Chapter 3, unless someone has questions on to bring up about Chapter 2. Yes? In the second chart, they were different. So you want to study what the different kinds of anivita vyakuta are? So it says on page 207, or after Karka, B72, actually it says, Karka says, the 12 minds make 20 by dividing the good mind of the three spheres into two,

[02:00]

acquired in the innate and by dividing undefiled neutral anivritta avyakuta mind of kamadhatu into four. That of retribution, of attitude, of application and of creation. And the undefiled neutral mind of the rupadhatu into three. accepting the anavirtya avyakrita of application. The kushula of each of the three spheres is divided into two categories, acquired by effort and acquired at birth. One then has six types of kushala corresponding to three types of the first list.

[03:15]

So we have a good karma that's acquired by effort and good karma that's acquired by birth. ... What? Why do you ask just for the rupadatu? How about kamadatu? I don't teach any whole symphony of kamadatu. Well, anyway, what it seems to say here, I don't quite understand why you're asking a partial question, but let me just say that in each sphere, there's two ways to be involved in good karma.

[04:24]

One is through effort, and the other is through birth. All right? So you have some problem with it in some realms, understanding how it would be acquired by birth? It says acquired at birth. So is it property? Is what property? Is the mind property? Well, what do you think? Uh-huh.

[05:33]

But in the other case, it says acquired, too. But think about what you just said, you know, in terms of Abhidhamic... terminology and what did you just kind of question what did you just ask you asked is the mind property and you can answer that question just in terms of your understanding of dharmas and consciousness can't you what why not because dharmas are property yes And propti is not a consciousness. Matter of fact, it's not even associated with consciousness. But even if it were, one dharma does not make a whole good state of consciousness. A good state of consciousness is consciousness plus a bunch of good dharmas.

[06:35]

Now, propti is good when it acquires good dharmas. So you wouldn't say... We don't speak that way, actually. It's not that it's right or wrong. It's just sort of not the usage of Abhidharma to say that, that the mind is prompted. A good mind is always... The dharmas of a good mind are prompted or they're acquired. So that would be the case in both cases. But the difference is between effort and... In one case, it seems to come at birth. In the other case, it seems to be due to effort. So what's the difference? The effortful one is easy to see, I think.

[07:40]

You just picture a state where... where there's this effort, where there's diligence and concentration and mindfulness and faith and things like that. Self-respect, decorousness. These actions are these dharmic thrusts which accumulate into this total action which is going towards that which the mind considers to be beneficial. The mind is on a beneficial bent. Okay? So that's easy to see out of effort. What is meant by this being born? I mean, acquiring a good state of mind that's acquired at birth. All of them are good.

[08:57]

All of them are... They're always in a good state of mind, but they can also be in a bad state of mind. They're really not good or bad. and themselves. Are you familiar with that? They're just in all states. It doesn't really, it just changes it. Just keep going, maybe you'll find it. Okay. Once you're born, you obtain a body, and then, if so, There are several dharmas that... By the way, this birth... Okay, go ahead. Yes? So, along with that body, there are certain dharmas that should rise from that plant at the very least. So you have good birth because you have a body.

[10:06]

There are also bad things because you have a body. What are the good things you have because you have a body? Now you're going back to that same list of ten. Well, they're not going to... think you have to get over into that second list of ten. Look at the second list of ten, faith and diligence and energy, these kind of things. How do those come by birth? At birth, how can you see those?

[11:11]

If you're And so from being, being very busy, it's a pretty much hard work, but into good and the most effort is going to try to get barriers. I've been able to change it with tendencies, Well, you brought up several things at once, but it sounds like one of the things you're saying is that maybe this means that a moment arises and is good effortlessly because of previous good, good at good, you're skillful at good. At that moment when it arises, it doesn't feel like there's any big effort. That's the possibility you're bringing up.

[12:23]

Okay? Yes? But this is a They're not talking about this. This is by Bhashaka. Okay? So they're not thinking, they're not going to say a beej is doing this, but how would they say it? So you're getting close to it. There was a property in the previous existence. There was a future property in the previous existence, which is now manifested, just comes at birth. That's how they could explain such a thing. And apparently they're saying that's possible. And that's somewhat like what you're saying. In a previous existence, you're doing, maybe making an effort to, in the present, you're manifest, you're bringing in these, you're presently manifesting good dharmas.

[13:26]

And you're also, by that effort, projecting, you're producing future, the future properties of good dharmas. So you're producing present good dharmas That is, you have the present property of good dharmas and also the future property of good dharmas. At that moment, there's effort. So then, because of that way of talk, because of that way of thinking and that way of thinking, which are just reinforcements of this mechanism, it would be possible then to come into a state of consciousness and do good at See, it's not exactly an inheritance, though, you see. It's not, because if you just come in and inherit it, then it's not really good karma. We're distinguishing, then, between some effort to do good and some realization of good, an effortless realization plus an effortful realization.

[14:37]

Or realization of effort, realization of realization. And this is something that can actually happen. that there is this fact of our existence that we can make an effort, and that effort is good, and later we can make that effort, and it's still good, but it's not effort anymore. It seems to be innate now, because it's been manifested already. It is manifest, therefore it's innate. Or it is realized, therefore it's innate. Or as the moment comes up, it's effortless. And this is a recognized phenomenon. I don't know if you've recognized it, but it's recognized in Buddhist texts. That many practices have two phases, the effortful stage or the cultivation stage and the realization stage. And the cultivation stage is a sense of working uphill, pushing yourself to make the effort.

[15:40]

And in the realization stage, it's effortless. what was before effortful and what was before kind of often, if it's a good thing, a kind of control or kind of directing your attention in a certain way. Now it's an effortless thing. And then right after the effortless phase, it often becomes a burden because you're doing it and it's effortless. And yet you're still doing it. And one wishes then to stop doing that and to go on to something else that's effortful. And then you make more effort, and then that gets to be effortless. And then again, that gets to be heavy because you want to play. And so you make some more effort. But hopefully you're getting more and more subtle. So finally, you go on to this effortless effort. And then when effortless effort is realized, it's effortlessly done.

