the door. And the way you open it, you've thought about opening it that way. Yes, definitely. But I myself... um have various habits which i if you want if i stop and think about them i think they're wholesome habits but when i do them i almost never think they're wholesome i never think oh this is wholesome okay and and part of my history just like yours is i've done various things in the past which are wholesome and unwholesome and i've learned oh this kind of thing leads to

[54:24]

kind of beneficial, happy results. I've learned that from the way I've thought before, but I don't necessarily think now very often. I don't very often think, this is good. But when I see something good, or think of something good, I feel happy at the thought often, and then I try to do that, but while I'm doing it, I don't think that thought, it's good. And then I watch the results of what I'm trying to do well, and I basically, most of the time, To tell you the truth, folks, most of the time it's a high percentage of success that I'm having. And I'm even having a high percentage of success at doing things which I don't think are good. Those two, by successful, I mean I'm successfully getting the experimental results that doing bad leads to bad results. This is pretty much, I verify this teaching myself, that doing bad things leads to bad results, doing good things leads to good results. But my question was about doing something that you thought was good, but it led to a bad result.

[55:26]

Like, you kind of had it in your head, you know, it was going to be a good thing, and you find out later, boy, what I did was really a bad thing. Right, and that happens sometimes, too. Sometimes that was me too. I try to do a good thing and it turns out to be a bad thing. But the older I get, the less that happens. But the question is then, what you did was actually a bad thing. Your action was not a wholesome action, even though you thought it was going to be good. But when I see that it leads to an unfortunate result, then I realize that it wasn't wholesome, that I was mistaken. And usually when I look more carefully then, I realize what I overlooked. Okay? Okay. I usually, I wasn't really that present when I did it. I usually find out. And therefore, I thought it was good, but I didn't really, you know, I wasn't really that present. So usually, then I sometimes get not so good results. The other way, however, is more successful. Usually when it feels like something's bad, and then I go ahead.

[56:30]

Somehow, when I sense that something's bad, I'm usually, for me anyway, I think I'm more present when I have that sense than when I feel like it's good. And then if I go against that sense, I usually get positive feedback that I was right, that it was bad. In other words, I get negative feedback when I feel bad. What makes you decide to do it? Do a bad thing? Yeah. Maybe I want to express a little selfishness, just to see if I can still do it, see what it feels like. Check it out one more time. Like today when I took my daughter to the airport, did kind of a bad thing. I just dropped her off rather than parking the car and staying with her and walking her down the thing.

[57:45]

Because I didn't want to go through all these tears and stuff. I thought it was bad when I first started thinking about it. I didn't feel good about it and then I went ahead and did a bad thing. And I did feel bad about it, right away. Why did you turn around and go back and park the car and go to the UK? Not bad soon, right away. Oh, I felt bad before I left. Yeah. So why did you stay and go like that? I mean, what was the reason you wanted to stay? Because I wasn't that bad. That's the amount of bad I felt for that thing. It wasn't that bad. I took her to the airport and everything went fine.

[58:46]

I did that sort of bad thing. It wasn't that bad. Not like you said, get out. I don't think it was that bad. I could have stayed if I wanted to, but I didn't want to. But I could have. Then I could have made that into a good thing I did of staying longer. I'm not saying it would have been fine to do that other way. I said, I felt bad about that. I didn't feel bad about that I drove back to Green Gulch. Because, you know, on the other side of it, the reason why I dropped her off is because I had kind of a horrendous day in terms of meetings and stuff like that. And, you know, not horrendous, but anyway, it was all packed together and I had to come back early. to get here in time for the practice committee meeting and if I stayed there to the end it would have been kind of tight and I had the class to get ready for and various other things to do with my other daughter and my wife and stuff like that so it was kind of like packed in there but it was still kind of selfish so and I felt kind of bad about that that I was kind of like being selfish about it yeah

[60:04]

Also, I think the other way, when you're really attached to your daughter, there are times when you have to let go, and it's actually better to let go than to have detachment. Have you thought that very well? Well, in this case, I don't think that I was like... No, I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about attachment. Oh, you're talking about some different example? Yeah, just everything else. Kind of like letting go of the body. Sometimes it's better to let go of the child. I'm not talking about this specifically. Yeah, I think that letting go of children is good. And if it were possible for people to take care of their children and let go of them, I think it is possible to let go of your children and take care of them. I mean, that's part of the thing that happened to me. When I feel bad about letting go, I know it's better for a child.

