Have you heard of the Eightfold Path? You haven't? A little bit? The Eightfold Path is sometimes called the noble Eightfold Path leading to the suffering. But the Buddha sometimes also calls it the Eightfold Path leading to the cessation of karma. So, I found it helpful to emphasize that the first element in the Eightfold Path, which is called Right View or Right Understanding, involves a number of aspects.

[01:02]

One of the aspects of Right View is that karma has consequences. And So, that the beginning of the path which leads to the end of suffering, or the path which leads to the end of karma, shows you that karma has consequence. So, if karma has consequence, if you are working with that teaching that karma has consequence, You might find it helpful to actually experiment with observing whether or not that is so.

[02:18]

So in one sense, right view is the Buddha telling you that karma has consequence. In another sense, right view is for you to see that karma has consequence. And in order to see if karma has consequence, of how karma has consequence, it seems reasonable to me that you would want to learn how to see what karma is. Make sense to you? So far? Yes? Do you know what it means that a tree can have a fruit? So it's like that, that karma can have a fruit.

[03:28]

It can mature and grow into something which is not quite the same as the action itself. For example, speaking for me to talk to you is not quite the same as me feeling pain. See the difference between those things? One is more and the other is more like the way I feel, how I experience my life. So, the way we feel, like whether we're happy or sad, whether we're experiencing anxiety or openness, whether we feel threatened or supported, these ways of feeling, these ways of experiencing life are fruits of various conditions in the world. And karma comes to fruit as certain kinds of feelings like happiness or sadness.

[04:37]

Okay? So what is karma? The basic definition of karma is it is our intention. What we feel motivated... to do, how we feel motivated, how we feel our mind tends to, you could say cautiously, how our mind seems to be determined to be, how our mind seems to be determined to act. This morning we're talking about having a thought in your mind like, oh, I hope so-and-so, I hope this person is happy. And then one person said, wouldn't that be an example of karma to like hope that somebody is happy or wish that somebody was happy?

[05:47]

And wouldn't that be like thinking? And it could be that, I mean, that's an element in what we call the attention. But that thought in one kind of mental context would be different from that thought or that wish would be different in one kind of mental context than it would be in another mental context. So, if I wish that some one person or many people would be happy, and I have that wish, but then that's in a context where I think, I'd like them to be happy, I don't want to make any effort, I'm too busy to do anything about it, I just hope they'll be happy, and also...

[06:50]

Although I hope they'll be happy, I'm too busy to do anything about it. They have actually not been behaving well lately. I hope they'll be happy. I think that the way they'd be happy is if they were punished. And although I thought a minute ago, or part of me thinks I'm too busy, actually I do have time to cause trouble for them and to cause pain for them. So that is a fuller story of what can be going on in your mind, and that would be an example of a certain kind of thinking. On the other hand, you could think, oh, I hope these people are happy, or this person is happy, and I want to work and do whatever I do. And... I'm quite clear about that, and that's the most important thing to me, and that person deserves all my devotion, and that's quite a different context for that same thought.

[07:55]

In the former case, what was basically a good, kind of a good-sounding action would lead to kind of cruel action. In the latter case, that same thought which sounds quite kind would lead probably to kind action. But even before... even before some speech or posture was done based on that, already that thought counts as mental karma. If you think, if you have thoughts in your mind of harming people, punishing people in such a way that they would be treated with disrespect and so on, those thoughts would ripen in your mind. to give you a bad headache. I'm just kidding about headache, but anyway, give you unfortunate, unhappy results with mature based on that kind of thought.

[08:58]

But when I say that, I don't mean that a deterministic result will happen from a certain kind of karma. because many other factors can come into play over the time between when you and when it comes to maturity to influence the way that thing comes to maturity. Just like when you plant a seed, you know, oak seeds, acorns tend to mature under certain circumstances into oak And oak sprouts tend to mature under certain circumstances into oak trees. But without certain other elements, oak trees do not grow. And sometimes, under some circumstances, oak trees grow and get to be too big and fall over.

[10:04]

So the oak tree, the acorn seems very successful under some circumstances where it has earth and sun and carbon dioxide and rain or even watering by humans. And it grows to be a big, beautiful tree, but then sometimes because it was overwatered by humans, it falls over. We had that example of the green gulch, a gorgeous tree, that got lawn water, a live oak that got lawn watering. And it just was splendid, huge tree, just spread all over the lawn area in front of Green Gulch. But then when the wind came, it just fell over. Wasn't an evil tree, but it's a tree that in too short a period of time and grew too fast or roots to be able to support it.

