There is a very difficult teaching today, which some of you have already heard about, and I hope you hear about it now. It's the main teaching of the Buddha. It's the teaching of dependent co-arising. You could call this teaching the slogan of Buddha, Buddhist slogan. And the word slogan means battle cry, this Buddhist battle cry in the midst of struggling with delusion.

[01:07]

And in a sense, the Pentacle Rising is simply stated, and that is that everything that appears in the universe does so by virtue of innumerable causes and conditions. And in each of our lives, due to innumerable causes and conditions. Each of our lives is due to, for example, all other life. And also, each of our lives is also a cause and condition for all other life. So we also, the universe causes us, and we also cause the universe. So there's this mutual relationship.

[02:11]

There's this mutual causation between the universe and ourselves and ourselves and universe. And happiness is something also that dependently co-arises. Misery dependently co-arises. Freedom dependently co-arises. And bondage dependently co-arises. The causes of each of us is different. And the causes of misery are different from the causes of happiness. The causes of bondage are different from the causes of liberation. So part of what is necessary in order experience liberation or awakening, awakening is also dependently co-produced, is to become fully absorbed and aware of the causes and conditions of awakening.

[03:32]

And also, in order to become free, you must become fully aware of the positive condition that is being created. And in order to be free we also need to be aware of the causes and conditions of bondage. However, you may be happy to hear that in order to be in bondage you don't have to be aware of the causes and conditions of anything. You don't have to be aware of the causes and conditions of misery. You don't have to be aware of the causes and conditions of bondage. You don't have to be aware of the causes and conditions of You don't have to be aware of the causes and conditions of good. You don't have to be aware of the causes and conditions of awakening. You could be in total denial and ignorance, and then you could be very happily stuck in bondage and misery and, of course, ignorance. So ignorance is much easier in a certain way than liberation. Liberation requires very extensive work.

[04:36]

in awareness of what's going on. Part of bodhisattva's work... Do you know what a bodhisattva is? How many people know what a bodhisattva is? Wow, great to speak. So bodhisattvas are those who vow or wish to work for the supreme welfare of all beings. They wished for and were committed to work for all beings in the highest benefit.

[05:40]

The highest benefit is complete freedom and happiness. So they worked for the complete freedom and happiness of all beings. In other words, they worked for the supreme and superb awakening of all beings. And they work for this, and they wish that this will be attained by all beings before themselves. These are bodhisattvas, the people who have that tendency and motivation. So part of bodhisattva's work is to um, lay out and explain what the work is and then also try to kind of maybe encourage people to pick it up. And they can use various means, like they sometimes paint horrible pictures of what it'll be like if you don't pick it up. They kind of like draw people's attention to how bad it is now and what will happen if you don't start, you know, getting a program.

[06:50]

Sometimes they just make the program sound really good and like lots of fun. There's the cattle prod method and the seductive method. But anyway, by various means, they try to encourage people to join the path of liberation and give up the path of ignorance. Give up the path of living in lack of awareness of the causes and conditions of our existence. Now not only ignorance comes to you without any work, in terms of awareness work, and pretty much follows according to your habits, but turning around In other words, turning from ignoring things to paying attention to them is not necessarily easy.

[07:58]

It's simple in a way. You just turn and you start paying attention to whatever is going on. But it's not easy because if you start paying attention to what's going on in society, in the world, but also if you start paying attention to what's going on inside yourself, you may notice that there's some pain there. There usually is some pain inside of us. Our inner life is very turbulent and changeable and chaotic and contradictory and full of conflicts and ambiguities and ambivalences. Lots of anxiety inside of us. Again, the path of ignorance is to flee. Flee from this anxiety. Run away from it. Turn away from it. Ignore it. That will get you into heavy duty destructiveness, cruelty, and extreme misery, and locked into that path, too.

[09:14]

But the other way is difficult in the sense that not only do you work, but you have to face anxiety. And you know anxiety means to be choked. You have to become aware of how you're choked, how you have trouble breathing. Also, you may have trouble facing, if you notice that you're having trouble breathing, then you may flee that. into fear. Fear is another kind that is produced by fleeing from this inner life. So the basic cause is that we flee away from this inner life. Again, the way to liberation is to turn around and confront with the face this pain. The source of this pain is at a deep level of our development.

