So we can start the text now, if you'd like. The first verse. So although we're studying the ancient text now, I still really want to encourage each of you to make this text, 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. The first chapter is called Examination of Relational Conditions. Pradyaya Pariksha, an analysis of conditioning causes.

[01:06]

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, but 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. Does anything, whatever, anywhere, arise? So I might just say that one way to interpret this right off is that what Nagarjun is saying is that there aren't any causes of events in the sense of a cause that has a causal power.

[02:18]

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 you have to think a cause is, and he's saying, there's no such thing going on. Causation, just looking it up in a dictionary, causation means an act or a process of causing. or a cause, but it also can mean the relationship between cause and effect. So studying causation does not mean you study a relationship, but the relationship, according to Nagarjuna, is not. The relationship between cause and effect is not that in the cause is some power that produces effect.

[03:28]

There aren't such relationships. That isn't one of the relationships. But what kind of relationships are there? Well, that's the next Karika. 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 add conditions. They don't happen with no cause. They don't originate in a non-cause either. Because then a non-cause would have power within it to cause them. Each thing then would have its special non-cause that arose from it.

[04:31]

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 the thing to happen. when you think of any examples of conditions for things that don't have 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?

[05:36]

Can you think of examples of where somebody else or you actually think different than Nagarjuna? Can you think of examples of conditions that he would allow Maybe conditions that don't have causal power and yet are conditions for an 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 if you want to be an example of somebody who thinks in such a way that Nagarjuna would say no to, you could be that person.

[06:40]

And then we could 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. Consciousness, okay. So birth is consciousness? Just a second. Is birth consciousness? No. 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 could say birth could be the cause of consciousness. You might say that. If you want to. But you want to stick to life? Because what in birth, where do you find the cause of life and birth?

[07:45]

Anybody see it there? Something in the birth there that you can see causing you life. Power in birth to cause you life. You see it? That would be power to cause you life to be. Birth is a condition for life. Right. There'd be people that would argue a few about that, too. How would they argue? Well, they would say that there's life before birth and that in fact birth isn't a condition of life. There may be other conditions of life before birth. Well, if life exists before 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.

[08:47]

I'm not interested in thinking of 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 to say birth has a causal power... to produce life I guess that's what was said and 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 alright 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, turning on a light in a room, an 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.

[09:55]

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 from 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 the desire and certain other, you have that condition and certain other conditions, like the electricity bills 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 out.

[11:03]

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 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 connected, causally connected to this thing, rather than when this happens,

[12:13]

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 reason, the only thing it has going for it is that when A happens, then on some basis, some regular basis, B happened. 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? Yes? How about if you breathe water, you die? Okay. Okay, so what do you think? You're saying that the breathing of water is paired with death? Is that what you're saying? Certain kinds of death, for example, death by breathing water, Let's say death by breathing water is regularly paired with breathing water.

[13:16]

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 that? Look at the breathing of the water. 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. And it's not, it wouldn't be, or you could say in the cause, but the way Nagarjuna is using these two words, in the background of him is two words, Ketu, which means cause, and Pragyaya, which means condition, in the background of Abhidharma and Buddhist language. They often would say causes and conditions. And he, for convenience sake, is sort of, and he has some basis in literature for saying, when they say cause, they usually mean this thing like a condition like breathing water in relationship to certain kinds of death.

[14:27]

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 said, if you look in there, the water breathing is okay for fish. You put other conditions together with the water breathing, and you'll comfort death among humans. Right? Well, it doesn't have a potential. It is a condition for certain kinds of death. When you have certain kinds of death, they 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. People all breathe water sometimes, right? It's called, you know, breathing through the wrong whatever, you know?

[15:29]

What do we call it? Huh? It's breathing through the wind type. We call it, we have a thing like breathing through the wrong, the swallowing, the air wrong, whatever. Anyway, you 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 die of a heart attack prior to that. Yeah, when... The ash is not in the wood, right. The wood is not the past of the ash. The ash is not 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. But the ash potential is not in the wood. When you think it is, you're attributing causal power, like the woods got in it, this little ash thing that can come out.

