at 30 AB chapter 1. Any questions about things that came before this? In this section of Chapter 1, what is going on now? What's the general characteristic of the carcass we're studying, Carcass 29 to 41? Exposition of the Datus.

[01:05]

Anything else? How are they exposed in this section? as lineage, okay. But in this particular section of Karakas 29 to 41 in dyads and triads. So they're taught in terms of falling, they're classified or taught as falling in a dualism or a triple definition. And the Karaka we just finished, Karaka 29 CD, dealt with, thought about the dhatus in the triad of kushala, akushala, and avyakrita. Okay? Do you all know what kushala, akushala, and avyakrita mean?

[02:15]

Anybody not know what that means? Do you know what kushala and akushala mean, but you don't know what avyakrita means? avyakati means what? What? Neutral? Yes, neutral. But more definitively, it means indeterminate. In other words, it's not that it's neutral, but you can't tell. If you think about many of these things that are classified as neutral, you often may think, well, that you can make a case for them being not so good. Or, Not so bad. Or you could make a case for them being pretty bad, but not so necessarily. There may be some debate. They would have both positive and negative parents instead of neither?

[03:24]

Did you hear what he said? Does that mean that they could have both positive and negative karma, but neither? Is that what you said? Well, that's an important good question, because the answer is no, I know. No. They cannot have both. Okay? They never have both. Those things which create the good karma and all that, do not work with the things that create bad karma. They're never mixed. But in some cases, you can't be sure which is which. But it's not that you definitely can be sure that there's good, and then also you can definitely be sure that they're bad and they're mixed. You just think, well, this looks kind of bad, but then somebody else could say, yes, but there's no way to look at it.

[04:24]

Or, and then again, I don't know enough to be sure. Now, if certain things are present, we can be absolutely sure it's good, and if certain things are present, we can be absolutely sure it's bad. But in many other cases, we can't be sure. But we can suspect, but we can't be sure. And the Datus, these 18 categories of existence fall into these three different categories. And how do they fall into these three different categories? Could you speak up?

[05:43]

Okay, in the form, among the form datus, The, uh, what? Did you speak up? That was six. It became a cell organ and it was a color. It was somebody here who found four otters. Four out of ten dhatus can have a karmic power. And six dhatus, six of the material dhatus cannot, uh, We cannot understand for sure what their karmic power will be. It's not clear to us. It's not to say that a smell never could have some karmic power or that the nose cannot have karmic power, but we can't be sure. But in some cases with the eye, we can be sure, it says here.

[06:51]

So the ten datus, which are characterized by being able to be hit, sa, pratiga, minus the visible, rupa, and the sound, shabda, namely the eight datus, five material organs, odor, taste, and tangible are neutral. It's not six, but eight. Eight are neutral. So the visible and the audible can have karmic power, can have a karmic quality. But the eye organ itself and the eye and the ear organ itself, the ear capacity and the eye capacity, the ability to relate to visibles and the ability to relate to audibles, they are in themselves indeterminate karmically.

[08:10]

Well, let's hear about manas now, okay? The other are of three types. These seven datus, seven datus being six vijnanas, the five sense vijnanas and mano vijnana. These six datus plus manas, They are good when they're associated with good roots, bad when they're associated with bad roots, and neutral when the roots aren't there. We can say neutral and inter-terminate interchangeably. Yes?

[09:41]

the Buddha knows they're indeterminate that's why he said so but the Buddha also knows that when it comes to karma there's some cases where you can say well looks a little bit like this looks a little bit like that There are some cases when it's so complex. For example, here's a case of neutral calm. See this? That's rather neutral. But we can debate that point. We can say, oh, he was showing up. Or we can say, no, he was trying to be nice. And so on.

[10:43]

To show the comic effect of me picking that up is rather difficult. Especially, forget about my understanding of it. Yes? But if I throw the shaker across the ring and break the window, it's clear it's a bad comic. And if I clean up the salt that spilled, it's clear that's a good comic. Especially if I do it in order to collect all that salt and bring it together and take it over and give it to people who don't have any salt. And that's what I want to do, and I want to do that to help them. And I want to do that in order to accumulate good karma. And that's good karma, and it's pretty simple. That's good karma. That simple story I just told is. But just picking the salt shaker up and setting it down, rather than you, if you get my word question. Contact me, we should ask him. That's right. If somebody's secret karma. That's right.