[10:18]

We denied the nature of ourself. Right around the time ourself was born, we again turned away from it. Right as it was born, we turned away from it. We ignored what it was. We denied it. And funny thing is, we denied it and at the same time we grabbed a hold of it and started clinging to it and thinking that it was very important. We did both those things right away. And then the funny thing is that because we think the self is so important from our early development, we also, in order to protect ourselves, we also sold ourselves out. We prostituted ourselves. in order to supposedly protect ourselves. So then the second level of problem and pain occurred. And so we have to, you know, turn around and look back into that space of our, which is, it's all in here, all this betrayal, abandonment, and selling out.

[11:27]

And underneath that, clingy and self-importance and self-ignorance. So it's really quite a feisty little mess in there. not easy work, and not that, but you can't just sort of jump in there and just start slogging around. You have to be, it's a matter of awareness. You have to enter that space and somehow keep conscious. And it's very difficult to stay conscious when you start to open up to this stuff. Like I was saying to some people last night, when I first started spending time with my wife, And she started talking to me about certain topics. I got very drowsy, even like in the middle of the day, you know. Pretty much any time of day or night that she'd bring up certain things, I'd get very sleepy. It's funny, you know, and I couldn't get enough sleep to stay awake during these conversations. But she learned not to bring those things up. She wanted me to pay attention. There are certain things that if you talk about, I'll be very alert.

[12:31]

Some people are so enlightened that people are crazy when they go to sleep. But most people get pretty alert when they start crazy and talking about, you know, you sort of like don't bring up anything that they're denying. You just talk about what, you know, what they're, what the little tiny bit that they're paying attention to and tell them how great it is that they're paying attention to that. So that's actually skillful, to get them to wake up and pay attention. Not to criticize anything white, but, you know, any white But then after you get their attention and they're awake, then you gradually, you know, might bring up a few other things, give you a chance. And then you might go to sleep. And they talk about sleeping and you say, but you're really swell. And then they wake up again. So back and forth like that, and you can gradually start to introduce something. I noticed a lot of you are starting to go to sleep. Of course, you say, well, it's because of the heat. But you can also say it because this guy's talking about boring things. Boring. Dependent core vitality is a very boring pocket because it's threatening the source of your disease.

[13:47]

And the source of your disease has all this denial around it because it's so horrible to look at the source of our disease, horrible to look at the disease and the source of it. you know, and so on. So we have all this kind of sleepiness around it so that as we approach it, what is it like? What is that, [...] that fairy tale about the princess that went to sleep for a hundred years? That's what will happen when she starts to go into that area. And then there'll be the picket and all the rambles and stuff put around the castle to try to get in there to wake her up. It takes, it takes a real hero to cut through that stuff and go in there and kiss her. But she does wake up eventually. And I'll also mention again that actually in Greek, the word for hero, if you slightly change it, it turns into the word for eros, or lover, or love. It's similar in English. Heroes take the H away, and it's like eros.

[14:52]

So heroes are not like bullies and meanies and ruffians. They're lovers that care so much about something that they will cut through all the obstacles and find their way to the center of the issue. Love is the way you guide yourself through the rough waters. Love is the best guide through the turbulence. So this is a kind of, maybe this is encouraging, but if you start looking back at yourself, if you start looking inward to what's going on and can face that pain and that chaos, I propose to you that the center of that chaos, it's not chaotic.

[15:56]

There's a center to the chaos, but there's a center Hurricane. Eye of a hurricane. It's calm and lovely. There's an eye in a tornado. It's a little tighter than in the middle of a hurricane. Eyes are kind of big. Airplanes can fly around inside there. There's not much space inside a tornado. Anyway, there is a calm place in the middle of something just turning rapidly. And inside of us, there's a calm place. Inside of the turbulence, there's non-turbulence. And at that place in the middle of the turbulence is an is the source, in the center of there, is the source of our life, of our aliveness, is right at that place.

[17:06]

And also at that place is our self, the way our self really exists. And the way our self really exists is that our self is not really a self. The way our self really exists is called no self or forgotten self. At the center there, your self is forgotten. The self you took in doesn't make it to the center. It's forgotten just before you get there. You forget the old one and the real self shows itself. And this self is pure, unadulterated aliveness. And also, Buddha doesn't make it in. Buddha drops away before you get there. Pain drops away. Nothing is at that place.

