Say anything about how the retreat's going or ask any questions to start off? Did you ask for questions too? Questions or statements about how things are going? Yes? I have a question. And that is about how the retreat's going or any contact? Either one. All of you. I wanted to ask about the way that this fits into the ethical teachings of Buddhism. One of the things we read yesterday, it talked about this is the way that you teach the norm, the middle way and the idea of rebirth. And then in some of the readings, particularly in that debate with Batchelor and Thurman, if there's a question of Is this in order that this forms sort of a philosophical underpinning so that people will have wholesome actions?

[01:12]

Or could you be doing wholesome actions without this idea, without believing? So, some people feel that without believing in rebirth, literally or any other way, that they're capable of wholesome actions just because they can tell, they feel that they can tell that wholesome actions are worthwhile, whether there's rebirth or not. So some people would say, no, I don't think it's necessary I don't believe in rebirth and yet I feel completely committed to doing wholesome actions. I have various reasons why I like to do wholesome actions. I like to not hurt people. I find that quite enjoyable.

[02:14]

I also like not having what happens to me if I hurt people happen to me. So for me, being gentle and harmless and even being helpful to people is satisfying both in terms for myself and I like that it's good for them. And I also like avoiding the pain I get into when I don't please them or do things I don't appreciate. And then you might say, I'm also willing, however, to do some things which they don't like if I think it will help them. And then you might say, It's a wound. I'm willing to do that because I feel somehow, although I don't like it, it upsets me a little bit when they scream and fight back and call me names. On a deeper level, I feel some peace knowing that I did what was really... So it isn't just that the immediate...

[03:26]

or experience is important to me, but some deeper sense that I'm doing something that's appropriate. And orienting around those things and being concerned with those things, I take on and consider these things about rebirth. Okay? So someone might feel that way without thinking of rebirth, without believing in rebirth, one way, without thinking that rebirth makes sense, or without actually seeing rebirth, is another way. Without any of that, one might behave that way. And then, believing in rebirth, but not necessarily understanding it, or witnessing it, then there's like, not necessarily believing it, but just thinking it makes sense, to some extent, reasonably, in some way, or even having some evidence for it, like scientific evidence, so you're convinced, rather than believing you're convinced.

[04:37]

And the other is actually to be able to witness it. Not only convinced, but know. There's various possible ways to relate to the issue. Now, for the people who are convinced, for the people who believe, are convinced, or somewhat convinced, or very convinced, and those who can actually witness it, those people, the question is, are they more equipped for doing these wholesome actions than the people who aren't? And there's some evidence, I think, to say that they seem to be some of those people who are convinced and or can see. These are like the... Buddhism. the ones who are, like, convinced, because they see, well, I'll just say that for starters before I get into something else. Any questions about that so far? Does that make sense to people?

[05:38]

And not only that, but even if you weren't one of these people who could practice ethics and be conscientious about what actions you're involved in, and we're willing to meditate. Some people might be willing to meditate on karma without... There's certain flaws, however, in the law of karma if you start meditating on it if you don't have rebirth. Like this thing about that it happens three times. So you can just sort of set that aside for a while and say, okay, I won't worry about that. I'll just deal with the karma in this life. There still might be... There's still something to it. You said this thing about... that, well, if I get off into this now, should I just go for it? Things are happening to you, like people harassing you, you know? Like in the Diamond Sutra it says, if someone holds up the Diamond Sutra, if you hold up the scriptures, and then people revile you and insult you for it,

[06:54]

In other words, you're holding up the truth, you're practicing, right? And then when you're practicing, if you get attacked, the reason why you're getting attacked is that evil deeds you've done in the past are now coming to fruition that would ordinarily have matured later. They're coming to fruition now. So one of the principles here is when you practice, if you've done evil deeds in the past, they may come to fruition and start forming in the form of insults and attacks upon you while you're practicing. And these very acts would normally have matured. But now because you're holding up the teaching, they mature now. This is like, what do you call it? This is called condolence to the martyrs. So if you're holding up the teaching, you will get attacked early past karma that would ordinarily mature later.

[08:13]

It will be drawn upon you now rather than later. One other thing that happens here This section of the Dhamma Sutra, there's a Dhamma Sutra that says this, right? One of the places it says this. It's not just the Dhamma Sutra, but Dhamma Sutra is the most famous place where it says if you hold up the Dhamma Sutra and you get attacked, that's because karma from previous time, unwholesome karma from previous time is maturing now rather than in the future. But this is in a scripture not just condolence to the potential martyr, but it's also in a scripture about wisdom. And this story, this section of Diamond Sutra is in the Book of Serenity, Case 58. This story is not just about ways you worry about being attacked and make you feel good about these people being mean to you. It's also an opportunity for enlightenment.

[09:14]

Your past karma is now being fulfilled and being dissipated right at this time by this unfortunate material, but this is also a time to wake up. Because when karma is being dissipated, and you understand that, this is an optimal time to wake up. So the scripture is like focusing you on this situation. Particularly also if you're studying a case, and the case is insulting you. You're going to feel like you're going to need to study. So, I saw I mentioned that. And now you could somehow, I guess, hear that teaching and somehow just not worry about whether you believe in rebirth. You could say, well, it's for evil karma that I did, you know, in 1947, when I beat up my little brother or something. That would ordinarily come in the next life, but it's coming now. So you don't have to give it a rebirth for that one, necessarily. But there's other things where the sense that people are not going to just evaporate at the end of their life might be a real motivational factor and might prepare you to be a way that you wouldn't be if you didn't think that there was more suffering for people after they die.

[10:43]

Not only that, but the other side of it is But the way you behave is different if you think you're going to have more chances to work. For example, you might become hysterical that you haven't learned Sanskrit very well yet, or Chinese, or Tibetan, or Pali. If you're really enthusiastic about Buddhism, you might be upset. But, you know, I don't think I'm going to be able to get very good at those because it's too late. But I'm not too upset about that. But it doesn't make me less enthusiastic about studying Chinese and Tibetan and Sanskrit. It just makes me more, in some sense, patient about the fact that I'm not. But I plan, you know, to study in the future. I'm going to a scholar's pure land sometime, where I have nothing to do but learn land readings for several lifetimes.

[11:49]

So it's both your stance in terms of, you have a big scope in terms of your practice. You see all beings as your work, so you realize you need many lifetimes to do this work. So without believing that, exactly, like literally true necessarily, you act as though you almost took it literally true. You start acting... That's what Stephen Batchelor came up with. I act as though I have infinite lifetimes to save infinite beings. And then he said, well, if that's the case, then you're all set. Whether believing it literally would make it more grounded and more realistic and more able to stay with that sense... We can debate that a little bit. You need something like that, otherwise you're too tight. You get distracted by your current little thing, unless you have this big view. But whether you take the view literally, or just as a view, as an imagination, which fuels... It's kind of like, it's an ethical imagination.

[13:03]

It's an imagination that sponsors... you know, great compassionate acts. But I'm not saying you couldn't do these great compassionate acts without that imagination, but what imagination would you have without those great compassionate acts? Tell me, tell me an alternative. I'd be happy to hear it. Yes. I don't want to give you an alternative. I already have one. But how does this fit with this saying that you shouldn't be working toward a goal? Well, did I use that example with you about Louis Pasteur? Did you use that example? Yeah. Remember? Yeah. Louis Pasteur had a goal, I think. Maybe he didn't. I don't know. But let's say he did. Or let's say somebody does. And the goal is... suffering from a disease, they think it would be cool if they didn't have to suffer.

[14:04]

They have a sense of what the conditions for the disease are, and they have a sense that if they understood the conditions, they could find a way to work with the conditions to set beings free from these conditions in some way. Okay? That would be the goal. The goal of a a microbiologist might be to set people free from certain diseases by understanding the disease process. They might want to do that. Maybe they themselves have been sick, or maybe they lost a little brother or something, or something like that, and they just don't like it. There's another way. Let's let people live longer before they die. Let's cure these children's diseases or something. This might be your motivation. Or you might have the motivation, I would like to set people free from delusion. I would like that. I've seen people waste their lives, destroy their precious. I really want to figure out a way. That's your goal. You have a goal. However, in the process of doing the work of studying the disease process, if you don't like the disease process and you would like it to be different from what it is, you can't see what it is.

[15:15]

You have to accept this little bug lives like this. And I don't want this little bug to go away because I actually can see the bug now. I had to buy all the expensive equipment to see the bug. I don't want the bug to go away. Now, if the bug could disappear from the planet, you might say, well, I might like that, but I wouldn't actually hope for that before I understood the process because maybe if that bug goes away, another bigger one will come. I can't hope for anything right now until I understand. So he studies these things, you know, and he sees how the disease functions. sees how the organism interacts with the human tissue, how the humans respond when that interaction occurs. He studies all this, he understands, and he sees, oh, if it happened like this, then that would happen instead. Or he sees it happens like this, what makes it happen like this? Oh, if you do this, it happens like that. Well, let's do this, then it happens like that, then the disease. So, in the process, you're just studying the way things are, and you use the way things are for the benefit of beings.

[16:17]

Wishing things weren't. So, in your meditation practice, the point of which is to set beings free, the meditation practice is to become intimate with the way things are. Becoming intimate with the way things are releases beings. If you want to release beings, then you should stop messing with what's happening and understand what's happening. and then liberation is possible. But if you fight what's happening, that's actually what the problem is in the first place, is that, generally speaking, human beings are interfering with what's happening, they don't like what's happening, they don't look at what's happening, they're ignorant about what's happening, and they're . So how are you going to educate them how to stop ignoring what's happening, become in harmony with what's happening? Well, how about trying it yourself in your meditation, learning how to do that? And then once you get the swing of it, find out who else wants to get the swing of it and guide them into the same. You do want them to be free.

[17:23]

You want to be free yourself. You want to open this samsara up and let dharma in. But the only way you're going to do that is by understanding samsara. Not by wishing it wasn't here. That feeds samsara. If you love samsara, that feeds samsara. Does everybody know what samsara means? Birth and death. It means going around in birth and death. It means death, rebirth, death, rebirth, death, rebirth. Death, rebirth. Rebirth, death. If you want to be free of death and have dhamma, to pervade that realm, you have to understand samsara. Otherwise, samsara will fool you because it's your own imagination which you've fallen for. So the practice is to not be caught by desire, rather be caught by wisdom.