[61:06]

Right, and a lot of people think that if they let go of their children, they wouldn't be able to take care of them anymore. So they think, well, I've got to take care of them, so you can't risk letting go of the attachment, because if you didn't have the attachment, maybe you'd just treat them like everybody else and you wouldn't take care of them. So they sort of like the attachment. They think that the attachment is the thing that really makes them able to take care of their children, so they use it as an excuse. That's why parents have a really hard time because they think they have to be attached to their kids in order to take care of them. And taking care of them is so important that they go ahead and be attached. But it is not necessary to be attached to people in order to take care of them. You can take care of people who you have no attachment to. Yeah. So when you say that... We should let go of the idea of attachment.

[62:08]

I don't say you should let go of the idea of attachment. You probably should hang on. Maybe that's one thing you should hang on to, the idea of attachment. Or at least keep it in your pocket, you know, and have a kind of regular practice of taking out this little thing and unfolding this thing, attachment. Well, no, why did I keep that? Remembering attachment is a good thing to remember, but It's not that you should let go of the idea of attachment. You should let go of attachment. How do you do that? By studying attachment. And how do you do that? By being attached completely to it. Which is the only way people are attached to it. Nobody's a little bit attached to that. I'm a little nervous. Oh, so you think you can get in front of the other people because you've got a two-pointer here? Well... You had mentioned there were two practices, one versus abandoning attachments, and the second was cultivating virtues or practicing virtues.

[63:21]

And I was wondering, in addition to what Tim said, that this is the discernment of what is wholesome in a historical setting. Yes. And then further engaging in those wholesome activities for the benefit of all beings. Right. It's like smiling at people. and serving people and things like that. Like I said, like opening doors quietly and carefully and closing them quietly and carefully so you don't disturb the people in the room, even if they're having a party. I may say, you know, If they see it, they might think it's strange, but they probably won't think it's that weird that it's open and closed the court quietly, even though they're making lots of noise. But the feeling of care for the door and the people and trying to make door opening a kind of offering to people, that feeling of every little thing you do is a kindness to people. This is another example of practicing good. Now, you might think, well, this will have a wholesome result.

[64:24]

And it might. Probably it will. I mean, usually that kind of thing does. But then to do it without even trying to do it for a wholesome result makes it even more wholesome. To open the door and close it without even trying to get a wholesome result for yourself and actually hope that somehow it would make their day more pleasant and more encouraging to them by the way you open and close the door. That's an example of practicing virtue for the benefit of others. That's basically the thing, is to do things for other people's benefit. And when you When you make physical gestures and when you think thoughts and when you speak things, do them basically in order to encourage and benefit and free other people from suffering. That's basically it. And this can be done in a non-dual way, but I'm sort of approaching it dualistically at first. dualistically studying your body, being aware of the separations and things like that, being aware of your separation from people, doing things for people as though they weren't you, not like working up the idea that they're separate from you, but just admitting that you do feel like this door is not you and that you're going to a room that's different from the room you came from and there's people in there that aren't you and do this thing for them.

[65:43]

Do all those things that would be beneficial to people. That's the... That's not the way that Dogen's talking about it. I'm giving another approach first. The way Dogen's talking about it is a non-dual approach. We haven't got to that one yet. I'm still on the dualistic kind of approach to this precept. So we connect dualistic discussions. Well, Roberto? Well, when you said that the head and body and our illusion of what we think this is our body, there's actually more, I mean, I don't think that table's part of my body or that you're part of my body or whatever, but all in all, I mean, in reality, motel, hotel.

[66:45]

Motel. I find that everything is my body in the universe. And so my idea of attachment to that, well, to the identification that everything in the universe and myself is like, it is my body. It's an expression of my manifestation of my being. So to let go of that attachment, Well, to first fully be into it, so completely immersed, and then say, well, that's fine. To just not be held back by that. I didn't follow what you said.