[18:10]

Nothing is there. And yet, the way you really are is there. It's called, you know, jizai, which means, you know, ji means self and zai means existence or both. It's the way the self actually exists. Self-existence or self-existent. Self-existent, self-existence. It means autonomy. It means the autonomous self. Auto-onomy. Self-existence. It's the self that receives all the causes and conditions of the universe. It's the self that's actually been made and supported by everything. And that self exists everywhere, in all human beings. Each human being has at their center the same, it's basically the same self.

[19:14]

Even though the causes and conditions of each one of these selves is different, And infinite and different, each one is the same because each one is basically a forgotten self. And from this forgotten self, true self-expression comes, and it does express itself. From this forgotten self, the center of your inner life, comes the Buddhist precepts. Buddha comes from there. Dharma comes from there. Sangha comes from there. Not killing comes from there. Not stealing comes from that. Evil can't get there. Good can't get there. And from that place, from that center of your life, a refraining from evil emerges. Doing good emerges. Clarified mind emerges. Doing can't reach that place. But all kinds of good doing come from that place.

[20:22]

Action can't reach that place. No karma can reach that place. But from that place of non-action, right action emerges spontaneously, spontaneously, immediately. It does it immediately. It comes out. Like in the, what is it, Dhruv Mir Samadhi says, although it's not fabricated, this place Although it's not fabricated, it's not without speech. This place can talk. And when it speaks, it's called right speech. When it acts, it's called right action. And the practice that you do to get to the center and sit there and then let right action come forth and let right speech come forth and let right intention and right livelihood and right meditation and right intention and right view, all this stuff comes forth from this place.

[21:39]

The practice you do there you call being upright or sitting upright. And you do that practice to get there, and you do that practice when you get there. And you do that practice when you come out of there. And being upright is the great mysterious skill of the bodhisattva. Nobody, nobody knows what being upright is. But even though we don't know what it is, it is possible for us to join the practice of sitting upright. If you do that practice, you naturally turn around and face your life that you've been denying.

[22:41]

You naturally turn around and face your anxiety and start moving to its core. And his core is self-betrayal, self-clinging, and forgotten self, those layers. You go through those layers. Pain, discomfort, revelation of self-betrayal and self-denial. And then behind self-betrayal and self-denial is self-clinging. And behind that is the actual existence of the self. And then when you reach there, you sit there and let Let it flow out. At that point, you're called realized. The proposal of the 40-sattva program is that you can return to this place. And returning to this place is called taking refuge in Buddha, taking refuge in Dhamma, and taking refuge in Sangha.

[23:47]

Like the refuge in Buddha, when you say that, you start to go back to that place. And that place is right inside you. But you've got to go back and not overshoot it or undershoot it. Uprightness is the way to aid you or facilitate your going back. But also, you go back in this kind of funny way of going back. Because the meaning of these precepts, like the meaning of the precept of taking refuge in Buddha or going back to Buddha, the meaning of not killing and so on, the meaning of these precepts is not moving. So if you want to know what it means not to kill, not to steal, to take refuge in Buddha, what it means is don't move. Because Buddha is not someplace else. Not killing is not someplace else. The meaning of practicing good is to not move.

[24:51]

And also the meaning of practicing good does not move. The meaning doesn't move either. So you don't go someplace to practice good. You don't go someplace to return to Buddha. Buddha is actually in exactly where you are right now. So you go to where you are right now. And the meaning of uprightness and the meaning of not moving is take refuge in Buddha. Want to know what it means to not move? Take refuge in Buddha. What does it mean not to move? Not killing. What does it mean not to move? Not stealing. What does it mean not to move? Not lying. That's what not moving is. What does it mean to refrain from evil? Don't move. What does it mean to practice good? Not moving. If you just don't move, your inherent goodness blossoms. If you know the slightest bit, you deny it and you lose it.