[18:25]

And that, in the point of wisdom, is to help beings. But you do have a goal, practice does have a goal, But the goal doesn't hurt the practice. The goal orients the practice. The goal is the way you check to see whether the practice is operating properly. You remember, oh yeah. And for me, you know, I came to Zen because I saw stories of people who knew how to help people. I heard these stories of these people who could help people. I thought, well, cool, I want to help people like that. But I found out that they had a practice they did They all did this practice called just sitting. And that practice made it so that it wasn't just like good luck that they could help people. But then I started doing the practice, and the practice... Actually, I forgot the goal when I... a long time. I forgot that I was doing the practice that I say of all beings. I just did the practice. Like Louis Pasteur maybe forgot when he studied the microbes, it had anything to do with sick people.

[19:29]

I don't know if he did, but... you just get fascinated with what's happening, and you forget that the reason why you're studying this is, you know, to liberate beings, or to liberate together with things. The practice itself just, you know, takes all your attention. So the goal still helps you remember, oh yeah, I'm doing the... Sometimes the practice can get off if it doesn't line up with the goal. But if you think about the goal too much, you don't pay attention to the practice, so there's a balance there. in terms of purpose and goal and orientation. That make sense? Yeah. Just a couple weeks ago I was thinking about some people in my life and in the lives of others that I know who are very problematic and it's just over many years they're just very problematic and I realized

[20:32]

I had this idea that, well, I just don't have to deal with them. I'll just stay away from them. But that you will have to deal with them, if not this life, then in the next life. So don't kid yourself about these people, that they're somehow, I got rid of them somehow. And that was very sobering or kind of wholesome thought. You know, like some of these people went to, some of these doctors volunteered to go to, like, Rwanda and places like that, right? There you are, a doctor, you're supposed to help these people, you've got 4,000 people standing in front of you. You probably just want to throw your body into the mass and let them eat you. That's not necessarily going to do them any good. You actually have to see them one at a time. You cannot, you know, fix three broken legs at the same time.

[21:34]

You have to choose one of them. And it's terrible, but you have to do it. Otherwise, I'm not going to fix your leg now. You have to say it, but in fact, when you do say it, you have to wait. Not that, but unless you're going to just work for about 96 hours and die, you have to rest. You have to, like, stop working for people waiting at the door. Otherwise, you're not going to work there for two months. You're just going to work there for half a week. So you have to say, you have to, like, not help somebody so you can help somebody. You have to check your motivation. Am I resting to help beings? If I'm resting, you know, maybe it's not clear. Maybe it's a little bold. So then what some people do is say, well, since it's not pure, my resting is not pure, I won't rest. So then they go ahead and impurely continue to work.

[22:37]

So you learn. But in fact, the bodhisattva realizes that eventually you have to help everybody. There's nobody you can leave out, but you still have to work on things one at a time. You have to decide which is most beneficial to work on. Which person do you meet today? Which is really the best? Experiment. It's like, I think this is best. You try it and see how it goes. And sometimes it's like, no, that wasn't best. It would have been okay. It's an experiment. It's a kind of scientific kind of way of proceeding. This looks good. This looks not good. I'll do the good. Pretty good. Not so good. Kind of bad. Usually, most of us have enough experience with bad, but maybe do a few more bad things just to make sure that's how they work. Yeah, that stinks, right? It's not that much fun to be careless, actually. But it's fun to, like, carefully do something which looks careless sometimes.

[23:45]

Like to carefully, like, throw something across the room. you know, take a piece of cloth off and just really toss it. Mindfully. You go through the motions of being a teenager. But, you know, once a month or once a year or once a decade is enough of that usually for most people. It's so satisfying. Like I always wanted to break my television set. But, you know, it's not like I want to break multiple television sets. But let me say something before we go further, okay? I'd like to say this, that there's different motivations for taking refuge. And I think that for a lot of Western people, the first two aren't so attractive and aren't so much the way we feel.

[24:48]

But the last one I think, I would guess you'll resonate with more. So I'll tell you the three kinds of motivations that I usually talk about for practicing. Or for, you know, becoming devoted to Buddhist practice. One is that you have horror at being reborn in lower realms than you're in now. This is for like In the human realm, and you get a glimpse already, you hear about the horrible possible rebirths you could have. So you practice in order to keep being born a human, and maybe even a happier human than you are now. Better and better circumstances. Better and better, whatever better and better means to you. And Buddhism says, you know, actually doing Buddhist practice can give you better rebirths and protect you from going to lower rebirths.

[25:55]

And a lot of people say, I don't care about that. When Westerners hear that, a lot of them don't like that one too much. Another one is, same thing, you see, now the horrors, and then the next step is the horror in some sense gets even more intense. You see even more horror. Like you start to see the horror of all kinds of life in samsara. Even those happy rebirths, you start to see that. Things are looking worse now. And again, people don't like that too much, but anyway, to hear about that too much, it sounds so nice. And like, for example, last night, you know, After the talk last night, one of the women who came up told me that one of the other women in our community just had a baby, you know. And it was so beautiful. The feeling of having a baby is so beautiful, you know. And it is. It's so beautiful.

[27:01]

I see this example of how a birth looks so lovely, so wonderful, you know. Beautiful things can happen in samsara. That's, you know... That's part of what samsara's got going for it, is that fantastically, wonderfully, inspiringly beautiful things can happen in this little tiny world. That's not the problem. The problem is what happens when the baby gets sick, and when the baby starts, you know, hating. When you start hating the baby, that's the problem. And that stuff can get horrendous. Even in this lovely situation, this miraculous thing, a miraculous, fantastic thing, which we make up called human birth. It's the suffering. And the suffering is horrible sometimes. And it affects all forms of life. You don't want to get a good rebirth anymore because you don't see any.

[28:04]

What you want now is liberation from the whole thing. The next step is that you start... You see the suffering of other people, other beings. And you see how terrible it is. And you see how terrible it is now. And you have a sense that not only is it terrible now, but you can see by the way it is that it kind of like perpetuates itself. And they reach up and rip the wounds off. I mean, they have a wound and they start to heal and they start pulling the scabs off, you know. But they're drug addicts and their response to that is to take more drugs or to kill people, you know. You see people getting worse and worse and you think, what if this goes on for their life? Well, let's just try to, like, take care of it. But what if it goes on longer than that?

[29:05]

What if it goes on longer than that? Even without believing it. If it's possible that it does, then you definitely cannot stand the idea that this is going to go on. And it doesn't look like it's going to get better. The trajectory they're on does not look like it's going to get better in the next life. It doesn't look like they're going to get better next week or next decade if they live that long. So rebirth in that case makes it more intolerable to let people suffer because you don't see it's going to just be for another week. And if you do think it's for another week, you might be able to tolerate it, which in some sense might be nice to be able to tolerate it. But on the other hand, if you can't tolerate it, then what happens is you give rise to this vow that you are going to become a Buddha, not just get liberated as a Buddha, because these people need it. These people, there are a lot of them, and they're really in trouble now.

[30:08]

And so, if you can become a Buddha this lifetime, fine. Maybe you can help them all in this lifetime. But somehow the fact that they might have to live longer makes it even more necessary. And also gives you a little more time to do it, in a sense, you could think. But anyway, aside from this time thing, the more horrendous the situation is and the more you care about other people, the more rebirth then... make even more care about other people, more worry about them, and make a deeper vow. So, the Western people that I run into in practice, they seem more motivated by the great bodhisattva vow than these other vows. That's the one that they seem to feel okay about. Yeah, I guess it's okay to really care about these other people just in case they're going to fall into rebirth, but I believe in it for myself. What if I fall into it? Then it seems like it's okay to, like, consider that as a possibility and worry about it. Not worry about it, but commit yourself to helping them. So I was kind of just... That's the one that seems to be easiest for people to take, is the great bodhisattva vow, based on the possibility that people might have to go more years.

[31:21]

And it turns out that's the best one anyway, so it's kind of fortunate that... that actually Westerners, most Westerners I meet are actually choose the highest vow, the highest motivation for studying Buddhism, and use rebirth in the best way, namely for the welfare of others. It's kind of like, for myself, I'm not going to get into these beliefs, you know. It's ridiculous. But for other people, okay. It helps other people for me to believe this, and then I'll work harder for them. You know, I'll use my imagination that way, because it does seem to be necessary. Otherwise, I can let people suffer. It's terrible, but it's just going to be for a little while longer. I guess I can tolerate it. But it's going to be a lot longer... I don't know if I can just, I got, no, I can't stand it. I got to go to work. I'm at practice.

[32:26]

I got to, like, take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. I need this, I got to get help here to do this immense job, which I now see that there's no way around it. I can't let these people, I can't tolerate it. So the only proof of a rebirth for that necessarily, it's more like, I don't know, to me that's a way of sort of like compassion talks you into it. You know, for the sake of compassion, I'll just go ahead and go for the rebirth thing. Obviously, it obviously goes with very compassion. Now the question is, can you have that kind of compassion without this thing? And logically speaking, I guess so, but I don't see it, actually. I think, almost like, no, I don't see it. Now, if you could, if you can't tolerate the suffering of second, then I guess you don't need to be a breathtaking. But most people can. So, excuse me, was it Breck and Stewart?

[33:30]

Yeah. I have a question related to what you just said. The first two of those really seem to be motivated by self-interest and aversion. Yeah, there's still some self-interest there. And you can approach a liberation, you can approach... If you've got self-interest, that's your problem, but still, you can use your self-interest. or unwholesome way. Wholesome way is to practice Buddhism. You've got self-interest, but if you practice Buddhism, even with self-interest, you can improve your situation. Self-interest is a problem for the second category, too, but now the thing is self-interest. I'm self-interestedly going to enter a program to become free of this self-interest. So it would reverse altogether. Hmm? I mean, the first one is to avoid rebirth in a lower realm, the second one is to get out of rebirth altogether.

[34:34]

Right. But aside from talking about rebirth, I'm just going to become free of my self-interest. Because self-interest is self, and now, because of interest in taking care of this self, I'm going to do something for this self. That's karma. So there we go. The other one starts out not for self-interest. The other one might commit it. The other one... You're suffering so much that you actually give rise to a non-self-interested thought. Which makes you even willing to believe in things that you ordinarily would be embarrassed to believe in. A lot of self-interest. I don't want to be one of these weirdos that believes in... If it helps people, I'll do it. Who cares? I'll be a jerk. I'll be a weirdo. I'll be one of those people who goes to these science, these new age science eras that are in Moscone Hall. I'll get into all those kind of like, those things, you know, if it helps people.

