I'm glad that I don't remember how wonderful it is when I get here and sit with you until I get here. It's almost every time I'm surprised, I think, this is great. But I don't drive over thinking, oh boy, I'm going to get there and we're going to sit. I'm kind of glad. And it's been that way for more than 20 years. You know, we used to sit over in the room which had two ballet studios across the way, and we'd sit there with all, and then outside we had the dogs barking and the neighbors doing construction work, airplanes flying over, etc. Very noisy. And almost every time by the end of the period, I never knew if all the noise stopped or if we just calm down.

[01:01]

But by the end it was like everything was quiet. I think sometimes maybe, but I don't think, the neighbors didn't stop making noise and the airplanes didn't stop flying over and the buses didn't stop coming. Anyway, it's very wonderful to come here and sit. And so this is a, again, a course on Zen meditation. And Zen meditation is In a sense, then meditation is, you say, a meditation which is enlightenment. And so, in that sense, then meditation is the Buddha way. The Buddha way is the way of Buddha. It's the way of enlightenment. And enlightenment is, among its various functions, is that it's free of... It's a kind of life which is free of life.

[02:08]

And in particular, or especially, it's free of consciousness. Because living beings who have consciousness... are kind of trapped in their consciousness. The consciousness in the conscious realm, the living being is kind of imprisoned there. And there is all kinds of misconceptions in consciousness, many of which are really useful, but nonetheless stressful. And so enlightenment is to become free of consciousness. Enlightenment, as I said a little while ago, is not consciousness. It is freedom from consciousness, and the path to freedom from consciousness is to study consciousness. And the study of consciousness is not just like studying, like, I wish this thing I'm studying would go away.

[03:12]

It's okay to think that, but that is another example of consciousness which we would study. That make sense? A lot of consciousnesses have within the consciousness the wish to get out, the opinion that this is really a bad situation. Well, actually, one of the examples I would give about this situation is an emotion of disgust arises in consciousness sometimes. So part of the way to study the self is to study the self as the sense that somebody's there interacting with objects and consciousness. And studying how the interaction goes is part of the study, which when you learn about that,

[04:20]

you will become free of this process. Because this process actually doesn't have any sticking points in it when you understand it thoroughly. But before we understand it thoroughly, it seems like the self is here and not there, and this and not that, and so on. But it's not that way. Things are more fluid and interdependent than that. There's no, as I Ching said, no blame, but total responsibility and total participation. And again, there's a little bit of a, I don't know what the word is, a little bit of a, like a problem or philosophical problem. I think it's a psychological problem too. And the problem is, um, Learning the Buddha way is not completely the same as the Buddha way.

[05:27]

Like, you know, not completely the same. For example, learning Chinese is not completely the same as Chinese. Or learning to speak Chinese can be distinguished from speaking Chinese. Some people are learning but can't yet do it. I mean, some people are learning Chinese and they haven't spoken a word of Chinese. But they're, you know, they're learning vocabulary and they're listening to people speak it. And listening to people speak Chinese is part of learning it. It's part of being able to speak Chinese is listening. And Chinese babies, they listen to it before they talk it, right? But the listening is not the same as speaking, right? And listening to Buddha's teaching is not the same as the Buddha's teaching. Or you could say, listening to a teacher give the Buddha's teaching is not the same as giving the Buddha's teaching.

[06:34]

But you can learn it by listening to somebody teach it. So learning the self is learning the Buddha way. Understanding the self is understanding the Buddha way. And understanding the Buddha way is the Buddha way. The Buddha way is to understand the Buddha way. Does that make sense? And to understand the Buddha way is also to understand the problem which it addresses. And the problem it addresses is consciousness self-consciousness. And one of the key things in self-consciousness is the self. But also in there are emotions and feelings. And the feelings are very closely related to the self. I will not be able to understand the self and become free of it if I don't understand the feelings around it and the emotions around it.

[07:43]

So I would like to study consciousness. I would like to study self. I would like to study emotions and feelings. I would also like to study the images of the body that appear in consciousness. Then I'm studying pretty much all there is to being a conscious being. The body has sense organs and its fields, feelings, perceptions, all the emotions, and the container consciousness. not to be confused with the container mind, which is one of the names for the unconscious cognitive processes which support the creation of the conscious prison that living beings live in. So we have two levels of mind.

[08:47]

One is sometimes called the container consciousness, but actually I think it should be called the container mind or foundational mind. The foundational subliminal or unconscious cognitive processes, which are very closely related to the body, and the body with those processes has created in humans and dogs and cats and tigers, consciousness, also chimpanzees and gorillas, and I don't know who else. But anyway, there are many types of conscious beings who have some sense of self. And for them to become free of self with its problems, they need to receive teachings about how to be kind to the situation and study it. You didn't remind me yet, you're so polite, to tell two stories, but you can remind me to tell two stories if I don't tell them pretty soon.