[16:38]

And that link is not really there. He sang. And, okay, so take one, again, one, remember, he says it, I quoted last time, and he says, too, he says, thank you, Buddha, for the teaching of dependent core rising. 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 you can try to uproot is this idea that something that happens with this has within it a special causal link. That's a fabrication that we attribute to a situation which he's going to try to uproot, and that will be part of his teaching the correct understanding of dependent core arising, which then can be used to uproot other fabrications. So if we can understand correctly dependent core arising, we will understand Dharma who will understand Buddha. So he's trying to teach his understanding of dependent core rising.

[17:41]

Other people have other kinds of dependent core rising understandings which make the process of causation and to some extent selfless, but the elements, some of the elements in the process they attribute reality to, like a cause that has power to produce effect. This is the first point he's trying to make. Yeah, right. This which causes this is duality. Right, right. That this causes this is a duality in the sense that this has the power to produce that. Conditioning what? Conditioning. When you say conditioning, I'm not sure what conditioning is.

[18:48]

A condition, as he says in Karaka 5, is only as entities are uniquely related to, 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 are called conditions. Related. Related. No, just prajaya, he translates, Hinata translates prajaya as relational conditions, but you could just say conditions. Prajaya is the word. Okay? So, this is a, this is, another way to say it is, these give rise to those, so they are called conditions.

[19:49]

This happens, then this happens. You turn, you flick switches, lights go on. They're regularly associated. Doesn't mean that every time you switch, switch, flick a switch, the light's going to go on, but in fact, when the lights do go on, there's usually clicking switches before, like the lights. So the light, hmm? 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 and add this thing to it. Okay. It doesn't exist independent of... Yes, well, electricity does. Electricity exists independent of flipping a switch, yes.

[20:51]

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. . I don't know if there is or not. . Maybe so. I'm not sure. I'm kind of using, you know, whatever, various kinds of language to try to point out what Nagarjun is trying to do here. And if my language is dualistic, then maybe so.

[21:53]

But still, he may be able to try to get, he still is making a point. which is this first point that is kind of making the text is this point. And so by whatever language you'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. Okay? Like, for example, my desire for lighting is a condition maybe for the lights to be switched on, but it's not exactly what the light is due to my desire. And yet we tend 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 someplace, some power there, some active power to cause things to happen.

[23:00]

This is our activity. And this then, you know, that goes someplace and that has certain other effects. Yes? I'm sorry, but it seems like, for me, the word causes has never been at that implication of their being. Yeah, that's why he chooses to say that there are no causes. There's only conditions. So I was thinking you'd toss that word in just these conditions? That's what he's doing. He's saying, toss the word cause and only use the word conditions. And that's the name of this chapter. But although he's tossing the word, he brings the word up to say there aren't any. There are no causes. 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.

[24:03]

How about time you burn? Uh-huh. uh fire well isn't fire burning i mean same thing isn't it well take that then take fire burning wood okay that when you have wood burning and a precondition for burning wood is fire yes but if you look in 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 a whole bunch of, look at fire, it's got burning wood, burning, burning, uh, toothbrushes, burning hair, burning cows, you know, burning... I mean, to say the cause is only, only the dormant potential within your causing agent is a particularly limited, not necessarily intuitive understanding of what causes. I didn't follow what you said. Um...

[25:04]

In each of these cases, in order to see that there is no such thing as cognitive asset to look at the causing agent to see if or its potential within the causing agent is the thing that we're calling the effect. So in the instance of the fire in the wood, for instance, you're asking us to look into the fire to see in it is potentially dormant burning wood. Okay, I got that. So what are you saying? What I'm saying is that that's only one and perhaps non-intuitive understanding of what it causes. Do you want to show some other thing? I just, you know, whatever. I'm asking you to come forth with the example. So I'm just saying... Can you see, and for a second there, or maybe still, Sylvia thought she saw in fire something, some special connection between fire and burning wood. So any other examples, I'm just 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?

[26:06]

What I mean by cause, the way I'm using it is something that has within it the power to cause and 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 what we think. Acorns are associated with oak trees 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 call it an oak tree. So that's an example of that way of thinking.