[35:37]

Being a pure Zen monk, you know, not worrying about past, present, and future. Whatever. This is not for me anymore. So that one, no self-interest from the beginning. I mean, it's not that there's no self-interest, but the thought is free of self-interest. Actually, truly, the same with others first. At some point today or tonight, did you talk about your reference to Gurdjieff? Yeah. Yesterday. I said, sometimes today or tonight, when I talk about breakfast, Gurdjieff... I know. I often hear other words before people finish the one that they're intending to say. I thought he said breakfast. Gurdjieff said, you know, his thing was, which I kind of, you know, I sympathize with, are, you know, human beings are really something, you know.

[36:45]

We do something special on the planet and in the solar system and in the local areas of the galaxies. We do something kind of special. What we do is we can know things. and we can give rise to this notion of self, and we can do karma and stuff like that. He's been saying all this, but I'm saying this. But anyway, we have this special role, and that role is a role where we can realize enlightenment, we can imagine a world and enter it and become free of it. This liberating, lighting up and becoming free function that we perform is important for the whole planet. and for the whole, you know, system. Now that we've been created, we have work to do. And since this is our universe, the universe has kind of got used to it. Okay, we made light, you know, and we made humans, now let's have the light.

[37:52]

So the universe has become dependent on a certain level of light from this planet. It's good. It's like a spiritual technology. The level of spiritual technology reached a certain stage at a point, maybe around the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, and the universe has gotten used to the light that was there at that time. These were very bright back then when he was alive, currently. Like he would just be sitting there and people would come up. He would say the Four Noble Truths and they would become enlightened. Didn't have to mention rebirth because they sort of came with that understanding. So he would just say suffering, yeah, okay. Arising for it, that's kind of like a surprise. There's an end to it. Yeah, we heard about that. Here's the end, Eightfold Path. Tell them the Eightfold Path, they wake up.

[38:55]

That's the way it was at that time. So then he died, right? He's got a lot of disciples, but a little bit darker. Maybe not. Actually, maybe for about 500 years, since he had so many disciples, it stayed pretty bright. But then it starts getting dark. So the cosmos says, where is the light from Earth? It says, we need more people. So, and there's more people. So the population of the planet has to get greater and greater because all of us are contributing less and less light. Because the overall contribution of light to the planet has to stay constant. But since each of us is delivering less, there has to be more of us to fill our quota of light. Self-defeating, though. The more and more people, the more difficult it is to have light. Yes, exactly. The more and more people, the more and more it is to have light.

[39:57]

So, you know, take your time. Be a wimp and say, hey, it's too hard, you know, let's have more kids. And generally speaking, you know, if you watch it, that's what happens. The people who are really oppressed have more kids. That's their response, because you can go into works, but anyway. Generally speaking, the population rate's highest where the population's highest. The reproduction rate's highest where the population's highest. When you're poorer, make more kids. When you're more oppressed, make more kids. Take more drugs, make more kids. turn everything into a drug, make more kids. And then there's more kids, and each kid comes up, little bump, more light, little beautiful face. More light to us, more light to the universe.

[40:59]

So, if we make more light, we'll need less kids. But it's hard to make more light when there's just been more kids. So it is hard, but there it is anyway. That's the courage of theory. I completely go along with the point about light. I completely agree with that. But his theory is that population is just going to keep increasing unless more of us make a bigger contribution. And I kind of feel like, you know, in some sense I could tell a story which is, if you have a person who's got a lot of light, and that person conveys that light, people are less interested in having more kids than they need. Matter of fact, people are in some senses free of the impulse to have kids. They still might have kids, it might be good to have some kids, but they're free of the impulse when they see that light. Unless that would help people in some way, maybe sometimes it does.

[42:03]

It might be helpful to participate in having a child that might be encouraging to someone's practice. In that case, it might make more light besides the additional individual, the people involved might have more light. But it may be only one kid is sufficient for that, because once the kid's born, then the light of the interaction is sufficient to, like, coping with the life is enough to keep the cursed person practicing up to their eyeballs. You know, that's his theory. So where do all the extra shapes... Actually, his vision. What? Where do all the extra shapes come from? Well, there's infinite number of beings that aren't human. Okay. We can't see them, no, but there's infinite number of beings that aren't human. Infinite. There's beings sort of, you know, filling up for human birth. They love it. And if they're necessary, we offer them opportunities.

[43:08]

And they're necessary when the light, when it gets darker, we offer more opportunities. Because we're concerned with various things other than spiritual practice, we're blanketing, blanking around. And so that gives opportunities to these beings to be born. That would be the story. Stuart? Yeah, there's a lot... They're more human beings, but there are some grizzly bears. We have a very large potential population. Yeah. So we may have no grizzly bears and no birds pretty soon, just zillions of humans. I wanted to go back to something you talked about. Yesterday afternoon, I had a question about your discussion of the retributed entity.

[44:10]

You explained it very carefully, but I in my mind well enough to differentiate what you were saying from the continuation of consciousness. I heard you say this is not a continuation of the consciousness skanda. Pardon? That's my feeling. Right. And also I think that that chords with explicit... in explicit teaching to the Buddha, who said that you can't have continuation of the consciousness skanda because that skanda is dependent on the whole skanda. So that doesn't happen. That's a heresy to say that happens. But I couldn't understand yet what it was that you were talking about. that wasn't past.

[45:17]

It sounded like something was reaffirming... This is going to sound like consciousness. This is a possibility of what someone might call consciousness. You've got consciousness, right? Ordinary consciousness that we have right now is a consciousness that arises with form, with feelings, with perceptions, and with a... In formations is, in a given moment, a wide variety of mental factors. So consciousness arises with these other five clumps of phenomenal events. And the consciousness arises with them, and they arise without consciousness. Consciousness never arises without that. And the consciousness, the shape of the consciousness, is determined by the things that arise with it. And the shape of the consciousness is what we call the definition of karma.

[46:18]

And one of the mental... Actually, as soon as consciousness arises, one of the characteristics of consciousness is the shape. So one of its factors is its shape, which is also the definition of its karma. So consciousness has a certain shape... Okay? And that shape of the consciousness, it happens just for a flash, very fast, it comes up and goes away very fast and changes into another one. And all the mental factors also change, and when they change, the consciousness changes, when the consciousness changes, they go down very fast, and people can directly experience this change, and blah, blah, blah. The shape of the consciousness is determined because this type of consciousness... never comes up without those other things. And then this shape and those factors are what the next shape is, and the next.

[47:23]

So there's a causal relationship then across, not across, but there's a causal relationship between them, and you can make that in a time if you want to, and we do sometimes. In a given consciousness, part of the shape is our concept of time. that into a series, connected series of actions and so on. In the present we can do that. Then what happens is, by various causes and conditions, the kind of elements that make a coming together in a separation, make a going apart in a dis-separation. Now the body and all these elements are no longer separate from other ones, they just get dispersed. But the shape of the consciousness is not going to be the shape like it had before because you're not going to have these other elements there to shape it.

[48:29]

However, what you're going to have now as the shape of whatever's left, which is not going to be a consciousness like we ordinarily call it. The shape's going to be some kind of like summary that led up to the last moment, but now it's not going to have the five skandhas to prop up the shape. It's going to have the residual, all the actions based on those five skandhas. That's going to be the shape of this thing. So it's going to be a different kind of... It's not going to be a consciousness. knows self and other and that kind of stuff. It's going to be like a register, a kind of psychic, spiritual register of the entire life of the person, actually many lives. It's going to be a particular shape and it's going to have a certain tendency. That's what sort of like comes up. It doesn't exactly go on, but that's what comes up after the dispersion.

[49:30]

And then that changes and something else comes up after that. And that's what I think they're talking about, which they call consciousness. There's something survives, just like sitting down, something survives. There's something left after... Just like there's something that seems to be there when various elements come together to make a thing, there's something there after the various elements go away and there's not anything there. And all those nothings are different. Okay? And that goes on. That kind of nothing goes on. Tayo and then Linda. You still have a question? Yes, I do. So, you say that this is the sort of thing that they talk about, and I'm wondering about who it is, the birth. Which is the thing that they talk about? People talk about rebirth, you know. you know, from starting, particularly with Vassal Bandhu, and then all the people who studied Vassal Bandhu then, you know, write commentaries on Vassal Bandhu.

[50:38]

So starting from India around the 5th, 4th, 5th century, particularly through Tibet, Southeast Asia, into China, you know, Buddhists refer back to this discussion of something that goes on and causes rebirth. There's tremendous discussion about it. And some of them call it consciousness. But I think that's a little confusing to call it consciousness, because then you confuse it with the consciousness which Buddha said doesn't go on. But he means the consciousness of a living being, which always comes with the other four skandhas. That one doesn't go on, but some people say, well, another kind of consciousness then. But anyway, some kind of register comes up. Some kind of something, some spiritual register of the quality of the practice of the person appears after death. Usually when we talk about consciousness as a living being, we talk about consciousness of objects, consciousness of something.

[51:39]

Are there objects? Well, the way some people talk about it, it's almost as though the conscious knows something. But I would say, you know, to me it makes more sense that it doesn't really know objects, and doesn't have the subject-object split and so on, but that the shape of it is the shape the impression left of thinking in terms of objects. So if it were the residual of the life of a deeply experienced meditator, then the shape would be a shape of the person who is not fooled subject-object phenomena. So it would be a different shape. If the shape of somebody who never had any inkling, was totally fooled by subject-object, then it would be that kind of mind. And if you looked at the mind, you'd say, that looks like the shape of a mind that came, that looks like a shadow of a mind that never reflected at all in the subject-object relationship and totally fooled by it.

[52:46]

It would have that kind of shape, and that kind of person would have, you know, they have more work to do at the beginning of the next lifetime. Now, again, at this point, that this is all the illusion, this whole thing is set up by illusion. Okay? This is one little, tiny little box in the middle of the universe which life systems set up when they separate themselves from all of life, particularly humans. So this whole story is not real. It's still real. But this is how the relativity evolves and how the relativity could learn about itself. In other words, this is another important fact of saying that when you practice this you don't just practice and then practice just evaporates and the next moment you start over and scratch again. There's some kind of like, almost like tangible result of the fact that you think something positive or think something negative.