[10:04]

I have three examples to use tonight to study consciousness. One, I'll just tell you them just in case I don't get to them, you can remind me. One is disgust, disgust. Two is ringing this bell. Three is driving over here. This evening and other evenings too. I'll start with disgust, is that right? So, what is disgust? Huh? Aversion? Yes? He said it's a feeling. I propose that it's an emotion. and also that there can be a feeling of emotions. You can have feelings of emotion.

[11:08]

So there can be a feeling of disgust, but there's also disgust, which is an emotion. It's primarily an emotion. I think it was an emotion in the history of living beings before there was a feeling of disgust, but I'm not sure. But anyway, there's two different things. One is disgust, which is an emotion. And I offer the example of people who are by one or even younger than that. one to two years old, one to two and a half years old, one to three. Emotions are actions that appear in consciousness. Other people's actions appear in your consciousness, and you can see other people express the emotion of disgust, and you can also see yourself express the emotion of disgust.

[12:16]

Disgust literally, etymologically means, you know, like to disgorge, gustatory, to get it out of your mouth. And now, see, I have this two-year-old to watch. And when she was younger, and also when her big brother was younger, sometimes I'd just watch the food go in. It'd go in and go out. And it wasn't even like they would put it in and go... It would just go in and go out. It was so relaxed, it just came out. Just in and out. And that's different from throwing up. Throwing up, vomiting is kind of a disgust, a form of disgust. Vomiting is... an action. You don't usually think of it as an emotion, but I just think you might consider that it's an emotion, just open to the idea that vomiting is an emotion.

[13:22]

But when you see the little baby put the food in and comes right out again, it's an emotion. It's a motion. It's an action. And if you yourself would put something in your mouth and then, as an older person, you're not quite as relaxed, it doesn't necessarily just go in and go right out. Usually we would kind of cough it out or spit it out. I haven't seen too many adults put the food in and have it come out the way I saw the babies do it. You know what I mean? There's usually a little bit, I think the adults are more, part of what I'm suggesting is the feeling of disgust that goes with the emotion of disgust, I think adults are more conscious of the feeling. The feeling of disgust, I propose to you, is the perception of the emotion of disgust.

[14:25]

it's an awareness or a feeling about the disgust. So I'll just stop there for a second to see if you can see that in yourself, that there's like the emotion of disgust. Just like, and it's kind of, in some sense it's more physical. I shouldn't say more physical, but it's coming from the body wanting to get this toxin out of you often. And then there's a feeling about that, which is that you're aware of this emotion. And the feeling might be, the feeling would range, the disgust could range too, but basically the disgust Just for example, just say it's getting the thing out of the mouth. You could have a range of feelings about that. You could find that really unpleasant or not so unpleasant or pleasurable.

[15:39]

Sometimes vomiting is pleasurable. I think particularly for people for whom it doesn't happen very often, like me. I have vomited very many times in my life, and in the last 40 years, let's say 45 years, because I'll just say the time I've been at Zen Center, I've vomited about once or twice in the last 45 years. And when I... This is so cool. And when I did it, when I saw this emotion, my body emotion, to get this stuff to act, my body acting... Not exactly voluntarily. I didn't put my finger in my down. Some people do it kind of, they stimulate it, they voluntarily stimulate it, right? In my case, I don't think I did that. When I felt it coming, the feeling I had was associated with other times I had it.

[16:52]

So as I vomited during the last 45 years, there was a feeling of very, what is the word, well, very soulful nostalgia. for when I vomited when I was a little kid. And it wasn't so much the stuff coming out. It was this feeling in the body that happens, in my case, this feeling of this process in my body happening when this takes over and here comes the vomit. That feeling, for me, it's a special feeling which I used to have, you know, when I was a little kid I used to vomit more often. To feel that and then all those feelings associated with that emotion. Whereas if I watch the little girl vomiting, not vomiting, but disgorging, it doesn't seem to be so much feeling and there's very little nostalgia.

[18:05]

That's a different self from the self of an adult. That's a different participation in the actions in relation of the body to the, the body process related to the food or the food coming in and the food, the stuff that's already in coming out. So I'm just pointing out that that's one example of a, of an emotion which we And again, when I said, what is it? Some people said a feeling. I think we're more familiar with saying a feeling of disgust rather than seeing disgust as an emotion. But I propose it is. But that it doesn't usually happen without a feeling there. Because feelings are almost always there with the self. about the emotion that's going on.