[27:08]

So please demonstrate. Demonstrate, show me, take the acorn, you know, I'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 word. And the way I want to use it is this way, that the thing you're posing, 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. He would not dispute that, I don't think. But what he would say is, look into the oak tree. Do you see a dormant acorn?

[28:09]

Do you see a dormant oak tree there? And people do, and then he says, well, let's hear about it. 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... 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. It's 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? I'm not saying that, although that's true.

[29:19]

It does, of course. That's right, too. That's right. There's a whole bunch. There's four types of conditions for Okshii. 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, you can incorporate 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.

[30:21]

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. 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 with them. 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 in some form dormant in it or the thing that has in itself some special invisible force that it can create this thing. What are the four types of conditions?

[31:29]

Well, we can get into that, but I don't know. Maybe it'd be better just to work on this more, but I think it'd be better to go into the four types of conditions now. It seems like you might, maybe it'd better to work on this for a while more. Let's see, he translates it as primary causal. Well, one of the conditions is called Ketu Pravjaya, okay? which in Hetu prajaya includes this gets more complicated. In the cause of the Hetus, Hetu are the causes of these five types of causes. And in prajaya, there's four of those.

[32:36]

One of them, the first one, is called . The tradition of one or more of these type of causes. That's what he's referring to. That's what that's called the primary causal, OK? It's actually, truthfully speaking, it's not all five of these. It's four of these five. It's, how do you say, four types and one type. These four types correspond to this condition. So there's five types of causes, and four of them correspond to this condition. And the last condition, which is called the predominant condition, is called atipatiprajaya.

[33:37]

And apipatipratiaia corresponds to a type of cause, which is called karanaketu. And karanaketu can mean a big cause, because karanaketu basically means that whenever anything happens, It has Koranahetu. Koranahetu applies to everything that ever occurs because there's a cause which is called Koranah. And Koranah is basically allowed to happen. That's one of the causes. OK? However, under this way of looking at it, is saying, when you talk about Koranahetu, you mean that in the allowing of something to happen, there is a cause of power. Whereas over here, or as Russo used to call it, within this one, on this side, in this way, looking at it, is there is this condition that always happens whenever anything happens.

[34:53]

There is a condition that thing must be allowed to have happen. So . It must have been allowed. But over here, it's not considered to be something that had the cause of power. It's just the 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 the kind of horizon. Anyway, that's what it means over here. It means look at these causes over, those same causes, all the different dynamics of those 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, there could be some actual, like, substantial link between things. So, like, in the 12-fold links of causation, you have ignorance. Then you have karmic formations and consciousness and so on. So, in fact, there is a regular association between ignorance and comic formation.

[35:59]

If you don't have ignorance, you won't have comic formation. When you have karmic formation, you know you have to have ignorance. You can't have consciousness without karmic formation. Depending on karmic formations and your ignorance arises. But one way to look at that is, in ignorance, in ignorance of all things, in ignorance is a special little link that connects you to the consequences of karmic formations. And then karmic formations have within it this little special deal that produces consciousness. So it gets to be kind of a substantial system and kind of locked in. The actual liberative power of this situation is that this isn't, these things don't have within them, this thing, this 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 are almost no exceptions, not all acorns have oak trees. And it's not just because Other causes we can just internalize. Some acorns have other problems too, right?

[37:03]

Right? Like that guy, what's it called? A guy who planted trees and grew happiness? Is that what it's called? Huh? Yeah, because he planted trees and grew happiness. Does that mean the real story? Oh, yeah. Anyways, this French guy planted, I think, 20,000 oak trees in southern France, you know, like, I think, in Provençal, in Provence. He, uh, every night, he had to use a regular farm, you know, and every night he went home with a pile of acorns, and he went through them, and took out, you know, a good one, and showed away the other ones, and saved them, and then he got a bunch of them, and he planted it. Not all acorns have within them oak trees, right? But even the ones that he did choose that worked, then some of them worked with 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, current formations in the ignorant, then there really is consciousness in the current formations, then everything's set.