[67:49]

Well, maybe you can complete my... Where I was going, I don't know, I was going somewhere there. Well, when I started off, the early part was that the first, you know, you have to give up all attachments. Not have to, but that's good. And one of the first things to work on to give up attachment is your body, because that's kind of like one of the first things we're attached to. So, by studying your body, if you can give up attachment to your body, then lots of other attachments will drop away too. So if you try to give up attachments to other things before you give up your attachment to the body, for most people that's skipping over something which will then hinder you. Not everybody's attached to, I don't know what, you know, money or fame. But everybody, almost everybody's attached to their body. What do you mean by attached? That they operate on the basis of what they think their body is, and what they think their body is, you know, is the concept they have of it.

[69:02]

And they operate their life around trying to take care of that body. And they don't study it. So they just hold this idea of a body, and they walk around with it all day, and they're stuck in this body. And so you watch them move, and you can see that they're holding on to some idea of what their body is. I don't see that. What is the average person attached to their body walking around? I mean, what's in their head? What's in their body? I don't... Well, I don't know it's in their body, but I know it's in my body, and I walk around with an idea of my body, and everybody I talk to, I find out they've got an idea of their body. And I watch that they do things based on what they think their body is. Like, example? They move according to their idea of how their body moves. And people who move very freely are people who oftentimes are free of their idea of their body. Whereas people who aren't free of their idea of the body... Are very clunky and stiff, and so on.

[70:12]

And they have ruts and habits about the way they move, which is the way most people are. Because they think their body is what they think their body is. They believe their body is what they think it is, and they hold on to that. And they actually try to protect and maintain this thing, which is just their idea. So if we all leave that sensory world and spend like a half hour just looking at our foot without a preconception of it, then we'll move more freely, and that'll be good. I think that it's not so much that you don't have any preconceptions, but you study your conceptions. through various exercises, you find out what they are, and the more you find out what they are, the more you find out that they're conceptions, and that your body actually is not really doing that. There's more information than your conceptions can dream of. Okay, I have to... I'm not trying to be facetious.

[71:16]

I didn't think you were trying to be facetious. I don't think anybody's trying to be facetious in this room, anyway. You know, When most people get into a car, they get in with their idea of their body, you know, of how their body moves, you know, and it's a very, you can see this clumsiness and awkwardness of them trying to get, especially a small car, to trying to get this concept of their body into the car. It's just a kind of a, it's a kind of a, it's an event, you know, it's almost sad. It's almost a pity. And even though it's really inconvenient to get into a car with this idea of your body with arms and legs and all that, it's really inconvenient and really awkward, for most people anyway, because they don't get in and out of cars enough to sort of like, you know, I don't know what, get skillful at coping with this awkward concept. It's because, you know, they have this idea of their body and they're moving their idea of their body into the car, so it's just... Most of us do not have an idea of a body which is, like, built around cars.

[72:31]

So, as a result, when our idea of cars meets our idea of a body and you try to get one inside the other, or... easier way to get the body inside the car. We have these real awkward moments, you know, because it's basically, it's generally speaking, what do you call it, untested, unfired, what do you call it, untempered by lots of experience. If you get in and out of cars enough, you probably would eventually start to give up your idea of your body. through all the pain you'd get into and the awkwardness and the diseases you'd get from trying to get this idea of your body into this idea of the car. Now, there's another way to get into a car which is somewhat free of your idea of your body, which would be not a pity and which would be quite a delightful experience, and that is move this thing which is hit into the car.

[73:38]

Move the being hit into the car. Try that sometimes. It may take you 15 minutes to get into the car, but that won't be a problem. It'll be quite a journey. It'll be a journey to have all these kinds of hitting, being hit, be the thing that's being moved into the car. Yes? I don't know whether this is the way I think about it, because when I first started to learn to draw, the very first thing you drew, I didn't know you had to draw a foot or something, but you had to take five hours to look at your foot and draw it. And you had to let go of all your concepts of your foot. To really draw it. To really draw it. To really draw it. Right. Or your body. I mean, if you take three weeks to draw your body, by the end of the three weeks, you have no idea what your body is. Right. And you're drawing it, so you think, well, that's not a body. Right. But the less you think, the less you think of your body, the better for drawing it.

[74:44]

Right. Like I do this exercise of drawing a Picasso drawing of Stravinsky upside down with my left hand. And it was, you know, I, and the person who was standing near me when I finished it said, that's really good. And it just took me a jiffy to do it, but it was really good because my ideas of Stravinsky and Picasso and my, were kind of out of the way and it was just, It was my hand and my senses doing something. And it wasn't necessarily a great work of art, but it was uninhibited and enjoyable because I couldn't get my... I couldn't wheel my concepts into the situation, so it was just a simple physical task. Getting into cars is a simple physical... Well, I don't know if it's simple, but anyway, it's a physical task that we actually have the ability to do when we make it much harder on ourselves than we have to by having all these concepts in the way. as generally speaking, what we do all day long. And it's not to say we should stop that right off.