[25:59]

I might say completely. However, if you just stop wiggling, it manifests again. And if it's not doing, I mean it's not moving, it's also not doing. You don't do anything. So it's very hard for us to do practice of not doing anything. In fact, I gave one of the senior people here, I gave him the instruction of, I gave him this difficult instruction about some time ago, six months ago or something, I gave him the instruction, I said, He was a good student. He used to be a good student. Those were the good old days. Anyway, I told him to, I don't tell people things, but I suggested to him very generally that he stop doing practice

[27:15]

that he stopped doing any kind of practice. And I'm not going to say this to any of you, even gently, unless you're kind of begging me. If you're begging me, I'll tell you too, to stop doing any practice. If you beg me three times, I'm going to tell you that. I'm going to suggest that to you, gently. That's the kindest thing I could do for anybody. The practice, I would say, for somebody to practice. People who aren't practicing, I might suggest that they practice. And lo and behold, without me even noticing it, he listened to my suggestion and has been practicing it ever since. And I've been having a hard time. Because he wants to practice. He remembers some of the practices he used to do, and he wants to do them again.

[28:23]

And he's very frustrated that he can't do any of the practices he used to do. I mean, he can, but he's trying to follow my instruction. And following my instruction means he can't do any of those practices. And he wants to do something. So I actually was very impressed that he listened to my instruction. And I was also kind of calling myself for something. I said, oh, wow. In other words, I told him to actually practice Zaza instead of just more karma. If you are doing something, if you're doing something, that's just more karma. And there is wholesome karma, and if you're going to do something, please do wholesome karma. But it's not zazen practice to do things.

[29:26]

It's just delusion for you to do things. That's one of the basic definitions of delusion, is when you practice some dharma, some teaching. That's delusion, if you practice something. That's way out in the center of your life. At the center of your life, all things are coming to give you life. And then life spontaneously blossoms out of you. All things are dependently producing you. In other words, they're producing you, and you're producing all things, all the time. The whole universe is giving rise to your life. Your life is producing everybody else's life all the time. That's what's going on at the center of your life. That's your aliveness. That's the harmonious forgotten self at the center of your being 24 hours a day. That thing doesn't do anything. That doesn't do practice. Practice is this thing that kind of like erupts out of that place constantly.

[30:34]

If you get up to the place where you do things, you're way away from that place. You're out in a place where you've got this self, which is like this independent operator which does stuff. Not the person, not the being who's supported by everything and can't do anything, but the being who's supported by a few things, her friends and whatever. her own personal power in doing things. That's delusion. I said to him, why don't you please stop being deluded, and that's all. So then, he didn't completely stop, but he tried, so then he couldn't do all those practices he used to do. And he couldn't do all the practices he had to get started. But I, you know, like in the Pukan Zazengi, I directly indicated a practice, or I directly indicated a way Or, no, I asked him to totally devote his energies to a way which directly indicates the absolute or the complete practice.

[31:42]

And he spent time. And so he told me recently about how hard it was, and I said, boy, keep it up. It's great. This is called also, as you may know, the term, this is called learning the backward step. Usually it's like the forward step is I'm doing this. Learning the backward step is to turn around and go back to the place not of I'm doing this, but everything is giving me life. And now you see what happens. Turn around and go back to the place not where you're doing life and you're doing practice and you're conferring and confirming everything, but to where everything that happens to you gives you life. That's called learning the backward step. Turning around, go back to the dependent core rising of your left. Turn around. Instead of starting with the self and then projecting that on everything and laying that on everything and pushing everything around, turn around and go back to see how you're made.

[32:51]

Again, sorry, but when you turn around to look at how you're made, you've got to look through all this anxiety and pain that's all around the place where you're made. I don't know why it's that way. I mean, I do sort of, but it turns out that this place, this peaceful place, is surrounded by toxic waste and stinking fire and pain and anxiety. The worst stuff. Chaos. So you don't have to go back to the center where you're born. You have to go through all this crap because of food from all the nasty things you've done. All the betrayals that you've contributed to your life, all the selfishness, it all has caused this fuel of flame. But this fuel is also the fuel for your life, your creativity. When you get to the center, what was hard to get through is now like fuel. When you get outside of it, it's like barriers, treacherous, difficult barriers.

[34:02]

So you have to go through. You can't just, like I say, fight your way through this stuff. You'll get hurt. You have to walk through this stuff lovingly. Otherwise, you'll get all cut up. Walk through it lovingly, patiently, kindly, joyfully, basically uprightly. Uprightly. Walk through it. Walk through it kind of like you'll be when you get there, to the middle. Walk through it. And there's uprightness, which you'll find when you get there. But it would be difficult, but you have to walk through. You have to walk through lots of nasty-looking faces of lots of demons going, you know, your practice stinks. And also some other really lovely faces, they say, your practice is really great. You can take a vacation. Come fly with me. Let's fly far away from this pain. And I'm not saying when this demon comes and says, let's fly away, what can you say?

