Templeti, whether it would be helpful for me to say to you before this talk that what I have in mind is kind of a big, challenging pile of words. I don't know if it's helpful to tell you that beforehand, but I guess what I'd like to ask you to do is to try to pay attention, because that's probably what's required. Please try to follow what I'm saying, even though it may be a lot to ask. I do ask you to do that. I'd like to give you a big picture. of practice this morning.

[01:01]

A big picture, but a simple practice and a difficult practice. So I begin with a story It's a story about, in a sense, it's about a person. It's a story about me. And it might be a story about you. So first of all, the way I see it, or the way I imagine it, is that first of all, there is life.

[02:09]

And this life is unborn. It's not a life that gets born and dies. It's an infinite life. So I have this vision of an infinite life And out of this infinite life, this infinite life can manifest in innumerable ways, innumerable forms. One of the forms in which this infinite life manifests is as a human being, as an individual human being with an identity and a uniqueness. And this individual human being is like a pine tree on a mountain or a hair follicle on your head.

[03:35]

It's part of this life. And it is part of the life. The life gives rise to this human being. And this human being gives rise... gives rise to the life. They're inseparable, mutually creating each other. And this human being comes with being human, it comes with a mind, it comes with a consciousness. an extremely, a virtually infinite consciousness. And this consciousness also, just like life itself, can take infinite particular forms. The mind of these humans is like a, in a sense, a perfect reflection of

[04:44]

Infinite life. Infinite mind, infinite life. And in this mind of this human, of this individual human, is also an imagination. This human has the ability to imagine. And one of the things it can imagine is that it is isolated from the life which is inseparable from it. This human being can imagine that it's separate from life, independent, isolated from all of life. And I don't know for sure how many forms of life other than human can do this, but I haven't seen any others that can do it offhand.

[05:52]

But I think my dream about the human is that human can do this. They can imagine that this individual is isolated. Rather than individual is completely non-existent other than how it's related. Now, in order... So this imagination is just an imagination which a human being can do. Nothing wrong with imagining something like that. It's just a fantastic imagination. We can do, we can imagine things that don't exist. We can imagine our independence which doesn't exist. So far, actually, okay. I would say that's my story. So far, okay is my story. Next step, we believe, we believe that this imagination is true.

[06:55]

We think it's real that we're separate, that we're isolated, that we're independent. So we not only can dream up this thing which doesn't exist, namely our independence, but we also can attribute reality to it. We have imagination and we have truth attribution power. Both of those things human beings have. When you take the truth and lay it on... When you take reality or idea of substance and put it on our sense of independence, then things get to be kind of like almost, you might say, not okay. That's ignorance. Imagining something, like imagining that we're separate... That's just an imagination, but in order to believe it's true, you have to ignore something. You have to look away from something. You have to stop noticing how you're related to everything and how everything helps you to be what you are.

[07:58]

We imagine a self, okay. We think the self really is independent of other things. That's ignorance. And then that ignorance, that ignoring our independence, pretty much right away, at that very moment, there arises anxiety. There arises pain. And that pain... That pain, the pain which arises from our belief that it's true that we're separate from the rest of life, that anxiety, that pain will be ongoing until we stop believing that story.

[09:10]

of self as independent as real. In other words, until we become free of that ignorance, we will continue to be anxious. And the anxiety may be subtle a good share of the time, but even though it's subtle, it is the basic cause of all the unnecessary problems on this planet. It is the major cause of cruelty." Was that clear so far? At least what I said? All right. This ignorance sets in fairly early in our development.

[10:13]

Children learn pretty early, as you know. Mine! And they mean it. Maybe the first couple times they try it, it's just an experiment. But after a while, they kind of like start to believe that what their parents give them, and what their grandparents give them, and what their kind brothers and sisters occasionally give them, all the things that are given to them out of love, they turn into And they will, of course, you know what they'll do to uphold that position. And then it goes on from there, that we really do think certain things belong to this independent self and not to the other, to those aliens, those people who are not us. Mine.

[11:19]

Now a corollary, kind of a corollary of ignorance, a corollary of believing that you're independent is what we call karma, karmic consciousness. Once I imagine I'm independent, of everything then I can imagine that there can be an author a maker of an act an independent operator and that could be me and you also might be able to do that I can do it by myself. This also you hear from children fairly young. I can do it by myself. I want to do it by myself. Let me do it by myself.

[12:25]

This is a virtually unstoppable development once there's ignorance. Once there's a sense of mine, then it's like my actions. This is karmic consciousness, and this is a source of what we call karma. So first of all as soon as there's ignorance there's some anxiety. Then because of the anxiety we want to do something about it. We want something done about it actually. We want something done about it and gradually we want to do that something about it or we want to arrange for someone else to do something about it. So now not only do we have ignorance and pain but now we can elaborate this system of painful ignorance or ignorant-born anxiety.

[13:28]

We can elaborate this system by imagining that we can act by ourselves and then to follow through on these actions which I do by myself then creates further effects. This action which I do by myself has consequences. When I think that I can do something by myself and I do it, there are consequences for that kind of thinking which are called karmic effects. And those karmic effects come back primarily to me. And when they come back, Then I cope with them, usually, by more karma, which leads to more effects, which come back to me, which I cope with by more karma. And so the cycle of karma, results, pain, anxiety, coping by karma, results, pain, anxiety, round and round, this gets set up.

[14:41]

And this creates, actually, a world, a new world. And this is a world, not the world of infinite life, but the world of temporary life, a world of birth and death. And I cope with birth and death in that world by more karma. which makes more birth and death, which I cope with by more karma and more birth and death as results. So this is the system, this is the prison, which is created by ignorance. And in Zen, we don't hate this world. that's created by ignorance and karma. We don't hate this painful world that is created by ignorant beings.

