Okay, so we can start the text now, if you like, Mula Majamaka Karakas, the first verse. So, although we're studying the ancient text now, I still really want to encourage each of you to make this teaching idiomatic, try to make it your own, in other words, see if you can have some close personal relationship, intimate relationship with this teaching. Now the first chapter is called Examination of Relational Conditions, Pratyaya Pariksha,

[01:01]

in analysis of conditioning causes. So the translation we're working with says, at nowhere and at no time can entities ever exist by originating out of themselves, from others, from both, or from no causes. There's many other translations, another one is neither from itself, nor from another, nor from both, nor from a non-cause, because anything, whatever, anywhere, arises. So I might just say that one way to interpret

[02:04]

this right off is that what Nagarjuna is saying is that there aren't any causes of events, in the sense of a cause that has a causal power, that there's no causation in the sense of something having within it the power to make something else happen. Right off he's denying that way of thinking about causes. If that's what you think a cause is, then he's saying there's no such thing going on. Causation, just looking it up in the dictionary, causation means an act or a process of causing, or a cause, but it also can mean the relationship

[03:08]

between cause and effect. So studying causation does not mean you study the relationship, but the relationship, according to Nagarjuna, is not the relationship between cause and effect, it's not that in the cause is some power that produces the effect. There aren't such relationships, that isn't one of the relationships. But what kind of relationships are there? Well, that's the next character. There are four, and only four, relational conditions, and before I get into what they are, he says there are relational conditions. In other words, there is causation, there is a relationship between conditions and events. Events do have conditions, they don't happen with no cause, they don't originate from

[04:20]

a non-cause either, because then a non-cause would have power within it to cause things. Each thing would have a special non-cause that arose from it. But he says there are conditions, and there's four, and not five. So what's the difference between a condition and a cause? And then in the next three karakas, he discusses how conditions work. But, before we even get into them, maybe you can imagine a little bit about how something can have a condition for it, but the condition doesn't contain within it the power to cause a thing to happen. Can you think of any examples of conditions for things that don't have

[05:26]

a power within? Or, can you think of examples of where you do think of a condition or cause that has within it the power to cause something? Can you think of examples of where somebody else, or you, actually thinks different than Nagarjuna? Can you think of examples of conditions that he would allow, namely conditions that don't have causal power, and yet are conditions for the event? Birth has causal power for what? Birth has causal power for life? Okay. Or, birth has causal power for death? Can you see it that way? You don't have to, but

[06:34]

if you want to be an example of somebody who thinks in such a way that Nagarjuna would say no to, you can be that person, and then we can talk to you and see how you think. So, do you feel that birth has causal power within it, that birth has within it the causal power for life? Where is the causal power of life in birth? Consciousness, okay. So, birth is consciousness? Is birth consciousness? No, because there can be consciousness after birth, right? So birth isn't consciousness, but if you want to take away life and have consciousness be the thing, you can say birth could be the cause of consciousness. You might

[07:35]

say that, if you want to. But do you want to stick to life? Because what in birth, where do you find the cause of life and birth? Anybody see it there? Something in the birth there that you can see causing life, the power in birth of causing life? Do you see it? That would be the power there to cause your life to be. Birth is a condition for life. So you say you have to have birth in order for there to be life, but isn't there a causal power? Right. There would be people who would argue with you about that too. How would they argue? Well, they would say that there's life before birth, and that there may be other, you know, that in fact birth isn't a condition of life. There may be other conditions of life, but one of them is that life can exist before birth. Well, if life exists before

[08:36]

birth, then are you proposing that birth is a condition for life? Am I proposing that birth is a condition for life? Somebody else did it over here, right? Right. Do you want to? I'm not interested in taking up that position. Okay. So, no, you don't have to. I'm just saying, we have on the floor here that somebody says that birth is actually, they're going so far as to say that birth has a causal power to produce life, I guess. That's what was said. Well, I was wondering actually if it was a condition. I'm not trying to work with what the conditions are, but it's not necessarily a problem of life. Well, it does seem to be a condition for life, that when you have birth, then you have life. That does seem to be that, right? That's a condition, all right? But can you see that there's nothing in the birth that produces a life? Another example would be, I'll give you an example of where like

[09:39]

turning on a light in a room, electric light, you turn the switch, right? So, for example, the desire to turn the switch has something to do with the switch getting turned with the light going on. But if you look at my desire, you can't see any light in my desire or light bulbs, there's no connection between, some secret subtle connection between my desire for the light and the light bulb. And like I don't have special connections for my desire for the light and my desire for dinner. Although my desire for both of them may have something to do with them, there's no active causal agent there in my desire. And yet, my desire for the light is a condition for me turning the switch. So that when you have that condition and certain other conditions, like the electricity bills

[10:43]

paid, the wires are in good condition, the laws of physics by which electrons move are still in operation, all this stuff, these are conditions. But if you look at each one of them, like the electricity bill being paid doesn't have a causal power to cause lights to come on. And yet, if you don't pay the electricity bill, they might turn it off. Well, it might even be sufficient without having some kind of power within it to cause it. In other words, if you add up all the conditions by which something happens, then that would be sufficient for it to happen. But in some ways, what Nagarjuna is saying is that the only reason why certain conditions cause certain results is by the irregularity

[11:45]

of that connection. There's nothing about the causes, if you look at the causes, that would make that thing happen, other than the fact that when those things happen, this thing happens. But people sometimes want to go further. When something happens once and then something else arises with it, they want to say that in that thing that was a condition for this, there is in that thing something inherently causally connected to this thing, rather than, when this happens, when A happens and B happens. Because, according to this, if A happened and B didn't happen, then it wouldn't be a cause and it wouldn't be a condition. The only thing it has going for it is that when A happens, then on some basis, some regular basis, B happens. But people, generally speaking, attribute something to A that actually A is connected to B. Don't you? Can you see yourself doing that and bring forth those examples?