[19:08]

And I'm just trying to help you and me be able to see the difference between an emotion and action and the perception of the action. And both are related to the self, but in a way the feeling is even more closely related than the emotion. So yes, there was Sarah and Tracy. Yes? I think I just confused a little bit about how the notion of consciousness and conscious construction Okay, thank you.

[20:14]

Just stop for a second there, okay? That's a good question. These physical things, these physical things are images. They're images. The images which are what imagination works with, and we don't usually consider imagination physical, but imagination is built of physical images. The body makes images of, for example, the body, and it makes images of actions. And then those images are constructed by the cognitive process into interrelated processes of images. And the images all come from the body. And particularly the images, all the images come from the body, and particularly the images about the body are the images that build the self.

[21:24]

But the images come up from the body and then all these images coming up from the body start getting interrelated and as they get interrelated we have a cognitive process which was not originally in the body. And that cognitive process then leads to a conscious process which doesn't use the same images that the unconscious cognitive process has, and it doesn't use the same images that the body has. Body has images. Like I said before, the example of the retina has maybe, I don't know if the number is right, but anyway, a million cells, okay? And then you have, from the million cells, you have 100,000 or something, maybe 100,000 nerves coming down from there. So what the nerve is conveying from this bodily situation of stimulating, the nerve's conveying concepts or images representing like, what, 10 or 100 cells.

[22:44]

So those cells themselves are not images. but as they get conveyed to other parts of the body, They're sent as images or concepts or categories. And these then get worked up into processes of relating to each other, and this gives rise to cognitive process. So it is physical, and the vomiting or the disgust is something which we're more or less conscious of, and we're also unconsciously processing, and we're processing images of the body. So it is conscious construction, but also the body constructs the consciousness. However, the consciousness construction only teaching is to liberate consciousness, which also will liberate the body. If the consciousness is free, the body will be free.

[23:46]

The body isn't trapped the way the consciousness is, but the body shares the destiny of the conscious process and the unconscious process. I interrupted you. Please go on. For me, there's a... between my awareness and emotions. So, to me, sometimes it's sort of a residue, self-emotional, self-emotion, or actually self-emotion and feeling emotion. It's just kind of a, my idea or my story about something that's happened to another person, or something that I wrote, happened to me.

[24:49]

I think I don't know. I think I don't know. I don't know. The sense of it being a physical residue, it might be physical residue in the sense that the body wants more work to be done on this problem. The body hasn't been served well. by the way consciousness dealt with the previous story, the previous imagination of what was going on, and the actions and the emotions which related to what was apparently going on, the body says, work on that some more. So it brings up the problem again to be dealt with.

[25:56]

If you satisfy the body, then maybe the unconscious cognitive processes will be satisfied and you won't have to work on that anymore. So, you know, I think it is, we've got to set, the whole life has to be cared for. And if some parts of it feel like they want more conscious work, then they support the creation and consciousness of some problems, like residue of something that seems to be related to some past actions and feelings about that. So then that has to be studied too, even though you thought you'd done pretty well with it. But I guess other aspects of your life saying, we're not criticizing you, we're just saying work on it some more. However, what might come up is, we're criticizing you.

[27:00]

That might be the way, the request for more work. So all this stuff that's coming up, in a sense, Consciousness is, one part of consciousness is that it's serving the life. Another side of it is it's calling for attention. And part of it is calling for attention in terms of optimizing life. Another part of it is calling for attention in terms of survival, not optimization. So that they're mixed together. And sometimes you're surviving okay, but you're getting a call for optimization. Yes? Okay. Okay. What?

[28:07]

Yeah, that's what it's like when you're learning a new language. But then you say, well, I understand that because it's a new language, but now I'm using English and you're learning a new language. But I'm teaching you a little bit of English, like the word disgust I'm teaching you has a certain etymology and so on. So I'm mixing English lessons with lessons on studying consciousness, and I'm using regular English words rather than Sanskrit or whatever. I remember I used to, when I first went to Zen Center, I worked for, well, to make a long story short, I worked for Bank of Maricard on their computers, and then I worked for, and then I went to Tassajara for a practice period, and then I came back and got a job with Standard Oil. And I was, programmed computers for them, too. And I went to meetings with these people, oil men, you know.