[53:58]

And the next moment your mind is shaped by it. And then when you die, if there is rebirth, it's not like your practice is totally shot. There's some way to carry and Charlie asked me about this this morning, is again, this is kind of a theory, and I don't, there's problems with theories, but Vasubandhu put forth this theory, he didn't put forth this theory, it was going on from way before him, I don't know when it started, but it could have been, you know, eight or nine hundred years old by the time he put it in his book, of this kind of, this thing, which is called uncognizable form. It's a kind of form that you can't see. And it's not really the form like, it's not colors, not smells, not touch. It's the kind of form which actually lives in your mind. It's a form that actually lives in your mind. But it's not really a form, because you don't have form in your mind. There's not like pieces of furniture in your mind, but it's almost like you have... And these furnitures are these like manifolds or contours in your mind...

[55:09]

they shape, they put a shape into your mind, which then makes, again, it isn't the shape of your thinking, it's a built-in shape. So that you tend then, because of these past actions, your mind tends to, when it comes up, take these shapes. So in fact, if you do, if your mind isn't a shape of an unwholesome thought, But it doesn't have a shaping effect on the next moment. But if you then act out verbally or physically some thought, a wholesome or unwholesome thought, not neutral thoughts, but a wholesome or unwholesome thought, if you act it out physically and verbally, it shapes your mind. And that shape goes on indefinitely. So if you take, for example, if you say, I, you know, vow to live for the welfare of all beings, and you say that out loud, and you bow while you're doing it, and, you know, people can see that, you can see it, it's a cognizable karma.

[56:26]

It's, you know, it's a vision of the karma. It's a karma that people can see. That means like a physical effect in your mind. And that's the theory of how it is that physically and verbally enact your thoughts, you can reshape your mind and make it more conducive to positive thoughts. And of course, if you do unwholesome things with your voice and your body, you shape your mind towards unwholesome thoughts, more unwholesome thoughts, and therefore perhaps more unwholesome thoughts. And the actions particularly will shape the mind very heavily. That's why thinking a bad thought isn't quite as bad as in speaking it or physically enacting it. It does count. And oftentimes thinking, you can get the immediate effect. You think a bad thought almost at the same moment, maybe right away. Whereas if you physically do it or verbally do it, you might not even feel it, but you just have installed this warp into your mind, which is going to support unwholesome thoughts forever.

[57:36]

Forever. It never stops. Actually, I think they even say sometimes you get stronger. Yeah. It's like your mind is now kind of like geared and prone not to unwholesomeness by the unwholesome thing which you said or physically did. Vice versa. The wholesome ones... So the mind, fortunately, is rather large. So people like having these kind of, these moving vans full of this furniture being delivered, you know. So the unwholesome thoughts are delivering these unwholesome shapes. The wholesome shops, the wholesome ones are delivering the wholesome shapes. So of course you want to like, universe of your mind with these wholesome shapes, right? Because you know you've already got a lot of unwholesome in there. So as, so you're building this this vast landscape now of installed equipment, you know, hardware, sort of, into the software by your... And all that gets transmitted after death.

[58:48]

So if I understand correctly what you're saying, that this description of the entity and its nature is a description of the structure, a further description of the structure of delusion. Yeah, the generating, the kind of the degenerative delusion. And part of the author of delusion is the author of wholesome acts. Wholesome acts are also deluded because they're based on the idea that this little area here can do good things by itself, or do bad things. So even wholesome actions are really in the long run because they're based on the idea that you can do them. However, wholesome acts... tend to support practices which can turn you back and look at the picture and see what wholesome acts are really about and see the illusion of the idea that you can act independently and then illuminate the whole system and set the being free.

[59:59]

Then once you're free and you're really happy you want to dive right back in there because you see the other being suffering and you want to go in there and show them actually how beautiful it is. And the beauty of it is that it's all an illusion. Penalty core arises. I'd like to make one last comment, which is... This is the last one? This is the last comment. Ah, listen carefully, everyone. Not for my whole life. Oh. I thought we had history here. Yes? Just in terms of what you were talking about before about motivations for taking refuge, I think maybe a lot of Western people are reluctant or embarrassed to take refuge for their own benefit because we're already so fortunate in our work. Right. That's why those first two, I think, are...

[61:02]

a little hard for a lot of people who come to Zen centers or Buddhist centers, it's a little hard for them to identify with the first two because we are very fortunate. So that's why it's easier for us, I think, to do bodhisattvas. That's the point. You do good karma, you become fortunate. When you're fortunate, you're fortunate to contemplate being a bodhisattva. You can dare to think, geez, maybe I could like, you know, know maybe i could practice maybe people would support me because i i'm kind of practicing now and they seem to be supporting me and right so that's why in fact if we if we taught this kind of stuff in prisons and stuff maybe people would more say i'd like a good rebirth i'd like a good rebirth see what i'd like can you get me out of here or you know so yeah i think that's part of the reason And now we have the good fortune of having another delicious heavenly feast to do. Unless you're not up for this.

[62:07]

I don't know what the order was. Linda, Jenny, Linnea, Miffin, Galen. Taya was next. Yeah. This shape that moves through the different beings, maybe that's a way to say, belong variables. What is it in a new being that recognizes something in this shape that allows it to see its former lives? Something must connect the two. Well, it's that shape. Just like right now, somehow, Somehow your body has given rise to, your body together with all bodies in the universe give rise to some kind of like awareness.

[63:09]

And you have a history up there. History of you, history of the universe, history of America. You have all these histories which you can imagine. Imaginations. Someone could come along, somebody you respect could come along and say, no, no, that didn't happen, Tai, or actually Texas was blah, blah, blah, and you changed your history and so on. We all have these histories up in our head which we consult for what history is. And you can also work your way back through history and say this happened and that happened before that, blah, blah, blah. I was like this when I was 30, I was like this when I was 20, I was like this when I was 10. You can do that, right? Well, some people can. They do this, they have this kind of set of images and they can work through them and they've got them ordered and stuff like that in various ways. Different people have different ones and have them ordered in different ways, but people can access this stuff usually.

[64:13]

And that's part of what they relate to, to act. Their own vision of history and their place in it. What they did and did not do. Okay? that information is part of the shape of your mind right now. And how you work with that is... Birdie here now again. I guess it's okay. Maybe we don't do anything, it'll walk out by itself. And then some of that shape... gets transmitted to the next life. And then when that... Some of it? Yeah, some of it. Some of it. Yeah. I guess it all gets transmitted, but it may change in the process, just like your history changes day by day.

[65:19]

And some of these you forget turn into not... Some of these you forget turn into have not happened, rather than just say, I forgot them. History changes because you forgot them. But forgetting has something to do with, you know, various forces cause forgetting. And then forgetting sometimes gets turned into, instead of just forgetting, it gets to be... So then when this consciousness, this energetic shape, this energy with a shape, like some people have talked about it as kind of like... Energy fields have shapes, right? You know, heard about that? ...kind of like intense kind of macrame in the energy field, which gives rise to another macrame, and then that macrame of energy touches a physicality, and then there's, like, thoughts gondas. And then, it's getting more experiences, but then finally it can, it can see, it just comes out of the mother and, you know, and see things.

[66:29]

And then at a certain point it can see. Kind of like faces and stuff. And then finally it can organize things into faces and stuff. See, that's my mother. That's my father. And my father, when I learn the word, will be my brother too. My father's my brother? Hmm. So is there a skandhas without that consciousness? No. No. But there can be some kind of consciousness without the skandhas. But it's not the kind of consciousness that comes with the skandhas. It's not... So there's this... What Stuart was referring to, is it there is a sutra which where a monk hears about rebirth, he says, well, then consciousness survives. Buddha said, no, consciousness doesn't survive. He means that goes with the other four skandhas. That doesn't survive. That all gets dispersed. But some kind of register of the life goes on. This avijjna-piyarupa... which is installed in the field of the consciousness, in terms of shaping the consciousness that goes on.

[67:39]

Again, life inherits that. Is it software? Life inherits that software. And so there's experience also that you get some babies born and some babies seem older than other babies. Like my daughter was one of those old ones. They call them old souls, right? The worn-out souls. Just kidding. My daughter particularly was like one of these kids who had this person inside who did not like this small body. When am I going to get my regular size body? She's all really angry and upset when she was young. She weighed about, you know, when she was about 5'9", and weighed about 150 pounds, she started feeling pretty good. But she was, you always felt like there was this little adult in there that was, you know, talking like an adult, but wasn't happy not to have an adult. And also didn't like these, she liked these people, she respected them, but they were cramping her style.

[68:46]

Why don't you get out of here? I can do my thing, you know. Felt like that for about three. Hmm? Wow. Yeah. It was like, there was me and my wife, and then this other person came, and it wasn't, we didn't make this, this is a visitor. And, you know, and I always felt like, she's a fantastic visitor, I'll enjoy this person while I have a chance, and I have some responsibility for her, but... Who, you know, now that she's free, she kind of like, feels grateful to me, and comes and visits me now and then. So that's one way to talk about it, I tell you. And then, if the person meditates, they can, you know, 20, 10, 15, I mean 20, 15, 10, they can also go 20, 10, 15, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.

[69:47]

They can go back to the womb, which is actually kind of hard because the consciousness isn't the normal kind. and then they can go pop into the next one, and they see what kind of five skandhas there were then. So there's no original, there's no... The Buddha never found an original one. But the original one wouldn't have necessarily known that it was original. In terms of the little world that we create, Maybe that doesn't apply to the way it was born. Maybe it was born not by the original one of these, by some other force, so it couldn't register itself as, I'm the first one, or here's the start, or something like that. Even though the kind of consciousness it created was a consciousness that had like... Asmong, or a book about that. The start for humans. Yeah. And one of our friends, he's not exactly a student here, but he's...

[70:51]

He's the husband of one of our members. He writes science fiction and he gave me a book recently about his theory, about his story about how rebirth could happen. I'll try to remember to bring it down after lunch. It's a machine that you jump into and... Pretty reasonable. Good story. But he doesn't like the rebirth thing the way it's usually told in Buddhism. I don't know who's next, maybe Linda? So you said, and this shape goes on. I don't mean it goes on, actually. I take that back. The shape appears and disappears, because it's a samsara thing, right? This isn't like dharma. This isn't the world of dharma. This is something that comes and goes, comes and goes, and then something else comes and goes. It doesn't necessarily go on, it's just that after birth this kind of consciousness appears, and this kind of state appears. It's what we have after we're dead.