[11:06]

So it's not, you know, it's not that oak acorns always produce oak trees because acorns that don't get planted don't produce trees. But acorns under certain circumstances do. And certain thoughts that you have under certain circumstances will mature into, you know, they can become as they can mature into a very good, happy life or a very unhappy life. And observing how that works is part of growing a mind which will grow into a oak tree so to speak which won't fall over in any wind because by observing your karma you build a root system and by

[12:30]

And also, by observing your karma, you turn everything that happens into sunlight and rain. And you grow, you grow underground too, so you can withstand the winds of change. You become this, your mind becomes this great tree that can't be destroyed. But if your karma acts without being observed, It either will become stunted and twisted and repressed and choked and feel threatened and tormented and then perhaps fight back with anger and viciousness and destructiveness

[13:31]

or arrogance, all of which set up a life painful and harmful to yourself and others. That's what I say. But the funny thing is, if you don't listen to what I said and don't observe whether what I said is true or not, then you won't be able to see. by not listening to what I said and not observing what I'm talking about, it will come true. It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, except in one case you won't notice that the prophecy is coming true. You won't be noticing. If you observe your karma, you will see that observing your karma brings the prophecy of Buddhahood. I just sat down on a table.

[15:06]

And I didn't know what was going to happen when I sat down on the table. I didn't know if the table would hold me because I'm sitting on the end. As a matter of fact, I still haven't put all my weight on it because I still don't know if it might tip up. So now I'm going to look down underneath and see Now I'm going to put a little bit more weight on it. In a sense, what I'm suggesting is that each act can be like an experiment. Not like an experiment.

[16:14]

Each act can be an experiment where you set a cup down and see what happens. Hear what happens. Feel what happens. at every thought you have. You see what happens. But in order to see what happens, you have to look at what the thought is and see how it happens. Doesn't that seem like a lot of work? Yeah, consider the alternative. The alternative, not so hard. As a matter of fact, it's called laziness. It's called think irresponsibly.

[17:19]

But don't, like, you know, get heavy about it and see what you're thinking. Don't see how it feels to think a certain way. Just go ahead and think. You know, relax. Don't be uptight. Doesn't that sound okay? Just go ahead and think. Well, it is okay. It's just that it will lead to hell. That's all. They say the road to hell is paved by good intentions. You know that one? That means good intentions that you don't observe. You have a good intention and you think, hey, I got a good intention, so I don't have to pay attention to it and see how it works.

[18:26]

I can just trust it's a good intention. You know, that's enough, right? I'm doing the best I can. Well, yeah, but are you watching what that's like to do the best you can? Are you seeing what it feels like to do the best you can? Are you seeing how that works to do the best you can? Or are you just saying, I'm doing the best I can and now I'm on vacation and I'll just wait until I get the good results of doing my best. So the best I can is a perfectly good thing to work with, and that seems like the best, actually. Do the best you can. But then, what is that? How is that happening? And could you be kidding yourself? And if you were kidding yourself, how would you find out that you're kidding yourself?

[19:37]

What kind of checks and balances do you have to doing the best you can? You said you do the best you can and it still isn't good enough? Okay, he says you do the best you can and it still isn't good enough. Okay? How do you know? Are you checking it out? Are you watching it? You have to watch it a little bit in order to at least to see that it isn't good enough. But then after you see it still isn't good enough, then what? You can either get smart and watch and figure out what you really should do or you don't watch and you keep doing what you were doing before. He said if you do the best you can you could get smart.

[20:42]

Is that what you said? and then do what you really should do? Yeah, that's right. You might say, well, I did the best I could and it wasn't good enough, so now I'll do better than the best I could. Because now I'm smart and I see that the best I could really wasn't the best. I can even be smarter than that and do something that's even better than the best I could. What could be better than the best I could? What did you find out? Watching. Huh? Studying it. Studying your life. Studying your life is? Being aware of the consequences. I know, I know that's what it is, but how does that relate to what you said before about you did the best you could, you saw it wasn't good enough, and then you got smart, and then I said, what could be better than doing the best you could? And you said? Or did you say? What could be better than doing the best you could? And you said, did you say?