[38:06]

And you're not going to be able to turn this around. It turns out that it's not that way. but there isn't this actual substantial connection between cause and effect that causes don't have within them this power. And if you understand it, Nargo is proposing, if you understand it in this conditionings of things way rather than the causal way, and he's willing to reason this out and he doesn't, 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 the other one. The other interpretation of dependent core rising, Buddhist teaching was dependent core rising as a way of liberation, but when people started to attribute substance in these causes, the dependent core rising teaching lost its vitality. because it became this thing where you're attributing substance to it. And the other chapter we're studying is about, you know, Four Noble Truths. And people also bring the Four Noble Truths into something.

[39:07]

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, my God did that. He said, uh-uh. These four normal truths are empty, like the heart syndrome says. No suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path. What that means is that in these four normal truths, they're all empty. There's nothing in them that makes Buddhism happen. And if there was something in it that made Buddhism happen, it wouldn't happen. If there was something to these four normal truths, then for sure Buddhism would be happening. The opposition said, like you say there's nothing to them, then Buddhism couldn't happen. Because you wouldn't have four noble truths. Well, that's not what you need. You need to explain it. But instead of bringing those in first and showing how to trigger substance development would be a disaster to prison, 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 can hear about four noble truths.

[40:09]

It doesn't think that the things are associated with another thing, that there's something there, something, you know, like that story of the boat, you know, coming down, coming down, the fishermen's, you know, sitting there fishing, you know, and you see this boat coming, shooting down at the river, you know, and it's going to get up into his boat, and he starts getting really angry at the, you know, at the person in the boat, and the boat comes close, and you see he's walking in the boat. think somebody's in a boat you have to put the cake on it and you do realizing that a boat coming to you still has it is associating with crashing into your boat but there's nobody in it it's quite a different world Whereas we think pretty much that every cause that comes their way, there's somebody in it. And therefore we have this kind of strange relationship where it's hard for us 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 like special thing for us.

[41:11]

Or, you know, somebody in a boat got this special thing that they is really sick. Somebody is really stupid, or somebody is really mad at us, or whatever, but somebody doesn't want 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 boats 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 colliding at all. And what we do is we may think, well, I understand. But sometimes you change the conditions, lose their association, and then they stop being conditioned. That happens sometimes. But if they had the cause of power, they wouldn't lose it. And he's great. You can always get the stuff on me. You can see him go back. I want to play with this on your own before you hear from you.

[42:12]

You've got to be there. I mean, sometimes anything you connect with. I see some people that haven't spoken yet. Yes. When I read the first one, I was struck with this sort of a description of . The first thing is the description affinity? Correct. That's correct. That's correct. That's really hard to comprehend. It cannot be comprehended. If all the tutors in ten directions of three times assemble all their wisdom, they would not be able to comprehend this first verse. That's right. It can't be comprehended. That's good, as you saw that. You get an A. So, it can't be comprehended. There's one way to hear it. Another way to hear it is, don't you have some idea that causes habit and the power to do that? And isn't this kind of upsetting to you? Do you understand what it's saying?

[43:13]

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 you what zazen actually is. And it's got 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 character is a beautiful description of what it means to just sit. Okay? When you just sit, this just city does not come from you. There's not something in you, kind of like some kind of Just City thing in you, that's kind of like finally manifest in Just City. It ain't like that. Also, Just City doesn't come from somebody else. It doesn't come from Dogen, or the Tango. It doesn't. It doesn't come from, or even the Eno, or the Soko, so for 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 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.

[44:17]

It's not like there's no condition. There are conditions. That's what zazen is like. Just like that, in other words, as Peter said, zazen is basically community. 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 and no time that's not like that. And if you think about it, it's really a different approach to spiritual practice. And that's the first character of this thing. Beautiful reason why he was a Zen ancestor, a Zen pioneer. It's the philosophical nutshell of love. That character. And you can't get a hold of love. Nobody knows where to do it. It's totally ungraspable. And nothing can stop it.

[45:21]

However, there are conditions all over the place for it. It's regularly paired with conditions and conditions that you do. Yes. So if I understand this, if I understand it, well, the confusion of writing, well, attributing a self in a biological sense, you know, working that we think is happening to something rather than the attributes of the self, the body of the life of the reality. The sitting itself with the reality, the conditions of the self, The attributes we give to things, that is the way of it. Yeah. And if the attributes we give to things didn't have to give up a lot faster, if you didn't think that there was something, you know, the old conditions that actually had the power, it's more embarrassing to give up a cause that had the cause of power than just to give up a condition, which you understand, it just happens to be associated on a regular basis with something.