[15:49]

Hating it makes it stronger. Hating the walls of the prison makes them thicker, brings in more guards and more sophisticated security procedures. In Zen we love the world that's been created by delusion. But love doesn't mean like, and love doesn't mean indulge in this world. Zen practice does not indulge in the world, does not hate the world. It studies this world. It studies the prison. If you love the world, if you study the world thoroughly, you will be liberated from this world which is created out of delusion. If you study the prison which is created out of delusion and karma, the prison walls will turn into the doors to paradise, the doors to infinite life.

[17:02]

As a matter of fact, as soon as you change your life from fighting the walls and trying to make deals with the walls of prison, as soon as you really change your mode of relationship to the world, you're immediately liberated from it. Because you change from manipulating and being enslaved by making constant deals and negotiations with the world which you've created by your constant deals and negotiations, to studying, to observing, to meditating on the world and how it works. It's a radical switch. Loving the world liberates the world. Loving the world brings understanding of how it works and liberated from its workings. Okay so far?

[18:17]

If you have any questions, write them down and we can talk about it in question and answer. I think there's many questions. The Buddhas, the Buddhas, and particularly the Buddha Shakyamuni, who founded Buddhism in India, and his successors down through the centuries, have studied the world. And some of them, we understand, have achieved liberation and have taught others to achieve liberation from the world of ignorant, karma-created activity. The Buddhas study the process basically that I've just described, understand it and become liberated, study it, become enlightened about it and become liberated from it.

[19:33]

Before Buddhas were Buddhas, they were just like us. Before Buddhas were Buddhas, they were just like us and they studied how we are. They were karmic beings. They were caught in the illusion of independent existence, created karma, observed the effects, understood the process and achieved liberation. They did the work of studying karma. Study karma, you see dharma. Seeing dharma, you wake up and are liberated. But I'll say this many times, I think probably if I live longer, studying karma is difficult. It's difficult because when you start studying karma, you start paying attention to what you're doing, and when you start paying attention to what you're doing, you notice

[20:45]

that much of what we do is motivated by our pain and our trying to cope with it. So bringing our attention to our action and getting into the details of our karma, it can be very nauseating, embarrassing. You become intimate with pain and anxiety in the process. So it's simple in a way to meditate on karma, but it's painful. So you have to practice patience in order to study karma. To practice patience means you need to be able to get to the most peaceful place in the pain. which is the most present part of the pain, and the most here, right here part of the pain. And if you can find that place, there is a fairly peaceful place in the pain to study the pain, to study the karma.

[21:50]

But the situation is basically all tangled and twisted and dark and murky. because it's born of ignorance, it's born of looking away from everything, almost everything. So as I mentioned at the beginning, this will be difficult, and as I proceed now, you may sense the difficulty of the meditation. So one of the stories about the Buddha Shakyamuni is that when he was Shakyamuni Buddha, you know, in the lifetime that he was Shakyamuni Buddha, which was 2,500 years ago, during that lifetime, part of the lifetime, the first 29 years of the lifetime, or was it 35 years, I can't remember now, but anyway, for the first 35 years of his life,

[23:00]

The Buddha was called a Bodhisattva, which means the Buddha prior to being Buddha, the Buddha as he was approaching, as she was coming close to being Buddha, as she was approaching Buddha, she's called Bodhisattva. Even in the very lifetime that Shakyamuni Buddha attained complete enlightenment and became the great teacher, even in that lifetime, he still was doing karma for the first part. He was still somewhat deluded and thought that he was doing things. And not only did he do some things, he said... Not only did he think that I do this and I do that, not only was he in that ignorant mindset for the first part of his life, and not only did he suffer from that, but he even did unskillful things.

[24:07]

It wasn't just that he did things, but he even did some unskillful things. There basically are three categories. For the sake of meditation, we say there are basically three categories of karma, three categories of action. And I'll say these in different ways. Unwholesome, wholesome, and indeterminate. Those are the three types. Unwholesome, wholesome, and indeterminate. unskillful, skillful, and can't tell which. Or you could say harmful, harmless, and unclear. Or unbeneficial, beneficial, and unclear.

[25:12]

Those are three types, various ways to talk about the three types. All these three types, however, are based on ignorance that you can do things by yourself so all three types even the skillful types still perpetuate this prison of delusion still perpetuate the prison of anxiety born of independent belief in independent existence still The Buddha highly recommended practicing skillful, wholesome, beneficial, harmless action. Because skillful action leads to happiness, good fortune, and most importantly, leads to the ability to study karma.

[26:17]

So if you're careful about what you do and try to develop skillfulness in your deluded action, the great benefit of that is you'll be able to understand more and more the nature of your action. Good karma by itself will not set you free from the ignorance upon which it is born. But good karma helps to set up the ability to see how karma is born of ignorance and to examine the ignorance. And the meditation on ignorance, the meditation on karma, does liberate you from karma. And meditation on karma is not karma. So the Buddha taught the cornerstone of the path of the Buddha, the cornerstone, the first step in the path of the Buddha is to, first of all, recognize that actions which are done under the auspices of the belief in independent existence of a self, that those actions do have effects.

[27:43]

That's called right view. That's the worldly right view. And we have to start there. And then we have to study how these actions have consequences. How these actions have consequences. And then see, what is the action here right now in me? An action can be mental, verbal, or physical. And verbal and physical karma are based on mental karma. So we need to study mental karma, verbal karma, and physical karma if we want to be free of the house of karma, the prison of karma. And so part of what needs to be done is you need to, I think you need to do this, I think we need to do this, is we need to make observing karma a higher priority than doing karma.