[16:52]

And there's nowhere to go. You've just completely got strung out. And you have no way to discriminate anymore, separate yourself from regular effort. So I think that it's one way of my understanding these two kinds of good karma, that it's not like you just inherit good stuff. That's the retribution. But you're thinking of it in a state where you're actually doing some good stuff, but where it's effortless. Yes? me to mind the, um, when you have to say something you want to say, yes, how was the difference between this crucial?

[18:01]

I don't know. We, we, we, we, Well, you want to talk about the difference between effortful good and effortless good? Well, they're actually sort of different. In one case, you feel like you've recently got it together. In one case, you feel like You just finished cleaning your house. Recently, it's been a big mess. It was a mess a few minutes ago, and now you've just finished cleaning it up. Or it's still a mess, and you're cleaning it. So one has a sense of these two kinds of senses.

[19:06]

Either you just finished getting it together, or... or just about to finish getting it together, or you're in the process of cleaning up, you're distracted and confused and lazy, but you're kind of, you know, getting a little bit less distracted and getting a little less lazy and get a little bit more clear. And this is the kind of good way you feel like you still have a lot more work to do and a lot more good work to do. The other one would be, the house is already clean. And you just keep walking around a clean house. And the arrow said, it's clean. It's clean. It's clean. It's all. So what? It's nice, but not much for me to do here. And it's been clean for quite a while and probably continue to be clean. It's effortless, though.

[20:07]

But at a certain point, it gets to be, you know, kind of a burden to walk around a clean house. It gets kind of heavy. And what's the point? Kind of get tired of it. Now, the path would be more like, let's say, talking about the Arhat path, the Vibhoshika Arhat path, Now the house is pretty clean and you're walking around and you may still get a little bit bored walking around the clean house and say, well maybe if I look around I might find that actually although it's clean, it's clean at a certain stage of clean. I could change my definitions now and all of a sudden it would be dirty or it would be dirty in a new way. I could notice, for example, that although the house is clean, well, the yard is dirty.

[21:13]

Or it's clean, but it doesn't smell good. So you can start, although you previously had one definition of clean, now your definition of clean is not just to the touch, but also does any odor come off it that's not good. So you might start thinking of ways to clean all things off that, or maybe put things on that or whatever anyway, a new definition of your work, and then you have another job to do, which you do. Now, that is not necessarily the path, but I'm just saying even if you did think that, that would be all right too. But as you do it, you may realize that what you're doing basically is just something to do. That's all. And given what your definitions of what you're supposed to be doing are, or what your next activity would be doing, that's what makes your next activity.

[22:19]

The definitions and the causes and conditions that come together to make this thing be defined by this rather than that. Namely, this is clean now, but if I change my definitions, it's dirty. And then if I do this, then it'll be clean. These are certain rules by which I notice my activity will be good. That kind of practice is more like what we call Buddhism or Buddhist insight practice. Namely, although you seem to be doing something to do something or even something we'd say to improve or to get to a more a refined level of concern, a level that's beyond something more than or takes it more into account or is based on the previous level. You couldn't have maybe done this other level until you cleaned up.

[23:19]

You couldn't have worked on the smells until you had the room pretty clean because all you have is all this junk. There's too many smells already to even begin to work on the smells. You have to clean at one level to get on to the next level. So you're maybe playing around with levels or progress or something, but you're very aware of where the idea of progress and levels comes from. And you're very aware of how it is that you, by definition or by these causal categories and ways of thinking, you're aware that the progress or the lack of progress is dependent on these things. And you have some sense of it. is just a game of manipulating causes and effects to produce certain effects, or not to produce certain effects, namely to produce other effects, because these causes aren't there, but their opposites are. Or these causes do not exist, but the non-existence of them does exist.

[24:23]

And if you think the non-existence of them exists, then you get this. If you think the existence of them exists, then you get that. And this is the way the world works. And you don't particularly care so much that these causes exist, and therefore you get that, and these causes don't exist, therefore you get a different result. You're not so much interested in that it goes one way than the other, but rather you notice that if you do this, that causes that, and that's primarily what you're interested in, understanding how things go, or why they go a certain way, rather than that they should go a certain way. But you also know that if you don't take care of things in a certain way, namely in a good way, You also notice that although if I don't, you know, if I don't take care of things and it's all big mess, it's just the only reason why there's a mess here is because I did this and because I called it a mess. I call this a mess, therefore I have a mess.

[25:24]

Or I have an idea of mess and then I do this, therefore I have a mess. But I could also say this is neat and clean and this is lovely and some people might think so. And then, because I think that way, and I have those definitions, this is how I make loveliness, and this is how I make something less interesting, by going like this. And because I do that, I get this result. But, if I don't keep track of this stuff, somehow I may get caught up in my own activity, and pretty soon I may not be able to see By doing this, I get that, and that's all there is to it. And by doing something else, I get something else. That's all there is to it. If I do this something else, and that's all there is to it, and it just happens to be very complex, and it happens to have signs on it like messy, pain, hate, starving, illness, and so on, then I may start saying, ooh,

[26:31]

And I may forget that actually this is just due to causes and conditions and I really don't care which way it goes. Maybe the sign is, you should care. Hey, Bob, you're in trouble. Hey, this is hell. You may hear this sound and you may say, you may lose confidence. And when you lose confidence, that's in fact one of the aspects of what we call bad karma. Now, without confidence, it's difficult to have confidence. Without confidence, it's pretty difficult to say, hey, this is because of that, that's all, and that's because of that. And this is that way, that's that way, and that's that way. That's confidence. Without confidence, which is a good dharma, it's hard to say those kinds of things. So somehow, although the Buddhist meditator They don't really care that this is that big. They'd be that way.