[29:33]

They were mostly oil men. And they had meetings and I was, I was like at their, at their meetings because I was supposed to like see what they were talking about and then try to program what they were talking about. And I had that same feeling of, they're speaking English, but I do not understand what they're saying. I didn't understand the oil business. Even though they used regular English words, they didn't use any big words. They used words like trucks and transportation and oil and barrels and numbers. So thanks for the report. And now, so that's an emotion. The emotion is that she told me what she just said and she didn't tell us the feeling in association with feeling like out of sync. But out of sync is an emotion. It's an action. It's a cognitive... What?

[30:35]

Emotion and action. I'm just, that's a regular English definition, emotion, emotion. Emotions are actions. Yeah. Anger's an action. Did you know that? Anger's an action. What did you think it was besides an action? Yeah. So, there's feelings about anger. Like, anger's not pain. Anger is not pleasure. Feeling is pain and pleasure. And you can have feelings of pleasure about anger. Some people have feelings of pleasure about anger. Most people don't. But some do. Some people are happy anger. And also some people who are like, I know some people who are like getting very weak, dying. and they like anger because they feel a little bit alive again.

[31:40]

And I know some really old people who, and their children tell me, well, it's a sign of life, you know. Like one old lady that's the mother of a friend of mine, you know, she still can, like, criticize people, you know, and find fault in their haircuts and stuff. I said, well, you know, it's kind of nice to see there's still a little bit of life there. So people can feel positive about it. looking down on people and things like that. But those are actions and the feelings are different. And the feelings, I would say that the emotion is the action and the feeling has both positive, negative and neutral range. Those are categories for a range, right? But also feelings have associations like the feeling I had about sitting with you and the associations of all the other times and the feeling I had about vomiting.

[32:51]

Vomit is an action. Do you see that's an action? Yeah. Yeah, it's disgust. What disgust is, it's vomiting. Or it's spitting the food out. Spitting an idea out. Or... You can also have the social version of it is contempt, you know, related to other people's actions. Contempt is an action. So there it is. Got it now. And this is like new for you, right? Emotions are actions and contempt is an action, you know, and the Buddha teaches one of the basic teachings which I've taught here Pardon? There is a feeling of contempt. Huh? Well, you're thinking, there's three types of action.

[33:58]

What are they, Tracy? You forgot? Well, here I am. physical postures. These are actions. Vocalizations are actions and thinking is an action. Thinking that somebody is a worthless, immoral being, that's an action. And also that's taught All actions have consequence. The Buddha teaches that. It's one of the first teachings. All actions have consequence. What you say has consequence. What you do with your postures you make have consequence. That has one consequence, and then, you know, has another consequence.

[35:04]

These are consequential actions. And thinking that you're better than other people has consequence. Thinking that you want to kill somebody has consequence. That's an action. Disgust is, in some sense, is a... an element of thinking. It's not quite as broad as thinking, but it's one of the elements in thinking. Like, you could think, how disgusting that, you know. But you have this sense of disgust or contempt, and then there's feelings associated with it. And the sense of self is, again, I bring it back to the little girl, the sense of self is developing along with these emotions and the feelings around them.

[36:16]

The sense of self grows, develops with that. And so she says, and she's been saying it for quite a while, I don't want it. I don't want it. She says that quite a bit. She even says it to her grandmother. Vis-a-vis, she says, I don't want my grandmother. And the name of the grandmother in Chinese is Abu. I don't want Abu. She wants mommy. And so herself is growing up around this. I don't want. And I did it. And around I did it, I did it, that statement is an emotion. It's an expression of an emotion. I don't want it is a verbal expression of an emotion. I don't want it or not wanting it or being disgusted with it.

[37:21]

That's a verbal expression of an emotion. It's a verbal emotional expression which has feelings associated with it. It's also an emotion. They're both emotions. Emotions aren't just mental. They're also physical. And there's feelings with both. And they're also verbal. You could say, when I speak, my emotions color my speech, but my speech is also an expression of them. They don't just color it. They are expressing it. And there's feelings before I express it verbally or physically, like with facial expressions or emotions. Again, this is saying emotions are physical. They're not, you know,

[38:23]

and there's feelings associated with them. Here's another example which is, this is stretching it a bit further. I rang this bell. Is that an emotion? Ringing the bell? Is it an action to ring the bell? Is it an emotion? having trouble, aren't you? I had trouble too. But I'm saying, well, wait a minute. This is an action that has no emotion in it? What happened to my emotions? Did I want to ring the bell? Did I hate the bell? Did I love the bell? Do I love you? Yes, I do love you. So what do I do? I ring bells. For you. Is there emotion there now? I love you. And I go.

[39:25]

Huh? What are the two separate things? Well, you can say separate. You can say separate if you want to. Go ahead. You said it. But what did you say? Yeah, well, this is like, you people are like setting me up to teach you Buddhadharma. This is very good because usually the way the Buddhist does it is he says, there's three types of action. Mental, verbal, and postural. Because verbal is also physical. Okay? Okay? So you think of ringing the bell, that's an action.