[11:46]

Or if I knew about it. Well, I think that if, in fact, I knew that picking up the salt shaker was a signal for someone's chair to be pulled off from underneath them, and that would hurt their seat, then it's pretty clear that it's a bad problem. Okay? But, if I'm just picking it up, and this doesn't... We can't find any consent of a simple thing like that or if we can't prove that something beneficial is going to happen to beings based on this. Beneficial from the point of view of their health and so on. In that case, still we could talk about it and still somebody could say, well, I think, I think he was a little arrogant. Maybe he was trying to gain something for himself by doing this. Somebody else could say something different. We had a talk in Abhidharma class last year about this guy who, it's a story about this guy named Bartleby the Scribner.

[12:55]

You know that song by, that song by . It's about the Scribner. Scribner is a scribe for lawyers in New York. And this guy, You couldn't pin bad karma on this guy. You really couldn't. I mean, it would be hard. But somebody in the class thought maybe that you could, one of the psychologists in our class. Nothing against her. It's their business. But anyway, she thought that actually that what he did by sort of starving to death was, in a sense, to her, she could see aggression. But on the other hand, you could make a good case that he wasn't aggressive, but that he was very passive. and he didn't hurt anybody. So that's the case, pretty clearly, where you can see, and we talked back and forth, I could see your point, but at the same time, he did not, he very carefully, he never broke any of the rules of decorum.

[14:00]

He was always very gentle and quiet. Now, he was rather contentious, and he wouldn't, you know, he wouldn't do certain things, like he wouldn't go to the store with his boss and stuff like that. But strictly speaking, they don't, you know, it's not so clear that he was breaking the quorum that strongly because the way he did it, his boss made the point very clearly, the way he did it was so gentle and so, I don't know, he exuded such diligence in some ways that you really couldn't be angry at him in some ways. I mean, you could be angry at him, but you really couldn't blame the man Does everyone know the story of Basel being scribbled? How many people have read it? Anyway, there's a story about this guy who took a job with his lawyer in New York and

[15:15]

he did a very good job for quite a while and then he stopped he started actually to refuse to do certain things and so on so the boss would come in and say would you please copy this again and he would say I'd prefer not to and he asked him again and again he'd say I'd prefer not to and the other workers in the in the office got very angry at him and he himself got very angry at him but he said the way he said I prefer not to and the way he just sat there and wouldn't do it and the way he stood next to his desk and looked at the wall he somehow he said if anyone else had done it he would have felt justified in throwing him on the street but this man he couldn't do it he was so meek and gentle and miserable that he couldn't do it so This is a case of where I think you can make a case for bad karma, you can maybe make a case for good karma, but it's pretty debatable what he did.

[16:27]

Pretty debatable. And in the end, this man died from starvation. He just stopped eating. He preferred not to live. I'd say, well, that's a gross act, you mean suicide, but The way he did it, you couldn't be sure that he was trying to commit suicide. It's just that he preferred not to eat. And he got so and so weak and so subtle in his existence in this world that it's hard to see that he was taking his life. As a matter of fact, they said he was walking around and 20 minutes later This guy came to visit him in prison where he was allowed to be not in a cell, but allowed to walk around in the courtyard. And everyone in the prison was very nice to him because obviously he was not a violent type or a criminal.

[17:28]

But there was no place for him to live. So he came to see him. And he made sure, he gave money to the people in the prison to make sure that he got food and was taken care of. himself was not interested in it. And this guy came to visit him and they said, he said, where is he? And the guy said, oh, I saw him 20 minutes ago. He was walking down the hall. He went out in the courtyard and there was Bartlett under a tree sort of sitting in a sort of fetal position next to the tree. And he was dead. So if you can imagine him being able to walk, 20 minutes later, he just curled up and died. Is this suicide? Well, it is in a way. But, and it is aggressive in a way too. But in another way, it's debatable. This is a particularly poignant example of where it's hard to tell the karmic effect of it. It looks, you know, it looks kind of bad, but... And there are lesser cases.