[27:33]

Not just that way. Not just that way. So what? There's no... There's just nothing. That's just fine. This cause... This is a cause that makes things this way. See all these causes that do that? Light, time, space. Just causes. But if I don't have any confidence, then I sort of... I don't... I can't say it. Then I somehow... Everything starts shaking. And that's causes too, you know? But I can't somehow... So, in a way, on one hand, the insight meditator, the meditator with wisdom, is completely detached from which way things are going, and yet, if things go a certain way, it's pretty harsher than to be detached. Eventually, we want to be able to do that. Bodhisattvas should be able to go in a situation where you can't even find any faith. It looks like there's no faith even. And even in that situation, they could say, it looks like there's no faith. And with no faith, how can I say that even that it looks like there's no faith?

[28:40]

I could have said, well, I'm not even sure if there is faith or not. Eventually, though, they can sort of live on that kind of life. But for the Arhat, it's a little easier. First, you clean up the house. You say, now the house is cleaned up. You say, now the house smells good. Now the house is beautiful. Now the house has nice paintings on the wall and so on. Now the house feels good. Now the house tastes good. Just getting better and better, this house is really great. And this kind of situation, when I have a house that I cleaned and smelled up good and I tasted it good and I made it feel good and made it sound good, It's coming out good in all these senses, plus it really has a good idea in it, too. It's got a good concept. A house like that, it's pretty easy to say, this house is just that way. It's this way, [...] this way. And once you have that, you can make those kind of statements. You can start to see how things go. That's very easy for you then to say, these things are happening because of this.

[29:45]

Then you can get into the causes and effects very well. And when you get into the causes and effects very well, then you're quite detached. You say, I could do... these five things in the house would be the opposite and then maybe if you made it the opposite you wouldn't be caught by it but then again you might be because our hearts can fall backwards they can slip so uh but buddhas won't slip because they also know what it looks like from the other side turn it inside out they say yeah right so at some point in the past in the big path to Buddhahood, you can switch around all the levers and stuff and the meditator won't be lost. But at another level, this escalation through good seems to be helped them somehow. It provides good opportunities for them to do what's really liberating. So good situations are, they make it easy for us to develop insight which will then free us from good and bad.

[30:52]

And bad situations make it hard to get the idea of how good situations and bad situations are just due to causes and conditions. And neither one of them are that hot. They're both bondage. So you see the difference between energetic or effortful good and effortless good and path. The difference between effortful and effortless is a worldly difference. And the path, although it doesn't care which way it's going, somehow it's hard to catch on to it and hard to maintain it without good. So the path is, a good share of the path is inextricably bound up in the good, the good side of things. People on the path are humble and they don't mind needing to be good. Well, they don't need to be good anymore. It's not so much that they're arrogant. but rather they just don't need to.

[31:55]

But theoretically, we don't need to be good to practice Buddhism. But in actual fact, we do need to be good to practice. For a good share of the practice, you need to be good in the worldly sense of good, in the karmic sense of good. And when you're so good at meditation that you don't even need to be good in the worldly sense anymore, well, of course, that's That's beyond good. And that's what we call absolute good. And this is the Bodhisattva's path. But for the Arhat's path, the Arhat is pretty much stuck in good. Even though they know they don't need to be. They can't get out of it. Yes? I have a question. What?

[32:59]

Usually? Usually, yeah. You mean 50% of the time? 51% of the time? Well, if killing somebody was good for everybody, then it would be good, including the person that was killed. That were your standards. And, you know, once again, what does killing depend on? Depends on a bunch of definitions. All things perish, so what would killing mean? You know, would it be put on a little concept? called, I killed them, rather than they killed themselves, or put on a little hat saying, for now we're going to say that there's such a thing as one cause, okay, and namely me.

[34:02]

Usually there's not one cause, but we'll pretend like there is not. So I, anyway, the bodhisattva doing something that's, it's being beyond worldly karmic good. That's what it is. But it doesn't, there's no violation of good. They don't deny the good of the world when they do these things that aren't caught by good. They somehow do it without interfering with the laws. And yet they're not trapped in good. They're not trapped in it and yet they don't violate it. So you can say mostly bodhisattvas are doing good, but it's more like they do good And when they get really skilled at doing good, then they can do better. And what better means is that they're not any longer caught by good. And there's only one way to not be caught by good, and that's to really not be caught by good.

[35:08]

Namely, you don't have to be stuck in concepts of good and bad. And what happens then is, who knows what will happen? You can say, well, are they bad? Well, they're not caught in the concept of bad either. Somehow they're free of good and bad. So they move into a space where you can't no longer specify. Before you could say, they're good. They're good in the worldly sense of good. And you can pin, you can stick a pin right in there, put them right in that little section of worldly good or karmic good. And they're doing that and they're progressing and helping people at some level and being harmless and doing that. At another level, you won't be able to say they're good anymore. Sometimes, sometimes you can, but sometimes you won't be able to, you won't be sure. And they themselves won't be sure either because they're not any longer operating in cause and effect. They're not, you know, by doing everything in realms of cause and effect and seeing the causes and effects in everything, they're no longer operating at that level.

[36:14]

Okay? When you see how things are working in that level, you're not stuck in that level anymore. So you can't really say that they all of a sudden start doing bad things. If they're beyond good, they're also beyond bad. So they won't all of a sudden flip out from being good and go right over into the pit of doing bad things. You won't be able to pin that on them. You can't pin anything on them anymore. Yes? It looks different, yeah. Yeah, it looks different because you won't be so able to... you won't be so able to say that they're good anymore. They will be less noticeable. Now, to say they'll be less noticeable means that they won't even have the characteristic that they're always less noticeable. Sometimes you'll say they're good. If they're always not good, then you could spot them too. Then you could tell they're really the best ones because they wouldn't have either characteristic.

[37:20]

But they can sometimes flip into good and sometimes flip into bad. But that's from the point of view of the viewer. And I say, well, if they're sometimes bad, then they look different from before when they always looked good. But, once again, from whose view do they look bad? You say from the outside, okay? From one side, one place on the outside, they might look bad. But if you look at it from all the points of view from the outside, you won't come up with that they're bad. Whereas before, If you look from all the points of view outside, you either see if they were free from good or that they were good. You would never see that they were bad. No one would see that they're bad. But now, from some points of view, they might be bad. But from all points of view, they're neither good nor bad, from the totality of what they are. So is there a difference?