[12:46]

Yes? Q. How about if I breathe water and I die? A. How about if you breathe water and you die? Okay. So, what are you saying? You're saying that breathing of water is paired with death? Is that what you're saying? Of certain kinds of death, for example, death by breathing water, let's say death by breathing water is regularly paired with breathing water, right? But look in the breathing of the water. Is the death in the breathing of the water? Is there something about breathing the water that has within it the power to cause death? Can you find anything there? Right. Can you find anything in there that, you know, look at the breathing of the water and can you see the death in the breathing of the water? No, I don't think so either. The effect is not dormant or potential in the condition, or you could say in the cause,

[13:55]

but the way Nagarjuna is using these two words, in the background of him is two words, hetu, which means cause, and pratyaya, which means condition, in the background of Avidharma and Buddhist language, they often would say causes and conditions. And he, for convenience sake, and he has some basis in literature for saying, when they say cause they usually mean this like thing, like a condition, like breathing water in relationship to certain kinds of death, they then take that condition and make it into what they call a cause that has within it the potential of death, they act like that. But if you look, and you will, if you look at breathing water you cannot see, I don't think, a death by water breathing in it. As Stuart says, if you look in there, the water breathing is okay for fish. You put other conditions together with the water breathing and you account for death among

[14:57]

humans. Well, it doesn't have a potential, it is a condition for certain kinds of death. When you have certain kinds of death there will be regularly paired with breathing water. But breathing water doesn't always cause death, right? You can sometimes breathe water and just get sick, or I don't know, various kinds of problems you could have. You've all breathed water sometimes, right? It's called, you know, breathing through the wrong, whatever, you know, what do we call it? It's breathing through the windpipe. We have a thing like breathing through the wrong, we swallow the air wrong or whatever. Anyway, we get water in the wrong place sometimes, right? And we don't always die. But you can if you keep doing it long enough, right? So it's breathing water to a certain extent that goes with eventually, usually, a death, unless you died of a heart attack prior to that. Yeah, ash is not in the wood, right? The wood is not the past of the ash. The ash is not

[16:16]

the future of the wood. Doesn't he say that? So if you look at the wood, you know that wood is regularly a condition for ash, right? But the potential, the ash potential is not in the wood. When you think it is, you're attributing causal power, like the wood's got in it this little ash thing that can come out. And that link is not really there, he's saying. And, okay, so take one, remember he says it, I quoted last time and he says too, he says, thank you Buddha for the teaching of dependent co-arising, it's really wonderful. It helps you graciously uproot all fabrication. So, for example, the first fabrication he's going to try to uproot for some reason, the first fabrication he's going to try to uproot is this idea that something that happens with this has within it a special causal link. Okay, that's a fabrication that we attribute to a situation which he's going to try to

[17:20]

uproot, and that will be part of his teaching the correct understanding of dependent co-arising, which then can be used to uproot other fabrications. So, if we can understand correctly dependent co-arising, we will understand Dharma, we will understand Buddha. So he's trying to teach his understanding of dependent co-arising. Other people have other kinds of dependent co-arising understandings which make the process of causation, and to some extent selfless, but some of the elements in the process they attribute reality to, like a cause that has power to produce an effect. This is the first point he's trying to make. So, the cause, when you say duality, the cause for separating, when you say duality, you have this which causes this, is that duality? Yeah, right. This which causes this is duality.

[18:23]

Duality. Right, right. That this causes this is a duality in the sense that this has the power to produce that. And ... Conditioning what? Conditioning. When you say conditioning, I'm not sure what conditioning means. A condition, as he says in Karaka 5, is only as entities are uniquely related and originate can they be described in terms of conditional relations. A simpler way to put it would be these give rise to those, these give rise to those, so they are conditions, so they

[19:23]

are called conditions. Related conditions, related, like those absolutes? No, just Prajnaya, he translates, Hinata translates Prajnaya as relational conditions, but you say conditions. Prajnaya is the word, okay? So, this is another way to say it is these give rise to those, so they are called conditions. This happens, then this happens. You flick switches, lights go on. They're regularly associated. It doesn't mean that every time you flick a switch, the light's going to go on, but in fact, when the lights do go on, there's usually flicking the switches before electric lights. It's happening in time. Yeah, it's happening in time, and it's happening in space, and it's a regular association, and that's it. But there's a tendency to attribute some special power to these regularities

[20:26]

and add this thing to it. So, electricity exists independent of flicking a switch. It doesn't exist independent of, yes, well, electricity does, electricity exists independent of flicking a switch, yes, and light and electricity can also exist independent of each other, and your desire for electric lighting can also exist independent of electric lighting to some extent, and independent of electricity, and independent of various other things, yes. I wasn't saying that, but that's true. Are you saying duality exists? Are you saying that there's no duality in this? I don't know if there is, I don't know. I thought you were saying that there's a cause for duality.

[21:33]

Are you saying that there's no duality in this? Maybe so, I'm not sure. I'm kind of using various kinds of language to try to point out what Nagarjuna is trying to do here, and if my language is dualistic, that may be so, but still, he still is making a point, which is his first point that he's trying to make in the text is this point, and so by whatever language we're using, I'm hoping that you can get a feeling for the difference between conditions that just happen to have a regular pairing with something, and something being actually due to something else. Like, for example, my desire for lighting is a condition maybe for the lights to be switched on, but it's not exactly like the light is due to my desire, and yet we tend

[22:41]

to try to maybe look into the desire, or maybe even look into the switching, or the switch, or the electric bill, or I don't know what, we tend to look into those things, which are conditions, and imbue some place, some power there, some active power to cause things to happen. This is our tendency, and this then, you know, that goes some place, and it has certain other effects. Yes? Well, I'm sorry, but it seems like, for me anyway, the word causes has within it that implication of their being. Yeah, that's why, actually, he chooses to say that there are no causes. Okay. There's only conditions. So I was thinking maybe to toss that word and just use conditions? That's what he's doing. Okay. He's saying, toss the word cause, and only use the word conditions, and that's the name of this chapter, Pratyaya Pariksha. Okay? But although he's tossing the word, he brings the word up to say there aren't any, there are no causes.