[75:47]

We should admit what we're doing, and that process will hopefully lead us to a lot more work. And part of the thing about doing good is that there's an effort involved there in countering all this stuff that's happening with us. I was thinking about how unusual it is for people to be not attached to their bodies. And I was thinking about the few people who are genuinely indifferent to their bodies. I've read that Socrates was genuinely indifferent. He would walk around in one toe, do it through the cold, and not eat anything like that. He wasn't necessarily pathetic. He would stand out. Like they said, he was solid and brown as a nut. And he would like, one night he stood out, you know, he stood out in the cold one night, just thinking, stood out in the cold one night, and all the soldiers were like huddled together, freezing, you know.

[76:49]

So, or like little babies, you know, they have all this energy coming off them, and it's coming off all around their body, because they don't have any concepts of where their energy should be, so it's like everywhere, you know. It's not like in these ruts, like being warmer here than here, or, you know. And anyway, there's all this good potential for us if we could just give up our attachments. And giving up our attachments is a result of studying our attachments, and also of the motivation of giving up attachment to the body. Yes. Excuse me. Sonia. Sorry. You haven't asked a question. You had one or two. Yeah. Do you want to ask it? Yeah. Go ahead. Well, I have this thought lingering, actually. And I'm stuck sort of back a ways where we were talking about thinking or doing good.

[77:51]

And it seems to me, if I remember pieces correctly, if we think about doing something good in a way that's doing evil, and in fact maybe there's something about maybe doing, kind of being, sort of studying and putting ourselves in a certain direction and doing and studying the effects of what we're doing more than thinking of doing good, I mean, that seems more, well, in the context of maybe this, wholesome. I mean, I think of our thinking, of my thinking, doing good, seem like a twin. That's called deep faith and cause and effect. In other words, that you trust that it's more likely to be good to study what's happening than to go around with an idea of, I'm doing good. But, of course, first of all, you think, I think it's good to study what's happening. Rather than walk in the room with an idea of, okay, here I come, I'm going to do good, and you people, please understand this is really true.

[79:01]

Don't interject your ideas too much in this. Rather than coming in the room and start to figure out, now, what's going on here? And by studying what's going on here, maybe figure out what's good. So put more trust into study than in your own idea of what's good. Now, to me, that's good. But it doesn't mean I know what it is beforehand. So that relates to this thing of inherently good, you know, business about... It's more like you come in a situation and try to find out what's going on. What's happening to their body? What's happening to their gay? What's happening to their tail? What's happening to their gown? Are you talking about realizing that we're alive and in a way we're killing this life by... thinking, well, just these ideas. Yeah. In touch with the whole life. Yeah.

[80:02]

Well, that's what killing is, is, you know, that kind of thing. But really, however, these precepts here, these prohibitory precepts, we are prohibited, these are prohibitory because they don't really, they cannot really be established. In fact, We do not, there is not killing life. We don't kill ourselves. And yet, we think in such a way that it's like we're killing ourselves. In other words, I think you said something like we realize we're alive. When you become free of your attachments to your body, guess what you realize? You realize that you're alive. Not you realize you're alive like the way you thought you're alive and find out, oh yeah, I'm still alive. You realize what life is when you become free of your attachments. And then you stop killing. But really, you never really were killing, because you always were alive. But the way you were thinking was killing yourself. And since you're killing yourself, you'll kill others too. The idea here is that if you become free of attachment, then you practice not killing.

[81:11]

The Buddha is the one who's free of attachment, and the Buddha does not kill. But on some level, which is very nearby, we are already free of attachment and we are living and we're not killing. What we want to do is figure out some way to realize this not killing. There's many approaches to try to realize the practice of not killing. The highest one is called the middle way or freedom from attachment, to be completely unattached. is how to practice not killing and not stealing and so on. I'm trying to stop now, and I must say I'm a little sad that we don't have more classes on this topic.

[82:14]

But this is the way it worked out in this imperfect world.

[82:21]

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