[46:29]

And you can notice, maybe when you are attributing reality to these things, you can notice where they do it in reality. When you're attributing calls of power, they'll probably notice that those are the things that are harder to even 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. Fine, just drop from the list. No problem. But you can't drop something from the list. 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. People wander around and say, well, the oak tree is actually in the acorn. So you still have these little oak tree containers. Where if you found out, you might find out tomorrow, actually, they grew some oak tree without acorns. You say, well, fine. 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 light in the bottom of the ocean where the Nagas lived than they thought.

[47:36]

It turns out that that's why they lived there. It's like 10 to 100 million species on the bottom of the ocean. The world, that invisible world, we didn't know about actually is what super it. super abundant in light, which is really nice to know, because we couldn't get there before, right? 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. What 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 had to think. 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 has within it the power to cause that. Because you have a feeling, it almost like, you haven't worked so carefully, but you almost can see the little thing you thought about. And if somebody asks you kindly, I mean, well, actually, it's the same thing with yourself.

[48:42]

You think there's actually somebody in there. Can you drive yourself that you have? But you're actually, beside that self that you have, that there actually is a self there. Right? OK. I was sitting, and I'm telling myself, frankly, that this excruciating me and that thing is not any parent inside of me. But I'm still experiencing the excruciating thing. How is this teaching helpful? So what kind of do you want? I want nothing. [...] If you want liberation from pain, then the way it would be to observe what conditions there are with pain.

[49:53]

I do that, but it still hurts. You can watch the conditions of pain, it still hurts? Yeah. Well, liberation from pain does not mean that pain doesn't hurt. How? Liberation from pain means that you're a happy camper even when you're in pain. Wow. What? 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 said, you know, I'm going to, unless you do it, I'm going to do it. I said, well, you know, do you need to do it? You said, okay, no problem. You know? And I say, not stop getting into it. You say, well, I'm just getting into it. If you stop, I'll cause you pain. So I can use pain to make me into a total robot. Right. So you're a total, you can just tell me about pain. Right. And you're going to feel pain for quite a while. I have a feeling. I haven't done that. They don't have this end up.

[50:56]

But if you're near me, I can always pitch. So let me do it. Okay. Now, they have a liberation from pain. You leave, you have to do, first of all, to face the pain. First thing you have to do is face the pain. You can't be afraid of the pain. If you're afraid of the pain, you're already totally enslaved. So first of all, you have to be present with the pain, number one. If you can't do that, you are simply never going to get enslaved by people. Okay? Next is, once you're not afraid of nothing wrong, you just experience it. Then you start walking about into the condition, and if you see that correctly, you will be liberated. And then when pain comes, you will experience it, and nobody can push you around anymore, including you. That's called liberation pain. Liberation pain is not pain. that when it comes, you don't want to go to the hills or do cool things. You trash all this image of being if it's necessary to not feel it.

[51:58]

You can trash people that do, like take poison in order to make it go away. Anything, you know, get to, I'll take it. That's called not being liberate. Being liberate from pain is, I got pain, okay, now look what's next. That's the liberation, anything. Oh, it went away. Okay. Oh, here it comes again. All right. I found your pain. I'm dead. Come on. I'm going to sit down and let's talk. Learning meditation technique where there's no pain. There is a learning meditation technique where there's no pain. Yes, sir. In the first genre and above, there is no pain. Zero. No negative sensation. first jhana, second jhana, third jhana, fourth jhana, and also the ruby jhanas. There's no pain in there on up. And not even no pain. But there's pleasure. And there's rapture. And there's even the passion.