[23:42]

He's saying there ain't any of these causes. And if you mean by cause this thing, which a lot of people do mean by cause, namely a thing that has some kind of subtle connection, some kind of link, some special relationship, some kind of like in-thing with the effect. What about fire burning? Uh-huh. You mean fire, in the fire, burn? Uh, fire, well, isn't fire burning? I mean, same thing, isn't it? Burn anything that you put on it. Well, take that, then take fire burning wood, okay? That when you have wood burning, then a precondition for burning wood is fire. Yes. But if you look in the fire, you don't see the burning wood. There's nothing, there's not this dormant thing called burning wood in fire. Fire doesn't have within it, it's a whole bunch of, look at fire, it's got burning wood, burning

[24:43]

toothbrushes, burning hair, burning cows, you know, burning… Causes only as a dormant potential within the causing agent is a particularly limited, not necessarily intuitive understanding of what cause is. I didn't follow what you said. Um, you just, in each of these cases, in order to have a see that there's no such thing as cause, you've asked us to look at the causing agent to see if dormant, is the word you've used for it, potential within the causing agent is the thing that we're calling the effect. Right? So in the instance of the fire and the wood, for instance, you're asking us to look into the fire to see if in it is potentially a dormant burning wood. Okay, I got that. So what are you saying? What I'm saying is that that's only one, that's a one and perhaps non-intuitive understanding of what a cause is. Do you want to show some other thing? I just, you know, whatever, I'm asking you to come forth with the examples. So I'm just saying, can you see, and for a second there, or maybe still, Sylvia thought

[25:50]

she saw in fire something, some special connection between fire and burning wood. Okay, so any other examples, I'm just saying, I'm saying, please do look and see if in causes, what you call causes, or if you want to call it... What do you mean by the word cause? What I mean by cause, the way I'm using it is, something that has within it the power to cause an effect. And that, you know, something within the thing, got the thing there? And in that thing is a special power or active force which can make an effect. And Nagarjuna is saying there are no such things. And so it would be good actually if you bring forth examples like that because then you can give examples of what he says don't exist. Okay? Kathy? Right! So that's a good example of where we think that acorns are associated with oak trees

[26:51]

on a regular basis, right? And that we think that within the acorn is the oak tree. The acorn has a power within it to cause an oak tree. So that's an example of that way of thinking? Okay, so please demonstrate. Demonstrate, show me, take the acorn, you know, that you've got here. Show me what power it has to cause the oak tree. Yeah, well, it depends on how you want to use the words. I mean, that's exactly, it's all about how I want to use the words. And the way I want to use it is this way. That the thing you're proposing, namely the acorn, has within it a causal link to the oak tree, rather than simply the fact that from acorns oak trees arise. Nagarjuna would not disagree that oak trees from acorns grow.

[27:56]

He would not dispute that, I don't think. Okay? But what he would say is, look into the oak tree, do you see a dormant oak? Look into the acorn, do you see a dormant oak tree there? And people do, and then he says, well, let's hear about it. That's the idea, that if you cut an acorn in half, there's no tree there. Yeah, well, like for example, one time I cut a cabbage in half one time, it was starting to bolt, you know, I cut the cabbage in half and I could see in the cabbage, I could see this, you know, we usually don't let cabbages turn into little bushes or trees, right? But if you cut a cabbage in half, you can see a tree in there, you can see the whole thing just laid out inside there, you know what I mean? So you say, well, there I can see this special connection between the cabbage and the cabbage tree, right?

[28:59]

So are you saying that the acorn by itself can't cause the oak tree to need to coil in the water and evolve as an oak tree? I'm not saying that, although that's true, it does, of course. It's not independent. That's right, too. Everything else. That's right. There's a whole bunch, there's four types of conditions for oak trees. Not all things need all four, but you've got these four types of which an oak tree might need all four. One of them is an acorn, okay? And it needs other things, too, all right? But each one of these things, out of all the things that are needed, all the conditions, there's more than four conditions needed for an oak tree, but there's four types, okay? And there's four types of conditions necessary for every experience that we have, all right? You don't necessarily have to have all four for every experience, but with these four

[30:03]

you can account for any human experience. And then several different types of things can go into each category, all right? But what he's saying is that each one of these conditions, none of them have within it the power by themselves or altogether to produce something. It's just that, because if you took any of them away and the thing didn't happen, then that would show that they're conditions. Or if you brought them up and the thing did happen, they wouldn't be conditions anymore. It's only because of that that they're conditions. Sorry, can you repeat this? If you had conditions for something and you took one of them away and the thing didn't happen, then you could say it was a condition for that thing. If you add those in and the thing doesn't happen, these things are no longer conditions for it. They're only conditions because of the fact that the thing arises within. It's not because, which is a tendency that he's trying to deal with here, it's not because one or more than one of them have within them this power and that the thing is actually

[31:10]

in some form dormant in it, or the thing in it has in itself some special invisible force that it can create this thing. What are the four types of conditions? Well, we can get into that, but I don't know, maybe it would be better to work on this more, but if you think it would be better to go into the four types of conditions now, it seems like you might, maybe it's better to work on this for a while more. No, but no one says that this is primary causal, I mean, that's cause, so it's just primary causal. Uh-huh. So, if there's something that causes it, that's the human. Let's see, he translates it as primary causal. So, well, one of the conditions is called hetu-pratyaya, okay, which in hetu-pratyaya includes, this gets a little complicated, in the cause there's the hetus, hetu are the

[32:22]

causes, there's five types of causes, and then the pratyaya, there's four of those. One of them, the first one is called hetu-pratyaya, the condition of one or more of these types of causes. That's what he's referring to, that's what's called primary causal, okay. It's actually, strictly speaking, it's not all five of these, it's four of these five, I'll just say four types and one type. These four types correspond to this condition. Maybe it's really helpful. So, there's five types of causes, and four of them correspond to this condition.