[29:10]

We need to make observing doing a higher priority than the doing itself. It doesn't mean that the doing is going to stop because we're actually meditating on the doing. It's just that we have to make the meditation on the doing the highest priority because the doing is much easier for us to do. without any effort, in a way. It's not without any effort, but our effort can be channeled into karma very easily because it's highly conditioned and habitualized in that way. What we need now is we need to put observation above or in the midst of this karmic field. Now, I didn't intend to lecture on the ten ox-herding pictures of Zen.

[30:20]

How many people have not heard of the ten ox-herding pictures of Zen? Raise your hands. Quite a few. Anyway, there's a series of paintings called the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures, and it's basically about how to tame an ox. And again, I did not mean to talk about this, but maybe some other time I'll give a talk on this. But I'll just briefly mention that just now it occurs to me that this ox is karma. It's a big, healthy ox, by the way. And it's an ox. Is an ox male or female? Huh? Is it male? Is it a neutered male? Anyway, it's an ox, it's a cow, it's a bull, anyway. It's a big, heavy-duty pile of flesh. And the story, the ten oxen in the picture is the first one.

[31:22]

I think the first picture is some little guy standing there out in the countryside, and I think it's called Looking for the Ox. Is that what it's called? Huh? Looking for the Ox. Some little guy, some little girl standing out in some nice Chinese scene going, hmmm. Where's the bull? No bull in, or it's called no bull in sight. I think the next one's called glimpsing or seeing the bull. Is that right? And that picture sometimes is drawn with, it's like alchemies are drawn in a circle, and sometimes that picture's drawn with the tail of the bull sticking into the corner of the circle. Anyway, you get a sight of the bull. You start to see your karma. And then you get a hold of the bull's tail. And then finally you start working with the bull.

[32:28]

I don't know what, petting it, talking to it, walking alongside, touching the horns, feeding it. You start to get close to the bull. Finally, you get up on the bull, and then finally you ride the bull home. And then there's various things happen after that. There's different series of these ten oxygen pictures. But in some cases, the next picture after riding the bull home is just an empty circle. If you can ride your karma and become intimate with your karma, you realize it's just an illusion. But first of all, you have to become intimate with it before you can get into the fact that it's an illusion. Before we can become free of it, we have to become really intimate with it.

[33:38]

So this becoming intimate with karma is what we call right view or comprehensive view, which is the first stage of Buddha's Eightfold Path, is to become intimate with karma. The second phase of the Eightfold Path is called right intention. But actually, right intention means the intention there that intention that we have moment by moment in our mind every moment there's an intention in your mind but sometimes the intention is very flat and smooth so it doesn't seem to be going anywhere like when you're in a receptive state there's no clear intention like when you feel a pain or feel a pleasure. You just feel a pleasure. You just feel a pain. You see a color. You just see a color. At that moment, the shape or intention of your mind doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

[34:54]

But in response then to these receptive experiences, then the mind goes into some shape or forms an intention or develops a vector or an inclination. And by studying these inclinations, these intentions, these intentions, these inclinations get transformed and as they get transformed they tend to enhance the study of the intentions and then the intentions are transformed further which enhances the study and further transformation. So the more you watch your karma by watching your karma, your karma gets transformed and as it gets transformed The way that the karma is transformed by observing the karma is such that the karma becomes conducive to more meditation on karma. As you watch how your impulses and your intentions form and how they are extended into speech and posture, the more you see that,

[36:04]

the more your speech and posture and mental attitudes tend to promote more meditation. And then more meditation again refines and transforms the karma, which again enhances the meditation, and so on, until you get clearer and clearer and clearer and more and more intimate with karma. And when we're completely intimate with karma, the world which is created by it drops away. As I said, Shakyamuni Buddha actually observed the tendencies of his thought.

[37:10]

He watched the tendencies of his thought. And again, the definition of karma is, karma is basically defined by your intention, which is the shape of your mind. The shape of your mind, where your mind seems to be going, defines the karma. It's defined the karma. However, the definition of the karma is not the same as karma. Karma requires not only an intention, not only an inclination of your consciousness. That's the definition of the karma, but it requires something else. What does it require besides that, do you think? What? No, that is the definition of action, but in order to make that into action, what more do you need? What? That is the will. That shape of the mind is the will.

[38:12]

What more do you need to make a will into action? The target and goal are the same thing. Intention, target, goal, will, volition, all the same thing. Okay, what more do you need to make that into an action? What? No. No? Ignorance, ignorance, you need ignorance. Ignorance, and what does ignorance give you? What? Self. You've got to have the author connected with the intention to make it into karma. The shape of your mind, even a Buddha could have a shape in his mind or her mind. The shape of Buddha's mind is... Actually, the Buddha does have a shape in her mind. The shape of her mind is... It's shaped. It's formed. It's intended towards. It's willed towards. It has volition towards. Okay, all same thing. Towards... What? Liberating beings from suffering.

[39:16]

The Buddha has a very clear intention in her mind. Very clear. Like... the shape may change a little bit. But basically it changes towards, it goes, it points over there towards this person, then it points towards that person, then it points towards that person. So it goes towards all the different beings, but it's always the same type of intention, namely wanting to liberate beings. So the Buddha has an intention too, but the Buddha's intention to liberate beings is not karma. How come? No ignorance. There's no author. The Buddha doesn't have an author in there. Like I am the author of the karma which is going to liberate beings. There's just, in the Buddha, there's just the interest, the wish, the intention, the will, the desire to liberate beings. But there's nobody, no author of that.

[40:17]

Now, if you and I wish to liberate beings... and we want to do it ourselves and be the author, that is called good karma. It's very good karma. It's still, however, karma because we still think, I'm going to do it. I'm going to liberate this person. I'm going to help this person. I'm going to do this good thing. It's still karma. However, it's good karma. And if you do that kind of good karma and you watch that good karma, you'll gradually see, well, this author of this good karma, this is pretty good, but still it hurts. There's still some pain here, still some anxiety. And you'll maybe gradually see, now maybe you won't, you will see if you get into it with this, that if you just set aside the authorship for a second and just have the intention to benefit beings, that that would do it.