[38:23]

there's a little bit less, there's a difference. The difference is somehow you can't be so sure of them anymore. They're less predictable than when they free themselves from the good, bad. But once again, you wouldn't know that because unless you take the total view, you wouldn't necessarily notice the difference. Because you're always looking, not you always, but some people are always looking from one point of view. So for them, there might be a change. Because before they couldn't see any difference, and now they can. Before they couldn't see any bad, and now they think they can. So before the person didn't smoke cigars, but now the person does. And some people have started to smoke again recently, I noticed. Yes? That's right. But he said it on the outside, right? looking from the outside.

[39:25]

From the inside, also you don't see any difference. There's no difference between, you're doing good all the time, you know, and at a certain point, you become free of good. But if free of good depends on seeing a difference, then that's not what we call being free of good. Okay, is that clear? So if you're doing good and you know the basis on which you're doing good and you become free of that, it doesn't mean that now you're doing something which is different from what you used to think of being good because that's bad. Do you see? That's just bad. The stuff that's outside of what you thought was good before is still bad by definition. So it isn't that you start flipping over to the things that you thought were bad before but now you don't think they're bad anymore. They still are. And yet you're free of the good bag. So there really is no difference. Because you don't switch over into the bad.

[40:26]

And you're not stuck in the bag of good. What could be the difference? That's the level at which... But that's the level that freedom exists on. Freedom exists in a level that's actually free rather than just saying you're free. Saying you're free by going over to the bad isn't what we mean by being free of good. It's actually free of it. Namely, it's actually not caught in being the opposite of good. You don't have to do that to be free. In other words, you don't have to do anything to be free. In other words, you can continue to be good. This is the bodhisattva's position. I'm continuing to be good, and the process of continuing to be good, the good I'm doing now is a different kind of good, which I don't notice the difference, but it is. It's better. Why is it better? Because it's not stuck in good anymore. In other words, you're doing good and you're not doing good by controlling yourself, by keeping yourself in some dualistic bag called good.

[41:28]

You're doing a good which is even better than the other good, but there's no way to discriminate between it and the other one. From the outside, though, people might say, hey, you start smoking. And from some points of view, people might see that's bad, but a lot of zillions of other points of view where they say, yeah, but did you see what kind of smoke you produced? That smoke was actually not smoke. It just looked like smoke when you look that through your smoke detectors. Take your smoke detectors off and you find out that that's golden ambrosia. Which is a lot of beings in all the other nine million directions, that's what that looks like to them. But from the point of view of the karmic maker, you weren't doing good and switched over bad. It just actually somehow things got better and yet it wasn't that they got different. And it wasn't that by becoming free, you took something off, because if you had to take it off to be free, then that's not real freedom.

[42:28]

So you know freedom, and yet it doesn't depend on having to take some particular thing off. With the same stuff happening to you, and more or less, there's a difference. That's actual freedom. Well, that's the higher quality freedom. There's one kind of freedom where you take something off and put it aside. That's the kind of freedom. But that kind of freedom, of course, if you put the thing back on, you're stuck again. There's another kind of freedom where you can be free with the thing still on. You can be free with the thing because you realize, somehow, you learn how to do this thing called having it on and knowing that having it on cannot exist without not having it on. You can do that very well all the time. You become skillful at not doing things dualistically. So therefore you don't have to do the opposite of something to be free of it. Because nothing ever exists without its opposite to you. So you no longer have a good that exists without bad.

[43:31]

And yet it isn't that you have to switch over to bad to have this kind of good. And somehow bodhisattvas get into this stuff. And one way they get into it is by thinking that way and talking that way. And when we get into thinking and talking that way is, for example, one of the ways is to read Pajna Pramita Sutras. And you start thinking and talking that way because you start reading that stuff and saying it out loud. Another way to do it is to act that way, which is what we call sitting Zazen. So there you do sit, you know, all crossed up there and sitting still and with your problems. and yet you know that this is absolute freedom. So you practice realizing it by sitting there. Obviously, you're not getting away from your problems by doing that, and yet you know it's freedom.

[44:34]

So you practice having freedom without getting away from something, and you get better and better at it. Pretty soon, there you are, completely free, without having had to get rid of any pain or any legs or any backs. any zafus, or any time periods, or bells, or sticks, everything's still there, and yet there seems to be a difference. You know, in other words, you're more sure of it, you have more confidence, but that confidence does not depend on anything. It isn't that your tension went away, or got worse, or It isn't that you gained weight or lost weight. It doesn't depend on anything, and yet you know more. It happens somehow. So, in one sense, there seems to be these Buddhas, and there seems to be these sentient beings. But that depends, that discrimination will depend on having a self. When you have a self, then you can have those two kinds of things.

[45:38]

But without self, there really isn't such things as a Buddha and a sentient being. So there is and there isn't. And bodhisattvas live in that world where they don't take either the is or the isn't. They exist in between there. But they start on one side. You start on the side of good. And when you start on the side of good, you have these layers of effort, effort, realization, effort, realization, effort, realization, effort, realization. And you can learn during the effort stage. You can learn during the realization stage. You can learn during the stage where the realization gets to be a drag and you go on to the next effort and so on. All these stages provide good situations to discern what's going on, and as your discernment gets more and more precise, somehow, somewhere, you become more and more free, more and more confident, I should say, of your freedom, which was there all the way through.

[46:38]

The longer you go, the farther back you can see that. Until finally you can see that when you were a naughty little kid and very selfish, it was there even. So the farther forward you go, the farther back it goes. So the longer the bodhisattva practices, then all the time before them also becomes liberated, forwards and backwards, and also sideways, and just keeps spreading out. So that's number one here. Then there's the undefiled neutral nakamadhatu is of four categories. Arisen from retributive cause, okay? And that is our old friend, which we call destinies, right? And then Janet asks, is there any other kind of undefiled neutral than destinies?

[47:44]

Relative to attitudes, walking, standing, sitting, lying down. Is that right, laying? Should be lying, shouldn't it? It would also, by the way, be lying. It would also be right. Relative to the... Relative to the arts... and relative to magical creations, the mind by which the professor of supernatural power creates visible things, et cetera, and which one calls the result of Abidya. Okay, so it's saying, so now you were saying, your question was, did you say, is all neutral destiny? Is that what you were asking at that time?