[33:22]

And the last condition, which is called the predominant condition, is called ati-pati-pratyaya. Ati-pati-pratyaya. And ati-pati-pratyaya corresponds to the type of cause which is called karana-hetu. And karana-hetu is sort of like the big cause, because karana-hetu basically means that whenever anything happens, it has karana-hetu. Karana-hetu applies to everything that ever occurs because there's a cause which is called karana, and karana means basically you are allowed to happen. That's one of the causes. However, under this system, under this way of looking at it, Nagarjuna is saying, when

[34:24]

you talk about karana-hetu, you mean that in the allowing of something to happen, there is a causal power. Whereas over here, ati-pati-pratyaya, or as Rusa used to call it, ati-pati-pratyaya, within this one, on this side, in this way of looking at it, there is this condition that always happens whenever anything happens. There is a condition that a thing must be allowed to have happen. Ipso facto, ad hoc, blah blah, whatever. It must have been allowed. But over here, it's not considered to be something that has a causal power. It's just a condition. Whereas over on this side, it's considered to be something that has within it some special link. It's two different ways of looking at dependent co-arising. Anyway, that's what it means over here. It means look at these causes, those same causes, all the different dynamics of those

[35:25]

causes that they're talking about over on this side, are present over on this side. But on this side, they're looked at in quite a different way. Here, they're just used to explain the association and regularities between things. Here, they're attributing some actual substantial link between things. So like, in the twelvefold links of causation, you have ignorance, then you have common formations, and consciousness, and so on. So, in fact, there is a regular association between ignorance and common formations. If you don't have ignorance, you're not going to have common formations. And when you have common formations, you know you must have had ignorance. You can't have consciousness without common formations. Depending on common formations, a new ignorance arises. But one way to look at it is in ignorance. In ignorance, of all things, in ignorance is a special little link that connects you to consequences of common formations. And then common formations has within it this little special deal that produces consciousness.

[36:28]

So it gets to be kind of a substantial system, and kind of locked in. The actual liberative power of this situation is that these things don't have within them this thing. This little oak tree isn't actually in there, so it might not happen. There is some freedom in this situation. Although oak trees have acorns, and there's almost no exceptions. Not all acorns have oak trees. And it's not just because other causes and conditions don't arise. Some acorns have other problems too, right? Right? Like that guy, what's it called, that guy who planted trees and grew happiness? Is that what it's called? Huh? Yeah, he planted trees and grew happiness. Is that maybe a story? Anyway, this French guy planted, I think, 20,000 oak trees in southern France. Like, I think, in Provence. He was a regular farmer, you know, and every night he went home with a pile of acorns,

[37:34]

and he went through them, and took out, you know, the good ones, and threw away the other ones, and saved them, and then he got a whole bunch of new plants. Not all acorns have within them oak trees, right? But even the ones that he did choose that worked, then some of those worked and some of them didn't. Some of them were associated with oak trees, some weren't. But the thing is, if there really is, you know, common formations in the ignorant, and there really is consciousness in the common formations, then the whole thing's set, and you're not going to be able to turn this around. But it turns out that it's not that way. That there isn't this actual substantial connection between cause and effect. That the causes don't have within them this power. And if you understand it, from Nargajuna's proposing, if you understand it in the conditions of things' way, rather than the causal way, and he's willing to reason this out, and he does in here, but I'm just giving you sort of a talk about it before we get into his language. If you do it his way, he's proposing it's a liberative understanding of dependent co-arising.

[38:37]

And the other one, the other interpretation of dependent co-arising, Buddha's teaching was dependent co-arising as a way of liberation, but when people started to attribute substance to these causes, the dependent co-arising system lost its vitality, because it became this thing where you're attributing substance to a thing. And the other chapter we're studying is about Four Noble Truths, and people also bring the Four Noble Truths into something. They put something in the Four Noble Truths. In the Four Noble Truths there was a Four Noble Truthness, which then does its thing, right? It has the power to make Buddhism happen. Well, Nargajuna said, Ah, these Four Noble Truths are empty, like the Heart Sutra says. No suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path. What that means is that in these Four Noble Truths, they're all empty. There's nothing in them that makes Buddhism happen. And if there was something in them that made Buddhism happen, Buddhism wouldn't happen, at least. If there was something to these Four Noble Truths,

[39:40]

then for sure Buddhism wouldn't happen. And the opposition said, Well, if you say there's nothing to them, then Buddhism couldn't happen, because you wouldn't have the Four Noble Truths. Well, that's not what he means, and he goes and explains it. But instead of bringing those in first, and showing how to attribute substance to those, would be a disaster to Buddhism. He doesn't do that. He goes to something which is more essential. A very, very, very basic way we think about things, before we even hear about the Four Noble Truths, is that we think that the things are associated with another thing, that there's something there. Something in it. Like that story of the boat, you know, coming down, coming down, with the fishermen sitting there, fishing, and you see this boat coming, shooting down at the river, and he's going to bump into his boat, and he starts getting really angry at the person in the boat, and the boat comes close, and you see there's nobody in the boat. If you think somebody's in the boat, you have quite a different take on it, than you do realizing that a boat coming to you still is associated with crashing into your boat,

[40:42]

but there's nobody in it. It's quite a different world. Whereas we think, pretty much, that every cause that comes our way, there's somebody in it. And therefore we have this kind of strange relationship, where we have hardness to actually meditate on causes and conditions, because we're not meditating on causes and conditions, we're meditating on a cause that has some power in it, that has some kind of special thing for us. Or, you know, somebody in a boat's got this special thing, somebody who's really stupid, or somebody who's really mad at us, or whatever, or somebody who doesn't know how to drive, all this stuff is put in there. But actually, none of it's in there. Nothing's in there. It's just that that boat regularly is paired with boat collisions. You don't have boat collisions without boats colliding. It's a regular thing. And if you had boats colliding without boat collisions, then boats would not be conditioned to boat collisions. That's all. And what we do, so you may think,

[41:44]

well, I understand. But sometimes you change the conditions, lose their associations, and then they stop being conditioned. That happens sometimes. But if they had the causal power, they wouldn't lose it. And he's great. He would try all this different stuff out, and you can see what he does. I wanted to play with this on your own before you even hear from me. You've got really good arguments against anything you come up with. I see some people that haven't spoken yet. Yes? When I read the first one, I was struck with sort of a description of infinity. The first thing is a description of infinity? Correct. Everything goes on, and there's nothing to start. So that's really hard to comprehend. It cannot be comprehended. If all the Buddhas in ten directions and three times assembled all their wisdom,

[42:45]

they would not be able to comprehend this first verse. That's right. It can't be comprehended. That's good that you saw that. You get an A. So, it can't be comprehended is one way to hear it. Another way to hear it is, don't you have some idea that the causes have within them the power to do that? And isn't this kind of upsetting to you? If you understand what it's saying. And also I would say that what this is saying is it's saying, don't you have some idea about what zazen is? And this is telling what zazen actually is. And isn't that a little nerve-wracking? Doesn't that upset you a little bit that you don't know what it is? Because it's just like that. This first karaka is a beautiful description of what it means to just sit. Okay? When you just sit, this just sitting does not come from you. There's not something in you, kind of like some kind of just sitting thing in you, that's kind of like finally manifesting in this just sitting. It ain't like that.