[41:22]

But actually you don't set it aside You just watch and watch and watch and it drops away. And then there's the intention to benefit without any possessiveness. Once again, Shakyamuni Buddha watched his own, he watched his karma. He studied his karma. He watched his impulses to act. And even Shakyamuni Buddha saw in his mind an impulse towards desire and attachment. He saw that in himself. He saw impulses which had the shape of ill will. He saw harmful impulses in his mind.

[42:27]

Can you imagine? In some sense, this could be taken as, I guess, extremely good news. In other words, Buddha, not too long before he was enlightened, was just like some of us. I say not too long before he was enlightened because he was enlightened when he was 35. So during that first 35 years, he was noticing these impulses in his mind. So if we would work as hard as Buddha, and turns out in some sense Buddha goes along with the Protestant ethic in a way, Buddha was a hard-working meditator. If we would work as hard as Buddha, In 35 years, we could be completely enlightened. And actually, he didn't really start that, get into it that much until he was about 16. So in 20 years, or 19 years, if you really went to work now, you could be a Buddha. And maybe since, you know, things are going faster this time, you could even be less than 19 years.

[43:31]

But the Buddha meditated on his karma. He watched. He saw, oh, there's an impulse based on attachment. Oh, here's an impulse based on ill will. Oh, here's an impulse based on harmfulness. He watched that stuff. And he sometimes acted upon those things. Can you believe it? Within 35 years of his enlightenment, he was still into this low-grade activity. But he was meditating while he was doing it. He was meditating on this stuff. We, too, sometimes have such impulses Are we meditating on them? We have a bull, too. You know what Shakyamuni Buddha's name is? Gautama. It means bull. He was a bull. But he rode that bull. Karma's powerful. Can you get close to it? Can you study it?

[44:34]

And he watched and he saw, oh, these actions, these impulses towards attachment. caused me pain, caused me suffering, caused me anxiety, caused damage, these impulses towards ill will, these impulses towards harmfulness. He saw how they worked. He saw how they worked. He saw how they worked and how bad, how troublesome they are to him and others. He saw it over and over and over. He didn't just see like one of each and then that was it. He saw many examples of each. So the good news is he was like us. The bad news is, geez, we have kind of a low-quality Buddha here. But that's not his point of view. Buddhas are people who study the nature of human karma and become free of it. So he studied. And as he studied, the Indian way of talking is kind of negative in these old texts. So they say he studied these impulses.

[45:37]

of these wrong intentions, of these harmful intentions, and they often say, he got rid of them. My experience is, it isn't that you get rid of them, because that's very much like ill will and attachment itself. But rather, as you see how they work, they drop away. As you meditate on unwholesome tendencies... your tendencies get transformed by the awareness of how unwholesomeness works. You don't have to stop yourself from doing things that you really don't want to do. And also you can't stop yourself from doing things you really do want to do. So as long as you want to do unwholesome things, you're going to keep it up. I think. That's what it looks like. People sometimes say, I did that bad thing, I didn't want to. Well, yeah, you sort of didn't want to, but you also did want to. But all the things you didn't do, you say you did want to do, well, you didn't really want to do them because you didn't.

[46:46]

So there are a number of things, of stupid things that I've done in the past, which I don't do anymore. Now, some of the stupid things I've done in the past, I still do. But one of the things I used to do, I didn't do it that much, but I used to do a little bit. I used to eat these kind of hamburgers called White Castle hamburgers. I guess some of you know what they are, and some of you are too young to know what they are. Do you know what they are, Cindy? No. How old are you? You don't want to tell? What? She's 38, and she doesn't know what White Castle hamburgers. Also, she grew up in California. Do they have any White Castle hamburgers in California? They're not allowed. They can't bring them across the border. Anyway, they're a kind of disease in the Midwest. And there's little hamburgers that are about the size of a Triscuit. Do you know what a Triscuit is? Anyway, they're just these small little hamburgers and they have some kind of spice in them so they taste like something.

[47:56]

And I had some friends who used to, on Friday nights, they used to go out. I didn't go with them. And they used to go to White Castles and eat as many as they could. And my friends were Romans. So then they would go and vomit the White Castle hamburgers and go back in and eat more of them. I didn't go with them. But that's the kind of thing White Castle hamburgers are good for. Anyway, I used to eat them now and then. I remember I used to eat them. I used to go to the Y when I was about 12. And there was a White Castle. They came in these cute little houses, too. Really cute little White Castles was the house. These little tiny diminutive... hamburger stands. They were really cute. And in Minnesota, you know, it's really cold in the winter, and you'd be coming home from swimming or whatever at the Y, and you'd go into this nice steamy little hamburger place and buy one of these little tiny hamburgers. And they cost about 11 cents or something at that time. And anyway, I used to buy them, and it was fun.

[49:01]

But then one day, I actually chewed it a few times before I ate it, before I swallowed it. And it really did taste terrible. And I had a few more, just to make sure. But I finally realized, you know, that I did not want to eat them. Nobody needed me to eat them. They didn't do me any good. They didn't taste good. I had no sense that there was any food value. The buns, probably there was some, but anyway, I stopped eating white capsules of hamburgers because I didn't want to anymore because I understood what they were. If you meditate on your karma, on your unwholesome karma, you will not want to do it anymore. You simply, the impulse to do them will not arise. You just won't come up. Because your understanding will be transformed by meditation on the activity.