[71:55]

There's something. And is it, like you also said, a sequence? Yeah, then when that goes away, it's going away becomes the condition for the arising of the next one. The next one can't arise till it goes away. So when it goes away, the next one comes up. And there's some relationship between them. Before the next rebirth? In this mediation? I think so. I think it changes during that time. I don't think it's like being in a trance. That's why. That's the justification for praying for these people when they're in that space. To kind of support them so they don't... Even if they're really... If they're excellent meditators, it's still good to remember to say, don't forget you're an excellent meditator. Don't, you know, get sidetracked up there. Come on, stay on beam. Remember, we're up here. We're rooting for you to stay on course there. You know, stay on the path. Keep practicing right effort.

[72:56]

You know, meditate on... You know, you're not doing any karma now, but just keep your mind present, simple, and oriented around this wonderful path of liberation of all beings. We're hoping that for you. We're hoping that for you. Keep sending that message because they don't have genes and stuff to hold up various things. They don't have memories of a way of themselves and others to hold themselves up. They don't have guilt in the usual way. So anyway, that's part of the rationale for continuing to pray for them while they're in the space. Of course, pray for them when they're born, too, but it's a different kind of a prayer anyway. It's a keep-on-the-beam kind of prayer. And a lot of the people who get that kind of prayer are people who want those kind of prayers. So I think that makes me feel like the person could... There's some uncertainty about how this... how the thing will go and to support it in the best possible way without being too...

[73:59]

Like we don't say, please go through Chicago on your way to... They might have to go through Chicago, but you don't tell them to. It's up to their own thing. Maybe they're actually going to go to Chicago. That's where they're going to find... A lot of people do get born in Chicago. So they choose? It isn't they choose, it's the shape chooses. The shape will choose. So we have chosen the family we come into, right? Yep. And also, the shape chooses which, according to this theory, the shape has an inclination towards one of the partners. And then you become the opposite sex. If you have the kind of inclination towards... You have kind of an inclination towards your mother, you become a man.

[75:04]

And some people are kind of confused, so they come out a man, but really they prefer their dad. And vice versa. You know, it's like... It's like... It always surprises me how much women like men. Some women. He surprised me, you know, because even when men are really, like, doing really stupid things, women kind of go, oh, that's kind of cute. And women often choose, you know, men that are very reckless and stupid, and they really love them. And, you know, it's kind of like, The people who prefer those crazy things turn up to be... And it's really nice for those crazy things because they get all this attention and support from these people who like them. It's great. What would the world be like if everyone preferred women?

[76:10]

I mean, yeah. Then nobody would care about... Nobody would care about the men, except for the men who really prefer... So it turns out that it doesn't work that way. Some people prefer men, so they get women and men, according to that theory. I'm so very thrilled with this question, but what do you think about cloning? What do I think about it? Yeah. Could we postpone that to later? So Miffin and Galen, or Galen and Miffin, Kind of the same subject of this, how you can sort of pray for the dead, but also studies about cultures that really have an active belief in the Incarnation. And it seems that... My question was going to come right after this. It seems that having that belief shakes your mind... You don't want to give us a few book reports on the thing?

[77:16]

The stories are so cool. brief shakes the minds of the receiving adults, you have an attitude toward these beings arriving, sort of ready to help them. Right. You have a different attitude. Right. Yeah. But my question, which has kind of been lurking for the last couple of days, is what kind of influence, what kind of relationship influence is there in karma so that You know, you said several times, thinking about karma is not as bad as speaking, and then there's action. But what if the receiving party isn't fazed by the karma? You know, what if... toward me, but then you speak something toward me that, you know, maybe it would hurt me, but not hurt grace. Is the karma, is there a different karma? And is there any benefit to you, say, if if I don't respond? Or is your karmic debt just as bad if I do react and grace doesn't?

[78:19]

The reaction does kind of like, if I try to kill you and I'm successful, it's worse than if I'm unsuccessful. For me. So if you say something that hurts Galen, that's worse than if it doesn't hurt me? No. If I say something to Galen and it doesn't hurt her, it's worse than if I say something to Galen and it does hurt her. It actually harms her. It's worse actually, huh? Yeah, it's worse. If I actually harm, it's worse, in fact, in this relative world. And isn't that the way it works, in fact? I just wonder, because every now and then it sounds... There's this sort of absolute feeling to it, a bad intention, it's the soul, the child, the mind, the weight. No. The effect comes, too. That's why karma is not... That's why this little book I have of, if you're mean to your parents and you get born, you yell at your parents and you get born deaf and dumb.

[79:26]

It's not that deterministic. Karma is very important in terms of what happens, and karma is even more important in terms of your spiritual evolution. But it's not the sole determinant in the world. For example, if you criticize someone who's very good at patience, it will cause them pain but it won't harm them. They'll just gobble it up for their practice. They'll just gobble it up and they'll grow. You feed bad things into a person who practices and they just get brighter. But some people are not really that harmful. Except to you. That's what I want. If I really need to you, but you don't even notice it because it's just great for the patient's practice, but if I really need to grace and it really hurts you, is there a difference in what it is for me? Yeah, and it depends on... If you try to hurt someone who's actually your beneficent helper, it might not hurt them at all, but it hurts you more

[80:31]

than if you try to hurt someone who's mean to you. Who is more successful at hurting? It might hurt you more. Being angry at Buddha hurts you more than being angry at someone who's just mean to you. It hurts you more, even though it doesn't hurt Buddha at all. If someone is doing a bad thing to you, It might even be helpful to them to get angry at them. And if you hurt them a little bit, that might help them. And therefore, it's not so bad for you to have been angry in that way. But if you get angry at someone who's kind to you, evil deeds in someone who's kind to you, project on them all kinds of negativity, that's very bad for you. That makes you crazy. Because you really, there's nothing there. You're just totally believing it and then hurting them based on that.

[81:33]

And it doesn't help them any because they don't need any help from you because they already love you. Well, keep me out. I'm talking about various things here, I guess. The other side of the relationship I keep wondering about is, is it useful to... kind of really work to not take on the hurt that some, is it useful to them to not take on the harm, even if they intend to harm? Is it, if I, you know, really, if someone is, it's different with kids and adults, of course, but if somebody's being really angry at me and by looking at not seeing that as a harmful act and so on and so on, is it useful to them? Okay, so being specific. You're saying that by being a benefactor, then... the karma for them is terrible no matter what. And it would be kind of nice to think that by not, by just using it to fuel my own patient's practice, it mitigated the harm that they've done to themselves. No, it doesn't. If someone's mean to you when you're feeling beneficent, and let's say you really are generally beneficent towards them and they're mean to you and try to hurt you, okay,

[82:48]

And you use that for your patients' practice, okay? That's good for you. They intend it to be bad, and it's bad for them, generally. So Shantideva says, I'm really sorry that I'm thriving on the cruelty that you're administering to me, and I'm going up and you're going down. I'm sorry about that. But what can you do? It doesn't help them any to, like, not punish yourself, to not practice... The fact that you use the harm they administer to you for your real practice, and your patients develop some harm they do to you, okay? That doesn't hurt them. That might encourage them somewhat. Well, I'll tell you a story about my daughter. It doesn't hurt them that you're practicing. If you get angry at them... It doesn't particularly hurt them either. They did the thing of wanting to hurt you. And the fact that they're wanting to hurt someone who's not doing anything wrong in the first place makes their anger worse.

[83:56]

So before you even practice patience with what they do to you, for God's sake, I'm trying to hurt you. It's not appropriate anger in this case. But that's good for you. But the fact that they have to execute it, it's bad for them. They go down helping you. But it doesn't make them go down any slower if you don't receive the benefit. If anything, it might make them go faster. If you don't practice, you could say, well, maybe it makes it worse. At least you're going to be there to catch them eventually. Because you're growing spiritually at the harm they did to you. But if you fought back, it doesn't make them fall any slower. They basically wanted to hurt you. They were successful, but you grew from it.

[84:58]

You go up. So do you have some other story you want to tell around that? I didn't follow that, but I'd like to. Could you say it again? Who was who? I couldn't tell. When you say, by being angry... angry at their spiritual benefactor, even though it may be the past karma of the spiritual benefactor, still they're going down. They get angry at anybody. Except to the spiritual benefactors. Because then you help them dissolve their karma ahead of schedule. And they're saying thank you to you while you're brutalizing them. They're growing spiritually.

[86:03]

They're waking up while you're brutalizing them. So it's unfortunate that you got assigned the job somehow by your karma. And you're attacking somebody who's teaching the Dhamma Sutra, right? There's a teaching of Dhamma Sutra, you know. You say, what do you mean harmonies of Buddha fields? Harmony of Buddha fields, no Buddha fields. What do you mean? Pow, you know. The person... You know, and you go... That's what happened. That's one story. Anybody want to tell another story? I haven't heard another one. You attack somebody when they're teaching Dhamma. You help them, especially if they understand, you know, the teaching that they're doing would tell them that they're holding up the... When you're doing this, if you get attacked, be happy.

[87:03]

So you attack them, they get hurt, you know... But inside they're, oh, great, finally I'm enacting this scene from the Dhamma Sutra. I was waiting for this one. I can hardly wait till the next one happens. They're perfectly happy, they're like, they're in dharma, they're in dharma land, because, and you're helping them enact, you know, but you're going to hell. Now one exception to this is, not exception, but another variation of this is, my daughter tries to hurt me for many years, right? And so, you know, I just feel like, the person who loves me trying to hurt me, you know, I just like, laugh, you know, and she gets more angry, attacks harder, so it just gets even funnier and funnier, you know. And she's more and more frustrated. So finally she gets to me, and then she's okay. When she finally scores the point, because she has to do that. She has to learn how to hurt me. She's trying to, in this case, it isn't that she really wants to harm me. It's that she wants to see if she can hurt me.

[88:08]

She needs to be benefited by understanding her power and relationship to me. It's something she had to do. I didn't understand it. But anyway, I never did do her a favor. She just finally was successful. Before that, so it was fine that I'd laugh because she was missing the point. She wasn't getting me right spot. Finally she found the spot, then she could quit. Except in certain times later when she might need to. But she found the spot, the real spot, to get the guy. So now she knew. But it wasn't really that she was trying to hurt me, she just wanted to know how so that she had that understanding of our relationship. it's pretty hard to hurt somebody who, you know, if you poop in their face or vomit in their face, they just say, you know, no problem. Okay, does that kind of address your question? I think in the map of this, what happens when the five elements dissolve, they say it's good to...