[43:46]

Also, just sitting doesn't come from somebody else. It doesn't come from Dogen, or the Tanto. It doesn't. It doesn't come from, or even the Ino. Or the Soku. Soku Jack doesn't do this. It doesn't come from another, or any other. It doesn't come from any other. We're not picking on any particular people here. It doesn't come from another. It doesn't come from yourself. That's what zazen means. Also, it doesn't come from a non-cause. It's not like there's no condition. There are conditions. That's what zazen is like. Just like that first karaka. In other words, as Peter said, zazen is basically infinity. You can't comprehend it. You can't grasp it. And zazen, just by coincidence, what is zazen like? It's like everything. Because there's nothing, nowhere, at no time, that's not like that. And if you think about it, it's really a different approach to spiritual practice.

[44:48]

And that's the first karaka of this thing, and the beautiful reason why you're a zen ancestor, a zen pioneer. It's the philosophical nutshell of love. That karaka. And you can't get a hold of love. Nobody knows what it is. Totally ungraspable. And nothing can stop it. However, there are conditions all over the place for it. It's regularly paired with condition. And conditions are infinite. Yes. So, if I understand this, or if you misunderstand this, the confusion arises from attributing a self in an ontological sense, a love self, in other words, birth and death, we think is happening to something, rather than the attributes themselves,

[45:50]

are the ontological reality. The sitting itself isn't the reality. It's the conditions themselves, the attributes that we give to things, that is the reality. And if the attributes we give to things didn't exist, and you give up a lot faster, if you didn't think that there was something in those old conditions that actually had the power, it's more embarrassing to give up a cause that has a cause of power than it is to give up a condition, which you understand, it just happens to be associated on a regular basis with something. And you can notice, maybe when you are attributing reality to these things, you can notice whether your reality, when you're attributing a cause of power, that will probably, you'll probably notice that those are the things that are harder for you to move on, and reconsider. But if it's just a condition, you can say, oh, it doesn't turn out to be associated with that anymore, it's fine, just drop it from the list.

[46:51]

No problem. But you can't drop something from the list if it's got the, you can't drop acorns from the list for oak trees if they've got the power within it to make an oak tree. It's going to be pretty hard if you can wander around and say, well, the oak tree is actually in the acorn, you know, so, you know, what are you going to, you still have these little oak tree containers, right? Whereas if you found out, you might find out tomorrow, actually they grew some oak trees without acorns. You say, well, fine, but these aren't conditions anymore. And you wouldn't have a problem with that. Like, for example, I was happy to find out in this article that Linda gave me that there's a lot more life at the bottom of the ocean where the Nagas live than I thought. It turns out that that's why they live there, it's just like 10 to 100 million species on the bottom of the ocean. The world, that invisible world we didn't know about actually is like super, super abundant in life. It's really nice to know because we couldn't get there before, right?

[47:52]

So they're still safe down there. It's really nice. And since I didn't have like some kind of reality thing with that before, for me it's like, oh, great, no problem, I'm not embarrassed. I don't have to change my theories and stuff like that about the way the ecology works because, you know, I said that it worked this way and that it had the thing. Now we have a new association of conditions, right? We have a whole new set of conditions down there for why the way things are. See? But it's not so easy to adjust when you've already said this thing had within it the power to cause that. Right? Because you have this image, you can almost, almost like, you haven't looked so carefully but you almost can see the whole thing inside there. Just about. And if somebody asked you kindly, you know, well, actually, it's the same thing with yourself. You think there's actually somebody in there. Right? Inside the self that you have. But actually, inside that self that you have, there actually is a self there. Right?

[48:52]

Yes? When I'm thinking, when I'm sitting and thinking, and I'm telling myself practically that this excruciating new pain in the back of my head there's not any parents inside of me, but I'm still experiencing this excruciating pain. How is this teaching helpful? Could you maybe... Sure. So, what kind of help do you want? I want some help in life. This teaching is very subtle and profound, but maybe Percodent would be more... germane. Germane to what? Liberating me from the pain I'm experiencing. I don't know. Percodent, just get up and leave this in though. Okay. That's what you mean by liberation from pain. Yeah. If you want liberation from pain, then the way to do it would be to... to observe what conditions there are with the pain. I do that, but it still hurts.

[49:56]

You watch the conditions where the pain is still hurting? Well, liberation from pain does not mean that the pain doesn't hurt. No. Liberation from pain means that you're a happy camper, even when in pain. Oh. That sounds like a big switch for me. What? I feel liberated... Liberation... You wouldn't be liberated from pain if I came over to you and said, Tom, I'm going to call you some pain. And you'd say, No, please don't. And I'd say, No, I'm going to unless you do what I tell you to do. Right. And you'd say, Okay, what do I have to do? I'd say, Well, I'll be mean to you in the end. Right. You'd say, Okay, no way, no problem. And I'd say, Now stop being mean to me. And you'd say, Why are you getting into it? If you stop, I'll cause you pain. So I can use pain to make you into a total robot. Right. So you're totally enslaved by pain. Right. And you're going to feel pain for quite a while. I have a feeling. Maybe not in this endo. Maybe not in this endo. But if you're near me,

[50:58]

I can always hurt you. Let me finish. I just wanted to know, Okay, about the liberation from pain. It means that you, First of all, You face the pain. First thing you have to do is face the pain. You can't be liberated from pain if you don't face it. If you're afraid of pain, You're already totally enslaved. So first of all, You have to be in the present with the pain. That's number one. If you can't do that, You are just simply never going to get un-enslaved by pain. Okay. Okay. Next is, Once you're not afraid of it anymore, You just experience it. Okay. Then you start watching the causes and conditions. And if you see them correctly, You will be liberated. And then when pain comes, You will experience it, And nobody can push you around with it anymore. Including you. That's called liberation from pain. Liberation from pain is not because you have pain. It's that when it comes, You don't run to the hill, Or do cruel things in order to avoid it. Or trash other sentient beings, If necessary,