[50:04]

And you just simply won't give rise to the thought, the intention. However, you have to, you know, chew on this distasteful stuff quite a few times to taste. This is no good, this is no good, this is no good, this is no good. And not only that, but I'm doing it. And how embarrassing, you know? And, you know... This is no good. I'm embarrassed. This is painful. I'm stupid. These kinds of extraneous judgments may arise too, which are also painful. So this meditation can get difficult. But it's transformed your karma. This is what happened to the Buddha. He really saw, just like us, that he had these tendencies. He really studied them, and they dropped away. Like I say, they say he got rid of them, but I don't think he got rid of them. They just drop. They just drop. You just stop. Suddenly, it's all over. You're free.

[51:06]

And then you're still doing karma, though. You're not quite enlightened. So now you watch all this wholesome karma and you see how good wholesome karma is. And because you see how good wholesome karma is, you just do it. You don't do it because it's good. You do it because you want to, because you see it's good. You understand that it's good. And if you're going to do anything, it's really good to do that. But still there's some anxiety because still you think you're doing it. Now, as you keep watching this, over and over, and you see how good it is, you still realize there's something problem there, and you start to see what the problem is. And the problem is the attribution of reality to this sense of independence. The attribution of reality. Then you start chewing on that. Attribution of reality, pain. Attribution of reality, pain. Attribution of reality, pain. Attribution of reality to independence, anxiety. Attribution of reality to my independence, anxiety.

[52:08]

Anxiety, anxiety. And it drops. Not because you push it away, because that would be part of the same system of I push it away. It drops because your understanding is transformed by seeing how this all works. You just get a different understanding. You stop being ignorant and you become one who sees this is suffering, this is how it arises, and this is the end of it. And this is the path to the end of it. And the path to the end of it is study it. This is what the Buddha saw. This is suffering. This is how it arises. This is the end of it. And this is the path, which is to look at the arising of the suffering. But this is difficult. But the Buddha was like us. The Buddha studied this way, and the Buddha became Buddha. If we, who are like Buddha, will study like Buddha studied, we will become buddhists we will be enlightened just like a buddha he said that his disciples say that that's the party line but also they say over you know decade after decade year after year day after day the teachers say this is not easy it's not easy to look at this stuff what's easy is just let the bull run through the forest

[53:33]

knocking down the trees. It's hard to get close to this thing and become intimate with it and learn to ride it. It's hard. And I've been concentrating on teaching about and studying karma with people now for most of this year, and I'm really impressed and inspired that many people are actually taking up the study. And those who take it up sometimes come and tell me, how hard it is for them. And I said, yeah, that doesn't mean there's something wrong. This is hard. And sometimes they even tell me that when they're meditating on karma, they sometimes think, you know, blankety blanket. The hell with it. It's just too much trouble. It's just too hard. Such impatience naturally arises when we're really pressed by the difficulty of looking at what we're doing. It's difficult. So occasionally you may lose your patience.

[54:37]

So be patient with your impatience and go back to work. You have to do this lovingly. You have to do this lovingly. You have to be, you know, forgiving of yourself for this thing, you know, and be gentle. This is a tender, loving attention to this grisly story. The Buddha actually tried to get rough with himself. He tried that. He mortified himself. He tried to mortify himself, and it didn't work. Indulging, of course, is what we've been doing most of our lives. That doesn't work either. You have to find this uprightness, this balance in the middle of this karmic turbulence, this karmic circus. You have to find uprightness there, and then you will see. But it's not easy. And there are many, many, many, many subtleties in the process, but I'll be discussing this in many other classes and lectures and sittings and so on for the rest of my life, I guess.

[55:57]

The question is, are you ready to make observing the karma a higher priority than doing the karma. Doesn't mean, you know, that while you're doing the karma, can you somehow say, okay, here I am doing karma, but I want to, like, make something more important than the thing I'm doing, and that is studying myself while I'm doing it. You have to sort of make it a higher priority to lift it, to lift your consciousness up above your karmic activity so that the evolution towards awakening can start So think about whether you're ready to make that, set that priority of setting awakening above karma. Okay, all right, so now I have a song. And this is a song, I don't know why I didn't sing this song before, but it's a song which I think some of you may know already.

[56:59]

Okay, so here it goes. Ready? I left my heart in San Francisco high on a hill It calls to me To see our little cable cars Climb halfway to the stars The morning fog may chill The air, I don't care My love waits there in San Francisco Above the blue and windy sea

[58:13]

When I come home to you, San Francisco, your golden sun will shine on me. May our intention equally penetrate. Is there anything you'd like to discuss? Yes? A burning question? Okay, good. Yeah, very early. I mean, very early, like, it seems like a fairly sophisticated concept to me.

[59:20]

They don't seem to need anybody to teach them. I think if around the house everybody else modeled the opposite, you know, like none of the other brothers and sisters said, mine, and the parents didn't say, mine, like when the kid comes into your room, you know, at middle of night or whatever, you know, wants to be in bed with you or whatever, you wouldn't say, you know, this is daddy and mommy's bed. You'd just say, whatever, you know. And if they, like, took your food and stuff off your plate and took their brothers' and sisters' food, you know, or... Pardon? Pardon? Yeah, right. So you might be able to work in your house, but they wouldn't be able to go anywhere else. I think that to try to go against the natural course of events is unrealistic. I think the better way is to lovingly teach your children how to be aware of what they are rather than try to get them to be like weirdos.

[60:40]

I think through consciousness of what they're doing, they can go the normal course of development and become fairly free. But if you try to modify their development in some selfless way, then the natural selflessness of the human genetic makeup will just go underground, and the children will get out of touch with it, and then that would really be weird. Like, what is it, that thing about the gifted child is the one who senses that, you know, it's good to be unselfish, so they sort of like pretend like they're not. And then they lose touch with their narcissism and get really sick because it's in the back. You know, it's hidden. It pushes them around because they don't know about it. So... if you can be loving to your children and let them be narcissistic, you can train them how to be aware of it.