[18:29]

There are even more difficult to spot cases where the issue at hand is not a matter of depth, you know, something small like lifting. So I... It's more like that. And neutral also is a good word because it's like neutral when you're shifting gears in a car. You know, when you're in neutral, you can go... Well, it depends on how fast you're going, but if you're in neutral, you theoretically... Actually, cars still, you can't do that, can't you? If you're sitting still, you can go from neutral to any gear in most cars. And if you're moving, then, of course, there's other things in consideration, but basically, you can go from neutral still into almost any gear if you know how to synchronize them in certain ways. So that's the way neutral states are too, is that neutral states provide a kind of transition between heterogeneous states. Because you think neutral states do not have those strong conflicting elements which would not allow you to go from them to another state.

[19:33]

So next is the So we've done eight dhatus are neutral and seven dhatus, the seven consciousnesses, manas and the seven consciousnesses, the seven vijnanas, arrive at the karmic category by the mental states that are associated with them. And then the Dharmadhatu includes, it can include the roots of good, the non-greed, non-hate, non-delusion. It can include the roots of evil and it can also have neutral dharmas.

[20:44]

So it will also vary according to what it includes. Then the Rupa Datu and the Shabda Datu, the visible and the audible, are good or bad when they constitute a physical or vocal act that is issued from a good or bad thought. So in this case, it's talking about the way a person looks or sounds. while the mind and mental states are bad or good. So that's how the Dattus are taught in terms of karma. Any questions? Yes? What? But the Ruba Dattu? Rupa Datu is, you know, is invisible, right?

[21:54]

Okay? And Shabda Datu is audible things, sounds. Okay? They will be good when they constitute a physical or vocal act. So if, in fact, I break a rule, of society by saying certain things, like if I scream louder than I should, then that sound itself, in addition to my mind and mental states that are unwholesome, that sound itself is also categorized with them as unwholesome. And also, if I make a very bad face, or if I take my clothes off and expose myself, that breaks, that shows unwholesome mind and the actual sight that you see itself is then also called unwholesome.

[23:05]

And also, if I get all dressed up and shine my head and look good for your benefit, then The actual sight of that shiny head is good. But you're balding, so it doesn't... Yes? This part of your head is neutral. This part can be good or bad. So if you... No. The way you look goes with your good action. It's the intention, yeah.

[24:14]

but first of all they did it too right they really did it so they're the first first one okay now if i if i believe that someone can do uh bad karma okay then my belief in their ability to do bad karma I retract my statement if I said that itself is bad karma but rather that belief that I have in that they can do bad karma or that they did bad karma is a bondage to me and sets up my life being in context of good and bad karma good bad neutral karma it means it means that My actual seeing of it may be good karma as I see it.

[25:23]

If I sit here in meditation posture and watch somebody steal something, they're stealing. If they are doing the act of stealing and they think they're stealing, they create bad karma. But if I see them and I think they do bad karma, then I'm in the realm of good and bad karma. I would say that what I'm doing is not bad karma, but what I do creates karma. My belief that they do bad karma is a karmic action, which may very well be neutral or even possibly could be good. For example, it could be good if I get my perception of their bad karma, then I talk to somebody else. I say, now that's an example of bad karma. To teach people about good and bad karma, is good karma. Okay? And to teach people about good and bad karma incorrectly is bad karma.

[26:31]

I mean, if you consciously are doing it that way. But to not see karma arise in the first place is liberation from everything. And it's not a to see someone stealing something and not see such a thing. In other words, to not see any more stealing or any more killing in the whole universe, but see everybody doing their job very well and getting along quite well, everywhere, all over. That's not a karmic act. If you don't make something out of this world, you won't see any karma. If you don't create any karma, you won't see any karma. The only way you can see karma is to make karma. If I said that to see someone else steal and to believe that they steal, that itself is bad, karma, I retract it. It could be neutral, good, or bad. It's one of those three.

[27:32]

Because you believe in karma, so you fall in one of those categories. Take your choice. If you see someone steal and say, they're stealing, and you're glad they're stealing, and you're glad that they're going to... get caught and be punished, this could be seen as bad karma. It's a very unbeneficent act. To see when someone's stealing and wish that they wouldn't be so foolish and hope that they learn to behave better, this is good karma. But we don't recommend either, really. But if you're caught in the, if you believe in either one or neither, namely neutral, then we would recommend usually good. But if you believe in it, if you believe in karma, if you believe that someone can kill, then we say don't kill. If you believe that you can do something, then we say do good things. But this belief itself is creation of karma.