[21:43]

Um, I said study it. So do you think studying it, studying what you did, is better than the best you could? Yeah. Yeah, I do too. Studying what you're doing, best you can, and you may see that's not good enough, or you may not come to that conclusion. Because that conclusion, that's not enough. is a perfectly good conclusion, but it's not really a conclusion. I mean, it's a conclusion, but you shouldn't let it be a conclusion. Kind of like, okay, I did the best I could. That's not good enough. Then you maybe see, well, the best I could isn't good enough, so what would be better than the best I could? Study is better than the best I could. So, today we can do... And maybe some of us can do the best we can do. And some of us can't do the best we can do.

[22:48]

We can do almost the best we can do. And some of us are going to be way off the best we can do. But even those who can do the best we can do, what they can do is not as good as studying what they're doing. Because the best we can do is still, you know, illusion. The best thing I can do is still, I'm just kidding myself. When I do the best I can do, that's just a little trick I played on myself. I'm now in called trick land. Yeah. Reb is confused. He's now doing something and not like that, but he's doing the best he can do. Now, what if, say, okay, you think it's a trick or a delusion that you're doing the best you can do?

[23:52]

Well, then how about I'm doing the worst I can do? No. You can't even do the worst you can do. Is that because you can always do worse than you're doing? No, it's because you can't do anything. You can't do the best thing you can do. You can't do the worst thing you can do. You can't do anything. That's not the way we really are. If you study what you're doing, you'll see studying what you're doing is better than doing anything. Now it turns out that if you're doing things and you don't do your best, that undermines your study. And if you're doing things and you do your best, that tends to support your study. So in Alec's story, I do the best I can, I saw it's not good enough. You could, with or without saying that's not good enough, doing the best you can sets up study better than not doing the best you can.

[24:53]

Or doing the worst you can doesn't set up the study as well as doing the best you can. So it is good to do the best you can. But better than the best you can do is study. And so are you studying and do you know how to study? and you know what to study, where is the key point to study? Well, you know, to study many things and actually studying many things is good. Really good study studies everything. But you want to make sure that when you study everything you don't overlook certain parts of everything. And the funny thing is that that among everything that we need to study, there's a certain place that we tend to not study, which is not more important than the other places, it's just the place we usually don't study. So Buddhism puts a lot of emphasis on getting us to study the hard part.

[25:57]

But the hard part isn't easy parts, it's just that we tend to overlook that. So you might think studying karma is more important than studying the flight of birds or sunrises or listening to music or smelling roses. It's not those things except that we tend not to do that because it's so hard. Because when we look at our karma we start to notice the reason we're doing the karma. We're doing karma usually because of craving and trying to avoid pain. So we'd rather just crave and do the things to avoid pain, but to look at it, it's really hard. So you might think that it's really most important to study this difficult stuff, but it's very important not to overlook it. And not only is it difficult to study our karma,

[27:04]

But then we also start to notice, as I said, the reasons for the karma, the craving and the pain. And then we start to notice our anxiety and being threatened. We start to notice how deluded we are. We start to notice our longings and our jealousies. And these are the things which are not... Well, they're not that pleasant to look at. Especially if you're fairly advanced spiritually. So it's really difficult, I should say, it's really difficult to study these things if you're advanced spiritually. And if you're not advanced spiritually, it's difficult to do them too because you don't have much spiritual advancement to use to study the things. So beginners have a hard time because they don't know how. And people who know how have a hard time doing it because they're embarrassed. The first aspect of the Eightfold Truth is that karma ripens, that it matures, it has consequence.

[28:27]

The second aspect is called right intention, and right intention is that your intention or your motivation, the way your mind is directed, is towards you know, renunciation towards non-attachment. You move through the world of beings, you know, without attaching to them, without, you know, like, manipulating them, without pushing the ones you like over there and pulling the ones you like over here. You move through very smoothly and respectfully and kindly. You move through with loving-kindness. You move through the world of beings with violence. That's the way your mind is intended.