[61:52]

And I think that would be... I think that's a better way to go. Like my daughter, we let her be the little monster that she naturally was, and she knows something about herself now. She's still just like she was, but she knows about it. She's perceptive. Yes? This has to do with the word you use, author, author of the karma, author of the action. I find it difficult. Occasionally, my flimsy lack of authorship, authorlessness, authorless action, the feeling within me is, there's no choice anymore. It's very much, it has to be done.

[62:55]

That's the closest I can come. But it's troubling me, it's difficult for me to imagine Oculus Karma, Oculus Action. Well, my simplest example is, like when your doctor taps your knee and your leg pops up, you don't necessarily feel like you did that, even though it's a movement of your body in response to circumstances. But you don't necessarily say, I did that. Now, you could, but oftentimes you may feel like, oh, that's just my body reflex. It's not, I didn't do that. And So there's one example. Other examples are very similar to that. Like people sometimes have difficulty with eating, trying to figure out how much they should eat.

[63:57]

And in some ways it's pretty simple. Just when food's in front of you, just quietly sit there and see if you salivate. If you salivate, you're probably hungry. The salivation is a kind of an action of your body, but, you know, in some sense it's selfless. So in Zen we say, you know, when you're developed, you eat when you're hungry and you sleep when you're sleepy. You don't eat when you're not hungry. You don't eat when you think you should eat or when you're supposed to eat. Or you don't eat, you know, to, like, satisfy desires that food doesn't satisfy. You eat just because your blood sugar is lower, because you're salivating. Now, of course, you don't always eat every time you salivate because, for example, if you're at a restaurant and the people next to you, their food comes before yours and you salivate, you don't reach over and take it because, of course, you get in trouble, right? So probably not too skillful to do that, but that does show that you probably do want to eat their food at least.

[64:59]

So if you haven't already ordered, you could order that. If you can afford to pay for it. Or get somebody else to pay for it. So not every time you salivate should you eat it. But that shows you the things that are the good candidates. If you don't salivate for something, probably you don't need it. But of course, we a lot of times eat things when we're not really... Our body doesn't want it. We just think we want it. Or we think, well, I'll just eat until... I have nothing better to do, so I'll eat. Well, that's not such a good way to eat. Your body doesn't want it, so what's the... So the thing, though, is that a lot of things, our body's not talking for us so well. For example, for speech, our body doesn't necessarily want to say certain things sometimes. But our mind thinks that something should be said.

[66:00]

So in that case... what we need to do is something like this that we are aware that to whatever extent there's a self here who's not this other person over there and you feel and maybe you feel that anxiety and then you notice maybe some impulse to speak So at that point, if possible, just sit upright with that impulse to speak. And the other person may be saying, well, what, [...] what? And you say, could you give me just a second? You could have a kind of standard kind of like meditation space request. Could you give me just a second? You could say, I'm thinking. Because thinking, you're not just thinking. In other words, you could even say, I'm meditating on my thinking. I'm looking at my thinking and try to get permission to do that because it's to the other person's welfare.

[67:07]

The more likely the more chance you get to meditate on your thinking the more likely that your thinking will be going a beneficial direction for all concerned. So if you can look and if you can see there's an impulse here to speak and what kind of an impulse is this? Is this an impulse of detachment? An impulse of loving kindness? An impulse of gentleness and harmlessness? Is that the kind of impulse it is? Does that seem like it would be beneficial? If so, I'll give it a try. And then watch to see how it works. Okay? Now still, you still think, I'm doing it. As you meditate on this process, you start to see that there's two different things. There's the impulse and there's the author. There's some sense that somebody does the thought, that somebody has the impulse. But actually, I say actually, it's also possible that it happens that

[68:14]

Given the fact that you're a human being, that you have a body, that you have a certain blood sugar level, that you're awake, all these circumstances, plus what's happening in the environment, that whole interaction, your mind has a certain shape. Your mind takes shapes. It just naturally gives rise to these shapes, to these inclinations, to these intentions. It just naturally does that. Even if you're enlightened, your mind still goes in these directions. So again, an enlightened person with a body and a mind and other beings around, that interaction, their mind gives rise to a shape of, how wonderful, here's a Buddha who doesn't know she's a Buddha. I want her to know she's a Buddha. That thought arises in the mind quite naturally when you're not holding on to a self. Now it can also arise in a mind when you are holding on to a self, which is great too, but then it still is, then it tends into, I'm going to do something about this. If you watch that situation over and over, you start to be able to see that there can be kind of like, there can be the impulse without the ownership, without the authorship, without the makership,

[69:31]

But that usually comes to you when you see that there is an author, there is a maker, there is that sense of, I do this. You say, I do this, [...] I do this. You notice that there's anxiety there, there's anxiety there, there's anxiety all around the author. And the author's thinking of, and the impulses that are arising in the mind of the author, these impulses tend to be co-opted to the sense of self as services to the self to try to alleviate the self's anxiety. That's what tends to happen. The more you watch that, the more you realize that these actions do not alleviate the anxiety. They don't alleviate the anxiety because the anxiety is inextricably involved with the sense of this author. So then if you keep meditating on the author and the anxiety around the author, independent of the karmic action, which is a little bit of a distraction but still going on, you understand the author for what the author really is.

[70:41]

The author is actually fundamentally not an author. Then you're set. However, throughout this whole process, this karma is being launched constantly. Not constantly, but very often, karma is being launched from this author and the effects are raining down on this author, so it's a difficult situation to meditate on the nature of this independence and the anxiety around it because all this activity is generated out from there and coming flashing back on it. So it's a rugged situation to be trying to meditate on something so subtle. That's why it's good to have your karma refining itself. As it gets more and more refined, the way it rains back on you is it kind of rains back on you like... It's okay. Meditate. Look carefully. Is there some cleaning here? Is there some sense of belief in yourself? What's really the source of this anxiety? Do you see the anxiety? That's also karmic consequences.