[28:35]

When you actually understand how karma works, Ten or three of it. And actually how it works is it works based on delusion in the first place. It's grounded in delusion. Take away delusion, karma falls on its face. Way back there. In the beginning of... The beginning is beginning, it falls on its face. Yes? Well, so far, that's all you've told me. Because you've told him do it. That he may own the store. Or you know he doesn't own the store because he's black.

[29:42]

They own the store. What? You tell yourself, you prove yourself. Tell yourself that they own the store. Yeah. Then they walk out. And that they do this thing, they move the stuff around. He's taking it home to his family. He likes to do it that way. Just to see if his store detectives are on the ball. But of course they know it's him, so they don't really take it seriously. But anyway, yes? What? What was it? yes actually they thought they were stealing you mean there is actually they weren't stealing actually you know actually in Buddhism there is no stealing that's why we say don't steal if there was stealing we wouldn't say not to do it We never tell people not to do something that's happening.

[30:46]

Have you noticed? We don't say, you know, don't be a flower. We don't say that. We say, don't steal. Because you can't. Alright? But if you think you can, then we say don't. And you think we mean don't do what you're doing because you believe you are stealing. So this lady who you say is actually stealing, I would say the most we can say for that is that she thinks she was stealing and maybe somebody agrees with it. So you've got this person on your hands now who thinks they're stealing something from the story. All right? If you went up to them and you said, you're stealing, they'd go, they think, you know, something about that. They think you were either right or wrong. You cannot do that.

[31:51]

You cannot do that. Okay? You cannot do that. So we say, you cannot do that. You should not do that. You cannot do that. You must not do that. You should not do that. You cannot do that. All the same thing. Are you done? Are you satisfied? It sounds like you stood back in the supermarket, I think. And you see this person who you think maybe thinks that they're stealing something. They're going like this. And you really believe that they're not just putting a show on. Okay, so what do you want to know? What are they doing? If they're not stealing something, what is it that they're doing? taking something off the shelf and hiding in their coat, blocking in the door. What are they doing? Well, they're reaching and they're getting this thing and they're thinking, I'm stealing.

[33:03]

They're putting it in a coat and they're thinking, I'm stealing. Okay? Isn't that what they're doing? And they're thinking, I hope I don't get caught stealing. This is what they're doing. And if they do that, they create bad karma for themselves. They get headaches and cancer and hit on the head, right? That's what happens to people who steal. Have you noticed? To people who steal? To people who steal, that's what happens. What did I just say? That's what happens to people who steal. Yeah. Well, what the Bodhisattva does is they try to show them that they can't steal.

[34:11]

If possible, that takes great skill and means, but that's what you try to show them. Try to show them that stealing is an illusion. You try to interact with them in such a way that they see that You don't believe it. And then they're relieved from believing it. And if they stop believing in it, it stops being stealing. If you really do not believe you're stealing, you can go into the supermarket and take things off the shelf. Have you noticed? You do it all the time. But when you think you're stealing, you think you're stealing. And when you don't think you're stealing, you're not. Have you noticed? You take your little cart, push it down the way, Take the stuff off and put it in the thing and you walk up to the place and you pay the money. And you don't feel like you're stealing. When does the stealing start? That's right. As a matter of fact, you can put it in your pocket and go up to the counter and take it out of your pocket and pay for it.

[35:12]

And the person at the counter may say, Why did you put that in your pocket first? You know? You say, well, it's a pen, you know, and that's why I usually keep my pens. So I just put it in there so I wouldn't forget where to put it. And now I'm paying for it. Or you can go into the store and you can eat a candy bar. And when you get to the counter, you can say, I'd like to pay for the candy bar I just ate. I ate a candy bar. And they say, well, you're not supposed to eat the candy bars before you leave the store. But some stores, they say, oh, OK, thanks. And they thought, they think. They ate the candy bar. I didn't know they ate the candy bar. Now they're paying for the candy bar. Isn't that interesting? In that case, you might be quite helpful to that person. You can also go into stores and you can put on the clothes in the store and you can walk out of the store with the new clothes on. And if you think you're stealing, you can do that. But you can also put the clothes on, walk out of the store and pay. And they say they don't mind sometimes that you put on the new clothes.