[40:31]

Then you do it with your body, it's an action. And the body, the body action is expressing the mental action. It's an action expressing the former action. And it doesn't come without the former action. You can say they're separate, but they're not. one's expressing the other. And I didn't go, hello, but I could have. I didn't go, I love you, but I could have. So, all three are actions. The intention to ring the bell with good intent is an action. So, do you see that? ... That's right. There are two actions. There are two actions. They're both actions, but they're not separate, though.

[41:33]

But there are two actions. And you could say, well, you could also even say, well, the action of ringing the bell with the body, you could also say, that sponsors the thought of ringing the bell, because it does. Ringing bells... in consciousness, that action, which was sponsored by other intentions to ring bells, but not even, you could accidentally, you could intend to ring, you could intend to blow your nose and accidentally ring a bell. But that thing happening in your consciousness might then transform your unconsciousness, which leads you to be able to ring the bell. So it's a cycle of things appear in consciousness, they transform your unconsciousness, and then you can do the thing again, sort of. Yeah. Modern philosophers often distinguish between intentions and volitions. Whereas an intention to ring a bell can be unfulfilled as opposed to as an intention. A volition is an action, an intended action.

[42:37]

And you might have a volition to ring a bell as a clapper snapped out of your hand, but you still did that. That's a volition, because you look for it and get it. So you try to make your arm, whether or not you succeed, Aside from the frustration element, what you said modern philosophers distinguish, the Buddha distinguished that with mind and body. What the modern philosophers are calling volition, the Buddha would call the bodily expression of intention. But using the modern language, the Buddha would say, there's intention... And he also called that volition. But the modern term, if you want to use it, there's intention, and then there's a physical enactment of it, which you're saying they call volition. The Buddha would say that one is intention, the other is intention expressed with the body. The Buddha made that same distinction. And whether you're successful or not, it depends on other factors.

[43:41]

But in both cases, the important point is what you intended from the Buddha's point of view. What happened is not so much in point. If you wish to hurt somebody, like if you wish to hurt a well-developed practitioner, and the well-developed practitioner says, that was wonderful, thank you so much, and you wanted to hurt them, you might feel frustrated, but in fact you did want to hurt them, and that's what counts for you. And From their perspective, if you did that same thing and you wanted to help them, that would also be interesting for them because they have this other kind of intention, which then gets expressed into the way they talk and gesture. So if you say emotions are actions, do you also say that all actions are emotions? No, I don't.

[44:43]

It's all intentional actions. all volitions, those are emotions. And those are what go with the self. Those are the actions in karmic consciousness, and there's three types in karmic consciousness. Three types of actions, three types of emotions, and they're all physically based, because consciousness is physically based. And yeah, this is really great. You're getting a class on karma tonight, which is appropriate because we're studying karmic consciousness. We're reviewing some basic teachings of karma, which I'm happy to review. Yeah. This is going back a little bit to what you said earlier about the finishes.

[45:53]

And what I want to talk about when I understand that it's liberating Well, whether it's hard or easy, you're free. Yeah, the body gets liberated. when the mind's liberated. The body and mind are real close friends. And if you liberate the body, you liberate the mind. If you liberate the mind, you liberate the body. Yes. The images of the body, the images of the unconscious process, the images of the conscious process, they're all one intimate constellation of innumerable processes of this magnificent thing called life. which has produced problems for living beings.

[46:56]

And the problems... The place, the necessary place for consciousness, the thing that makes consciousness is the thing that makes the problem when misunderstood and it liberates the process when understood. The self is the key ingredient of making consciousness and it's the key thing which when misunderstood is a source of stress and it's the thing which when understood liberates the process. without destroying the facilities of consciousness, which are necessary in order to communicate the practice to people of how to become free of consciousness, which this particular tradition wants to not just liberate beings from consciousness, but wants them to use that liberated consciousness

[47:57]

or use the liberation which can come back, can illuminate the consciousness and help it continue to study and liberate. Yes, Bill? I suspect the answer to the question, but I need to check with the authorities. And so I was wondering if there is an inappropriate thought Unexpressed thoughts, can they cause harm? Unexpressed thoughts have consequence. Yeah, definitely to the person who has the thought. Yeah. Yes?