[48:47]

Oh, we said destiny is undefiled neutral. We know that. Abhijamakoshi says that. Because you couldn't have undefiled neutral. You could have to follow in the... ... [...] I think we're talking somewhere around the area where we saw that you could go from rupadhatu, the effortful part of rupadhatu, where you're doing the jhana, you can go from there to the undefiled neutral, which is like you're projecting yourself from the jhana practice into the heaven.

[50:14]

But you can't go from the common data into the common data to good. You can't go from there into the destiny. It was somewhere around that discussion. It made it sound like the only way to get an undefiled neutral is born... through retribution. So in that case, maybe that's true, that the only way to get into that state of undefiled neutral from kama dattu, you can't get in there any other way than to go up into rupa dattu and then over. But it looks like there's other ways in the rupa dattu to get into undefiled neutral. Okay? And there's other ways in the kamadatu to get into undefiled neutral.

[51:19]

Would two and three here refer only to the kamadatu? Or at two? You wouldn't be doing those in the rupa or our lupa? That's the one that's missing. That's the one that's missing, right? But the professions aren't, but there's professions in the rupa-daptu. Oh, no, it's the other way around. The attitudes are present, but the applications aren't, right? You have attitude. No, we don't have arms and legs in the rupadhatu. Well, let's first do kamadatu and see how this goes.

[52:34]

So we're suggesting then that you're just in the kamadatu by retribution, human retribution. Namely, because you thought the kamadatu seemed to be a neat, you thought the kamadatu had a neat place, and therefore you're in the kamadatu now. and you think it's a neat place. You have some desire for the stuff you see because you thought that it was a desirable place to be. So there you are. This is retribution. But the way you desire it now is not the way you desired it then. Because now it's not that you desire it. You're not actively desiring it. You just started there in the kind of stuff that you actively desired before.

[53:35]

And you may desire again soon. Is that clear? So you choose birth in the kamadatu because you actively think that that kind of stuff is attractive. That's what it means, that's what kamadatu is. That these types of materials this types of conglomerations of forms, you attract it to them. You attract yourself to them. That's how you take birth. That kind of cause then projects a different result, a non-active karmic state which is not defiled, which is just being in the midst of the stuff which you previously thought was attractive. but in a sense that we can't say is defiled or even foresee any, we can't see any karmic direction in it clearly, and yet we, you know, so we can't impugn any defilement to the state of consciousness.

[54:49]

They're just the facts, man. That's all. Here I am with this stuff. And that's what's called the destiny in the Kamadatu. And then there is desiring the things in the kamadatu, and that's called what? That's called akushala. And also disliking the things is also called akushala. And then there is doing certain karmic acts which are neither desiring things of the kamadhatu, which are not desiring things of the kamadhatu. For example, they might be desiring things of the rupadhatu, which is called... What do you call that?

[55:52]

It's kushala. And so, as a matter of fact, we call it what? More specifically, what is that activity called? It's called rupajhana meditations, except it's not yet culminated. We're talking about in the incipient stages. Anyway, incipient to final stages. You desire the rupadhatu. When you're in the kamadhatu, the desire of the rupadhatu produces what you would call good results in the kamadhatu. From the point of view of the kamadhatu, the rupadhatu is better. If you like the kamadhatu, you'll love the rupadhatu. However, the only way to experience the rupadhatu, which you will love, is to love the rupadhatu.

[56:55]

That's the catch. You won't even know anything about the rupadhatu until you start to appreciate it a little bit. Some people are so caught up in the kamadhatu, that they don't have time to look for something better. That being caught up in the kamadhatu is called akushila. If you start to say, if you start to notice as you're caught up in the kamadhatu, you know, as you're grabbing for books that, hey, this is kind of a nice color here. You're starting to turn towards good karma. And if you still step there and go like this, and just keep looking at this, the karma gets better. This is better. It's better. Maybe don't you think it's better? In fact, don't you think a person is a little more lovely when you see them in the bookstore and they're just sort of looking at the cover and you see them appreciating getting off on the blue rather than... More books. More books. I don't have enough money.

[57:56]

Oh, no. Where's my checkbook? No, they just... They don't need to take the book home. They're just taking... Excuse me, we're closing. Oh. Put the book down. You walk on the street and you can then get off on the sidewalk. In other words, you're a yogi who's doing meditations on, you're sending, you're projecting yourself through the good karma, the kamadhatu, towards the rupadhatu. It's higher quality existence. From the view of the kamadhatu, people who look best in terms of worldly activity or who look better anyway, in terms of worldly activity are people who are looking at the kamadhatu, the rupadhatu. They look better. They're not so hysterical because they're not so moved about by superficial things. They're looking at more basic stuff. They're looking at the color behind the book, for example. So that's called good karma in the kamadhatu, is to look at the rupa side of the kamadhatu.

[59:01]

But you don't yet attain it. You're still working on it. Yes? It's desiring still. Well, if you go to the rupadattu, okay, then as a result of the rupadattu, you go to the heaven there, which is undefiled neutral in itself. And if then, as the heaven starts to deteriorate, by virtue of its old age and death, and you give rise to attachment to that, to the heaven of that stage, that attachment will project you very likely into a hell. But strictly speaking, what we call the deterioration of that heaven is that the heaven isn't there, namely you are aware. Where are you then?

[60:08]

When Rupadhatu Heavens deteriorate. What's that? You only have three choices and one's already out. You're in Rupadhatu, resultant, you know, Rupadhatu destiny, and this destiny is deteriorating, coming to end. Where are you going to go? Kamadhatu. Kamadhatu, okay? So now you're in Kamadhatu. and you bemoan the fact that you're not in the rupadattu anymore. Then you can degenerate in the kamadattu to even a lower destiny. So you actually go in the intermediate state of the rupadattu and you go back down to the kamadattu and in the kamadattu you chop away at your experience and you get fed up with that one and that escalates until you can't stand your hatred of the kamadattu that you're in. Project yourself into the... Because you want to get out of there, you die of that state.