[51:58]

So that you don't feel it. Even trash people, That, Are you. Like to take poison, In order to make them go away. Anything. Give it to me. I'll take it. That's called, Not being liberated. Being liberated from pain is, I've got pain, okay, Now what's next? That's what liberation from pain is. Oh, it went away. Okay. Oh, here it comes again. Hi. I'm Tom, How do you deal with your pain? How do you deal? Come on over here. Sit down. Let's talk. Is there a learning meditation technique, Where there's no pain? Pardon me? There is a learning meditation technique, Where there's no pain. Yes. In the first jhana, In the first jhana, And above, There is no pain. Zero. No negative sensations. In the first jhana, Second jhana, Third jhana, Fourth jhana, And also, In the rupi jhanas, There is no pain from there on up, And now there's no pain, But there's pleasure, And there's rapture,

[53:00]

And then there's even detachment from pleasure, And so on. It gets to be like totally high quality states. However, these states all have time limits on them, And when they're over, If you hold to them, You go to some place much lower than where you started. You know, like you're up there, You're kind of up there like, And then somebody says, Can I talk to you for a second? I'm not talking about somebody like kicking you, Or spitting in your face, Or like sticking you with a branding iron, I'm talking about somebody, Somebody just wants to talk to you, And you're like, Hello? And like, that would be a slight come down, you know? So, Get out of here. You've got power too, You're a concentrated fellow, So you can like, So then you go way, [...] way down, Like you didn't start that low. You started in a pretty good state, Like you're a suffering Zen student, right? A little Zen knee pain, stuff like that, And you say, practice a little concentration,

[54:00]

You get up there. When you get up there, If you hold to that stuff, And even if you don't hold it, It sends you to deep, deep hell, For sometimes quite a long period of time. Not too many people spend that much time in hell, Because not too many people get that high. The higher you get, The longer you can spend in hell, Because the worst thing you'll do, And the more power you'll have to do that thing. So I can tell you how to get there, But it's very dangerous, Unless you go there, In order to stay off your feet. And so I can tell you, We don't want you to go there. I'm telling you, You're a little clear on the point of my Buddhism. Yes? I was reading a part of one, A little differently than my third, And I wondered, How dare you? I just wanted to say this, And see whether this is correct. The mic? Or louder. Or louder. Or whatever. My sense of what he's saying, Is that, There are no static,

[55:02]

There are no static things at all. Yes. And since there's no static things, Nothing can be fixed on. And since nothing can be fixed on, Nothing could be said to be an originating cause. There's just more like, Something more like events, Or just flow. Yeah, right. That's right. That's another way to read it, And that's correct. So there's just this flow of interconnectedness, Among all of us, you know. There's this constantly undulating, Fluxing soup of relationships, All the time, you know. That's what's happening. And, you know, Well, when you say that, You don't know what it is. And in that situation, These associations sometimes come up. Or you can say, Oh, when this happens, This usually happens. Okay? That's a condition. But if you try to go out in that soup, And say, Okay, right over here, Now here's like a thing here, Separate from everything else, That makes that happen. He says, You can't do that. You can't like fix the cause here,

[56:03]

Over to the effect here. You can't do that, Because everything's flowing. Even the explanations, He says, Are just only because, When this happens, that happens. That's the only reason why We even associate them As conditions for that. And actually, That really doesn't hold up to anything. There's nothing to that, Only because of that. And so if you took away This cause, And this condition, And this thing still happened, Then we wouldn't call it a condition anymore. Or if you said, This wasn't a condition, And the thing didn't happen, You say, Well, maybe it was. You put it back in C. You put it back in half, And say, Okay, I guess they're paired. For now. So we'll call it a condition. That's all the more he'll go. And even beyond that, It's only because we want to know About this Jane That we're talking about Jeremy. If we weren't interested in Jane, To talk about how Jane happened, Then we wouldn't even be talking About the conditions for Jane. Right. So if Jane wasn't an issue for us In this one particular event,

[57:05]

We wouldn't be into the conditions of Jane. We only set it up If we want to explain A particular thing. And there's plugs. Gabe? I was just... I think my question was Whether thinking in terms of causal power Is that endemic to all comprehension? Like you were saying before, We can't comprehend the sub. Is that... I think so. Is it... It's at the key... For Nargajuna, It's like a key point To talk about how we grasp. It's part of... It's seeing things as objects. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like gondas.

[58:06]

It's like... The basic same thing happens When you grasp. The self does arise In regular association With this gondas, But if you look In this gondas, You will not find a self In there any place. But sure enough, God's self is five gondas there, Unless your mind is high, Very high trance state, And then it will deform. But basically, Conditions for a sense of self In this gondas, But you cannot find The causal power In any of these gondas For self. In the experience of light, Smell, taste, And feelings, And various emotions, You can't find a self In there any place. If you look In the concept of self, You can't find a self In there any place In the concept. There's nothing but The concept of self That we have to find a self In there. And yet, The concept of self Is one of the conditions For this sense of self Which we then grasp. But because of that, Because of their conditions,

[59:09]

Rather than causes, There can be liberation From this connection. The gracious Uploading of the fabrication That this self Actually does comprehend Or embrace Or account for Our experience. Whereas actually, Our experience can be Totally accounted for Without that. And that's just that. Yes? Well, I don't really see... If you name a condition Or a group of conditions, And you keep in mind That the thing That these things Are conditioned for Is nothing more Than a group of these conditions, Then isn't that Kind of a special link? I mean, like, How far... Like, you sort of Arbitrarily stop at a certain point In considering what the condition For this event Or thing is. And isn't that The same kind of an illusion? I mean, you know, Maybe you get more pitfalls, Maybe you get more conditions,

[60:10]

And, you know, The picture has greater clarity For the illusion of it, But does it really... Where does it stop? And isn't that really A special link when you... I thought I heard... I thought I heard What you said, The answer to that, In that you said, I think Nagarjuna Agrees with you, And even the Buddhists That would say That there's... Before I get into that, So I just say, Okay, you said That the thing is nothing Other than the conditions. Okay, so, If that's the case, You can't see the thing In the conditions at all. There's no link Because there's nothing To link to. But the conditions Are just as arbitrary. So, yeah, All the more, So there's no special link. So where's the special link? I don't see it. It's just a habit of mind. What? Did you say It was a habit of mind? Yeah. That's what it is. That's all it is. It's a habit of mind. That's all it is. This whole thing Is just a habit of mind. It's a fabrication. That's what you're Trying to uproot, Is that habit of mind. But you beautifully