[53:00]

And so on. It could be like totally high quality. However, these states all have time on them. And all of them. If you all to them, You go to someplace much lower than where you start. 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 mean, I'm not talking about something like kicking you or spitting in your face or like sticking you with a branding iron. I'm not talking about something. Somebody just wants to talk to you. Hello? And like, that would be a slight come down, you know? So... Get out of here. And you've got to do all that, dude. You're a concentrated fellow, so you could like... So then you're going way, way, way, way, way down. Like, you didn't start that whole. You started in a pretty good state, like you're a suffering medicine, right? You know, it's that knee pain, knee pain, stuff like that. When you start to concentration, you get up there. When you get up there, do all the best stuff. Many people you hold send you to deep, deep health for sometimes quite a long period of time.

[54:07]

Not too many people spend that much time in health because not too many people get that far. The higher you get, the longer you can spend it, you know, the worst thing you'll do and the more power you'll have to get that food. So I can tell you how to get there, but it's very dangerous unless you go there in order to say, well, fit your king. And I can tell you, we don't want you to go here. I'll tell you when you're a little clearer and certain points of money on food isn't true. Yes? How dare you? So, I want to say that and see whether this is correct. My sense of what he's saying is that there are no static things at all. Yes. And that there's no static things, nothing can be fixed on. Nothing can be fixed on, nothing can be said to be originating.

[55:13]

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, who's just constantly undulating, fluxing soup of relationships all the time, you know. That's what's happening. And, you know, 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. That's a condition. But if you try to go out in that soup and say, OK, right over here, now here's a thing here, separate from everything else, that makes that happen. He said, you can't do that. You can't, like, fix the cause of the ulcer effect here. You can't do that, because everything's wrong. Even the explanation, he says, are just only because when this happens, that happens. That's the only reason why you even associate them as conditions for that. And actually, that really doesn't hold up to anything.

[56:17]

There's nothing to that only because of that. And so if you took away this cause and this condition and these things still happened, then you wouldn't call it a condition anymore. Or if you said this wasn't a condition and the thing didn't happen, you said, well, maybe it was. Just put it back and see. Put it back and it happened. So OK, 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 talking about Jeremy. If we weren't interested in Jane talking about how Jane happened, then we wouldn't even be talking about conditions for Jane. So if Jane was an issue for us at this one particular event, we wouldn't be under the conditions of Jane. We only set it up if we want to explain a particular thing in these books. Gabe? I think my question was whether

[57:23]

Thinking in terms of causal power, is that endemic to all comprehension? You're saying, well, we can't comprehend the... Is that... I think so. I think that's a key, for Nagarjuna, that's like a key point to talk about how we grasp It's part of just seeing things as objects. It's like the same thing happens when you grasp. The self does arise in regular association with the scandals, but if you look in the scandals, you will not find a self in there anyplace. But sure enough, God's self is quite strong as there, unless you're in one of these high, very high current states in 91 to 4.

[58:25]

Basically, conditions of self and the scoundrel, but you cannot find the causal power in any of the scoundrels for self. in the, you know, experience of light, smell, taste, feelings, various emotions. You can't find, like, a self in there anyplace. If you look in the concept of self, you can't find a self in there anyplace. There's nothing but a concept of self that we get to find a self in there. And yet, concept of self is one of the conditions for this sense of self that we can then grasp. But because of their condition, rather than the causes, there can be liberation from this connection. The gracious uprooting of the fabrication that the self actually does comprehend and embrace or account for our experience. Whereas actually our experience can be totally accounted for without that.

[59:27]

It's not necessary. Yes? Well, I don't really see. If you name a condition or a group of conditions, and you keep in mind the thing that you think 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 saw it at a certain point for saying what the condition is for this thing is. Um, and he doesn't have the same kind of an illusion. I mean, you know, maybe you get more people, you get more conditions. You know, the picture had a greater clarity for the illusion of it that really, where does it stop? Okay. Well, isn't that really a special link when you... I thought I'd heard what you said in the answer to that, in that you said, I think Nagarjuna agrees with you, but, uh, and even the, even the Buddhists that would say this, people are going to say, okay, you said that the thing is nothing other than the conditions.

[60:30]

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. So, yeah, all the more. So there's no special link. So where's your special link? I don't see it. 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. It's that habit of mind. But you beautifully 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 have 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.