[29:28]

That's the way your mind is inclined towards kind, non-violent, non-attachment with all beings. But in order for your mind to be like that, you have to observe actually what it is like. And if it is actually moving with some attachment, and if it is moving with some ill will, and if it is moving with some violence, you need to observe how that works. The Buddha watched how this all worked and studied how this worked. And the mind that studies how the intention works is the mind in which the intention is transformed into being non-violent, loving and attached. So those first two go very closely together. Those first two aspects of the path which leads to freedom from karma.

[30:34]

The first two set the stage which is study karma, your intention. See if moment by moment you can see what the inclination of your consciousness is. There is a design of your mind. Every moment your mind... Buddha knows it. Buddha knows the design of your mind. To know the design of your mind is Buddha. The first aspect of the path of freedom from karma says, this is important, don't overlook this. The second aspect says, look at, check it out. Is it like this or is it like that? It doesn't say it shouldn't be this way and it shouldn't be that way.

[31:39]

This is what's called right intention. And by studying your intention, your intention becomes right intention, because you see how wrong intention works. When you see how wrong intention works, right intention is born from seeing how wrong intention works. Is that enough? I don't have to go, but I could stop talking, yes? I'm excited about this idea, but I'm also confused by it, in that, what you're saying at the end is, I see that any karmic standard is filled with violence, it's filled with aggression, it's filled with detachment, and the way I think it's put into things, and I can't even see that, even if I look at it, it's very superficial, yes? Yes. So, how do I keep the truth that you've given me, karmic, I mean, just another way to punish myself.

[32:44]

Just another way to look at myself and say, look at you, you're still not being a victim. You're so violent, you're so attached, you're not kind enough. And I already do that with my actions. Did you say, how can you use the practice of writing to stop yourself from being violent with yourself? to stop yourself from having ill will towards yourself? Did you say? I think trying to stop it, the picture you're telling me about, you know, that you're filled with ill will, with violence, and with attachment, in that context, to try to stop that situation would be more violence. To observe it, you might say, if I observe it, then I might by getting even more violent with myself. You said that? Is that what you said?

[33:44]

It's possible, but sounds like fairly unlikely. You probably won't get more violent with yourself. Because when you're, at least at the moment you're observing and noticing the violence in your mind or in your heart, at that moment it's a little break from that. Now once you see, oh God, I'm really violent, boy, I should, you know, I should like punish myself for this. I should be violent with myself. stop myself from being violent you might do that but you might not you might just see oh I'm violent and you might even say this makes me feel this way or that way I have seen lots of Zen students who start looking inside themselves and are horrified with what they see and then they're additionally horrified with being judgmental ...themselves badly for what they see. I've seen that. Okay? This is... This is... That's slightly different from meditating on intention.

[34:57]

Intention is... You see some quality in yourself, you would then judge yourself as being bad for having that quality, and feel bad about being judged bad by yourself for having that quality, and then intend to do something about it. Like, intend to actually be violent with yourself or someone else. Some attachments. these kinds of things, to actually be determined to do something in response to this, to what you see. That's more the actual gross kind of level of observation that intention's about. And if you watch that, you won't just be watching a horror show, you'll be also watching a show which, a process in your mind which will evolve and which grows. So you get to see not only is this thing the way it is now, but it also becomes other things.

[35:58]

It gets worse. And when you start to see how bad it is, you don't tend to get more riled up. You tend to sort of like sit down and say more and more like, oh, I get it. I see where this is going. Like, you know, Martin Luther King wasn't always non-violent. Did you know that? He wanted to, you know, work for the civil rights of the people of America. And there were people who were violently reacting to his movement, to his groups of people who were trying to demonstrate their civil rights. So, in response to this, he developed the intention... to be violent. Did you know that? He had a lot... and bodyguards.

[37:02]

He was developing a small army of men and women who had weapons. This was his violent, not necessarily ill will, but at least a violent reaction to... the situation of his life and the injustices which he saw. Okay? And then they bombed his house. Somebody bombed his house. I don't think his family was killed. And he wasn't killed, of course. But I got the picture of where the violence he was going towards was headed. And it wasn't like he said, It wasn't like he was thinking violent thoughts and thought, you know, oh, I'm really terrible for having these violent thoughts. No, he was thinking these violent thoughts, and he was just thinking these violent thoughts. And then he saw it, and he kind of went, I get it. And then that transformed him, and he became a different person.