[71:43]

So if you're careful and do wholesome karma, it promotes meditation on this author. And if you can't yet identify the authorship and get a sense of that sense that I can do this, I can do it myself, if you don't have that clearly in view and the anxiety around that, then if you can tune into your karma and sort of ride this karmic bull, then eventually you'll notice, you know, I think there's somebody here riding this bull. And then you say, I think there's anxiety around this bull rider. And the more you feel that anxiety around the bull rider, the more you realize that actually it's the anxiety around the belief that this bull rider is independent of the bull and independent of this forest and the earth and the sky.

[72:45]

And you start to see, well, that sense of independence is actually the source of the arising of this pain. And after you have 1.6 trillion examples of this, it will drop. But don't worry because once you tune into this, you get almost a trillion examples a day. So you don't have to wait many years to get that many examples because there's many examples of this throughout the day. If you could tune in and get that concentrated on what you're up to, you could learn rather rapidly the illusoriness of this independence. But again, it's hard to be paying attention, you know, like, this is called, you know, teaching an old dog a new trick. Right? We know how to do karma, but we don't know how to meditate on karma while it's being generated and while we're getting the results of past karma.

[73:49]

It's not too easy to meditate in a very chaotic, energetic situation, so it's difficult. So when I was talking about this kind of meditation practice one time in Tassajara, before the talk, I went into the kitchen, and in the kitchen they have these far-side calendars, you know? And they pile up the old ones, so I was looking through. I think it was the one for that day, actually. It hadn't been ripped off yet. And it had a picture of this dog. I forgot the dog's name. I think the dog's name was Olivia or something. Or Jackie or something like that. And the dog was riding a bicycle on a tightrope. And also she was juggling at the same time And there was a big crowd of, I think it was humans, watching the dog.

[74:50]

And I think the caption was, looking down at the hushed crowd, Jackie was, you know, very concerned because she was an old dog and this was a new trick. Something like that. So we have, you know, a tremendous amount of karmic experience, but learning how to meditate on it is not that well developed. to learn how to meditate while you're continuing to tightrope walk on a bicycle. It's very challenging, but you can actually get to the source of it all and wake up if you're willing to make the effort.

[76:04]

People actually, human beings do actually realize this stuff. I don't think of it so much as being in a state of enlightenment, of like there's a person in the enlightenment, because enlightenment is that you have a person who's not thinking in the terms of being in a state, that they're in a state. But such a state can visit a person, And you want to know if there's many people like that? Is that what your question is? Are there some? Once you actually see how you really are, you never forget.

[77:10]

Once you see that the illusoriness of your belief in your independence from others, once you see that clearly, you never forget. However, you can still have this full repertoire of behaviors that were developed under the auspices of ignorance. Like let's say now, after growing up, you have a tendency to get angry at people when they spit in your face. Like you develop that habit of getting angry when they spit in your face? Or at least when certain people spit in your face? And then you realize that your personhood is not independent of other people, including the ones who are spitting on you.

[78:14]

So when a person spits on you, and you have the habit of getting angry, so you still get angry. But you think, that's really weird that I'm getting angry. That habit is still there. Amazing. I'm still doing that. But before that you thought, you didn't think it was weird that you got angry, you thought it was weird that the person was spitting on you. You thought it was weird that they're so stupid and you thought it was weird that they're allowed to live and so on. You didn't think it was weird that you were getting angry because, what's to get angry about? Because this is your life. Your life is you're being spit on. This is life. There's a lot of saliva flowing around this world. And we make these strange, you know, distinctions and take them seriously. You know what I mean? Like, you know, so here's my glass, right? And I have saliva in my mouth, right?

[79:15]

And I don't mind if saliva is in my mouth, do I? I'm not disgusted if saliva is in my mouth, right? But if I spit into my cup, I might not want to drink it. You know, I spit, now the saliva was in my mouth, well actually it was saliva mixed with, with muffin, you know. I won't get into, I just read an article on humans biting people in the New Yorker. Did you read that? It turns out that human bites are very dangerous. So if you get bit by a human and it draws blood, you should go to a doctor right away. Because human saliva has more kind of like poisonous stuff in it than dog saliva generally. But anyway, so I spit in my tea, and I'm willing to drink this stuff. But most of you probably wouldn't be interested, right? But before I spit in it, you probably felt okay about it, right? Maybe, if you like the kind of tea it is.

[80:18]

But I don't mind, right? But some of you might mind your own spit in your cup, right? But let's say you don't mind it. But if there was no tea in the cup, and you spit in the cup, and it was just straight saliva, then most of you wouldn't want to do it, right? Or you might feel, well, one spit I could drink back, but a whole cup full. Even though it's my saliva, I wouldn't want to drink it, right? Now, some people say, OK, I could drink a whole cup of my own saliva, but could you drink a cup of somebody else's saliva? Could you drink a cup of all the people in the room's saliva? A real wide selection of saliva. Well, most people can't, right? I mean, they seriously would have problems with it, right? But anyway, go back to your own. How come you can't drink your own saliva when you've got it in your mouth and you don't mind? It's because you put it outside yourself and you actually say, now it's outside myself. And we do the same thing with people. We say, these people are outside myself, and therefore only in certain circumstances will I let them in.