[61:10]

Demonstrated how Insubstantial it is By saying That what These conditions Give rise to Is nothing Other than the conditions. And if it's not, Then you definitely Couldn't find it In the conditions. And yet, We had this habit of mind Of construing something That's nothing Other than the conditions That's a separate thing And then when we get The separate thing We can see the separate thing In the conditions. Which it never was Anything other than And we have this Habit of mind. It's called Mental fabrication. And it's our habit Pardon? We have these habits Of mind Because of Consistency That we go to sleep And yet we Wake up And it's the same place The same people As opposed to Dreaming Where we have Non-consistency A non-consistency Experience. So we have Consistency. We have Everything's the same. It changes Gradually. We don't see that change. We just see The same thing. So that habit of mind Is formed out of

[62:11]

Consistency, isn't it? It's a condition But not a product. It's a habit of mind Formed out of consistency. We're used to It's not the same. Well, there's something I have to say What is the efficaciousness Of the habit of mind? What is the efficaciousness Of the habit of mind? That if I know that Regularly I Strike a match In flames And I light my Kerosene lamp Then, you know, This happens regularly And so I form an association Between striking the match And lighting the kerosene lamp Then when I have a desire To have my kerosene lamp lit Because of this habit of mind Associating striking the match With getting A kerosene lamp on I think Perhaps I think That strikes the match And so From a certain point of view There's something efficacious About this idea Of cause That some, you know Even if Probably I haven't Been as precise enough To actually locate the cause Whether it's in my desire

[63:11]

Or whether it's in the match Or whether it's in the striking Of the match Or whether it's Which is putting a match To the To the To the Wait, thank you But so I could have A general idea Although probably not Philosophically precise Of a cause Which Is somewhat efficacious When it comes to Getting my lamp lit If I want it lit That's what I meant When I said that And I think that's What's sort of getting A certain consistency That the habit of mind Of cause Comes because of certain Things that regularly are As you said Associated with each other And from a certain point of view Is efficacious To think of that As a cause Why could Not seeing it As a condition Well, I'm not I'm not saying I prefer to see There's a cause I'm not saying That there is a cause I'm not arguing That there's a cause I'm saying it's right That there's a cause I'm saying that I'm just trying to Sort of flush out Turns points Maybe I shouldn't Have done that The efficaciousness Of this Of the habit of mind Of attributing Some causal power The efficaciousness

[64:12]

Of it Is it Efficacious The efficacious Decency of it Is that It's efficacious Because it causes pain That's the Efficacious Part about it That's the efficaciousness Of that habit Is that it causes pain And by causing pain It forces us To turn around And understand The process In another way That's why It's efficacious It forces us To see The true reality Of the chemical arising If this way Of seeing things Wasn't painful There would be Not much of a chance To get people To totally reverse That way of seeing things And the reason Why we get in this way I think Is because It forces us Because of Being able to To have a sense of self As other than Other than the object To be able to reflect This whole thing arose And In evolution Of human consciousness There came a time When we could see Things as external And therefore Know them And this was a big Breakthrough for us Before that

[65:12]

We didn't see anything External And before that There was no sense of self And in association With being able To see things Externally The sense of self Is born As we studied last year Okay Now the advantage Of that sense of self Being born And then attributing Substance to it Is that It caused A pain And the pain Causes us To re-look At the whole situation And Nagarjuna Is that He's got the pain In the background And he's not Trying to Show you That this is painful It's sort of understood That what he's doing here Is he's trying to Set people free From pain The pain of Attributing Self-existence To things Which we even do When it comes to cause Because of this Habit of mind So you take this human Habit of mind Of holding a self And we apply it To causal processes Even apply it To the causal processes Which were the ones That Buddha used To liberate himself From self-clinging He taught the Tenet of co-arising

[66:13]

To set people free From the idea Of taking a self As a Self-existent thing But The process The habit of Projecting self-existence On the thing Is so strong That it even got Turned around And put back In the process By which you Liberate yourself And I asked you To do What you're doing I asked you To show me Again and again The way The habit of mind By which We put something Into the situation Which actually Is not necessary And its Efficaciousness Its usefulness Is It causes suffering That the way Of adding this Into the process Of accounting for The association Between the elements That you need to use To light your lamp Adding this other thing Into it Makes that uncomfortable That's not That's not Obvious to me Fine Now what Would be good Is if you Would look to see The difference between Considering these things You talked about As conditions Without attributing Any self existence

[67:13]

To them Or any causal Power to them And then looking At the way It is When you Attribute it And notice The difference Between in one case You feel uncomfortable And in the other case You experience Spontaneous liberation I guarantee I guarantee That you will be Completely liberated If you switch To this other view But One of the reasons Why you will Switch to the other view Is because switching To the other view Will be difficult It will be unfamiliar Switching to the other view Will be at first character Will be just sitting When you switch The reason why You would be willing to switch Is when you start to see And that's maybe You can do first You start to see How uncomfortable it is To have this extra thing Added into the process To put this Habit of mind On top of what is actually Kind of a clear situation Of cause Of causation An actual Association between Which is actually Just by association And just by regularity No more They're just regular things Associated with making A human being No more You don't have to have The self on top of it But the self

[68:14]

Is on top of it And the efficaciousness Of it Is suffering The definition of suffering is Experience And clinging to it As a thing That's what causes suffering And the efficaciousness Of suffering Is that it causes you To Look At how that happened And then see The actual reality That encoded By the experience Of liberation That's our job So if you can look At the daily Like little things That you do You know Little things you do Where various causes And conditions Come and rise And sketch yourself Letting this habit Of mind operate And attributing Causal agency To things You can catch that And notice that You're like Making Nagarjuna Yours You're What do you call it You're making Nagarjuna Idiomatic To your actual Experience And you can see Then Then when you hear Any verses They're going to be Talking about Exactly The mapping Of your habit Is this In This habit

[69:15]