[48:58]

It's difficult, it's difficult and touchy, and it's difficult and touching. It's also touching. This is the first, this is like the, one of the first, you know, when the Buddha taught right, right view, main element of right view is action has consequence. So what we think is the basis, is the origin of karma. But then what we say from there and posture from there is the essence and the substance of our actions. And they all have consequence. And yeah, so if I have certain harmful thoughts, thoughts that are harmful to me, unless I handle them well, I should say, if I don't handle them well, if I don't meet them with compassion, then what I'm actually showing people, which they more or less see, is I'm showing them a person who has unskillful thoughts and doesn't know how to practice with them.

[50:18]

So they see an example. And some people see the example, and if they love you, they might copy you. So the very people you care most for might copy your unskillful thoughts. Now, on the other hand, they might say, thanks, Dad, for showing me the wrong way to go. And then it doesn't hurt them, which is good. If I do something unskillful, it's nice if people watch me and say, that was really unskillful what he did. That was nice of him to show me. I'm not saying I'll never do that, but I can see how stupid it is. That was really nice of him to, you know, not pay attention, walk into the wall, and yeah. So that inspires me to pay better attention because he really got hurt when he did that. It wasn't funny, you know. And so in that sense, you can do something really unskillful and doesn't hurt other people, only hurts you.

[51:23]

but sometimes the terrible thing is that sometimes you can do unskillful things that hurt you and people who love you will copy you because they love you and you're their daddy or you're their mommy you know like I know this great guy he was really a great guy he really was but he was an alcoholic and he drank with his son you know And here's this boy who has this wonderful dad, gets a chance to drink with him, and his dad dies at 57. And then, great person, great genius, you know? One of the great Zen geniuses, but also an alcoholic. And his son drinks with him, and he lets his son drink with him, and they have a nice time together, nice father-son thing. And then his son, but his son does not become a great person, because he's an alcoholic from childhood. And it's really terrible.

[52:27]

It really hurt his son that he thought of drinking and he did drink. So all these things are consequential. So we want to study them. I want to use one more example of emotion. Kind of an unusual way to do it. So I'm driving over here. And in some sense, I was thinking tonight, it's so silly that I try to come over here when there's not a traffic jam. In a way, it's silly. Because when I come over and it is a traffic jam, my meditation is, in some sense, it's mandatory high quality. Not totally mandatory. I could get away from it, but... When it's a traffic jam, I really do actually pay attention to my mind, especially when it's dark. And I'm watching these lights in front of me, these tail lights going on and off.

[53:34]

And I'm watching the lights in my car shine off the back of the other car. And I'm watching them, and I'm watching the distance. I'm watching my emotions. I'm watching how I want to drive and how I am driving. I'm watching that. I should say, I'm happy when I'm watching that. I turn the radio off. I don't distract myself. And I do this, and I do it with really good will because I think, This is what the class is about, is for me to be watching my consciousness, which is these cars in front of me, and how I'm acting in relationship to them. That's my self as object, how I'm relating to that car, how I'm taking care of this car, which could be called my car, and that car, which is not my car. I'm acting there, and this is my emotional life.

[54:39]

And I have feelings about this. And my feelings could be many things, but my feelings actually, coming over here, I had feelings associated with the emotions of driving, which were really associated with all kinds of thoughts about this class, and positive feelings about this meditation of driving the car in heavy traffic. So the driving the car, the physical action, but also the intention to drive it. And the intention was to drive it well. And sometimes the intention is not to drive as well as others. Like sometimes maybe I'm not really careful about how I change lanes. And when I had that impulse, that emotion to change lanes a little bit impatiently without being careful,

[55:44]

there's feelings associated with that. And the feelings are not so good. Not so good because of his unskillfulness, but also not so good because of not studying my emotions thoroughly, which I really, I believe would be good. And this is studying the self, or you could say my self, which is involved in these actions, these emotions, is impatience an emotion? Is it an emotion? Is impatience an action? Is it an emotion? To be impatient, is that an emotion? Is being patient an emotion? And are there feelings in association with patience? Are there feelings associated with impatience?

[56:46]

There are. I'm not saying that the feeling associated with patience is all the same. It can vary. It's a process. It's not a fixed thing. So there's the process of feelings which are connected to the body. There's the emotional process of patience and impatience when driving. All this is going on. All these actions are happening. And somebody's involved there. And that's the self as object. That's the narrative self that's doing this. So I'm driving over here and I'm really having pretty good time doing the study of this class driving over here. And I say I feel kind of silly because this particular way of study takes much longer than the other way. The other way when it's light and there's not much traffic is you go zoop and I'm here in a half an hour. but I'm not forced to, or supported in a way, to watch my mind as much and see how I feel about it.