[81:26]

In other circumstances, it's like, seriously, no way, Jose. It's just like, no way, get away. You're not me. And, I mean, we really take that seriously. I mean, we will do major things about that. So, what's the deal there? Now, a Buddha, you know, if you give a Buddha a cup of somebody else's saliva, would the Buddha drink it? Hmm? This lady says, no, what's your name again? Huh? She said, yes, the Buddha would drink a bowl full of saliva. I disagree. The Buddha would not necessarily drink a bowl of somebody else's saliva. The Buddha would only drink the saliva if it enlightened people. Now, if it helped people, if it would help people for Buddha to drink a saliva bowl, a bowl of saliva, the Buddha would be very happy to do it because, can you imagine it? Would you be willing to drink a cup of saliva if you liberated somebody completely? If that's all it took?

[82:32]

Just for every person, you know, one saliva, saliva. That'd be great. You know, to make a Buddha just by drinking a little bit of her saliva. But we have trouble doing that kind of thing for people, right? Because of these boundaries. Was that disgusting? You look disgusted. I think maybe you were next, Salim. I was reading yesterday about the right effort. And I was thinking if in the right effort you are making, you know, it says that there is an unwholesome thought that has not arisen yet to not let it arise. Yes, prevent the arising of unwholesome thoughts.

[83:35]

Or if a wholesome thought has a reason to continue. with a wholesome thought. If a wholesome thought has arisen, to promote that kind of thought. So it seems to me that that is something that we are doing not as an impulse, like the example that you were talking, you know, with your leg, or coming from a part that you're not the author. It feels to me that this is coming from another, from an effort from an author and not from an impulse. And I was just wondering if later, at a later stage, after you've been practicing the right effort for some time, it will become an impulse and it will come from a selfless action or a selfless... Yes, it will. That's right. But first we have to practice it. If you're still involved,

[84:36]

in believing that you're independent, that your identity is isolated from other identities, if you still believe that, then even practicing right effort will be based on that belief. It still will be right. And if you practice successfully, it still will be very good. You can do good things while still believing in your independent existence. That's called good karma. However, if you keep doing good karma and you study the karma while you're doing it and see how it works, you will eventually become relieved of the ignorance which is the basis of the karma. And then the same kind of good things, you'll still keep doing the same kind of good things, but there won't be an author in it. So then the good things will be not only good, but you'll be demonstrating selfless action which sets yourself and other beings free from karma.

[85:40]

Yes? In line with Salvi's question, when you're in that state of authorship and you're trying to practice right effort and you come to a place where you read... Yes. Yeah, I don't like that way of talking. Yeah. Right. How does a teacher help you work with that place where once you're aware that the What you don't know is so much bigger than what you do know, especially the more you get to know. You start wondering what's denial and suppression and what you're doing with that right effort.

[86:54]

Pretty soon you're bored by the bull, you're trampled by the bull, you're looking for the clown in the barrel to track the bull. Yeah, okay, I got it. Can I... So this is a pretty big topic, but let's see what we can do. So there's four aspects of right effort. One is to prevent the arising of unwholesome states. If they haven't arisen, to prevent them from arising. The other is to abandon the ones that have arisen. The other is to give rise to or promote the arising of wholesome states. And the other is to promote the continuing and increase the frequency of wholesome thoughts. Those are the four aspects. Now the first one, of preventing the arising of unwholesomeness which hasn't arisen, you could understand that as some kind of suppression, you know, like guarding yourself against the arising of these thoughts could get into a

[88:03]

horrible repressive regime. Right? We'd be going around all the time like trying to make yourself so rigid and so tight that you wouldn't do anything wrong. Right? Well, immediately you've done something wrong right there. That's very unhealthy to be so that tense. So the actual, the main, the practice which the Buddha taught as the basic practice for preventing the arising of unwholesome thoughts. Okay? He called Indriya Sanghvara, which is usually translated, I found, most often is translated as Indriya means the sense organs. Indriya means like, you know, Indra, the god or the goddess. Indriya means sovereign or god because the senses are kind of like the sovereigns of our experience. And samvara is usually translated as restraint.

[89:07]

So the usual way that's translated as restraint of the senses. And I always felt like, well, how can you restrain your senses? Your senses aren't really doing anything anyway. They're just like receiving. How do you restrain your senses? But as I learned a little bit more, I realized that the word samvara could be translated as discipline. So it's the disciplining of your senses. Now, if you discipline your senses, you can discipline your sensation process in such a way that the unwholesome thoughts will not even arise. And what is that way? To discipline your sense processes such that unwholesome thoughts will not even arise. It is this way. That when a sensation happens, you keep your mind at the level of the sensation. You keep your mind at the level of what's given to your senses.

[90:14]

Or not even keep, you just have a mind which is at the level of the sensation, at the level of what's given. That's the way you discipline your senses. But you don't really discipline your senses, you see. You discipline your mental reaction to your senses. So, for example, if a blue color comes to you, what do you do with it? You respond to it at the level of what's given. In other words, blue. Not getting into, I like it, I don't like it, I wish I would like a different color, please. Not a little bit brighter, please, a little bit darker. Can we have the sun out now? None of that, but just taking things as given. That receptiveness, that not picking and choosing, that's the way to discipline. They say senses, but it's the way to discipline the sense process. And if you're disciplining your sense process like that, unwholesome thoughts don't come up.

[91:21]

So it's actually not that you're restraining, denying, suppressing. It's actually that you take things just as they are. And that disciplines your mind such that unwholesome thoughts do not arise. So the Buddha said, but this could apply to sensation in the sense of physical sensation, like colors, smells, tastes, like saliva. This is saliva, that's it. Sounds, tangibles. and whatever else, five of them, right? Sounds, smells, tangibles, tastes, and odors, and colors. So those five, but also mental phenomena. When they come, you just take them as they come and let it go at that. This is how you discipline your mind. And if you have a mind like this, unwholesome thoughts can't come up.

[92:23]

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