[89:16]

just kind of stay without the light for as long as you can, rather than seeing something and immediately wanting to take rebirth in it. So I was wondering, maybe it's actually good to develop that practice of looking at your impulses without acting on them, so that it will give you your shape. we're going to do that afterwards. Yeah. It's good to spend a good share of time just looking at impulses without acting on them. Of course, once they've arisen, it's the mental conversation before acting on them verbally or physically. Just to meditate on them. Yes, definitely. That's how you develop right view, is to become very familiar with your impulses, with your thinking, to study your thinking. Very good. Yes. I'm going to have one more question.

[90:21]

Exactly how that benefits others. Okay, that's written on the board, and that's kind of like a little bit abstract, but I'd like to, it's on the board, I will deal with it, but it's kind of like a little bit, can I wait? If it's on the board, I'll do it day or day. I feel like right now. I think you're next. I think, maybe. Okay, thanks. You were talking earlier today about helping others, right? And working with others. And my question was, how... doesn't it have to have somebody who's willing to listen in order to help? Isn't that part of the equation?

[91:23]

Because, you know, beings are numberless, right? I vow to work with them, right? Okay. But We're in a situation here. If you were down on Market Street doing this, the dynamic would probably be pretty meaningless. It would be different. It would be very different. It wouldn't necessarily be meaningless. It would just be different. So in fact, I sometimes tell people, because sometimes in situations like this, I talk quite a bit. You people may not know, but when I'm on Market Street, I don't walk down the street talking. Right, and why? Because those people don't ask me to. Yeah, they don't want to hear you. They don't say, hey, Reb, what's happening? You know, if they do, they still don't necessarily ask me to talk. And that's enough for them. And they want to tell me stuff. A lot of people want, out and around the world, people want to talk to me and tell me and give me lectures.

[92:28]

And I can do that. I don't have to be talking all the time. I sometimes go out to the center and for hours and hours I don't talk, don't say a word, because nobody asks me to. That's right. So it's not... And it seems to work out fine. Nobody seems to be messing up on these words that I don't say. So I think that is a big, big part of this, to know when you're being asked to speak. And some people don't speak much because they don't feel requested to speak. And I think... The way to help people is rather than talking to them, giving them to talk. How about the karma of the guy who is down on Market Street telling you to talk to people? Yes. How about that guy? What about his guy? What about his deal? Well, in that case, you might be able to help him by going to listen to him. I don't want to. Well, you don't have anything to do, and I told you. Oh, I don't know. Isn't that funny? But if you listen to him in a different way from some of the other people, he might gradually start noticing something's funny going on.

[93:39]

nobody listens to, and they talk very fast because nobody listens to them. So they go around talking to everybody really fast. Good guy. Yeah. Nobody listens to them, so they talk faster and faster because they think if they talk faster and faster, maybe somebody will probably listen to them. Because it could be nothing but them talking, so maybe somebody will listen to them about that. And when somebody really does listen to them, sometimes these people stop talking. But yet those do it a long time before they believe that the reason why you're listening to them is just because you can't say anything. So really, they notice that nobody's listening to them, but at least people aren't talking. And it might be listening. And if you just sit there long enough, they realize, hey, maybe this person's not just standing there talking so fast. Maybe they're actually listening. And then they stop for a second. And then they talk to me.

[95:30]

When you do that, you're actually listening. Even when I stop talking, you don't stop talking anyway. You haven't been waiting to get a word in edgewise because you weren't really listening to me. You want to talk. Listen to me. Now you're waiting for me to talk again. When you start talking again, you listen to me. And then you stop. And you keep listening. You listen. I think you're actually listening to me. And then you can talk a little bit. There were a number of people that they really, they really think the only way they can get rid of it is the only thing that's happening. And they're not talking to anybody. They're just saying, nobody's listening to me, nobody's listening to me, nobody's listening to me. So people say, okay, nobody's listening to you, I'm not listening to you. So if somebody would, they might eventually get it, but it had to have been a long time. But you could try some different stuff. You could go like this. You could say, talk louder.

[96:35]

Various little things you might do. You might lay down on your back, kick your feet up in the air. Various things you could do that might come to you as ways to convey to them, you know, I am actually here listening to you. And then they might stop for a second and say, thanks, or whatever. And then things might start evolving as well. It seems to me that it's inappropriate and possibly even bad karma to talk to someone who doesn't want to hear you. Yes. Who isn't willing to hear you. The Buddha. Even if it's a wholesome intention. Yes. The Buddha would not talk to people, even people who ask the Buddha to talk to him wouldn't talk to him. We wouldn't because if you tell people something that's very important and they don't hear you, that can be very harmful to them. Even their thoughts? Yeah, like if somebody may ask you, you know, where's the... And if you answer before they can hear you, they don't hear the answer, it can be a big problem.

[97:49]

Or, you know, where's the handle to the door to get out of the burning flame? And you answer before they hear you, and you don't get another chance. And they didn't hear you. But you want to tell them. You want to answer them. And you're so excited, you tell them before they finish asking. So they don't hear you. And you don't give them that chance sometimes. But if you would have waited until they finished the question and said, are you listening? They say, yeah, it's over there. It's right next to chair number 16. Sometimes you have to wait. Right when you want to tell a person, you want to tell them, eh. You want to tell them before you tell them. Somebody's got a problem. You know the problem you've got. They want you to tell them the problem you've got, but it's not time to tell them yet. You have to wait until they stop screaming. And when they stop screaming, then you say, are you ready to hear it? They say, yes, this is it. But you want to tell them, you want to give them exactly what they need ahead of when they can hear it.

[98:53]

And the Buddha wants to give dharma. but he doesn't want to give it. But if the Buddha had a schedule, if the Buddha had enough treasures to know, it's not trying to tell the person. They don't want to hear it yet. Or they're looking at something else now, and if I tell them now, they won't hear it. So the Buddha waits. The Buddha wants to give it, but the Buddha does not want to waste it. And if you give it and they don't hear it, there's a second chance. Because if you deliver it when they can't hear it, or don't want to hear it, and you say it again, then it's a, well, last time I said it, last time I didn't hear it, so now it's kind of embarrassing to hear it this time. You know what I mean? You reject it the first time, and the second time you hear it, and it's kind of like, oh, but it's going to be embarrassing for me to sort of say okay to it, because the last time I heard it, I said, bullshit. That happens sometimes, you know? So they're pouting. because they've already, like, rejected.

[99:56]

So the Buddha was very careful, and especially very important teaching, that he knew where it's been, like, we just flip people around. And they want to be flipped around, but they don't want to be flipped around until they're ready. We're all a little bit autistic, you know? You know what I mean? Autistic people try to, like, a lot of experiences, for us, experiences that we can handle pretty well, we're overwhelmed by it. like just a normal human interaction, it's so complex, all that goes on there. And autistic people can't handle all that. So like they cover their face, or like this one lady, you know, designed a hug machine for herself. She'd like to be hugged, but ordinary to her, that she'd sometimes just feel overwhelmed by the experience of being hugged. So it's terrifying for her to be hugged by somebody, because they might hug her, you know, a minute, you know, a whole minute or something, rather than like three seconds. So she designed a hugger scene, which she kind of would hug her, and then as soon as it got to be too much, she could turn it off and it would stop hugging her.

[101:06]

Huh? Yeah. And she learned, and after doing that many, many times, she could not be hugged by a normal person that she liked, but she's different, you know, because she doesn't know how to figure out how to get out of a hug. A lot of us don't know how to hug. So, but, you know, we're all, in a sense, we're all, compared to what's really happening, you know, compared to the way the universe is actually hugging us, we're all a little bit autistic. We're all sort of like blocking out, trying to control what's happening to us a lot, relatively speaking. So the Buddha says, okay, do you want to find out what's happening when we open the door? He says, yes. He says, okay, are you ready, really? Well, you do. You want to get the big picture, but it's going to be a reorientation. It's going to be a big shock. It's hard enough to get all this information. I'm going to tell you something really different. It's not going to go with the established program.

[102:08]

You really want to hear this? Yeah, I don't think so. Oh, we really do? I don't think so. Oh, we really do? I don't think so. But after that happened three times, the other people in the room maybe don't really want to hear it. This is getting too weird for me. I don't know what he's going to say, but this is too weird for me. I'm out of here. The people really want her still. Then the Buddha delivers it. But he said, no, you'll be perplexed. He did that in a number of scriptures. That's why you have to ask three times the Buddha. In this other story I read, he said, I don't want to talk about it now. I don't want to talk about it now. Okay, okay. We'll handle it now. Basically, it's not the right situation, right? But if you ask three times, you start getting focused... and he delivers this information. So it is very important because they're rejecting a teaching which will save their life. You don't want to give it when they're in a rejecting mood. You want to really be ready for the shock that might happen. There might be a shock. One shock. I don't want a shock, but I'm willing to be shocked. I'll try to stay in my shoes when you say this and you say it.

[103:11]

It was a shock, yeah, okay, yeah. What a stupid teaching. But, you know, you let it in. So you've got to take all this into account. Also, when you ask, make sure you really want. Some people give it to you, so be careful when you ask, and be careful when you're asked. Tiny. Very important. How can I vow to save all people? Well, you know, that's not something that you actually do. It doesn't come from you. It comes from somehow when you get in communion with Buddha. That communion gives rise to this miraculous thing that you want to do that. The Buddha doesn't do it either. Otherwise the Buddha would just turn the dial on all of us. It would have happened.

[104:14]

It would have happened. But the Buddha can't do that. But the Buddha, in relationship to us, if we get into a relationship, suddenly this arises. It isn't done by us, it isn't done by another, it isn't done by both of us. It's the middle way. And somehow, when that relationship with Buddha reaches a certain maturity, we start making vows like that. Kind of mysterious. I just think... Yes, I think you're next. I have a question about the relationship between meditating on karma and psychotherapy for energies that are out there in the world. I want to encourage you to look at what appears to be your results of karma, your retributions. karma, and that's a bit that I plead from looking to be more of just sitting, sitting, watching.