[61:33]

Pardon, is it? Pardon? No, we have this habit of mind that you go to sleep and yet we wake up and stay in place for people. as opposed to dreaming where we have non-consistency, a non-consistent experience. But we have consistently, we got everything the same. It changes gradually, but we don't see that shortage. I just think the same thing. So that kind of mind is full of consistency. Well, there's something efficacious about that if I know that regularly. What is the application to the heaven of the moon? that if I know that regularly I strike a map in flames and I light my kerosene lamp, then, you know, it happens regularly, and so I form an association between striking a match and lighting a kerosene lamp, then when I have a desire to have my kerosene lamp lit, because of this habit of mine associating striking a match between a kerosene lamp on, I think that perhaps I think that striking a match.

[62:54]

So from a certain point of view, there's something efficacious about this idea of talk, but, you know, And probably I haven't been as precise enough as to actually locate the cause, whether it's in my desire, whether it's in the match, or whether it's in the striking of the match, or whether it's putting a match to the way I did. But so I could have a general idea that they're probably not philosophically precise of a cause, which is not an application when it comes to being my lamplit. That's what I meant when I said that, and I think that the consistency of the habit of mind cause comes because of certain things that regularly are, as you said, associated with each other, and from a certain point of view, it's efficacious to think of that as a cause. Well, I'm not saying I prefer to get the pause. I'm not saying that there is a pause. I'm not arguing that there's a pause. I'm not saying it's right that there's a pause. I'm just trying to sort of flesh out Turner's point. Maybe I shouldn't have done that.

[63:56]

The efficaciousness of the habit of mind, of attributes and cause of power, the efficaciousness of it, it is efficacious The efficaciousness I see 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 that we provided. If this way of seeing things wasn't painful, it 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 of being able to have a sense of self other than object to be able to reflect. This whole thing arose. And in evolution of human consciousness, there came a time where we could see things as external and therefore know them.

[65:04]

It was a big breakthrough for us. Before that, 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, sense of self is born, as we studied last year. Now, the advantage of that sense of self being born and then attributing substance to it is that it caused pain, and the pain caused it to re-look at the whole situation. And Nagarjuna, 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. pain of attributing self-existence to clinics, which we even do when it comes to cause, because of this habit of mind. So you take this human, this habit of mind, upholding himself, 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-clinking. He taught dependent moralizing to set people free from the idea of taking a self as a self-existent thing.

[66:11]

But the process, the habit of projecting self-existence onto it is so strong that even got turned around and put back in the process by which you liberated 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 more 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 obvious to me. Now, what would be good is if you would look to see the difference between considering these things you talked about as conditioned, without attributing any self-existence to them when you cause a power to them, and then looking at the way it is when you attribute it. You notice that you can see the difference between one case, you feel uncomfortable, and in the other case, you experience spontaneous liberation.

[67:16]

I guarantee that you will be completely liberated if you switch this other view. But one of the reasons why you will switch to the other view, because switching to the other view will be difficult. It will be unfamiliar. Switching to the other view will be at first correct. It will be just sitting. When you switch, the reason why you would ruin the switch is when you start to see, and that maybe you can do it 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 causation. An actual association between them, which is actually... Just by association, just by regularity, no more. They're just regular things associated with making a human being. No more. You don't have to have a self on top of it. But the self is on top of it, and efficaciousness of it is suffering. The definition of suffering is experienced and clean as a thing. That's what causes suffering. And the efficaciousness of suffering is that it causes you to look...

[68:22]

that probably happened, and you see the actual reality of the spiritual liberation. So that's our job. So if you can look at the daily life, little things you do, you know, little things you do where there's causes and conditions coming right is catch yourself Letting this habit of mine operate and attributing causal agency to catch that and notice that, you're like making Nagarjuna yours. What do you call it? You're making Nagarjuna idiomatic to your actual experience. Then when you hear these verses, they're going to be talking about exactly the mantle of your habit. Yes, that's right. I would say, yeah, like when you bring up

[69:31]