[38:07]

Yeah. That's the second part of exactly the kind of violence I'm talking about. You see that relationship, okay, that if I put in violence, he gets violent. So now we're going to put the thought in place of, I'm just not going to let it start. We're going to let an imperfect thought into my mind. I mean, what we need to talk about all the time. That way, I'll just never have to deal with a bad end of karma. You can think that thought. That's totally relational, though. I mean, that's ridiculous. That's just controlling stuff. That's right. [...] But I said you could... Didn't I? I just said you could think that thought of controlling. I'm letting you think controlling thoughts. I agree that's a controlling thought. But that's one of the reactions, okay? You see this, and then you bring in fascism to impose upon... I didn't... I said, I'll let you bring in the fascism. Because if you see where that goes, that's attachment. So you'll see where that goes.

[39:10]

And you realize, well, that's not it either. So little by little you'll learn how cool it is to like let thoughts and to see and to study how they work. And you'll see that if you have deluded thoughts, violent ones, and then you try to bust them, that that goes another way. You'll see that. You'll see that. And when you see that, your mind and you will develop perfect thought. But it will become not because you impose it upon yourself, but because your mind is transformed by understanding how that works. If you eat poison and don't taste it, you can eat it forever. Not just for one lifetime. But if you eat poison and taste it, you don't have to restrain yourself anymore from eating it. Once you finally get it, I don't like it. You don't have to restrain yourself once you understand how bad it tastes.

[40:14]

But you have to slow down and chew it. If you can slow down and start chewing your karma and tasting it, you will say, hmm, oh. And the next time you are about to take a bite of that type of karma, you just stop and say, not interested, no fun, no do, but not. And if somebody forces you, say, well, no, not going to. You can't be forced anymore. Now, on the other hand, if it would help somebody, no problem. Because you're also not attached. So, do you have some sense of how to study your karma? Now is the time to start, by the way. You know, Buddha actually started at a certain point. There was a day when Buddha started studying, looking at what his intentions were.

[41:21]

And he was embarrassed, you know? Because he was pretty highly evolved in his last lifetime and he still had a bunch of junk inside his head. He still had low quality intentions. Yes? What day did he start? What day did he start? Well, there's some scholarly debate about that. What day did he say he started? I don't know. I really don't know the date. The day you start. And so if you haven't started, today could be the day you start to look at your intentions, see how they work. And if you started some time ago, today could be a day when you spend, for now, for the rest of the day, looking inside, looking back and seeing what is the intention there? And how does that work?

[42:26]

And how do you feel about what you're intending to do with the rest of this day? How you're intending to respond to the world you live in for the rest of this day? Every moment there's going to be... What is it going to be shaped like? What's the design of your mind? It's there to be seen and to be learned from and to be enlightened in. Not exactly by, but, you know, with. Because it isn't like your mind's going to come over and force enlightenment upon you. Your mind is giving you an opportunity. You have to bring your alertness and your awareness to it. It's giving you a chance Any other comments at this time?

[43:31]

So is the point just to make only good karma? He said, is the point then only to make good karma? Like karma that leads to happiness or pleasurable state? If you're going to do good karma, then the Buddha recommended that you do good karma. Okay? But the point of Buddhism is not ultimately to do good karma. Karma, both kinds of karma, all kinds of karma, are based on delusion. When you're not deluded, you don't get involved. So the ultimate point of Buddhism is not that you do karma.

[45:06]

But in order to realize the ultimate point of Buddhism, if you're still caught in the world where you think you can do things by your own power, then we would encourage you to do good things and pick up the insight that you can't do anything by yourself. How do you study what? He said, how do I study non-doing? The way you study non-doing is to study doing. There's no such thing as non-doing, and there's no such thing as doing. But the no such thing of non-doing is... The no such thing of doing is the doing that you usually think you're doing. The no such thing of non-doing is studying doing.

[46:08]

Neither one of them are really anything, but they're different, you see. There's a difference between doing something and studying it. There's a difference between just acting out and being aware that you're acting out delusion. Non-doing is to be awake to your nonsense, to your stupidity. That's not really anything, but it's an important not anything. Based on that, we wake up. We've got enough silliness, we've got enough stupidity, we've got enough ignorance, we've got enough karma. Everybody's got enough, really. Nobody's lacking. Nobody's too good to practice. Everybody's bad enough. Everybody's got enough karma to study. But almost nobody's studying enough. And the study is not karma, although the Buddha said it was.