[36:15]

They don't mind. Some stores they do mind. Maybe some stores they do mind. Anyway, what we mean by stealing, when we say stealing, what we mean is that a person does something and thinks something. This is the complex of stealing. But also we mean stealing that we even mean stealing if, in fact, I go into this store, which I didn't know my uncle owned, okay, and I take something from the store and I think I'm stealing. And my uncle sees me walk out of the store, but he says, this is my nephew. He cannot steal from me. He thinks he's stealing, but I don't count stealing. I'm not going to call the police. Everything in the store belonged to him before he went in the store anyway. But if the boy thinks he's stealing, then he thinks he's stealing, and this is what stealing is like.

[37:17]

Stealing is fundamentally based on delusion. There is no actual act. that is stealing, aside from delusion that you think it's possible, to take what is not given. You cannot take something before you have it. And after you've got it, you can't take it. This is the facts of the world. But, I can think I stole this shirt. You know, the week that he was up in Washington, his uncle actually sold the store. So he walks in taking his stool with Uncle Saris, and he walks out with all these things. He sees him and says, hey, that guy's stealing. I don't think he's stealing. I think the new owner maybe thinks he's stealing, but I don't think he's stealing.

[38:18]

He's just going to pick up his stuff from his uncle's store. Now, he may not be all that hot a Buddha to not know that his uncle stole his store. He should know that. Not necessarily. I mean, how do you make it up? You think there's stealing and not stealing. That's one way it rises. You think that there's possession and not possession. You think there's you and others. You think you can get more than you actually get, or less than you actually get. These are various dualistic conceptions which we can create. Our mind is very fertile. Imagination machine. I could spend the rest of my life thinking of dualisms that would create the idea of stealing. But they're all just dualistic concepts. If I believe in my dualistic concepts, I can steal, I can kill, I can do all this stuff.

[39:21]

That's why we say, don't do that stuff, because you're acting out a delusion that doesn't really happen in the first place. So if I see someone do those things and I believe they do them, it's not necessarily bad karma just for me to see it and categorize it that way. As a matter of fact, if I just see it and categorize it, it's good karma because it's a good mental exercise. And if I teach someone else that so that they'll know the rules of the world, And they'll learn that. It's also good karma. However, this good karma still enchains me to the world of karma. And it's just a matter of time until I slip into bad karma. But it's not good or bad karma. That's the point. But good karma, if you're going to believe in karma, we say good karma is better than bad karma. It's a little bit better. But in the end, you have to drop such ideas.

[40:23]

Otherwise, you'd be chained in that realm. Is your thing okay now? Everything in Abhidharma and Mahayana Buddhism, everything depends on intention. Your attitude is the primary thing. if your attitude is completely always to do good, to do a good that's beyond good and bad, then you'll follow the precepts perfectly. But it wouldn't be because you were not doing something that you thought you could do. It'd be that you always remembered that this is impossible. And if you were about to steal something, you'd know it was a delusion and you would stop yourself from entertaining and believing in that dualism. You kept that like that. see through it and you never act that way. Because you know it's just a phantom.

[41:29]

And you're told, you've told yourself and you committed yourself not to indulge in such phantoms. And even if they do go by, but you don't get caught by them, you just go . So in fact, you never steal, you never kill, you never do any of that stuff. But it's not that you can't see that such a phantom occurred. You can see the person steeply going out of the store with this stuff. And this person next to you can see them. But you don't believe it. They do. So we have one person who believes they're doing it. They're creating bad karma. You have another person who's observing that the other person's doing it and believing it. They're creating good karma or neutral karma. And you see them doing it. And you see this person doing it. And you see how karma works. And that's it. You see it's all based on an erroneous idea that things come up in the first place. And nothing happens to you. You don't do anything. Just the body-mind functions, that's all.

[42:32]

And everything's going quite smoothly. Cooking along. People are going out of the stores with the stuff. Some people are watching them. Other people are watching the whole show. Everything's being managed very nicely. The store has a very good manager. This is an expansion on Abhya Dharma. Abhya Dharma does not disagree with this, but they just don't draw it out quite so far.

[43:10]

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