[57:50]

I generally feel quite good, you know, geez, it's really easy to get over there. It's nice. But I'm not so much like, I'm not so much aware of my emotions So, you know, again, so now I have this. And then when I realized that, I felt I had even more positive, happy feelings about the emotional study that that situation supported. Because some part of me says, you know, I said to you like, you know, it's hard work to come over here. So, you know, if you people don't come to class, I kind of don't want to do it. So I still feel that way because part of the reason why it's so much fun to drive over here is because I'm thinking about the class that we're going to have. And here I'm telling you about my experience. And I've done that before in other classes. I've told you what I did in traffic jams. Because again, when you're in traffic jams, there's the opportunity.

[58:56]

I mean, it's kind of a support to be more aware of greed hatred and confusion. You know what I mean? Road rage and greed to get out of this traffic jam. Actually to get someplace, someday. And impatience. And is not being generous, is being stingy and wanting to put yourself ahead of other people, is that an emotion? Is wanting to be ahead of other people an emotion? Is it an action? I'm telling you the Buddha teaches wishing to be ahead of other people is an action. Wishing to be even with other people is an action. Wishing to be behind people is an action. Wishing to be of service is an action. And then expressing that with your body is an emotion.

[59:58]

physical expression is emotion with your posture. That's why we sometimes like to watch dancers and feel emotion when we see them. And we can have a feeling for their emotion. So actually, it's like when I watch the child, the food go, go out. It's not my emotion, the food going in and out. But in my consciousness, I see the food going in and out, and I have a feeling, wow, it's just amazing how it just goes in and out. I can't do that. But they have very skillful little tongues and lips. They're so relaxed. Yeah, it's almost like they're playing. But at the same time, children are quite serious when they're playing too, aren't they?

[61:02]

They're very carefully piling up tiny little things. They're very concentrated for a while. They're very concentrated. They're easily distracted, but sometimes when they're concentrated, it's impressive. And they're serious. They're not joking around. It comes in, it goes out. It's not a joke. Yeah. I visited, when I was visiting Fred Murat, he was very happy for me to visit, and I actually thought how wonderful it was for him to have a person in his life who he saw as he saw me. I mean, I'm not the person he saw, of course. and you're not the person I see. Still, how wonderful it would be if I saw you the way he saw me.

[62:09]

To have somebody in your life, it's wonderful. And to serve somebody, to have somebody in their life who they really appreciate, it's wonderful. And to have a grandchild who goes like that and to not... talk to her like that. It's nice for her to have people like that. And that's the way her mother's like that. And that's why she doesn't want a substitute. Her mom is really good. She just thinks her mom's the greatest and she does not want anybody else if possible. But, you know, she adjusts. But really, nobody's as good as her mom. And her mom does not say, sometimes her mom maybe goes, ooh, Frankie. If Frankie would take shit and rub it around, ooh, she does that. Anyway, this is studying the self. And learning about how this works is learning the Buddha way.

[63:13]

And also I was thinking today, we only have two more classes, and pretty soon we're only going to have one more. So I thought, oh, and I just feel like I'm just getting into it with you. And I thought, oh, it's okay, because the next class is going to be about the mother of Buddhas. the perfection of wisdom. It's the same study. So don't worry, Reb. You're going to get more chances to study the self. To study the self is to study the perfection of wisdom. Yes? So, if you told me Or if you're telling me that emotions can be intentional. As I said, emotions are actually not... The Buddha's definition of intention, the term he used, meant the overall pattern of a moment of consciousness.

[64:30]

and the overall pattern of a moment of consciousness could have multiple emotions in it. And the overall pattern is called intention. That's the definition of the action. So, for example, I could have disgust for somebody doing something, who I also have a feeling of diligence towards and a respect. Here's some other emotions. Here's some other emotions. Self-respect. Here's another emotion. Decorum. Those are emotions. I would say usually in most states of consciousness there's a number of emotions. Some emotions are incompatible, but others that are quite different are compatible.

[65:36]

So it doesn't seem right to say that ringing the bell is an emotion, so much so as ringing the bell can be emotionally emotional. Good point. Yeah. So in the intention to ring the bell, was the emotion. There was an emotion in the intention to ring the bell. And there were several emotions. Yeah, I think that's better. That's better. Are emotions of body, speech, and mind generally emotional? Almost always. Almost always emotional. There's almost always emotions. Yeah, so maybe that will help. That emotions are actions. Emotions are actions. But the action of the consciousness is the kind of sum total of all the emotional actions of the moment. And so that's why it may be difficult to see that some actions are an emotion because maybe there's other emotions present there.