[105:30]

And yet, it seems I wish I had said it there to the Dharma teacher. So I guess I'm curious if there's a way to incorporate those techniques. I mean, that's kind of what the work is, to incorporate those techniques in such a way that it facilitates looking at this stuff. That's one question. The answer is yes. Yes, sometimes it helps. Okay. I had another question. Is that all? I could go on. I could keep talking, but I don't have to. If you want more, we can have more later. But for now, yes, rather than waiting until the end of the second question, I'll answer it now. Come back. We can talk about this more now and go on to the second question later. Well, I was actually dropping down into an instance of this, which is... An instance of it would be fine.

[106:36]

Well, I was actually thinking of a situation you were talking about, which is when, for instance, I think that I have the unfortunate capacity to express irritation, so I'm working on that, right? And you know that, so you don't take it too seriously. But your willingness to practice patience, and I'm not quite sure what you mean by practicing patience, because it doesn't seem to me when you practice patience that you're practicing patience with me. It seems as though you're practicing patience with something that's separate from me, so that you can go on and still like me Yeah, and what do you think that thing is that's separate from you that I've got to see patients is? Life, I think. I don't know. It's wrecked.

[107:36]

It's wrecked. [...] You don't get confused between your response to me as having a great deal to do with me. You have a response. I sometimes don't get confused. Oh, you don't seem to. I often can keep track of what's me and what I have to work with over here. And then there's you. Right. And you don't get confused about that. I sometimes don't get confused. You sometimes don't get confused about that. And that... My experience, so if I get irritated and I say something that may appear to others to be a little bit hurtful, my experience of that, because I am working on my retributive karma, is that I'm allowed to work on it.

[108:40]

So you've actually done me a favor. I think you're going to hell, but you've actually helped by genuinely not getting confused about those two things, you allow me not to be able to just be with my own stuff, because obviously if I think I hurt you now, I'm really hurt. But then I can look at it without self-criticism. Good. And that's the relationship with the teacher, at least for me. Yeah, and that could be called psychotherapy too, I suppose. Well, yeah, not too much psychotherapy. Right, it has a psychotherapy sense. In a sense, therapy means, you know, to be attended. So it gives you a chance to attend to what's going on. Right. It helps you attend. Because you've chosen not to be reactive. I've chosen to study myself because I'm modeling that for you. Plus also, now I'm modeling situations that you can work on yourself rather than working on what happened with me.

[109:44]

Right. Which I'm doing. You don't have to do that. I'm doing that part. And that's my job. I'm not going to just say it's a favor to you. Although it is a favor. It is a favor. Even if you split right afterwards and couldn't see me do it, I'd still have to do it. Right. I mean, I still want to do it. Actually, it's a huge gift. If you have to go to hell, you can watch yourself go to hell. I'll let you watch yourself, because you're going to go anyway. But at least you can watch. You can say, oh, that was it to me, I did that, and here we go. And I say, I let you go. Because I know if you watch, you'll save yourself. So we jot down specific and then we put it back into more general. But that's also the general thing. That's how it works. You help the person attend to their karma. And sometimes you help them attend to going to hell right there in the session. And then they go down there, and by seeing how that goes, a big light comes.

[110:44]

So they both go into a very dark place, they're mean to you and stuff like that, you know, for not doing anything good for them, other than sitting there. You don't do anything, you just sit there and blah, blah, pock, pock, pock, you know. Then they go, then they walk, and then a big light comes on. So it's great. They see, oh God, it's getting dark all of a sudden, everything's dark, you know. Maybe that darkness is, you know, has something to do with this, this anger and all that, blah, blah, blah. So it's big, it's nice, it's good. ...therapy, or that could be dharma practice. But dharma practice then is like, after that, then kind of like, now that we've seen this, now go be present like that in your meditation. Okay? Continue this kind of presence that you've had through this. So hopefully now you can go do this on your own. It's like then, you know, more emphasis on that presence which you discovered.

[111:46]

And encouraging that. And then if particular examples seem to be throwing the person off that presence, then we deal with the examples to come back to the meditation. But that's not divorce. A little bit more emphasis in Buddhism on the presence with which you do this rather than the particular examples. But sometimes you have to use the examples because the person can't see what's happening. They're not paying attention to the actual pain or whatever, the anger. So then it looks like psychotherapy. But if the... spending too much time on the diversions from directly experiencing the pain, then if the person doesn't want to practice patience, then I might say, well, I think you need a psychotherapist because you need lots of hours of encouragement to pay attention to the pain. And I don't think they need that because there's people who are happy to do that and are making a living off of it. So I'd rather concentrate on working a little closer to the bone of the attention, rather than spending a lot of time trying to drag people back to look at the pain.

[112:54]

Does that make sense? And I do it mostly by number of hours. I feel like that's enough. Now it's time for a psychotherapist, because I need that auxiliary myself. It's like they're helping me. The student needs this many hours of meditation instruction and this many hours of psychotherapy. I just farm that out. It's pretty clear that that can be farmed out. Somebody else can do it just as well as me or better, and I'll work on this part so the teen can do it. And since this is my specialty, I'd like to spread my specialty around. So it's kind of like... And if more people... than I could bring to, then I would find out more of the psychotherapy. But if I've got time, then I'll do the psychotherapy too for a while. But it's kind of a practical thing. I'm willing to do both, actually, but I don't want to do so much of the bringing the person's attention to it that I don't have time to bring the person's attention.

[114:01]

Which, again, some psychotherapists do, but some don't. I know they don't because I talk to them. And they don't, they don't, some of them are still caught up in doing things for their clients. So, which is good, but they're not into that. So they need, people need somebody who's not into doing anything for them. That's the specialty of Zen, doing it for people. That's how we help them. Charlie? So if the final goal is to end rebirth for everyone... No, that's not to end rebirth for everyone, no. Through similar terms, like this samsara thing, and, like, well, you know... Okay, okay, maybe you're right. And if that's the case, then that would be like the extinction of all life on earth, and there'd be no more suffering.

[115:08]

It wouldn't be the extinction of life. It would be extinction of samsaric life. It would be the extinction of birth and death. But life would still be there without birth and death. It would just be dharma life. And it might look like little people like you and me. I guess it's the thing, I guess I take it more literally like birth, physical birth. It would be the end of physical birth and death in the sense of taking that as real. So it would still, there still could be the appearance of that. There could still be the appearance. And we met when we talked about extinction and nirvana. Well, yeah, that's the meaning of nirvana, is you're free of samsara.

[116:13]

You're no longer fooled by it or drawn into it. But it's not like the elimination of life. Life is going to go on. Whatever it really is, I think it's going to go on. And life has made possible this thing called, whatever you call it, you know. So if everyone was an arhat, it wouldn't all just come to the end? If everyone was arhat, it wouldn't. There'd be life, but there wouldn't be any more, what do you call it, there would be no appearance of working life. even the illusion of birth and death would not occur anymore. Uh-huh. It would just be like a planet of rocks. No, no. Not even that. There'd still be just the same life that we have now, I just say it would not be any more of birth and death wouldn't be happening. Yeah, I think it's hard to imagine what life without birth and death would be. Life is actually inconceivable.

[117:16]

If you want to conceive it, a good example of it, don't we? I mean, it's virtually infinite, this conception. Everybody's got their own conception, but our conceptions of life are not what life is. But there's another scenario, and that is, arhats could reproduce before they split. Arhats together, male-female arhat, they could have a child, and they could now have rebirth, but the child would go through the motions. What would be the reason? What would be the reason? Why would they start bumping into each other like that? Why would they want to continue? They might not want to, but maybe somebody asked them to. Maybe their parents say, I know you guys are going to check out, but we'd like grandchildren. So would you have a baby and give it, and then take care of it until you die?

[118:24]

And you're not going to come back anymore, but we'd like to have the baby while you're here. Arhats might be willing to do that. They could probably handle that. Arhats can have sex without getting, you know, hung up on it. Greedy and selfish about it. You know how they have sex? You want to know? What did he say? Sure. You don't want to do it. You just want to know about it. The only way I do it is they rub their limbs together. Get two of our hearts together. They rub their limbs together. Huh? It's like you take a girl's skull and a boy's skull and you rub them together.

[119:28]

And that's it. That's all there is. Huh? And that's it. That's all there is to it. And is it a baby born in a womb or does it come out of their limb? Baby's born in a womb. It's like a normal female has a womb, and a normal male, and so on, with sperm and stuff, they make a baby that way. They can do that. But they wouldn't do it, you know, because they wanted to have their baby, you know, something like that. That wouldn't be their motivation. They wouldn't have sex and give themselves some kind of, like, I don't know what. It would be for the sake of darkness. So what good, possibly good, would having a baby be? It might be helpful to someone to have a baby. It could be helpful. Couldn't it? Aren't Buddhas beautiful? Isn't it wonderful to have Buddhas? That's how Buddhas are made. They're made by this process. And Buddhas could be made by two harahats who don't get reborn and who don't do any karma in the sex process. You don't have to do karma to do that. To be reborn, though, you have to, you know, go through certain things.

[120:30]

So the person who's born has to, like, get all sort of warped to do it. But if they want to do it, give them a chance. It might be good because then they'll be born a human and... become a Buddha. So now you see the answer, don't you? Arhats who are not going to be reborn anymore would serve the function of allowing beings to be born so they can become Buddhas. Except that... What? I guess it sounds like... I just get the impression that when there's this, like you say, there's this horror of rebirth, right? These three things you're talking about, one of the reasons for practice is the horror of being reborn at all. And I guess maybe I'm just not... Maybe reborn I guess I just have this idea that reborn means like an art hop.

[121:36]

Literally, there's no that kind of extreme and they're out of there. That's right. They're out of the little birth and death thing. They just go back into the life. They just go back into life. It's like energy. The living energy. And they could come back again if necessary if it was beneficial to being And so there's some theory that arhats go, they check out and they don't need to be reborn. And they don't have vows which draw them back. So they go out and rejoin all of life. And one theory is they get so happy out there that they get drawn back in as bodhisattvas. That's what some people say. But the other theory is if any beings were still in samsara, How are you, you know, and some of them are not humans. Samsara has non-humans in it. So how do you give the non-humans a chance to become Buddha?