[61:11]

You go into the intermediate realm. Because you're so angry, you choose hell. Hell looks good. That's how you go down to hell. Now, if you do something really bad up in the Rukidatu, you can go directly to hell without stopping at an intermediate state of, you know, messing with higher levels, human levels, in the Kamidatu. You can go right to hell level in Kamidatu. And sometimes you can go directly, that's how you can go directly from rupadattu. You can kill somebody in the rupadattu. You can go direct, kill something, give rise to murderous thoughts in the rupadattu. I don't know if you can do that, actually. You can murder in the rupadattu. Anyway. So that's how you can go down into hell. Now I said desire the rupadattu, but what I mean by desire is not, it's actually that you... you are really interested in it, you want that, and you don't want the kamadhatu. In order to be interested in the rupadhatu and the kamadhatu, when you're in the kamadhatu, in order to be interested in the rupadhatu, you have to sort of dislike the kamadhatu, okay?

[62:18]

In order to tune into colors, you have to dislike combinations of colors, which make shapes. or that's the satranteca position. Vibasica position is you have to light colors over shapes. And the only way to get at colors is through shapes to start out with. So you actually start with a shape to get to a color. You make a round disc and then you get this shape. And then you tune into the color aspect and you keep all these other things in the common doctor, these shapes, you know, trees and people walking by and you put that stuff down And you keep liking or choosing the color. By doing that, by your interest in the color, which I would call desiring the color, you project yourself into that existence. So maybe desire isn't such a good word because you're not really desiring it in the sense that you're desiring something because you've already got it.

[63:30]

But in a sense, you're attaching to it. You're sticking to it. So in a sense, that compulsion to stick to the color will project you out of this realm which is built of composite colors and composite smell and composite taste and composite touch. And you project yourself. That's called good karma to do that. Because when you're doing that, you won't break any of the precepts. Precepts are based on fooling around with composite things. Composite teeth. Composite mouths, ears, eyes, hands, doorknobs, and so on. Clothes, food, all these composite things. That's the means by which you do bad karma in the kamadatu. So you start turning away from the means by which you do bad karma, and that turning away is called good karma.

[64:35]

And it's good in the kamadhatu because, as a matter of fact, just spending a little time doing that even before you attain the trance gives you good results in the kamadhatu. If you just sit there and look at colors, concentrate on colors, for a lot of people in the kamadhatu, they have unfortunate circumstances. If they could just spend five minutes a day looking at something blue for five minutes a day or whatever it is, X amount of time, If they could look at something blue and keep their mind in that blue thing, this would have good results for their life. And it would be quite noticeable. In some people's lives it would be quite noticeable. Because some people spend almost no time celebrating their concentration. Even the things that they, you know, they really, they really want that bubble gum, you know. They can't even, just as they're reaching for the bubble gum, they go, and they say, They reach for a magazine instead. They go to do something and they can't culminate in anything.

[65:41]

They abort their greed. Because in fact, if you're six feet away from a bubble gum machine, a lot of stuff's going to happen between here and the bubble gum machine. And a lot of people go towards the bubble gum machine, but as I say, one step, magazine rack. Magazine rack, they reach for one magazine, they go to get another magazine. They open the book and they start listening to the radio. They drop the book and they start, what is the radio? And it's a bubble gum machine. This is their life. They have no concentration. They actually do have concentration, but they don't think they have concentration. Therefore, they go boom, [...] boom. For a person like that to do five minutes of looking at something blue would be a real breakthrough. You could see how good that was for them. Now, you people maybe don't think, see how good it would be to do that, because you already spend quite a bit of time looking at things. But if you spent more time looking at something blue, you could see maybe how good, what a good effect it would have to just look at something blue for two hours, if you could do it.

[66:51]

It would produce lots of good stuff in the common doctor. You know? Your teeth would be stronger, and your feet would smell less, and You know, a lot of good, nice, worldly things would happen to you if you just could look at something blue undisturably for two hours a day. Yes? When you talk about desires, you know, there's no actual dharma. Greed, there's greedlessness, but greed isn't a dharma. I was wondering what constellation factors... Greed isn't a dharma? a word is a thing if there's a lobha it's the a of something where is the thing that's a of moha is not on the list either but that's because it's drishti or moha is

[68:03]

and various kinds of anger. So where is it? It must be on the list. See, you know, like someone couldn't... Huh? It's very stubborn. It's very stubborn. Well, Kachandra can be directed towards bad things too. It's the basis of good, but it's... So where is it? It's not under the name of logha. Chetana. Chetana includes it. Well, what do you think?

[69:05]

Well, they say that actually the Chinese is the same as the Chinese. And there's two kinds. One for common, one for rupa. And our rupia. Well, so are some of the angers. That's right. Because when you're in the Rupadattu, often you do have lust for the Rupadattu. When you're in our Rupadattu, you can have lust for the Rupadattu. It's very high-quality lust. I mean, there are some beings who can't conjure up that kind of lust.

[70:09]

They can't desire formlessness. As a matter of fact, you can talk about desiring formlessness, but in fact, you cannot desire formlessness until you get into fine material. You can't really talk. You can talk about it, but you don't know. You're just talking through your hat until you get into the rupadattu. Only the rupadattu can you really desire it because of those four estrangements we talked about. In the Kamadatta, you just don't know what it is. You just talk. But in the Rupadatta, you sort of can talk about it. When you're up there just with colors, you know, just with these certain simplified forms of unconglomerated sounds and unconglomerated smells and unconglomerated tastes and touches. And in that space, you can sort of, and you get really good at that, then you can sort of say, The infinity of space. Just think about that for a while.

[71:15]

First of all, you've got to picture yourself being in some place where everything is, just imagine this endless blue. Endless blue, a little bit lighter than this. Light blue, just nice and even, you know. And when you really can stay with that, you project yourself as a rupa dot. Do not imagine that you're just there. And you can stay there as long as you want. Then that kind of space could also be white or yellow. In that kind of space, then try to think what it'd be like to think of the infinity of space. And if you can do that, put those two together, get yourself up there and then do the other one, and you're getting yourself into what we call formless experience, formless trance. And there, you can have desire for that space.