[66:48]

So I appreciate that point, that the intention of the moment of consciousness could include several emotions, for example, disgust. And it has also a feeling. The consciousness always has some emotions, several possibly, and one feeling. So an intention includes several emotions. Does it include anything besides emotions? Or is an intention comprised completely of a varied collection of emotions? It includes perceptions. And it... Huh? The intention is the overall, the overall thing. So, you know, we have this thing about the five aggregates. There's the form aggregate, which is the sense organs and its playgrounds. There's feeling. There's perception. And then there's all these mental factors, most of which are emotions.

[67:54]

And all of them? Well, intention is, in some sense, is comprised of four because consciousness is the thing that the intention characterizes. So there's five aggregates there, consciousness being the all-embracing one, and then within it are the other four. or within it of the other three, and the body supporting the whole conscious process. So maybe that would help you when I say that emotions are actions, that they are, I'm still saying they're actions, but they aren't the karma, they aren't the karmic consciousness as a whole, usually. Yes, Carol? ...reaction, because to me, Yeah, I would say re... I would say reactions are actions.

[69:03]

Yeah. Okay, good. Reactions are a type of... In some sense, all actions are reactions because they're a response to some stimulus. It's a response to my sense of my job. Maybe if I didn't think it was my job, I would have a different response. It's my response to being in this room. And leaving the bell here is my response to the idea that this bell was here. I didn't bring it with me. But I did bring this striker. And I brought this striker because there was a striker here before which was misplaced, but it's been returned. It's up there now. So I don't have to bring this anymore.

[70:04]

Unless you'd like me to. So does that help you understand how emotions are actions, but they aren't the karmic action? They aren't the intention of the moment? So for example, like the example I gave, disgust is an emotion. It is an action of the body and the mind. However, there could also be decorum and self-respect in that same consciousness. So my sense of decorum, my sense of decorum was I could discuss with you the word disgust and I could discuss with you the little girl having the food come in and go out. By the way, her brother could do that too when he was little. My sense of decorum in this class is that that would be appropriate, but there's certain discussions which I might, there might be the emotion to, I might have the emotion about some emotion, but at the same time there's another emotion called decorum which would maybe contraindicate the expression, the verbal expression of some emotions.

[71:17]

Does that make sense? So then the intention then would be expressed by not mentioning certain things which actually were going on in me, actions that were going on in my consciousness that I was studying. But because there was this emotion, this thing was not expressed verbally. The emotion of decorum is there with the emotion of, for example, thinking this is really a good idea to tell people about this idea. But then the decorum comes up as maybe not. By the way, the Buddhist, the more literal the more literal translation of the factor which I call decorum and self-respect, the more literal translation of them would be fear of shame and fear of blame.

[72:22]

that actually decorum and self, and something easier for people to maybe handle, decorum and self-respect, because fear of shame means fear of doing things that you would feel weren't worthy of you, that you'd be ashamed that you did, because they're not what you want to do. They're not what you feel your respect for yourself would dictate. And the other is, fear of blame is decorum. You actually are afraid that other people will blame you or ostracize you if you do certain things. But that's part of decorum. But the more literal translation in both cases has fear in it. And fear is also sometimes considered an emotion, right? I would suggest that it could be considered an emotion. And I would also say that it's an action. However, it's not the intention of the moment.

[73:25]

But it's a very powerful action within consciousness, which then can influence the intention of the moment, which might be, I'm going to run out of here, or I'm going to attack that person. And again, you still might not do it. That intention might not be strong enough because decorum might come up or self-respect might come up or both of them might come up. So you don't do this. So this thought, the action, the emotion of fear, the emotion of attack, and these other emotions make it so that the moment is that you don't attack. So this is like the composition and the watching how you're relating to these various emotions that are going on and the feelings, that thing that's out there working with this stuff.

[74:30]

the process of relating to these different actions. That's the self as object, or the narrative self. And there's the other self, self as knower, which is there too. But you see, the first one I'm talking about because it's more gross, easier to see. Not necessarily that easy to see, but there's a self out there involved in all these emotions, involved in all these actions. Is that clear? And thanks for that comment. I think that may help people understand how there can be actions in consciousness that aren't actually the karmic act of the moment, that aren't actually the intention. That the intention is the overall resolution of the various emotional, you could say, vectors And sometimes they don't get lined up, so it doesn't seem like there's almost no action that you can see because there's so much conflict between them that it just seems kind of unclear what happened.

[75:41]

That's called an indeterminate karmic consciousness. And then the other ones, if they're clear, they're skillful or unskillful, sometimes very clearly skillful, sometimes very clearly unskillful. And then it ranges to be kind of like indeterminate Okay, so thank you for coming tonight. I hope you can come next week.

[76:07]

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