[35:08]

Out of my face, creep, oh, I know this one. No, no. Or if a demon comes and says, your practice stinks, say, oh, no, Rep told me you're just a demon. No, no. That's not right. Be dignified about it. When demons come and spit in your face, be dignified about it. and say, okay, I see you're spitting in my face, I know that. I wonder what you're trying to tell me. And I mean really wonder, kind of like, I wonder what you're trying to tell me. No, like, I sincerely wonder what does it mean that somebody's, that a demon's spitting in your face and telling you that your practice stinks and it's selfish and blah, blah, blah. Or when does it tell you you're doing fine also? Be dignified. Don't, you know, tell me. Just, okay. Okay, I hear you. You think I'm doing fine? Okay.

[36:09]

If you can say thank you very much, fine. Also, when you're being insulted, if you can say thank you very much without being sarcastic and dignified, right? And you can say thank you very much when someone criticizes you. You can even say thank you very much, right? If you can be upright, if you can be upright, you'll get a reward, and your reward will be more toxic waste in your face. Toxic waste means the waste product from your top wound toxicity. will be the waste product from your own self-betrayal, self-hatred, and cowardice. All that stuff will come flying back at you that used to have movement at the center of your life. If you're upright with it, it'll just fall right off to you. As soon as it comes near you, it'll drop you away. It'll never reach you, never reach you, never touch you.

[37:12]

It won't hurt you at all. And just like what he called being in a birth canal. It's just pressure, which will never touch you. It moves you through. It moves you through to your new life. But it's pressure. It's pressure, and you feel like it's going to choke you. But it doesn't if you don't move. And again, the reward for not moving when you get swept and the reward for not moving when you get stroked is you get more. And pretty soon, you get more and more until you get it all. Until you get it all. Until you get the whole smear of what you have been in trouble facing. And you've faced everything. When you've faced everything, you're done. You're done. You're cooked. You're at the center of your life. You're a Buddha. You have walked through the flames. You are initiated into your life.

[38:17]

all buddhas sit there and they are turning the wheel of truth in the middle of those flames and you'll get there and you'll have some friends these friends knowing you won't know what they are i don't know what they are they don't know what they are they're there they they are your true existence they are your autonomy and buddhas are in the middle of those flames teaching the dharma turning the wheel but they sometimes say although the flames are all around There's a cool reason for it. And you can work there forever. We're all beings. And all this right action and right speech is blossoming out of that place. But my friend, you know, like I said, he's having a hard time not doing any practices. He's hanging there. And he told me something else that I thought was helpful.

[39:22]

He, in his stymied state, he was contemplating and aware of not just, you know, what we call headline stymied, but there's a lot of experiences that go with stymied. Stymied, frustrated, and so on. There's a lot of meat in there, okay? Part of the meat is your body. Your body tells you secrets about... what it's like to not be able to be a karmic machine anymore. Things started moving around. He had some paint around here. He said, is that the paint or the blockage? I said, well, where is it? He said, is that your solar plexus or your heart? And he said, I think it's my solar plexus. And I said, I think so. It makes sense to me. You know, the solar plexus and the heart Up close. Yeah. Isn't that funny? The solar plexus chakra and the heart chakra are right next to each other.

[40:24]

Very convenient to locate for one-stop shopping. Great. The solar plexus is right on top of the diaphragm. The diaphragm is the thing you use to breathe. It's a muscle you use to breathe. And it's a voluntary muscle. At the top of your breathing muscle is the solar plexus, and the solar plexus is about control. He was having some pain around the control center because I told him to stop controlling, stop doing a practice of what you can do. If you stop doing a practice of what you can do, the solar plexus is going to say, I need a workout. What's happening to me? Give me some kind of workout. I'm getting stiff. I'm getting old. I think it's good. We should give the solar plexus some reasonable workout.