[72:17]

And it's very desirable. I mean, people who do the work to get there, they like it. They have no problem liking it. It's easier to like than to count it out to. but you have to be quite concentrated to even like it, to even have it available to you to like. But for the Buddhists, it's interesting to think and realize that there are beings which we can visit with our own body and mind. They're tromping around in this heavy situation called the kamadatta, to whom not very often does that world fleet into their consciousness, or does their consciousness fleet into recognizing the possibility of a world that all of a sudden could make great spaciousness in the middle of wherever you are. But it's not good to do it under certain circumstances, because you wouldn't be relating to your environment very well. So you should probably isolate yourself from heavy moving objects at that tone.

[73:20]

Yes? I had one other question. Concentration. They can't even concentrate on what they're greedy for, is what I'm saying. Of course, they can't stay on the beam of what they want. But concentration, actually, it rises all at each moment. That's right. There's no difference. The object rises all at each moment, too. That's right. There's no difference between, you know, concentration and concentration on There's no difference in reality, that's right. However, to realize and celebrate concentration, what most people need to do is to pick something to concentrate on. And it's good to pick something that will come up fairly frequently.

[74:26]

Or something you can make come up frequently. You can make mental things come up frequently. like the thought of Buddha. You can think of that. You can make it happen. You have certain options. Or there are certain other thoughts which will just come up by themselves. But as to external objects, things of the senses, it's good to pick something that quite frequently happens. And by human karma, it means that you quite frequently will be able to be aware of your breath and your posture. And you'll be able to be aware of your posture quite frequently in certain ways by virtue of your human karma. You can seldom, you know, for example, you can frequently be aware of your back and your arms and your face and so on. And it's difficult to be aware of your wings and your scales. So we choose being aware of those things because by virtue of our karma they come up frequently.

[75:34]

They're kind of easy to catch on. By means of them, it's easy to catch on to the concentrated nature. As you can say, I'll be aware of my posture and my breathing. And you get chances to do that quite frequently. So even when you're not being aware, even though you're not perceiving your breathing, and even though you're not perceiving your posture, you know what you're committed to be paying attention to. So you keep redirecting yourself there, which you might do anyway. but you may not. Some people maybe never notice their breath. And by doing that, you become convinced of the possibility of a concentrated state of your mind, which is always there. And when you get very good at it, the culmination of it is that a Buddha is always mindful. We talked about this before, I think, and maybe it was in the other class, but in the Abhidharma, I believe it's in Chapter 4. It says that some schools say that the Buddha is always in samadhi.

[76:40]

Well, the Buddha always has samadhi, but having samadhi and being absorbed in samadhi is different. Being absorbed in samadhi means you pick a meditation object and you're on that meditation object. So some people say that the Buddha is always in samadhi. But that is not true. The Buddha is not always in samadhi. The Buddha is always mindful. And what that means is the Buddha can be in samadhi or not. If a Buddha wants to be in Samadhi, the Buddha just thinks of the Samadhi the Buddha wants to be in, and that's the Samadhi they have, and they have it for as long as they want. It means the Buddha never distracts from Samadhi except to what they want to be distracted at. So they turn away to these various things, but they do it unconsciously. They can direct their attention to the bubblegum machine, and to the doorknob, and to the magazine rack, and to the music, and to the whatever. They just go like this, bopping from one object to another, totally at will, but they can also go, zoop, and look at the bubble gum machine for years, as long as they want.

[77:44]

They can do that. That's right, but they keep going back to that different bubble gum machine. And they may even take the bubble gum machine away and destroy all bubble gum machines in the universe. The Buddha still can just think of a bubble gum machine forever. And you can, if you really want to be strong about it, you can even eliminate outside You can even start cutting down the other things happening. If you really get strong enough and put your mind strong enough on it, you can start looking at blue. When you first start looking at blue, you see blue and brown and you hear noises, but after a while you see blue, blue, blue, and there's nothing else, just blue. You can do that. The mind can do that. You can cut out all the other experiences. It's possible. Buddhists can do that. That's one of the skills they have. But not just Buddhists can do that. Lots of yogis can do that. You don't actually need to do that in order to be concentrated. But most people can't thoroughly believe or have faith in the concentrated nature of their consciousness unless they do something like that.

[78:48]

They can hear about it, but unless you actually can experience in that way, you have troubles actually believing it. But just, you know... just to come back to the concentrated nature of your mind all the time without even using a particular object, that would be the object. And that could be a meditation, too, to constantly appreciate the concentrated quality of your consciousness. If you can do that, and you can do that a lot, you can do it more than you can do any color, and you wouldn't project yourself out of this realm. You wouldn't send yourself to the Ripa Datu, necessarily. where meditating on your breath, you could project yourself out of this realm. So some people, what they feel is, they feel as they jump from one thing to another, they feel that they're actually jumping from one thing to another, and they feel no continuity and no concentration. And if you tell them about concentration, their understanding of it is that it's a radically different state of consciousness than they know.

[79:52]

So when they hear about Zen, the first thing they think about is that they should eliminate everything. I was talking to a guy at San Quentin the other night, and he said, well, first of all, he said, like, I clear the telephone line. And he says, but then after I clear the telephone line, I try to put something back on the line. He said, then I get a headache. But the first reaction when you hear about Zen is that it means to clear everything away, not just them, but most people. Just wipe everything away. That's what they understand as concentration. because their experience of their concentrated state of mind is the opposite of what they hear about a concentrated mind being. So they think that their mind is jumping around and that there has no concentration. If they didn't think that way, when they heard about a concentrated state of mind, they'd say, yeah, right? I go from object to object, but I'm always concentrated. Yes?