Or process Of wanting To make [...] The unknown The known Yes That's right Like what you said About Believing it's true Rather than Deceiving it Like If you don't Like An example of Bring on light And say Well yeah Because It's been pretty long But like When you bring up You know The lower Up Oh yeah Thanks Yes So then My mind opens To other Possibilities Of what Conflict is Not A final Um Act Or Act Or Act So Acknowledging Acknowledging That there's more Happening More Something I know about That's good But actually I think the most

[70:16]

Effective thing Is to admit This Habit of mind By which You Are limited If you catch yourself At that That's what He's pointing to As non-existent And notice how You resist that When you start Noticing how you Resist that Then naturally Your mind will Open up to the Conditions Which you may already Know You may already Know them But your mind will Open up to them As conditions Rather than as These things Which have the power And then if you Can catch yourself At thinking that Things have the power And then feel Nagarjuna Pointing to that Place And then use To examine Whether they Really do So start With the place You're clean Rather than Trying to Unclean yourself By considering Other possibilities Which is fine If it happens Spontaneously But let it Happen spontaneously And bring your Attention to the Place where you're Holding And all you Got to do Is If you disagree With Nagarjuna You got it So Does that relate To Is part

[71:18]

Of the Problem To let go Of that Or part Of the Problem That you're Holding to Basically And he doesn't Say You know Let go Of those Things He just Discusses With you For you to Look at So you can See that You're holding When you See that You're Holding You're Cooking Because he's Going to Keep pushing On you And you're Not proposing Other ways of Looking at Things He's just Saying look At the way You do Look at Things And if You look At the Way you Do Look at Things Which Would Help If you Can notice That he's Talking about The way You Think Then he's Going to Make fun Of you If you Want to Follow His way Of Thinking If you Study this You can Actually catch Yourself When you Can see He's Talking about You And then You can See him Like loosen Your mind Up and set

[72:18]

You free He's not Telling you To think Another way He's Telling you To look At the way You do Think And if You look At that Then he's Going to Start twisting You And turning You And making All kinds Of other Possibilities Here And you Can feel That it's Another possibility When you're Holding to Something And suddenly You feel Like Oh Other than What I Thought I can Try it Another way And another Way And another Way So don't Try to be Different from What you Are Try to Be honest About what You're Up to And Yeah So Immediately I'm going To run A possible Application By You I Seem To Claim To Comfort You Want Comfort So You're Advising I Just Pay Close Attention To My Seeming To Comfort You And That'll Bring To Comfort You

[73:18]

And Then Also See if While you're Looking While you're Watching This actual Simple thing Of Feeling discomfort And yearning for Comfort Watching that And see If you Think In that Situation That there Actually Is In the Situation In some Particular Thing A cause Rather than a Condition Which has a Causal power To produce Pain To produce Pleasure See if you Think that Way too So Yeah Go ahead Is I Think That In The Acorn Of My Pain There's Conditions For Your Pain Right So You're In Pain And Then You're Yearning For Pleasure So That Helps You Locate Your Pain So Then Is There Acorn For Your Pain There's Conditions For Your Pain And Then You Think That In Those Conditions For The Pain There Is Actually Pain In There You Do That If You Do And That Can Be One Kind Situation

[74:19]

You Can Start Seeing That There's Conditions For Your Pain And There's Conditions Associated With It You're Going To Have A Whole different take on your pain. And the same way with the thoughts, the yearning for pleasure, there's conditions for the yearnings for pleasure. But are they causes for you? And if so, can you see if they're causes, like it actually would be a thing that has the causal power to give me pleasure? Do you think that way? And if you can catch yourself at that in the pleasure realm, or the pleasure yearning realm, and if you can see yourself in the pain realm, in those two realms, if that's the way you see things, then both situations of the yearning for the pleasure and the situation of being in pain, either restlessly digging the pain, or excitedly digging the pain, either way, you think that way. And if you think that way, you're meditating on the topic that will set you free from pain and pleasure. So you start with something practical and concrete, and then notice the conditions of it, and then notice how you feel about those conditions. And in fact, very simply, we do have positions

[75:20]

on that stuff, we do have this habit of mind, and I think that's great what Steve said, because we have this habit of mind of, these are the conditions of pain, but the pain is nothing other than the conditions, and then, somehow, within those conditions is the pain, even though I just said the pain was nothing other than the conditions. I just added something back into the conditions that I saw was nothing other than the conditions. We do that. If you catch yourself at that, you're very close to changing your attitude about the situation, and getting, you know, a situation where you're not in pain when you're in pain, basically. Or, you know, you're just not bothered by pain or pleasure. You're liberated from both, because you see that you do the same thing to the pain, you do the causes of pain, the conditions of pain. You make the conditions into something that has something to them, you make the pain into something that has something to it. If pain has something to it, you're in trouble. It's a reality. You've done both. But it's not, fortunately, and neither are you, and so on.

[76:23]

This is Nagarjuna's love on the process. He's trying to help us. But we have to do a lot of hard work of, you know, feeling our feelings, and then watching the conditions for our feelings, and then watch how we feel about and understand those conditions. And he's saying, for most of us, this is a key point, that we have a faulty understanding for the conditions for our suffering. There are conditions for our suffering, but even though I explain the conditions for suffering, those are just, they're just conditions, there's nothing in them either. The conditions that explain suffering, they're not realities either. They're just something we choose to help explain it. And we choose those because they have this regular associating with it. But if they didn't, we'd choose a different set. That's all. If they really did have this thing in them, there was actually a thing in the conditions for suffering that was actually there, and the suffering was in there, then it would be locked in, and we'd be, again, in big trouble. But it's not that way. That's the story of how we're

[77:28]

not in trouble. This is a story of how we're not in trouble. The story of how we are in trouble is that self is really there, and self projections into everything is really true. But again, this is just a habit of mine, which is very pervasive, and even applies to the causes and conditions of all of our experiences. And it's almost nine o'clock, and there's lots of hands raising up, and it's really great, but it's time to go to bed, right? And I hope the people who have their hands raised would write their questions down, and we talk about it more later. And I'm really happy that you're willing to talk about this crap. And I'll tell you, once again, if you memorize the text, it's going to really help, you know. Things mean a lot more to you when they're inside of you.

[78:34]

may our intention deeply penetrate.

[78:47]

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