[47:13]

He said that the study of karma sets you free of karma. I choose to say it's not really karma at all. But anyway, it's a poor kind of karma in one text. Well, actions you think you do, that is karma. But that action is based on the delusion that you can do it by yourself. So there is this phenomena called the illusion of you being able to act by yourself. You know? Like somebody walks from here over to there, and they think they did it all by themselves. For example, they forget the earth that supported them. I mean, you know, big deal. So what the earth supported me? It's like, you know, I still did it by myself. They forget about gravity, which made it possible for them to touch the ground and push off.

[48:19]

They forget about their shoes and their grandmother. In other words, karma is based on disrespect of life. Karma is based on ignorance, ignoring how everybody's helping you. It's just, you know, it is the fruit of ignorance. But there is a fruit of ignorance called karma. But if you study this fruit, you'll become free of this fruit. Okay? Well, let's say you're standing here like I am, right? And somebody asks you a question. You might think before you answer them, what your intention is.

[49:22]

I might think before I answer you, what's my intention? You might notice sometimes that what you want to do is you want to say something nasty to the person. Or you might notice that you want to say something helpful. You might notice that you actually have some kind of like intention. Often we do. Sometimes it's not so clear. Sometimes it's a little bit vague what we want to do with the person. That's a karmic situation where it's not so clear. It's not so clear that you really want to help or you really want to harm. So there's those cases too. But you actually look and see, what is your intention? At the end of this class, I ask you to check out, can you feel the impulse that you want to leave the room? Can you feel the impulse that you want to get up and go out? Yes. And is that a wholesome impulse? Well, if you want to run out, you know,

[50:24]

of the room and you don't particularly want to pay attention to yourself when you walk out, it's not very wholesome. If you want to walk out here without being mindful of your walking out, it's a relatively unwholesome state. It's not real mean, it's not super evil, but it's a little bit evil to sort of like walk around unguided and unmonitored, unaware of what you're doing. It's a little bit evil. Because you're spending a little bit more time not paying attention to what you're doing, you're deepening the habit of inattention. But usually walking across the room isn't that bad, right? It isn't that harmful to walk across the room, usually, right? But sometimes it's very harmful to walk across the room without paying attention. And not only that, but even when walking across the room doesn't seem that bad, your attention is pretty bad. So if you look in yourself in a given little short period of time, like between the end of this class and when you get out of the room, and you look there and you don't see the intention to pay attention to what you're doing, then you've discovered a kind of unwholesome state of mind.

[51:38]

Bad, but fairly bad. Now, what if you notice a state of mind where you actually would like to pay attention to at least, say, with just a short period of time, a few seconds, but I would like to pay attention to what I do from the end of the class to when I leave the room. I'd like to pay attention when I participate or do not participate in rearranging the chairs. I'd like to see what's going on with my body and mind during that time. That thought is a fairly wholesome thought, quite a wholesome thought. Then, if actually you were able to then actually pay attention for several moments, and there will be several moments in a few seconds, in a minute, to pay attention for a whole minute, that would be, you know, that's studying karma. Reviewing your experience, you can look back on it and say, I didn't feel good about that, or I did feel good about it, but with connecting present experiences with past actions to see the connection between I had this negative thought and now I feel lousy.

[52:50]

So observing the relationship between past actions and present states is part of studying karma. But I emphasize studying in the present. And in the present you will notice the relationship between this state and past actions. You don't have to leave the present to see. The past will start to come up there and you'll see it right in the present. Say, this is connected to that. And also you'll be able to say, this will probably be connected with that. After a while you can know, if I do that, I'm sure I'm going to feel bad. So I'm just not going to do that because I'm absolutely certain that I'll feel bad. So you start feeling bad consequences of unwholesome actions in the present. You don't do them anymore, to be sure. You taste the bad taste before you taste it. It's gotten into your body because you've observed so many times the connection.

[53:53]

Okay? Yes? Yes? often I find myself thinking that my intention is to help someone and then I think I'll And then I realized that it turned into wanting to fix them or change them and I'm very attached to the results of my health and it becomes very frustrating for me. So then I, what I'm learning to do is quickly, but I noticed I prefer that process. But I don't really know how. to help without somehow, you know, getting into that good. Did you hear what she said? Observing how you try to help and how it turns into these other things which you realize are not quite what you intended and aren't so helpful as you hoped.