[80:57]

Is there a way of describing that difference in Abhidana language? Between the mind that's concentrated? In the worldly sense, concentrated. The mind that's concentrated in the worldly sense. Well, in the sense, in one sense, the one person has the idea of destruction. And the other person has the idea of concentration. In a sense. And the idea of concentration is a commitment. to the concentration. You have a concentration object, object of meditation. You have mindfulness of that. You keep remembering what your object of concentration is. You have chandra, which is making you interested in the meditation object. You have mana shikara, which keeps bending you over to the object. So if you look at the mind of the meditator who's celebrating

[81:58]

concentration in samadhi, you'd notice that all this stuff, the whole mind is bending back to that celebration. All the parties involved are joining in the same celebration. The mind of the person who is concentrated, because they do have mental one-pointedness, mind always has mental one-pointedness. But if you look, they have no concept of celebrating that mental one-pointedness. Therefore, they have no mindfulness of it because there's been no decision. Oh, another one is adimukti. And that's to keep checking the decision to make sure that the meditation object you're celebrating is the one you decided to use. So they don't reiterate their decision to meditate. They don't even have the idea of meditation. They don't remember to meditate. They don't have to make themselves interested in meditation. And they don't have to bend the mind to meditate and the mind and so on. So all the assorted dharmas which make possible the celebrations the group mental celebration of the concentrated nature of mind, they're all over the place.

[83:03]

There's a will to, you want to be this way, but there's no coordination. You're not even mindful of what you want to do. Not to mention that what you want to do, it doesn't happen to be what you're thinking about. Your object of concentration is not what you want to do, and what you're mindful of has nothing to do with what you're experiencing. And you also, what you decided to pay attention to is not what you're paying attention to. But this is just your opinion. Which is why you think, have no respect for yourself. And why you act undecorously and everybody else agrees. Yes, you are acting weird. It's true. You're jumping all around. So you sit still. Yeah? It's sort of like that it was between at least two ways you can look at the path as... Going from one place to another, and that's one way of looking. Going from suffering to learning. And you can also look at it if it's not going from one thing to another.

[84:07]

It's just a practice of learning, just suffering itself. It's going from one thing to another, but the actual nature, even if it distracts the state of mind, is concentration. People who think they're distracted, think they're distracted. Thinking you're distracting is not knowing you're concentrated. Knowing you're concentrated is not thinking you're distracted. If you just don't think you're distracted, you're concentrated. But the way you don't think you're distracted is to celebrate concentration, or if you don't celebrate concentration, you celebrate the illusory and ungraspable nature of distracted mind. But the only way you can celebrate the illusory, ungraspable nature of distracted mind is to be concentrated to see what the distracted mind is. But that's quite easy to do because you happen to be right there. And that happens to be exactly what you're experiencing.

[85:10]

So it's right there to look at. And if you look at it, you find out you can't get it. When you find out you can't get it, it's not distraction in the market. It's not operating that way. And so on. Why do people who are on a path, who seek, who understand what you said, continue to do practices which... To continue to do practices on a path? Yeah, why do they continue to do things which, from the point of view, step up to something else? Well, as I just, what you were talking about before, you know, is that they do this just because Until you, you know, really advanced on the bodhisattva path, you can't somehow remember or make these discriminations unless you provide yourself with a nutrient situation, a good situation. And if you're providing yourself with a good situation, namely good karma, then quite naturally you get into these situations where you're making effort and when you culminate the effort and then when you sort of effort

[86:16]

You know, you're doing something which is the manifestation of realization of some effort. You've just culminated and made effortless some practice. When at the point at which a practice is effortless, there's no more reason to do that practice than any other one. Because it's just, you're just at that stage, you know, and it's just, it's nothing special to you anymore. It's good, but it's nothing special. And there's no reason why you would stay there anymore. As a matter of fact, to feel like you should stay there just because you happen to have gotten to this high plateau, you feel actually burdened by the height. It's kind of a drag that you've attained all this. You can't go back down because the only way to go back down is to do something bad. So you are sort of dragged or oppressed or stuck in your attainment, which is effortless and wonderful, but anyway, it's a drag. The only place to go is up or out. But you're not quite good enough to go out yet. in other words you're not quite good enough to know that there's no out so the only place to go is up and to get high enough it's not so much that it's at higher level you can do it more easily it's not that you can do it more easily at the high level but rather you need more time to study alright you just need more time to study you could learn uh...

[87:45]

what you need to learn at a lower level. You can learn at any level. Lower level, meaning lower level, but still good enough so you can see straight. But at the same time, higher level is also a little bit easier to see. But you could see at a lower level. But you're a human being still. And you just plain get bored with being stuck any place. So going up is a way to... to sort of practice getting unstuck even though it's not true unstuckness. It's unstuckness in a causal sense of getting unstuck. Maybe you get out of this one. You transcend this realm and go up to a higher realm. So it's just a natural human situation. You're not completely enlightened yet. You don't realize you don't have to go anywhere. But this is it. Because any place else is already here and so on. You don't really totally manifest that in your whole being. So, as a human being, you feel somewhat trapped in your attainment, so you go up.

[88:46]

So that's why people keep practicing these good practices on the path, even though basically they have a fairly good understanding that this is just more causal stuff. Anyway, you have to do something, and you might as well keep going up as not. And you're totally... not caught by that stuff, then you won't have to do it anymore. Now, the next thing is relative to attitudes of walking, of standing and sitting and lying or laying. And that has to do just simply that if you stand up, if you stand up, just standing up, Or if you walk, at least this will be undefiled, neutral karma, at least.

[89:51]

You could, of course, it could be bad, too. It doesn't say that all walking, standing, sitting and lying down is undefiled, neutral. It just says that in some situations, the human beings, if they stand, just standing will be undefiled, neutral. Now, what is the difference between that and the destiny? And somehow there's a slight difference. It's very close, though, actually, I think. It's very close. But there's some difference because you're not just experiencing. The destiny is retribution, you see. This is not retribution. In other words, you're not just experiencing, you're not just receiving, you're actually making an effort, you're standing up. But this standing is not done for some good reason. and it's not done for a bad reason. It is possible to stand in that way.

[90:53]

Such standing is not just the destiny because it's not just receiving, it's some kind of effort. But you can't say where it's going or what it's doing. It's just a posture. This is an example of undefiled neutral. The next one.

[91:28]

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