WE HAVE TO SEE THE OTHER [...] OTHER. Acknowledging. Acknowledging according to what's happening. What are you supposed to do with my elder? That's good. But actually, I think the most effective thing is to admit this habit of mind. If you catch yourself at that, that's what he's pointing to, as nonexistent. And notice how you resist that. When you start noticing this, that, then naturally your mind will open up to the conditions, which they already know. They already know them. But your mind will open up to them as conditions rather than as

[70:32]

and saying you should have this power. And then you can catch yourself at thinking about having power, and then you're pointing to that place, and then you use it to examine whatever they do. So start with the place you're clean. Rather than try to unclean yourself by considering the possibility that it's fine, if it happens spontaneously. But let it happen spontaneously, and bring your attention to the place where you're holding. And all you've got to do is, you know, to do that, if you disagree with Nagarjuna, you've got it. It's part of it, that's part of it, yeah. All the things you believe in are the things you're holding there, basically. And he doesn't say, you know, like all those things, he just discusses it with you for you to look at it 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 going to notice how uncomfortable you are, and he's going to keep reading with you about your Holy Spirit.

[71:38]

That's what you do a bit quick. He's 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, you can notice that he's talking about the way you think. Then he's going to be like, I'm going to make fun of you if you want to follow the joy of people. If you study this, you can actually touch yourself. You can see he's talking about you. And then you can see he might loosen your mind up and set you free. It's not telling you to think another way. It's telling you to look at the way you do think. And if you look at that, then he's going to go push to you, turn to you, and making all kinds of other possibilities there. And you can feel that it's another possibility when you're holding the center. And suddenly you feel like, oh, other than what I thought. I could try it another way, and another way, and another way. But don't try to be different from what you are. I'd be honest about what you're up to. And that. Well, you see, you have to leave on what we're holding.

[72:44]

Yep. So you didn't mean that. I want to run the possible application back. I need to make it your cover. But probably want cover to go to this one place. Yep. So you're advising, I didn't pick what the passion's right. And then also, see if while you're looking, 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 a situation, in some particular thing, rather than a condition, which has a causal power to produce pain, to produce pleasure. See if you think that way, too. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, for example, okay, there's conditions for your pain, right?

[73:51]

So you're in pain, and then you're yearning for pleasure. So that helps you look at your pain. So then is there an acorn for your pain? There are causes, there's conditions for your pain, and then do you think that in those conditions for pain, for the pain, they're actually paining them? Do you do that? If you do, then that's going to be one kind of situation. If you can start seeing that there's conditions for your pain, and that there's conditions been associated with it, you're going to have a whole different take on your pain. And the same way with the thought, yearning for pleasure, there's conditions for the yearnings for pleasure. But are they causes for you? And if so, can you see, I think, where causes, like, it actually would be a thing that has the causal power to give me pleasure? Do you think bad? 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, that that's the way you think things. And both situations of the yearning for the pleasure and the situation of being in pain, either restlessly being in the pain or pregnant being in the pain, either way, you think that way.

[74:53]

And if you think that way, you're meditating on the topic that will set you free from pain and pleasure. But you start with something practical and concrete and then notice conditions of it and then notice how do you feel about those conditions. And in fact, very simply, we do have positions 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 that 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 condition. I just added something back into the conditions that I saw with 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. been liberated from both the cause, you see that you do the same thing that the pain, you do the cause of the pain, the condition of the pain.

[75:56]

You make the condition into something that has something to it, you make the pain into something that has something to it. If the pain has something to it, you're in trouble. It's a reality. You've done a book. But it's not fortunate, right? And neither are you, and so on. This is Nagaraj's unity law on the cross, but in turn, 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... but 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. Okay? And we choose those because they have this regular associating with it.

[76:58]

But if they didn't, we'd choose a different set. That's all. Okay? Okay? 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 not in trouble. This is the story of how we're not in trouble. The story of how we are in trouble is that self is really there and the self-projections into everything is really true. But again, this is just a habit of mind, which is very pervasive, and even applies to the causes and conditions of all of our experiences and understanding. And it's almost 9 o'clock, and there's lots of hands raising up, and it's really great, but time to go to bed, right? And I hope that people who have their hands raised would write their questions down, and we'll talk about it more later. And I'm really happy that you're willing to talk about this crap.

[78:09]

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. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[78:33]

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