[122:36]

So an arhat who's not going to, who's going to check out now, they do not have the commitment to do another life. And they have the spiritual ability not to do another life. They have the capacity. And in fact they're going to use it. They're not coming back. They think. They can check out what it's like not to come back. Okay? They could have a baby so that the being could be born and grow up with arhat parents. Quite an auspicious birth, I'd say. And the arhats might even say, you know, we're arhats, but actually it's okay if you're a bodhisattva. That's what I was talking about. They might realize that two arhats might realize we've had a bodhisattva. this thing's going to be a Buddha. And with all their lack of, you know, karmic activity and total love, they work to graze up this bodhisattva. They still may be, still may say, but still, they might change their mind and say, now that we see this, we're going to be bodhisattvas too.

[123:44]

We're changing our vows and we're going to be reborn. They might change. They had a little, actually, especially if they had a little Shakyamuni Buddha, because Shakyamuni Buddha would say, Mom and Dad, guess what? You guys don't have a relationship. You can be a Buddha. And they go, what? Really? Oh my God, that's wonderful. Just change your vow. And you can not only be Arhat, but you can be a Buddha like me. And look, isn't this swell? You say, yeah. You can be just like me. As a matter of fact, I'm going to make a little prediction right now. You're going to be such and such a Buddha in a certain number of lives. So come back and do these practices and serve Buddhas and they change their vows to bodhisattva vows and they do come back. This can happen. Until all beings of samsara are pulled up into the proper position to become Buddhas. Someone may say, you know, what about the grizzly bears and the birds? Is there some way for their population to be converted into humans

[124:49]

in a way that's really kind. But we have to find a non-destructive way to make sure that they're just choosing not to reproduce. That's where they're going, you know. And there is often that there will only be no animals, except humans. There might not even be any human. There'd just be interconnected life with all this capacity for, you know, wisdom. Which isn't fooling them anymore. That kind of makes more sense. There you go. There's a picture. That's a vision that works for you. Okay? So what we're developing here is a vision. A vision of what, you know, what the whole thing is going towards. And it might be this vision might turn out to be just like the Alptown Sakasutra, but maybe it'd be a little different. We'll see.

[125:50]

We're developing a vision here, right? Gradually, that makes sense to us. And we have questions about it, so we're... I think Grace... Was it Grace? Somebody over there had her hand raised. Was it Grace? Yeah, but... It just sort of went by that? It was something... Oh, good. It was Grace. The other Grace. Isn't that something? I have a question about I don't know if I should wait. Why don't you ask it? OK. So the shape, are we that the shape has a history, this energy packet? The shape has a history, or the shape is how the history is conveyed, both ways? So if we're universe, would the shape have a history of the universe, instead of this individual packet? The shape has a history of the universe, The shape has its history of the universe, okay?

[126:53]

Which is a small world. Yeah, right. But why would it be the whole universe? It does, but in its own version. It's like this thing I was... which I was going to mention last night, but I wanted to only have it all around long. But this thing is that... I said this thing about when the dharma fills your body, mind loves not yet. But I forgot to mention the... When you realize something's missing, then it's like this. When you go out in the ocean, and there's no islands around, you think the ocean's a circle of water. You look around, it looks like a circle of water. It doesn't look any other way. But the ocean is not a circle of water. Okay? But all you can see is a circle of water. So you have, and I have a history of my life, I have a history of the universe. But that's a circle of water in the ocean of the history of the universe. Okay? Is that all right?

[127:56]

It looks like it's not. I think it's because I know the water, I'm not catching the vision of the water, I know that there are islands. Pardon? It's not a good example. You know there are islands? There are. Because of my history. Oh, you think if you were out in the ocean and you looked around, you wouldn't be fooled that you wouldn't think the ocean was a circle of water. Is that what you mean? Beyond it, there's iron. Yeah, you know that, right. But it's like that. It's like your vision when you're in the ocean. Except you sort of know that it's not the shape of the ocean. But you don't know that the history of the universe... is not the history that you have. You think it's the history you have, probably. And science keeps finding out new histories, and then you hear about them, and you discuss them. You go with it or you don't. If you go with it, your history changes, the circle of water changes, but it's still a circle of water. Or you reject it, and your circle of water stays the same way. But it's always a circle.

[128:57]

However... Look at the circle of water and you study it carefully, you realize that the circle of water is not behaving like a circle of water would behave. You realize there's not enough information in this circle of water to account for the way it's behaving. You can't see beyond, but you can tell this huge current that came rushing through this little circle of water. It doesn't make sense. In fact, you think about it, you think about it, but you can't figure out how this would happen given the information in the circle of water. But if you know it, you say, oh, I get it. There's an infinite amount of water outside me that's causing this huge flow through my little circle of water. You still can't see the ocean, but you understand that the reason why this circle of water is behaving the way it is is because it's not.

[129:59]

So in a sense, you start to understand the ocean, which you never can see by the way the circle of water is happening. And the more you study the circle of water, that's what it says. When diamond does not fill your body and mind, you think, oh, circle of water, this is what's happening, makes perfect sense, I got it. When the dharma of the circle of water fills your body and mind, you realize, this is not what's happening, this is not, something's missing here. And it turns out what's missing is not just a little bit more, it's like the ocean's missing. So we do have a history of ourself. Ourself is just this tiny little circle in the ocean of the history of ourself. Our history of the universe is also a tiny little... And scientists are trying to expand it, but it'll always be just a little circle of water. And they'll always look in there and they'll say, when they really understand, they'll say, something's missing. Yes. That's why some scientists, especially some of the best ones, are also religious.

[131:07]

Because they realize that there's always a circle of water. That's the nature of our vision and our senses. But that doesn't mean... But you can be fooled by the circle of water. That's what's called not being fooled by samsara. And when you're not fooled by the circle of water, you're free of the circle of water, and you feel the whole ocean even though you can't see it. So you get this oceanic life in the little circle of water. And you're not clinging to the circle of water so much. And you don't think the circle of water is reality. And it isn't. So you're liberated from falling for the circle of water. And the same with your own history, your own views. You have them. You can't help but have them. You can't make them really significantly bigger. But you can learn, hey, this is just my opinion. It's no more than that. This is my fantasy. This is my world. That's it. And this is not, something's missing here.

[132:09]

So when I express my understanding, I express it with the sense that I'm saying what I see, but there's something missing. So I'm more tentative about it. I'm more experimental, more righteous, and pretty happy too that I got a circle of water by which I can relate to the ocean. And also I have a circle of water that I can jump free of and re-enter the ocean from. But when I jump outside my circle of water in the ocean, I want to be in our circle of water. I love that image. It's very helpful. If I can remember that, it protects me from self-righteousness, protects me from thinking that my view of the world is really what's happening, without pronging my view of the world out and saying, well, I don't have a view. I do have a view. And it's not a good view. And it's good in the sense that it's what I have to work with. It's my little playground. OK?

[133:12]

Is that? Yeah. OK. All right. Lunchtime. Was there anything left over from this morning? Yes. Self-reflective question. Yeah, I was talking about having a bad intention and not causing damage, but still having great repercussions. I'd like to be a good intention, like removing a spider that's about to get attacked by a cat, putting it outside, and trip over something and kill it. Do you have repercussions for that? Sorry, Eva. Well, the most important thing in terms of karma is the shape of your mind, your intention.

[134:29]

If your intention is to protect life, then that's more important for your evolution spiritually to be successful. So if you try to protect a living being and you fail, but that's your intention, then that intention is kind of evolving in a whole. And that intention usually goes with your mind becoming clearer and more peaceful. There's another intention that you put in there which is not intentional, directly intentional, and that is, was there the intention also to be very aware of how you walk? And so you didn't have an intention, I want to walk sloppily and fall on my face, you didn't have that one, because that would be kind of unwholesome.

[135:37]

But in that story, the intention of, I want to benefit beings. So in order to do that, I'm going to be very careful about how I walk. So with my hand, I'm protecting this being. But I want my whole body to be in accord with this intention. So I've got to get my feet with it too. So it's a more thorough intention to not just think of, well, I want to protect this being. What does that entail in terms of you being conscientious in other ways? So some people have very good intentions But the good intention mostly is in their head, and they don't bring it into their body enough. So that's the good intention, or right intention.

[136:43]

You don't want to hurt beings, you want to be loving to beings, and you want to be flexible and not attached and greedy. But then, do you bring it into your speech? And do you bring it into your posture? If not, You're not in any trouble for your intention, if it's wholesome in that way. But unless it's integrated with your speech and your posture, then you're probably operating on speech habits and body habits, which might have been set up by wholesome acts. Maybe back in the days when you used to not be so kind, you developed a certain way of walking. you know, some very kind people, and they would walk like, you know, samurai. And so that's why your intentions aren't fine, and then you bring it into your speech and your body and your livelihood. So your attention was good, and your failing was not because your attention was wrong.

[137:57]

the faith hadn't maybe thoroughly integrated itself with your body. Something like that, in the story you told. You didn't do that, but that's your story, right? And that can happen. Yes? That's interesting. There are some that you say that because... Could that relate to, like, people that aren't financially well to have children, but they have children anyways because they feel like they should procreate. I've heard women say, well, I should have a child because that's what I'm here for, even though they can't financially afford that child that God will provide. And that's sort of like, well, they're taking on the responsibility to have this child that God's going to provide.

[139:02]

I mean, what you're saying kind of relates to that. Well, do they have good intentions? Well, what's your intention? They think having a child is a wholesome act? Is that what your intention is, do you think? Yeah. They think that would be helpful? I'm not sure how it would be helpful. Yeah. they're not able, for example, to get the proper nutrition to develop, and that's what was, you know, like an addict. Yeah. I mean, there's so many children that are born that... Right. But... The person is thinking of doing the act, okay? If they are misinformed or naive, but they think it's a good thing... Right. But they know they can't beat that child. But still, even if they know they can't feed the child, but for whatever reason, they have not somehow put those two together, and they think, oh, that would be good.

[140:08]

They don't notice these other points. In their mind, they're still doing what they think is good. Okay? And you might say, well, I think it would be better if you had sort of figured out these two. And I would say that's right. But, sort of, you have to start where you're at. And some people, their level of discipline in their good karma is such that their good karma is not nearly as good as it could get. For example, their good karma in the sense that their intention is good, but it's possible that there's so many dispersing and inconsistent elements that even the basic intention of doing good, the thought of doing good, is not sufficient to get the whole consciousness to cooperate. Okay? So, the thought, I want to do something good, is an element of

[141:08]

Given who I am, this is in accord with my goodness. The thought of, I don't want to do anything could all be there. They must be there. But there could be a whole bunch of other things, like certain kinds of denial.

[141:27]

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