[41:26]

A good thing to give the solar plexus is a workout, a yoga workout on helping learn how to love the diaphragm. That's what you use it for. But what the solar plexus tries to do is it tries to control everything. If you're trying to practice with your solar plexus, and somebody says, don't do anything, your solar plexus just has a problem. So he is, and if you do this practice of zazen, you shift from solar plexus to heart. It's a difficulty there. Heart being, heart's the organ. You know how hard it is? Stuff goes into the heart, right? And out of the heart. The heart is the place where everything in the universe comes. All your relationships come to your heart. Your heart's like the organ where you can actually experience how everybody's helping you. The heart's a place in your body where you can actually feel how everybody's helping you.

[42:30]

And when you feel how everybody's helping you, that's called heart. That's your heart. And heart is also the place where you go out and help everybody. So you are actually helping everybody. And everybody's helping you. And it's at the heart that you feel that. And opening your heart means opening to feel how everyone's helping you and everyone's giving you their life. And also how you are helping everyone else. But you open to that. You don't go around saying, I'm giving everybody their life. What you do is you open to everybody's giving you their life. And you notice that you're giving everybody their life. That's at your heart. It's right next to your soul classes. And that's not about I'm practicing. It's about I'm being practicing. I'm being supported so that practice can happen. And also, my being supported supports others because others supporting me supports them. The fact that others are supporting me, the fact that you're supporting me, your support of me supports you.

[43:34]

And my support of you supports me. That's the bodhisattva. That's what naturally happens there, at that place. When you see how all beings are supporting you, you first think of helping them. You naturally think of helping them first at that place, before yourself. The first thing that occurs to you is to help them that give you life. You don't first think, oh, thanks for giving me my life. Now let's do something for me. You're overwhelmed. You are overwhelmed. Your existence is simply overwhelmed by the kindness. And so the first thing you do think of is how can I help others? And it turns out, so the bodhisattvas want to help others first, but they never, ever help others first. Because as soon as they help others, they immediately help themselves at the same moment. So you can't help others before yourself. But you can want to help others before yourself.

[44:40]

If you don't want to help others before yourself, you're kicked out of central city. You're kicked out of the place of who you really are by wanting yourself to be helped first or even at the same time as the other people. I want to tell one more story about one of the practitioners of this area. This person was doing some volunteer work around here. This person was filling the lamps in the cabin, and I'm standing. It wasn't this person's job.

[45:43]

This person was doing it for, like, for extra credit, kind of. It wasn't her job, and so she started to fill the lamps, but she filled one lamp, and she couldn't fill it because she ran out of kerosene. She was trying to do some good. She ran out of kerosene, so then she went through the... cabin crew area to get some more kerosene, but there wasn't much. So she went, took back what there was, and went back and tried to fill them back again, but there still wasn't enough. And she was tired. And it wasn't her job anyway. So she didn't feel like going up to the shop to get some more kerosene. But she gave up. I don't remember exactly when it happened to her, but something dawned on her, even before she left that Something dawned on her, and that was she thought of her own room.

[46:45]

She got this big flash and thought, what a mess her room was. She doesn't take care of her own room. Here she was overtaking somebody else's room. However, I point out I'd like to stop it. And it's fine? Looks like it. Oh, good. Go back and study yourself and realize where Dharma comes from and realize the precepts and become Buddha for the sake of all beings. Okay? But no questions. Do you want to... Do you want to... Do you want to connect with such a practice? Is that your spot? Yes. Nobody's going to say anything? Why? Well, what's the reason why you're not saying anything?

[47:55]

I'm going to ask you this then. OK, I'll do one, two, three. One. I'm going to do one, two, three. I'm asking you. Please answer. But I would, you know, when you said nothing, I thought, this is, I would, that was surprising to me. I thought, wow, you've got guts. One, two, three, I'm asking. Spider-Man. What? Spider-Man. There's no other choice. Good for you. No, all at once. Please. I was amazed. I mean, silence is a good answer. It's a good answer, but I was surprised that all of you chose to say I'm innocent. Usually when everybody's silent, it's because 80, 90 percent are afraid.

[49:01]

But maybe you weren't. Maybe your answer maybe was, when asked, are you going to practice Buddhism, your answer is, That's a good answer. I'm surprised you all chose the same one. Usually when people do that, it's because nobody's present. So I'm going to ask you again. I'm not going to ask you anymore, but I do have that question that I'm asking myself. Thanks. See you in Yervon.

[49:39]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_79.11