[55:11]

Okay? Yeah. not helpful to you. If you start seeing that pairing over and over, your mind will be transformed and you'll start doing things which are helpful. That's not so important that you know that they're helpful. They will be helpful. You'll know that you're happy Probably. You might not be going around thinking, oh, I'm happy, but if someone asks you, are you happy, you say, yes. Because that would be the correct answer. When you make a mistake and you see it's a mistake and you acknowledge it as a mistake, your mind becomes more in line with reality.

[56:14]

when your mind becomes more and more in line with reality, you become happier. Reality is to treat things with loving kindness because this being and other beings are working together. Reality is not to be violent, not to have violent thoughts. There is violence in the world But our intentions, when they're in alignment with reality, are not violent. If you have an intention to change someone, it's a violent intention. If you have an intention to change someone, well, I don't know if I'd say violent, but I could almost say it's violent. It's certainly not very respectful. It's not respectful to violent, I don't know, but it's not really like loving, it's not really like non-attachment, and maybe it's violent.

[57:29]

Buddha doesn't go around changing people. Buddha, you know, the Buddhas, big Buddhas, right? I mean, these Buddhas, like, they have like, they've got a lot of resources, you know, like the universe, it's at their disposal, they can use it, But they don't go around and fix everybody. Like, fix, fix, fix. The Buddha doesn't go and pull Buddhified people, you know, in delusion. The Buddha doesn't come and pull them out of delusion. Over and over, the Buddha makes that point. Mostly the Buddha doesn't make that point, though. Mostly the Buddha does what helps the people get themselves out of delusion. Because we get ourselves into delusion. Nobody puts us into it. And nobody can pull us out. They can send us a message called, pay attention to what you're doing. And if you pay attention to what you're doing, you naturally will buoy up. So trying to fix people is off the track.

[58:32]

What you need to do is to try to find out if people want some help. And if they do, you try to help them in a way that goes with what they want. In other words, you help them with the Dharma. Once they have the Dharma at their disposal, they naturally will be happy Buddhas. Now, you may not like them. But you'll be happy. And they'll be Buddha. And just you won't like the Buddha that they became. Maybe. But you cannot like somebody and still respect them. Like somebody and not respect them. Respect's more important than like or dislike. And if you respect somebody, what you want to do is to help them be themselves truly.

[59:34]

Because you realize nothing could be better than to be in North Carolina in the morning. loving-kindness with wishing people be happy and also non-attachment goes with that so you about how they will be happy you want that for them you help them that way but mainly the thing that you want the people is for that they will become themselves because when they become themselves they'll be free Our lack of freedom is blocking us from being ourselves, and our lack of being ourselves is because we're so self-concerned. Because we're so worried about ourselves, we don't let ourselves be ourselves. And so we're trapped in ourselves, rather than rejoicing in being ourselves. If you study your karma, you'll see all the stuff you do would prevent you from being yourself.

[60:38]

You'll drop them when you understand that they're not what you want. But you have to see it quite a few times before they drop. You can't rush the program. That's why it's good to, since you have to see this lesson over and over, it's good to start and get as many lessons as you can within reason, because then you have to keep some of the old programs going, because otherwise there'll be a big rebellion, right? Yes? I see the problem in the attachment to the outcome, but is there also a problem that you're helping where it's not wanted? I mean, your example, Rev, was to help people be free.

[61:44]

It's possible that that person would want you to help them, you know, be what you want them to be. But if I'm also attached to them in that result, it breaks all in itself. Right. So let's say I want you to be some, let's say I don't respect you, and I want you to be something, some different way from the way you are, and you love me, so you want to help me by going along with my program of disrespect for you. Some people love us so much that they're willing to help us by betraying themselves. Some people love us so much or want our love so much that they'll help us with our program by betraying themselves. Huh? Well, like you want your daughter to be a certain way, and she wants your love, so she betrays herself by being the way you want her to be.

[62:49]

What? We probably all have done that to some extent, except for some of us who are too stupid to understand what was being asked of us. So we never knew what we were supposed to do to betray ourselves, so we never could. So we're cool. Maybe that's enough so we can go to meditation. Okay?

[63:26]

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